Human Work: Delightful, then Cursed, then Redeemed

Human Work: Delightful, then Cursed, then Redeemed.

“The Lord God took Adam and placed him in the Garden of Delight in order to work it and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)

(1.) On Work Being Delightful. After Creator God’s magnificent work in His creation of the universe, Adam was put right to work himself. Made in God’s image, Adam had a job to do as well. The Lord was a Worker, and thus so was Adam, and later Eve as well. In the beginning of the world, right there in the Garden of Eden, the Paradise of Pleasure, work was assigned to the first man and was intended to be satisfying, meaningful, productive. At that point, work was not a necessary evil, since there was no evil yet before the fall. Work only became a drudgery after the fall from grace, after Adam and Eve’s disobedience to God. Before then, work was obviously planned by the Lord, because He wanted His people to have something useful to do, to give them a stake in their world, a role in caring for themselves, and way to provide a sense of fulfillment. God intended from the start that mankind was to be productive and responsible for their livelihood. Work at this time in history occurred while Adam and nature were in harmony, and work was immensely enjoyable. At this point, the world was not yet a hostile environment. But in the beginning, work was an important aspect of man’s identity and purpose, and so work was inherently a very good thing in the life of Adam and in the mind of the Maker. In other words, work was ordained by Creator God to remain a part of the fabric of mankind’s reason for being. Work is not a consequence of sin and so is an inherently holy activity.

1. To Work It: The Hebrew word for “work” in Genesis 2:15 had two meanings… manual labor, and worship. So Adam was put to work in cultivating the garden, tilling it, tending it, caring for it and making it fruitful. But we have largely ignored the other meaning of work in Scripture, which is to serve and minister to God, to worship Him through the work itself. So right from the start, manual labor was intended to be a joyful and productive act of worshipping the Creator.
2. To Keep It. The Hebrew word for “keep” in this passage means to watch closely over it, to guard it, to protect it, to keep an eye on it. This was God’s plan in the beginning, for man to be a responsible caretaker and guardian, and not merely the gardener. The Lord delegated His creation’s well-being to humankind as it’s protection detail, its watchman, its guardian. Adam was asked to be the Garden’s papa bear, and Eve its mama bear, as they protect Paradise and enable it to flourish to God’s liking.

(2.) On Work Being Cursed. But then tragedy struck in the middle of Paradise. Adam and Eve did not trust that God had their best interests in mind and disobeyed His very specific instructions. The results of this Fall from grace were felt throughout creation. First, God cursed the most precious part of womanhood, bringing new life into the world, and declared that birthing a child would henceforth be a painful process. And then God’s attention turned to Adam for His punishment for disobeying the Lord… “The very ground is cursed because of you, Adam. Getting food from the ground will be as painful as having babies is for your wife. You’ll be working in pain all your life long. The ground will sprout thorns and weeds, you’ll get your food the hard way – planting and tilling and weeding and harvesting, sweating in the fields from dawn to dusk. You will now experience sweat from your brow as you work the ground, as you fight for every crumb of food. Your forehead will have to drip sweat in order for you to taste even a morsel of bread. In sorrow and toil, in anger and frustration, you shall work the ground all your life.” (Genesis 3:17-19). So what was once a completely pleasant, delightful, and worshipful experience of working in Paradise has become a terrible struggle, a source of anxiety and worry. What was once a complete joy to sustain life has become a supreme difficulty. What once was a divine assignment and thus a glorious privilege has turned from a blessing into a divine curse full of toil and trouble.

Sweat from the Brow. Human sweat was mentioned only three times in all of Scripture, and each time is significant:

