Genesis 1-2: Working and Resting in the Image of God

Introduction

"The Bible begins with a work week." Andrew Wilson makes this observation as he launches a new series called "Good Work" at King's Church London. The church is living it out on Sundays and in dozens of small groups at the same time, with an eight-week booklet of questions for discussion and personal reflection.

The aim of the series is simple: that our work would be good, and that it would be driven by love for our neighbor and by the glory of God. Whether the work is physical or intellectual, paid or voluntary, boring, exciting or exhausting, at home or outside the home, God speaks about it in his Word.

Drawing on Genesis 1:26 to 2:3 and Genesis 2:4-15, the preacher corrects three widespread misconceptions: that all work is paid, that work is bad in itself, and that work serves to justify our existence.

Message Outline

1. The Bible Begins With a Work Week

The story of the Bible could have started in many ways. It starts with a work week, before anything else. God works: he creates, he organizes, he designs, he builds, he guides, he delegates.
On the first day, God brings order out of chaos and puts things here and there. On the second, he separates. On the third, he makes plants grow like a farmer. On the fourth, he organizes the calendar like an administrator. On the fifth, he fills the world with creativity, life and abundance.
On the sixth day, he creates beings in his image, humans like us, and he entrusts us with continuing his mission: cultivating creation, giving it order, shape, life and fruitfulness. He gives us work just as he himself worked. On the seventh day, he rests.
Work matters to God: it is the first thing he does. It also matters to us, because we spend most of our time on it. For many, if not most, it is the main way to worship God, to serve and to love our neighbor. Not necessarily what we do at church and through the church, as beautiful as that is ("and I love it!"), but through our work.
Connecting faith and work is not always easy: ambition, boredom, creativity, discipline, ethics, frustration. Andrew Wilson admits that, for fifteen years, his unpaid work as a father and caregiver has been, most weeks, harder than his paid work, partly because he loves his job, but also because his children and his family situation have been trying.
His church brings together masons, bankers, accountants, nannies, business owners, biochemists, boxers, lawyers, bakers, bus drivers. Each one has important work to do.

2. First Misconception: All Work Is Paid, Yet Five Characters Work Without Wages

Many people, in the room as in the city, think that work is what you do to get paid. Our language constantly mixes up work and money.
When his wife was raising two preschoolers with special needs, people would ask her: "Why aren't you working?" She was too kind to answer: "I probably work harder than you do. If we swapped places, you would find my work more demanding and I would find yours easier."
We hear: "I'm looking for work," "I stopped working," "I work two days a week." Politicians talk about the working class or about creating jobs, and they mean paid jobs. The preacher admits that he uses this language too.
The danger: we end up believing that the value of work is measured by the money it brings in. Then what God's Word says about work would not concern the caregiver or the volunteer at a food bank. Or else, if nobody pays me, I would have no reason to work. "No, no, no, no, no."
Work is part of what gives human beings their dignity. It is one of the ways of expressing the image of God. Sometimes health prevents us from working, but for a flourishing human life, work is very important, without necessarily being a paid job.
To the idea that all work is paid, Genesis 1 and 2 answer: "Nonsense!" There are five characters in these chapters, and all of them work without being paid: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Adam and Eve.
God creates by his Word, by his Spirit hovering over the waters. "Let there be light!" The Father, the Son and the Spirit work six days, then rest, to give a model to his people.
Adam and Eve receive unpaid work right away: "Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it." In Genesis 2:15, Yahweh God puts the man in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.
The woman receives work so hard that we still call it "labor" today when a child is born, a work that only she can do.
The only character in the first three chapters of Genesis who does not work is Satan. "That should tell us something."

