What’s The Purpose Of Work? How Vocations Participate In God’s Mission

It’s Monday. You wake up to another week. Yesterday was Sunday, but you missed church again for a pressing work project. Maybe on break you caught a recorded sermon, which you now find difficult to remember. At least you got in some football viewing in the evening. And now, the daily grind continues. You’ve got to put in extra work for that bonus at the end of the year, and then maybe you can finally take those vacation days.

Sometimes you wonder, though, what is the point of it all? Sure, you need an income to provide for your family, and that is a good reason to work. But sometimes it all just seems like an unfocused, endless cycle. If you stopped too long to think about it, it might even be depressing. Similar thoughts and feelings may trouble you, whether you are employed by a corporation, self-employed with your own business, or even if you’re a stay-at-home parent.

Thankfully, Scripture holds answers that give true purpose to our work—whatever work that might be. Our work is not of one sort while our faith is of another. Instead, our vocation as Christians, and even temporary employment that may not be our greater vocation, should all fit into our greater calling as God’s children and redeemed people.

The creation of work

We must first realize that God was the first to work (Gen 2:1–3; cf. 1:1–31), and therefore work itself is not a result of sin or a curse. Work is transformed into hard labor as a result of sin (more on this later), but it was not originally so.

God was the first to work, and therefore work itself is not a result of sin or a curse.

Furthermore, work is not a strictly secular exercise. In fact, we probably would be better off not making such hard distinctions between the sacred and secular. The whole earth and everything in it belongs to God (Ps 24:1). In Christ, the whole world is made sacred, “For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:16).¹

“All things” encompasses every aspect of creation. There is nothing that exists which is not made for Christ, nothing that simply doesn’t matter for the future new heavens and earth (Isa 65:17–25; 2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21–22; cf. Col 1:19–20 and Eph 1:9–10). Everything God has created he has set apart for his use—they have been made holy and sacred.

In the first pages of Scripture, we see God getting right to it, creating the universe.

• He creates heavens and earth (Gen 1:1).²
• Then he works on the raw materials he’s created to form a world fit to be his physical temple (Gen 1:2 ff).³
• As the final act of his world-temple building project, God places his image—humanity—into the sanctuary of Eden.⁴

Work and vocation are created things: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” (Gen 1:28). God gives humanity work to do. Because of this, work and vocation are always in relation to God.

Our work as participation in God’s

Adam can have dominion in the earth only as a vice-regent of his Creator (Gen 1:26–28). God always leads, giving us an example of what we are to do. His work serves as a model for our work, as it did for Adam.

God plants a garden in Eden (Gen 2:8), demonstrating for Adam how he is to tend and beautify the creation. Adam is to “fill” the earth and “subdue” it, closely reflecting God’s creative actions of forming and filling.

God names things in the act of creation, showing Adam how he is to take dominion. When God speaks light into being, he names it, calling the light day and the darkness night (Gen 1:5). Likewise with the firmament, the land, and the seas. Even the stars he names (Ps 147:4). However, the beasts of the field and birds of the heavens God leaves unnamed, reserving them for Adam as a first craft project.

Naming as dominion

Adam takes his first steps within the Garden to follow God’s model of work when he names the animals. In doing so, he joins with God in the work of creation.

The task highlights Adam’s role as dominion-taker. Naming is a ruling act. When the president of the United States renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, he asserted a sort of authority over the region that had not previously been asserted, even if no other military or political action follows. In naming the animals, Adam is beginning to fulfill the creation mandate (sometimes called the “cultural mandate”) to have dominion over the beasts of the field (Gen 1:28).

It is sometimes thought that Adam’s naming of the woman is an instance of asserting dominance (Gen 2:23). While the naming act suggests authority, we must notice that in the same instance Adam also renames himself in relation to her. Until now he has been called אָדָם (adam, “man”), but when the אִשָּׁה (ishah, “woman”) is created, he calls himself אִישׁ (ish, “man”).⁵ Man and woman are full and equal partners in God’s mandate to humanity to have dominion. Though they may engage the mandate in different roles and methods, they are both essential to carrying out humanity’s vocation.

