Work and Our Labor in the Lord E-Book

James M. Hamilton Jr.

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Serie: Short Studies in Biblical Theology
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 174

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The Short Studies in Biblical Theology series is designed to help readers see the whole Bible as a unified story—culminating in Jesus. Insightful, accessible, and practical, these books are perfect for readers looking for bite-sized introductions to major subjects in biblical theology. The third volume in the series, Work and Our Labor in the Lord explores how work fits into the framework of the whole Bible—looking at the original creation purpose for work, how it was affected by the fall, and the hope for lasting good offered to all who toil and labor in the Lord today.

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“Embracing a robust theology framed in the four-chapter narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and consummation, Jim Hamilton skillfully handles the scriptural texts, displaying how human work is a central thread in the biblical storyline. No matter the present depth of the reader’s understanding of the integration of faith and work, the insights gained will prove inspiring and transformational.”

Tom Nelson, author, Work Matters; Senior Pastor, Christ Community Church; President, Made to Flourish

“The Bible has much more to say about work than we often think! Hamilton shows us just how central work is to the biblical storyline and God’s plan to fill the earth with his glory. This is a profound book that dives deep into the Scriptures yet remains highly accessible. There are surprising insights on almost every page. This is now one of the best books on the biblical view of work today.”

Matt Perman, Director of Marketing, Made to Flourish; author, What’s Best Next: How the Gospel Transforms the Way You Get Things Done

“People’s lives get turned upside down when they realize God cares intensely about their daily work. This short book walks us step by step through the big story of the Bible to show that God’s purpose for our daily labor is one of Scripture’s deepest and most important themes.”

Greg Forster, Director, Oikonomia Network, Trinity International University

“If you want to fully grasp the depth of the biblical theology of work, you will not be disappointed by James Hamilton’s short but powerful book. As he walks you through the biblical narrative of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, you will develop a deeper appreciation of God’s plan for his redeemed images to truly flourish, both in this world and the world to come.”

Hugh Whelchel, Executive Director, Institute for Faith, Work & Economics; author, How Then Should We Work? Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work

“There is no shortage of quality books on the connection between faith and work. But James Hamilton’s Work and Our Labor in the Lord is in a class all its own: a thorough, yet concise, examination of the place of work in biblical theology. This is a must-read for all Christians.”

Joe Carter, Editor, The Gospel Coalition; contributor, NIV Lifehacks Bible

“This book may be short, but it is extremely rich. Hamilton is a surefooted guide to the scriptural material and provides a highly valuable and stimulating discussion of the entire sweep of the biblical theology of work.”

Gary Millar, author, Now Choose Life: Theology and Ethics in Deuteronomy; Saving Eutychus; and Calling on the Name of the Lord

Short Studies in Biblical Theology

Edited by Dane C. Ortlund and Miles V. Van Pelt

The City of God and the Goal of Creation, T. Desmond Alexander (2018)

Covenant and God's Purpose for the World, Thomas R. Schreiner (2017)

From Chaos to Cosmos: Creation to New Creation, Sidney Greidanus (2018)

The Kingdom of God and the Glory of the Cross, Patrick Schreiner (2018)

The Lord’s Supper as the Sign and Meal of the New Covenant, Guy Prentiss Waters (2019)

Marriage and the Mystery of the Gospel, Ray Ortlund (2016)

The Son of God and the New Creation, Graeme Goldsworthy (2015)

Work and Our Labor in the Lord, James M. Hamilton Jr. (2017)

Redemptive Reversals and the Ironic Overturning of Human Wisdom, G. K. Beale (2019)

Work and Our Labor in the Lord

James M. Hamilton Jr.

Dane C. Ortlund and Miles V. Van Pelt, series editors

Work and Our Labor in the Lord

Copyright © 2017 by James M. Hamilton Jr.

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Pedro Oyarbide

First printing 2017

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AT are the author’s translation.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-4995-3ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-4998-4PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-4996-0Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-4997-7

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hamilton, James M., 1974- author.

