Work

 It’s not loving; it’s insidious. Telling someone that they’re perfect just the way they are when they obviously aren’t isn’t showing grace and love to the individual, but a roundabout way of making you feel like a good person. You weren’t being a good person, and you weren’t being a good friend. You were just being selfish and trying to feed your own ego.

When you whitewash someone’s life and give them the thumbs up, insinuating that they’ve climbed as high as they can climb and can now make camp and rest easy by the roadside, you give them permission to quit, to give up, to throw in the towel, and merely exist. Breathe in, breathe out, eat, defecate, sleep, wake up, and repeat the cycle until, one day, you go to sleep and never wake up again.

That’s what individuals who make it seem as though surrendering to God is the end of someone’s journey and not the beginning are actually doing.

“Raise your hand, and receive Jesus in your heart! Hallelujah! Welcome to the family of God.”

“What now?”

“Now you just park your rear in one of those padded seats and wait for Jesus to return. Oh, and don’t forget to pay your tithe.”

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Raise a hand, walk the aisle, and you’re set. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming. Mention the word work or any synonym or derivative thereof to some believers, and they’d rather you’d doused them with gasoline and set them on fire.

You can see the physical metamorphosis in their face, from cheery, smiling, and conversational to frustrated and angry to the point of feral madness. How dare you insinuate that we must do anything other than raise our hand and once at that?

Revelation 22:12-13, “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.”

Payment presupposes labor. Reward presupposes having performed an action worthy of it. When He returns, His reward will be distributed in accordance with the individual’s work. What’s more, it is He who will determine the value of the individual’s work and not the individual. There’s an old adage that something is worth only as much as someone’s willing to pay for it. Thankfully, God is generous.

But that’s not equality of outcome. I thought we were all guaranteed an equal piece of the reward pie. No, it’s not, and no, we weren’t. It’s equality of opportunity. We all have that, and no one can take it away from you. You can do as much for the Kingdom of God as any man or woman that came before you. There is nothing standing in your way, there is nothing stopping you, and there is nothing impeding your quest. The only roadblock is you. Your willingness to step out in faith, your willingness to suffer hardship, and your willingness to labor.

It doesn’t matter what version of the Bible you look at or if you go back to the original Greek, each one says that when He returns, He will give every one according to their work and not their faith. Salvation is by faith alone in Christ alone, but the reward He comes to distribute is to every one according to their work.

Don’t kill the messenger; it’s what the Bible says. Not only that, it’s a direct quote uttered by none other than He, who is the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last.

Whose report will you believe? I guess it’s easier to sing it than to live it.

It’s not my job to look at my neighbor’s field and see how much he’s sown. It’s not my job to gauge how much effort he’s put into his labor because everyone is rewarded based on their work and not by how persnickety they were about judging another’s. If I spend my days itemizing where everyone else failed in their labors, I’ll have nothing to show the Master as far as the work I did or was supposed to do.

He’s already got the ledgers, He already has everyone’s time card, and whether or not they took to the tasks they were given with gusto and consistency. He’ll figure out the accounting. That’s not my job, and it’s not your job. Then again, sitting in judgment of how everyone is doing their work is a lot less taxing than doing the work ourselves, isn’t it?

If someone asks for my help as to how they should go about plowing a field or planting seeds, I’m glad to help and show them, but I can’t do the work for them. That part they must do on their own because it is their labors that will be rewarded, and not the labor they talked someone else into doing for them.

You can’t outsource your work to another. You are not a corporation looking to maximize profits, you are a servant of God, called to labor in His harvest field, and your reward will be commensurate with your labors. If you were given much, much will be required. If you were given little, then that little you were given will also be required of you.

God is just, He is righteous, and He is all-knowing. There is nothing you’ve done or will do for His name’s sake that will be overlooked or ignored. Small or great, whatever it may be, He will reward you according to your work in a manner He will see fit.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.