The work of God
“Jesus answered and said, it is God’s work to believe in the One God sent.” (John 6:29)
It is not desirable fundamentally to separate the work of God from the work of man. It’s not greatly difficult to explain separately each of the two concepts. In human life, those two are not isolated, but they’re organically connected with each other. And in the end, the two things end up into a single meaning. People commonly think, God’s work means church or religious work divided from general business. Or that means the role of a priest. This has led people to have the perception that Christians are more right to devote themselves to church work or to perform the duties of clergy. Otherwise, it felt for oneself like they were only engaged in something just secular work.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the general perception of God’s work was very prominent in Korean churches. Such perceptions and moods generally were led by the lecturers of church revival movement, and it made influence to the quantitative expansion of the church. In our past of teenagers, youth shown some faithfulness in church life could sometimes hear, “You should be a pastor.” or “You should live as the worker of the Lord.” And heard of that, the youth commonly took it for granted. That is to say, they affirmatively thought it meant that they should do God’s work as servants of God. As a result, with the quantitative expansion of the church, many theological schools were established for supply and demand of pastors, and the popularity of pastors increased in professional preference. However in other hand, wrong understanding of such concepts was bound to bring some negative effect. That’s why the present church has been so dizzy gradually than before.
Jesus went across on the sea of Galilee, after performing the miraculous event that fed 5,000 people with five barley cakes. However, many people followed after Jesus and met Him and gave greetings in Capernaum. Despite their welcome, Jesus said something embarrassing them to hear, “~ you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loaves and were completely satisfied.” as written in . Jesus hit the nail on the head what the their underlying intentions are. That words Jesus said would be an important teaching for us living in this age of chaos in spirituality. Wouldn’t we have sought to visit churches to take bread and become pastors to gain bread and worldly authority? We now have to reflect on oneself seriously.
It is not we say that people don’t need food or that it’s bad to work to get food. Health can be kept by eating food, so we have to work hard to get food to eat. God said to Adam, “You will eat food by the sweat of your brow ~.” as written in . And Paul the apostle said in the Bible <2 Thessalonians 3:10>, “If anyone doesn’t want to work, he shouldn’t eat.” But what Jesus said in the text is, “Do not work only for physical food, but for the bread of eternal living.” Acts of faith and pastoral work are not a common business doing for the food of the body.
It is the faith life and the ministry activities to do for obtaining the eternal bread of life. We’ve heard once that investing money and setting up a chapel will make earn more money. Ah, it’s sad and sad words and realities! How many churches and pastors have been made like that? Would they have been true offerings to the Lord God, though they may have been fattened with good food and earned money? a question arises. It is written in the text that the food of eternal life is given by Jesus. Jesus, who was born as the son of man, can give the bread of eternal life to people because He is the sent by God. The bread of saving people forever is the word of God, that is, the Logos. Jesus is the word of life that came into the world and the true bread for men. Believing in Him is the complete way to true life.
Anyone who believes in and follows Jesus would like to do God’s work. But don’t think as doing God’s work by being something. The question of what becomes is determined by God’s grace and the talent. Only focus on believing in God’s holy Son Jesus correctly. Then you will naturally be good at God’s work. And those who are good at God’s work would become those who accomplish also their own work.
(Written by Koonoh, Pastor of JDO Presbyterian Church in Korea, on Nov 8th 2020)