Title: Work and our labor in the Lord / James M. Hamilton Jr.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2017. | Series: Short studies in biblical theology series | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016027439 (print) | LCCN 2016033561 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433549953 (tp) | ISBN 978433549984 (epub) | ISBN 978143349960 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433549977 (mobi)

Subjects: LCSH: Work—Religious aspects—Christianity. | Work—Biblical teaching.

Classification: LCC BT738.5 .H355 2017 (print) | LCC BT738.5 (ebook) | DDC 261.8/5—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016027439

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2020-11-20 03:35:26 PM

For Kameron Slater,

a blessing to all who know him

Contents

Series Preface

Introduction

 1  Creation: Work in the Very Good Garden

 2  Work after the Fall: Fallen, Futile, Flourishing

 3  Redemption: Work Now That Christ Has Risen

 4  Restoration: Work in the New Heavens and the New Earth

Conclusion

For Further Reading

General Index

Scripture Index

Series Preface

Most of us tend to approach the Bible early on in our Christian lives as a vast, cavernous, and largely impenetrable book. We read the text piecemeal, finding golden nuggets of inspiration here and there, but remain unable to plug any given text meaningfully into the overarching storyline. Yet one of the great advances in evangelical biblical scholarship over the past few generations has been the recovery of biblical theology—that is, a renewed appreciation for the Bible as a theologically unified, historically rooted, progressively unfolding, and ultimately Christ-centered narrative of God’s covenantal work in our world to redeem sinful humanity.

This renaissance of biblical theology is a blessing, yet little of it has been made available to the general Christian population. The purpose of Short Studies in Biblical Theology is to connect the resurgence of biblical theology at the academic level with everyday believers. Each volume is written by a capable scholar or churchman who is consciously writing in a way that requires no prerequisite theological training of the reader. Instead, any thoughtful Christian disciple can track with and benefit from these books.

Each volume in this series takes a whole-Bible theme and traces it through Scripture. In this way readers not only learn about a given theme but also are given a model for how to read the Bible as a coherent whole.

We have launched this series because we love the Bible, we love the church, and we long for the renewal of biblical theology in the academy to enliven the hearts and minds of Christ’s disciples all around the world. As editors, we have found few discoveries more thrilling in life than that of seeing the whole Bible as a unified story of God’s gracious acts of redemption, and indeed of seeing the whole Bible as ultimately about Jesus, as he himself testified (Luke 24:27; John 5:39).

The ultimate goal of Short Studies in Biblical Theology is to magnify the Savior and to build up his church—magnifying the Savior through showing how the whole Bible points to him and his gracious rescue of helpless sinners; and building up the church by strengthening believers in their grasp of these life-giving truths.

Dane C. Ortlund and Miles V. Van Pelt

Introduction

How did the biblical authors view work? To answer this question we need to understand the place of work in biblical theology. Biblical theology, in my view, is the attempt to understand and embrace the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors.1 To attempt to understand the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors is to attempt to understand their worldview. The only access we have to their worldview is what they wrote. Understanding the worldview of the biblical authors requires the ability to see the ways they intended their statements to be read against a wider understanding of the history of redemption, and I am convinced that an evangelical and canonical approach to these issues best positions us to make progress in the task of understanding and embracing the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors.2One’s perspective on redemptive history will be an inextricable component of one’s worldview, and if we are pursuing biblical theology we will (whether consciously or not) operate with some kind of perspective on the relationships between the various books of the Bible.

Because this is a biblical theological study of the topic of work, the structure of the canon will play a less explicit role.3 For our purposes here, the following questions will help us to seek the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors on the topic of work:

What part did work play in the big story of the world through which the biblical authors interpreted their lives?What propositional truths about work did they understand to flow out of and back into that big story?Do the biblical authors understand work to symbolize something beyond mere labor?

These questions will be used to get at what the biblical authors believed about work, and when we have understood what they believed about work, we will know what we should believe about it.