Agriculture as dominion

Humanity is supposed to tend and cultivate the plants of the field (Gen 2:15). On day three, God creates vegetation—grains and fruits (Gen 1:9–13). But he does not merely speak them into being. Rather, he calls the ground to do the work. Creation responds by bringing forth its fruit. Adam, a creature made from that same earth, follows God’s example. His work continues God’s work.

In Genesis 2:5, the absence of a man to work the ground is presented as a deficiency that creates a state of barrenness, which must be remedied by the creation of Adam. The earth is to respond to Adam’s urging to bring forth life as it responded to God’s urging. The cultivation of the earth is dependent upon humanity, the creature who was given the task of ruling it. When a farmer tills the earth, fertilizes it, plants it, and harvests it, he contributes to the work humanity was intended to do.

Architecture as dominion

In Genesis 2:10–14, we’re given a brief tour of the lands around Eden, following the four rivers that flow through it. Highlighted here are onyx, bdellium, and gold outside of the garden (2:12). We might wonder why these items are highlighted in our tour.

Onyx and gold are used to beautify works of craftsmanship. They are especially used in the decoration of God’s sanctuary and the priestly vestments (Exod 25:10–18; 28:9). Bdellium is a fragrant tree resin, similar to myrrh, used for incense. Its only other mention in the Bible is the manna God gave Israel for food, which has “an appearance of bdellium” (Num 11:7).⁶ A representative sample of that manna was also stored in the Ark of the Covenant within the Holy of Holies of the tabernacle (Exod 16:33; Heb 9:4).

In short, these are all materials associated with God’s sanctuary. They are outside of Eden, but Adam is supposed to eventually gather them and bring them in to beautify God’s work. They represent work for him and his children to do.

Joining God in rest

The creation order offers rest to humanity. Man is created on day six (Gen 1:24–31). The only task Adam is given in the first week is the naming of the animals (Gen 2:19).⁷ Before he goes into the world to work on the first day of the second week, he must pass through day seven (Gen 2:1–3). Sabbath is interposed between commission and vocation.

God rests from his work of creation (Gen 2:1–3). He begins the institution of the Sabbath day of rest by resting himself. But the Sabbath, Jesus tells us, was made for man (Mark 2:27). When God rests, he invites humanity, his earthly image, to rest as well.⁸ By this creational pattern, God teaches Adam (and us) that humanity must rest in God before we can be effective in our work.

Because humanity’s first home, Eden, is a sanctuary, the place of worship, their rest must be characterized by worship, as well.

Because humanity’s first home, Eden, is a sanctuary, the place of worship, their rest must be characterized by worship, as well. Rest is not merely a cessation from labor, for until now Adam has hardly worked at all. Rather, rest for humanity is fellowship and communion with their Creator.

In this relationship with God, Adam is entirely dependent. Before he can even deliver offerings from the fruit of his own labor, he must enter into a rest that is gifted to him. He is invited to eat the fruit of the garden that is pure gift.

Through this rest, he is empowered to go to work. And at the end of the work week, there is again Sabbath. Vocation, work, and rest must go together, or none will be effective.

Work under the curse

Immediately after the creation of woman is recounted in Genesis 2, the serpent enters the garden (Gen 3:1).

The chapter divisions in our Bibles are no older than the eighth century AD,⁹ and they sometimes break up sections that were originally intended to go together. Genesis 2:25 (the last verse of the chapter) and Genesis 3:1 are a likely case of this, as they contain a Hebrew pun between the word for “naked” and the word for “cunning” (עָרוֹם and עָרוּם, respectively), emphasizing the cunning of the serpent in contrast to the immature naiveté of the man and woman.

With the temptation and fall of Genesis 3 being the event recounted immediately after the creation of the woman, we might surmise that it occurs on the day just after the creation of humanity—on the Sabbath. Just as humanity is being invited into God’s rest, he rebels and transgresses the commandment not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (Gen 2:15–17). Because of this, he fails to enter into God’s rest, and instead is cast out of the sanctuary (Gen 3:22–24).

It is God’s grace that he does not take away humanity’s vocation. He is still sent out “to work the earth from which he was taken” (3:23). However, after the fall, vocation and labor become painful. The very ground that Adam worked now resists his efforts, producing thorns and thistles rather than fruit (Gen 3:17–19). For the woman, the labor of multiplying by childbearing is now accompanied by sorrow (Gen 3:16). And all humanity is barred from the presence of God (Gen 3:24).

