The Oxford Dictionary defines work as
1 activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a result.
2 such activity as a means of earning income.
3 a task or tasks to be undertaken.
Basically work can be a job that you go to everyday and from which you earn a salary. However, it can also be any task or duty you are supposed to do even if you may not be financially compensated for it.
Every one of us has work to do whether it be a job we go to, ministry, business, farming, housekeeping etc. There is no such thing as unemployment. God’s way of prosperity is work and a good work ethic. It is dishonest and disingenuous to teach people that all they need to do to prosper is to give. Giving is just one fourth of the success equation.
When God created man, work was the first thing that He gave him. God gave Adam a job before He gave him a wife. Work was part of God’s plan. It is not the result of the fall. It existed before the fall.
“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” Gen1:28
Adam was a perfect man in a perfect environment with all of his needs met by God. God provided whatever Adam needed to live and thrive. And yet still He gave him work to do. A perfect man in a perfect environment had work to do. Now what about us who live in an imperfect world? We have a lot of work to do. There is a lot to do in this world.
Work is what Adam did in the garden. Naming the animals was work. Hard work. Smart work. He worked the garden. He tended it, he kept it. The dominion mandate God gave him could only be achieved through work. You have to work hard and smart if you are going to prosper God’s way. If you don’t work you will not have what to give.
Every purpose is connected to work. You cannot fulfill your purpose without working. The pastor works, the evangelist works, the doctor works, the teacher works etc.
2Thesalonians 3
6 Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.
Paul gives instructions about how we should deal with the brethren who refuse to work when they are able. This is not talking about those who cannot work. There are people who have reasons why they can’t work. These can be sickness, weakness, they just lost a job and are temporarily jobless, transition etc.
However there are those that are able to work but just deliberately refuse to go to work for whatever reason but instead prefer to live off someone else or get welfare or depend on charity to survive. He commands us in the name of the Lord to withdraw, disassociate and separate ourselves from such people.
Such people are living a disorderly life and have not submitted to the authority of Jesus Christ and to the plan and purpose and design of God.
7 For yourselves know how ye ought to follow us: for we behaved not ourselves disorderly among you; 8 Neither did we eat any man's bread for nought; but wrought with labour and travail night and day, that we might not be chargeable to any of you:
Paul and his companions were self-supporting missionaries. They worked long hours so as not to be a financial burden to those to whom they ministered. Acts 18:3 tells us that Paul was a tentmaker. That was the business in which he engaged to support himself and his companions. And it was a profitable business because in those days tents were widely used. Thus there was enough market for their tents and they earned sufficient income from them to support themselves in the ministry.
“And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers.”
Paul referred to their work as travail. According to Thayer, the Greek word that was translated ‘travail’ here means, a hard and difficult labor, toil, travail, hardship, distress. Paul and his companions didn't just work; they worked hard.
In 1Thes2:9 he says that they worked day and night so as not to be a burden to those they ministered to. “For ye remember, brethren, our labour and travail: for labouring night and day, because we would not be chargeable unto any of you, we preached unto you the gospel of God.”
They worked long hours to provide for their need and not depend on the people to whom they were preaching to take of them.
9 Not because we have not power, but to make ourselves an ensample unto you to follow us.
As apostles and ministers to these people, they had the right or authority to receive their living from preaching the gospel. However, he chose not to use that power so he could set an example for the Thessalonians to follow.
10 For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.
When people are able to work and they just deliberately refuse to work, we as the church should not help them or feed them. If a person is able to work, they need to. It is not helpful to give and take care of an able-bodied person who refuses to work. Giving them handouts is what keeps them in that state of laziness and unproductivity.
We have already discussed that there are people who are not able to work for whatever reason. These are not the ones Paul is talking about. All of us have been in a situation where we needed help and care because we weren’t able to take care of ourselves.
As Christians we are always driven by compassion to help the needy. However, many times just giving food or money to the poor is not the help they really need. If they can work, it is better to give the opportunity to work and be contributors instead of takers.
It is the proverbial giving a man a fish thus feeding them for a day versus teaching them to fish thus feeding them for a life time.
11 For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies.
A person who is busy working and making a living has no time to interfere in the affairs of others because they are occupied with their own lives. These Thessalonians who were not working had a lot of time to idle around and be busybodies.
12 Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread.13 But ye, brethren, be not weary in well doing.14 And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed.15 Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.
If there is something we all should be ashamed of, it is mooching off other people or freeloading. It should be embarrassing and humiliating to beg for food and care when you can go out and work and provide for yourself. God did not create us to live this way. Laziness should be shameful.
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