We will begin with (1) God’s design for work in the very good creation, prior to sin. From there we will move to consider (2) what work looks like in a fallen world, (3) what work should be in the kingdom that the Lord Christ has inaugurated, and finally (4) what the Bible indicates about work in the new heaven and the new earth the Lord Jesus will bring. We will thus look at work at creation, after the fall, now that Christ has accomplished redemption, and in the restoration.

A word about biblical theological method: on the one hand, the contents of this book move through the salvation-historical storyline, i.e., the worldview story of creation-fall-redemption-restoration. On the other hand, in chapters 2 (fall/old-covenant instructions) and 3 (redemption/new-covenant instructions) we are not looking at events that can be plotted on the storyline but considering the gracious instructions God gave to his people for everyday life.

The incorporation of Old Testament Wisdom Literature into biblical theology has sometimes been seen as a challenge, particularly for those who move along the salvation-historical storyline, as this study does. Chapter 2 gives considerable attention to the ways that the books of Ecclesiastes and Proverbs speak to work in everyday life under the old covenant, so here the Wisdom Literature is having its biblical theological say.4

We are looking for the interpretive perspective of the biblical authors. The following four chapters will enable us to explore work as it was meant to be, as it is, as it can be, and as it will be.

1. James M. Hamilton Jr., What Is Biblical Theology? (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014).

2. Those who have read Edward W. Klink and Darian R. Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology: A Comparison of Theory and Practice (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012) will see that I am consciously combining what they describe as three different types of biblical theology (history of redemption, worldview story, and canonical approach). In my view, these issues are inseparable. I have attempted biblical theology in this way in God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment: A Biblical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2010); and With the Clouds of Heaven: The Book of Daniel in Biblical Theology, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014).

3. For further discussion, see Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible, New Studies in Biblical Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), 15–51; and for a comprehensive consideration of the issues, see Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985).

4. A longer project could include discussion of the Song of Solomon, particularly in light of what we will see about marriage and work in chapter 1. Time and space do not permit such discussion here, but see James M. Hamilton Jr., Song of Songs: A Biblical-Theological, Allegorical, Christological Interpretation (Fearn, UK: Christian Focus, 2015).

1

Creation

Work in the Very Good Garden

The stories we tell reveal our understanding of the world, with our hopes and fears, and the songs we sing are poetic crystallizations of the deep longings of our hearts. The deep longings of our hearts correspond to what we envision as the good life. Our vision of the good life can be understood as our vision of “the kingdom.”1

God’s Design for Work

The soundtrack to the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou? includes the song “Big Rock Candy Mountain.”2 The lyrics celebrate handouts that grow on bushes, trees that sprout cigarettes, and bulldogs that have rubber teeth so their watchdog bites are harmless. This song’s idyllic landscape includes streams of alcohol beside a lake of stew, and whiskey too, because those who sing it want to escape reality by means of intoxication and to be fed though they have not worked. They want mountains made of rock candy. They want no tools such as shovels, axes, saws, or picks. They want to sleep all day, and they want to hang the jerk that invented work. I wonder if the songwriter realized that would put the noose around God’s neck!

The song’s sentiments fall significantly short of the glory that God intended when he created man in his own image and gave him work to do. Life at the Big RockCandy Mountain would not result in true and lasting happiness or satisfaction. The Bible says there is a primal mountain that is our destination, but it’s not one that will rot teeth and indulge character deficiencies. Contrast “Big Rock Candy Mountain” with Psalm 128:

A Song of Ascents.

Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord,

who walks in his ways!

You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands;

you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.

Your wife will be like a fruitful vine

within your house;

your children will be like olive shoots

around your table.

Behold, thus shall the man be blessed

who fears the Lord.

The Lord bless you from Zion!

May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life!

May you see your children’s children!

Peace be upon Israel!