The essential curse upon Adam due to his sin is labor without rest. By the time of Noah’s birth, humanity so longs for some relief from their hard labor that Noah’s father Lamech gives him a name that means “rest.” He hopes that perhaps with this birth, “Out of the ground that Yahweh has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and the painful toil of our hands” (Gen 5:29).

In Noah, the earth does find a sort of rest as the world is unmade and recreated in the flood.¹⁰ The confirmation of the covenant with Noah (Gen 9:8–17) and the reiteration of the creation mandate given first to Adam is God’s reaffirmation of humanity’s basic work and mission in the world (Gen 9:7; cf. Gen 1:28).¹¹

Creation’s rest restored

God’s rest is extended further to Israel when he calls them to be his chosen people. As the seed of promise, they are the ones who receive God’s word at Sinai. They are given a renewed mission to guard and keep God’s sanctuary. To “serve” and “guard” (עבד and שׁמר, respectively) God’s sanctuary are the tasks given both to Adam in Eden (Gen 2:15) and to the priests and Levites regarding the tabernacle (Num 18:5–7). It is as this new nation of royal priests (Exod 19:6) that Israel is invited to enter into Sabbath.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exod 20:8–11)

Again, Israel is called to imitate the actions of God. The command to rest includes the command to “do all your work” for six days, just as God created in six days, and to rest the seventh, even as he rested. Not only is Israel to take rest, but like God they are to give it, as well: to their families, to their servants, to sojourners, and even to their livestock.

Work and vocation are ineffective and even self-destructive unless coming from a place of Sabbath rest. Seeking to draw strength from yourself is like drawing water from a dry well. You will be depleted before you even begin.

Israel finds a measure of rest in the tabernacle and in the Sabbath feasts that God provides them. But their real rest depends upon fellowship with God, and Israel does not have that in full. Not even after entering Canaan, the land God promised to Abraham, was full rest found: “For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Heb 4:8–10).

Our full rest, the author of Hebrews goes on to tell us, is found only in Jesus Christ, the new high priest who entered the true heavenly sanctuary (Heb 4:14–16). In Adam, rest was lost, and so work was subjected to futility (Rom 8:19–22). In Christ, the full fruitfulness of our work and vocation have been restored through rest in him.

The work of the church

The creation mandate and the Great Commission

When Jesus ascended, he also sent his disciples out. They were to baptize and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all of Christ’s commandments. The mandate given to humanity at creation is restated in a transformed way in the Great Commission.

And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matt 28:18–20)

Adam’s mission was to subdue the earth—to have dominion over God’s creation as God’s image–representative—and to multiply the human race to fill creation.

Christ, the second Adam (Rom 5:12–14; 1 Cor 15:21–22), first alludes to the creation of “the heavens and the earth” by defining his realm of authority as “heaven and earth.” The dominion Adam was to have on earth has now been granted to Jesus, and so now humanity may be assured of success (see also Heb 2:5–9).

The apostolic mission, like Adam’s, is one of forming and filling. Their mission is one of subduing the earth (the nations), now in the name of the triune God, through the proclamation of the gospel. The redemption of humanity signals the resumption of the project to glorify all of creation as God’s sanctuary. The apostles are new craftsmen, builders of a new temple (1 Cor 3:10–17; Eph 2:18–22; see also 1 Pet 2:4–8). We are vessels in that temple, sanctified for holy use and “every good work” (2 Tim 2:20–21).

Adam and Eve were together created as the image of God in an analogical way. They were not God, nor were they gods. But Jesus the man is the true Image, the Image who is fully the one he Images, and so reveals God to the world (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3; John 1:18). Adam and Eve were to exercise dominion by multiplying to fill the earth with the image of God, their children. Now, the spread of the gospel calls people everywhere to be conformed to Christ’s Image (Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; Col 3:10).

In Jesus, the incarnate Son, the Image of God marred by the fall of Adam has been restored to humanity. His temple is being filled with the myriad people who are added to it (Rev 7:9–10), multiplying the knowledge of God to fill and cover the earth as the waters cover the seas (Isa 11:9).