1. Genesis 3:17-19. “Cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread…” Sweat was a description used by the Lord God as He applied His curse on Adam and mankind because of his disobedience. Evidently, Adam worked before the fall, but he didn’t experience this kind of perspiration, a consequence of his sin that involved extreme exertion, stressful work, and difficult manual labor. So sweat has been associated ever since the Garden with the consequences of sin, a reminder of the Lord’s curse over all of creation.
2. Ezekiel 44:17-18. “When the priests enter the gates of the inner court, they shall wear linen garments. They shall have nothing of wool on them while they minister at the gates of the inner court and within. They shall have linen turbans on their heads, and linen undergarments around their waists. They shall not bind themselves with anything that causes sweat.” The priests serving in the Temple were specifically instructed not to sweat. They were to wear linen, a material associated with holiness, because the material breathed and helped cool the skin, it absorbed moisture, and did not irritate the skin. So linen was the material of choice since it was effective in preventing perspiration. Sweat was to be avoided at all costs inside the Temple courts because it was a symbol of the curse in the Garden, a reminder of the Fall. The Temple was to represent Paradise restored, not Paradise fallen. The Temple was not to be tainted by the human sweat of painful toil and stressful self-effort, but instead by the purity of the priests and the power of God. The inner courts were to remain a holy space, associated with the joy of God’s strength and not the frustration of human weakness.
3. Mark 14:32-34 and Luke 22:44. “Then Jesus led His disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane. He told them, ‘Sit here while I pray awhile.’ He took Peter, James and John with Him. An intense feeling of great horror plunged His soul into deep sorrow and agony. And He said to them, ‘My heart is overwhelmed with anguish and crushed with grief. It feels as though I’m dying. Stay here and keep watch with me… And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.” The Passion of Christ’s suffering truly began in the Garden of Gethsemane. Christ had just finished His Passover meal with His disciples, His Last Supper, and He retired to the beloved Garden to pray as the anguish of what was about to happen hits Him full force. His anxiety was understandably profound as He prays alone to the Father, to His loving Abba, feeling like the whole world was on His shoulders. As it turns out, of course, that burden became literally true later on the Cross. The physician Luke is the only gospel writer that mentions Christ’s blood and sweat falling to the ground during this anguish. Is this even physically possible? Could Jesus have been so filled with stress and anxiety that this literally occurred? According to medical science, the sweating of blood can actually occur. Yes, this rare condition can occur when someone is in unthinkable distress. The Gethsemane prayers of Jesus certainly qualifies. The Greek text says that His sweat became “like great drops of blood.” So it is entirely possible that Luke is trying to describe Christ’s sweat as being poured from his brow in a way that resembled drops of blood, but was not literally blood. The sweat was pouring out from Him in big drops, like blood would have poured out if He were cut badly. So, it’s not definitive that it was hematidrosis which was happening to Jesus. Luke may have been exaggerating, trying to describe the indescribable agony of Jesus in Gethsemane. It’s interesting that many biblical scholars at this point compare the bloody sweat of Jesus with the cursed sweat of Adam. Adam was tested in the first Garden, and he tragically failed the test. But here in Gethsemane we see the Second Adam being tested in another Garden. Could it be that Christ’s precious blood contained the sweat of the first Adam, who was cursed to bear the sweat of his brow because of his sin? Perhaps we see here that the love of Christ included Adam’s curse. Christ was tempted too, but He passed the test that Adam failed, somehow mixing His blood of salvation with the sweat of the curse. What a poignant picture of redemption.

(3.) On Work Being Redeemed. Human work was initially designed by God to be delightful, joyful, productive and worshipful. Work was assigned by the Lord in Paradise and inherently a good thing. But then evil slithered into the Garden, led Adam and Eve into disobedience, and work went downhill from there as a part of God’s curse on creation. * It’s interesting that there are two words for “work” in Latin: “labor” and “opus.” Labor means work that is arduous toil, a difficult effort, an undertaking that involves wear and tear on the human body and psyche. Opus, on the other hand, is a creative act, a voluntary work that is artistic and expressive. Opus work results in a finished product that is satisfying and a triumph of human ingenuity and skill. So the first work as assigned by God in the Garden was Opus work; labor work became the norm with the curse; and now we have the opportunity to redeem work and return it to the Opus work of the Garden. Whatever we can do to bring Opus work back into this world, the work that God had intended in the first place, will be redemptive and God-approved. When we are able to bring joy, worship and satisfaction to our work, delivering it from mere meaningless drudgery, we are helping to redeem the world through Christ. Novelist Frederick Buechner described Opus work this way: “By and large, a good rule for discovering your vocation, your calling, is this… The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work that (a) you need most to do, and (b) that the world needs to have done. The place God calls you  to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet… where your greatest joy meets the world’s greatest need.” Whatever we can do to redeem the world of work back to the way God first intended it, helping to turn work from a necessary evil to an act of worship, will prove to be a light to the world. Many have claimed that work is a path to holiness, a road to sainthood, no matter the work. Opus work is a way to experience God in daily life, performing a service to God’s creation and an offering to the Lord. Opus work is a profound way to present ourselves as living sacrifices to God, which is our reasonable means of worship (Romans 12:1). The astounding priest-poet Gerard Manley Hopkins put it this way in one of his sermons: “It is not only prayer that gives God glory, but work. Smiting an anvil, sawing a beam, whitewashing a wall, driving horses… To lift up the hands in prayer gives God glory, but a man with a dungfork in his hand, a woman with a slop pail, give Him glory too. God is so great that all things give Him glory if you mean they should.” 

• I owe this idea of labor vs. opus to good friend Dennis Bakke from his great book, Joy At Work.