This song is addressed to a man who works, and the blessing comes to him because he fears Yahweh and walks in Yahweh’s ways. The blessing of Yahweh takes the form of this man enjoying the results of his work, which he has done to provide for his wife and children. Psalm 128’s depiction of the good life, then, entails hard work done to provide for others, dependents, whose growth and fruitfulness are evidence of God’s favor and blessing. Prosperity here includes godliness, responsibility, stewardship, and awareness of God, prompting fear and obedience and virtue.

The man blessed in Psalm 128 is a God-fearing man (v. 4), and in the context of the whole book of Psalms, the mention of Zion in verse 5 evokes the Davidic king Yahweh set there (cf. Ps. 2:6).3 The references to the prosperity of Jerusalem and children and grandchildren in verses 5 and 6 hint that what has resulted in this individual blessed man experiencing the joys of Psalm 128 has spread to the wider culture. Jerusalem prospers because its men fear God, obey his Word, and work with their hands for the benefit of their wives and children. Psalm 128 is a poetic depiction of the blessings of the Mosaic covenant (cf. Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28).

“Big Rock Candy Mountain” and Psalm 128 sing different versions of the good life. In the Bible, the land of promise is not the place sought by freeloaders and slackers who long for an El Dorado where theft is easy, the hills are made of sugar, work is abolished, and handouts are freely distributed to tramps and bums who have neither responsibilities nor families.

The Bible’s songs are rooted in hopes seeded by its wider story, watered by God’s promises. What is the role of work in that story? We begin our answer to that question by looking at what God created the good life to look like, when the world was without sin. We will start with work in the garden in Genesis 1–2. From there we will seek insight on what life in Eden could have been like from the blessings of the covenant in Deuteronomy 28:1–14. We will then consider how the judgment on God-given tasks in Genesis 3:16–19 subjects work to futility (cf. Rom. 8:20).

Work in the Garden (Genesis 1–2)

The Bible’s story of the world opens with God doing work, six days of it. Once completed, not from weariness but because the work was done, God rested on the seventh day (Gen. 1:1–2:3; Heb. 4:3–4). Given that man is made in God’s image and likeness (Gen. 1:27), with Christians called to be imitators of God (Eph. 5:1), the fact that the Bible opens with this scene of God doing the work of creation by his powerful word calls for reflection. God works by speaking words. Among other things, this validates all kinds of knowledge work in which the hard work of thinking and communicating accomplishes what those made in God’s image have set out to do. But what words are like God’s words? What words could make worlds?

In addition to being able to marshal his army of words to accomplish his purposes, then, we see from this vast and splendid universe that God is a skilled worker who completes his tasks with unparalleled excellence and creativity. Work is neither punishment nor cursed drudgery but an exalted, Godlike activity. Nor should we think that once God completed the work of creation he was finished with work—as though he made the watch then simply left it to tick away the seconds. As a justification for his right to heal on the Sabbath, Jesus declared, “My Father is working until now, and I am working” (John 5:17). The Bible opens with a depiction of God at work, and the operational understanding throughout the Bible is that God continues to work, guiding, upholding, loving, judging, and saving.

The first thing the Bible shows us about God is that he is a creative, competent, efficient, caring worker, whose work provides for others, blesses others, meets the needs of others, and makes life possible for them. Surely this is meant to inform readers of Genesis as they confront the idea of man made male and female in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26–28).4

The creation of man and woman is accompanied by a blessing and a task, a charge and commission, which spring from God’s intention for man as he made them, male and female. Genesis 1:26 presents God intending to grant dominion, royal rule, over the animal kingdom from the moment he decides to make man in his own image and likeness—indeed, dominion because made in God’s image and likeness. God made male and female in his own image (Gen. 1:27); then he blessed them and told them what he wanted them to do (1:28).

Man was created not for passive observation of the world but for an epic task, a worldwide venture. Genesis 1:28 recounts,

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.”

God commands the man and woman in Genesis 1:28 to be fruitful and multiply and thereby fill the earth—the whole thing. Then they are to subdue it—the whole thing. God next charges them to exercise dominion over the animal kingdom—