Christ is concerned not only with the salvation of souls. “All authority in heaven and on earth” encompasses every facet of creation. In Christ, creation is being made new. In the one who is the perfect image of God, humanity sees what we were created to be.¹²

Participating in God’s work in the world

The redemption of human souls is just the beginning of God’s redeeming work in the world. In baptism, people are brought into a new relationship with Jesus Christ, but work does not stop there. Discipleship includes teaching believers to obey everything Christ has commanded (Matt 28:18–20), and obeying Christ affects the whole world.

Just as God’s creative work modeled for Adam what his duties were, Christ models for us the extent of our work and mission. The people of God, the church, is the body of Christ. Therefore, the things Jesus was concerned with, we must also work for.

Jesus did not regard health and sustenance as unimportant but instead healed the sick (e.g., Mark 1:32–34) and provided bread (e.g., Mark 6:30–44). He had compassion on the poor. Amazingly, he cared not only for human souls, but he taught that God cares even for sparrows and lilies (Matt 10:29–30; 6:28–29), and he expects people to give rest even to livestock (Matt 12:11). Jesus has concern for all creation, and so must we as his body.

Moses was shown a model of heaven on Mount Sinai and from it built the tabernacle (Exod 25:40; Heb 8:5–7; 9:23–24), a model of the whole cosmos. We who have come not to Mount Sinai but to the true heavenly places in Mount Zion (Heb 12:22–24) have a heavenly model as well, to which we are to conform the earth. We can pray, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt 6:10) because we have been shown the heavenly model in Christ.

All of the world was created to be God’s dwelling with humanity. So, work that subdues the earth and rightly exercises dominion over it is work that beautifies and glorifies the sanctuary of God.

A new perspective on our work

All this should give us new perspective on our daily work and vocation. It may not even significantly affect what we do, but it should affect how we think about and do it.

People (especially Christians)¹³ engage in work of various kinds that extend the knowledge and glory of God in different ways and in different realms.

• Human invention—technological advances and ingenuity bridge time and space, making people more efficient in their work and thus, potentially (if we use it wisely!) carving out more time for rest.
• Health care reflects Christ’s care for the sick and gives them relief.
• Legal work affords opportunities to see justice done according to God’s standards of right and wrong.
• Work in the arts directly beautifies creation to more fully reflect God’s glory.
• Farming provides food to strengthen the arms of co-laborers.
• Consider that even what some might view as menial labor—vocations in conservation, plumbing, or sanitation—is essential to the mission of the gospel, maintaining and beautifying God’s world.

This perspective should also make us consider what sort of work is worthy of our energies. We might pause to consider how our vocation contributes to God’s work of redeeming creation, and even consider how we perhaps could better reflect God’s will for creation in our work.

Evaluating our work

At the end of each phase of creation, God evaluated his own work and judged that his work was good. At the end of the creation week, he evaluated the whole project and judged it “very good” (Gen 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31). This is, again, our model to follow. We should evaluate our own work to see whether it reflects God’s goodness and serves our general calling as followers of Christ.

In our work, do we form and fill creation, beautifying and glorifying it as we exercise rule and dominion? Or do we abuse heavenly gifts in a utilitarian way, exploiting and then leaving them to lie fallow? Does our vocation treat God’s creation and his creatures with proper respect? If not, then how could we improve upon our approach to our work?

Our work is intended to bring the world into God’s rest—to increase fellowship with Christ through service to others. How does your vocation give God’s rest to others? Are you honest and fair in your business dealings, so that others may make a reasonable profit, as well? As an employer, do you give rest to your employees in Christ’s name?

We cannot give what we don’t have, and we have nothing we have not first received (1 Cor 4:7). So, if we do not rest in Jesus ourselves, how will we give rest to others? But if we start at that place of resting in Christ and work from there, then our work, whatever it is, will be meaningful. Our vocation, whatever it is, has a place in God’s kingdom mission.

Some day, all our work will be evaluated and tested by God, to his approval or disapproval (1 Cor 3:12–15).¹⁴ We want our work to have eternal meaning and to receive God’s approval. So whatever your work and vocation might be, whatever you do, do all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31), so that the world may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven (Matt 5:16).

Recommended resources from the author for further study

Related articles

• How Christian Feast Days Help Sync Our Calendars with God’s
• Will There Be Roombas in Heaven? Rethinking AI, Work & Time
• Fighting Spiritual Fatigue with True Soul Rest