3. To Work Is to Serve

Andrew Wilson repeats it on purpose: we are not necessarily paid for our work. Work is not earning money in exchange for a task.
His definition: work is using our time and our abilities to serve others and contribute to the flourishing of humanity.
The Hebrew verb translated "cultivate" in Genesis 2:15 is often translated "serve." Work is service. It is not laziness, but it is not necessarily a paid job.
To those who think, "A series on work! I'm not working right now," he answers: "That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about serving others, whether paid or voluntary, for the glory of God and the love of our neighbor. Work is not just a job."

4. Second Misconception: Work Is Bad in Itself

Another common misunderstanding: seeing work as a curse, a plague, a consequence of sin and the fall. If the world were completely renewed, it would no longer exist.
To be honest, the image of work has been damaged by the fall (that will be the topic of the following week). Work can be frustrating, exhausting, painful, very repetitive. But many conclude that work is negative in itself, that we should do as little of it as possible, and that real happiness is found in rest, vacations and leisure.
The preacher notes a strange common ground between far-left politicians, big companies and artificial intelligence experts: the less human work there is, the better off we are. Big companies think that is "great." Far-left politicians say: "Nobody has to work. Go to the beach, go surfing." You may answer: after a while, it gets boring.
Human beings do not flourish when they do not work for long periods. Not when they have no paid job, but when they do not use their gifts and abilities to serve others.
He recalls the furlough scheme during the pandemic, which he himself experienced for a time. Those who used it to learn, to create or to do real work serving others remember it fondly. Those who spent it only on leisure and inactivity found it very boring after a while.
While writing his book on happiness, he learned that people think they are happier relaxing at home than carrying out a task at work. Statistically, it is often the opposite, especially when the task matches their skills: doing a job well makes people happier than sitting in front of their phone.
"Work is a blessing, not a curse. It is a gift from God." God is not under a curse: he works and says it is good. He creates us in his image and says it is very good.

5. The Rhythm of Work and Rest

God works, then he rests. We work, we see that it is good, then we rest. That is the cycle of creation.
According to Genesis 2:3, there is no real rest without work. "Laziness is possible. Hanging around is possible. Killing time by letting yourself be distracted is possible." But rest in the biblical sense comes only after working. God rests because his work is finished.
You know the difference: sitting around doing nothing for weeks, days or even hours, or sitting down after finishing a task, opening a beer, watching the sunset, watching your children play in the yard. One is rest, the other is just lethargy or luxury. That can be understandable for a while, since we are not all made to run nonstop, but there is a grace in work followed by rest that you do not find in sitting around doing nothing.
Work comes before the fall. In the garden, there is work and rest, and even six times more work than rest.
Jesus works all the time: "My Father is still working, and I am working" (John 5:17). God is always at work in the world. And in the new creation, humans will keep on working, without boredom or frustration (another message in the series will come back to this).
Created in the image of God, we do not flourish if our life is only work without rest, or only rest without work. We are made to live by the rhythm of both.

6. Third Misconception: Work Justifies Your Existence

If we tend to underestimate work, many overestimate it to the point of making it the justification for their lives.
Andrew Wilson saw the musical Hamilton three times, plus the film. At the end, Eliza Hamilton sings: "When my time comes, will I have done enough? Will they tell my story?" Many people in the city think this way: have I justified my place in the world through my work?
In the film Chariots of Fire, two runners hold opposite views of the link between work and identity. Harold Abrahams says to a friend: "That's your secret, contentment. I'm 24 and I've never known it. I'm forever in pursuit, and I don't even know what I'm chasing. In one hour from now, I'll be out there again. I'll raise my eyes and look down that corridor, four feet wide, with ten lonely seconds to justify my whole existence. But will I?"
The sprinter has ten seconds, the soccer player ninety minutes, the boxer twelve or fifteen rounds, the consultant fifty-five hours this week, or forty years of career. In every case, it is work that must justify existence.
Eric Liddell, a Christian who refused to run on Sundays and would become a missionary in China, says the opposite: "I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run, I feel his pleasure." For Abrahams, identity comes from performance. For Liddell, performance comes from identity.
Tim Keller sums it up this way: "Abrahams is working even when he is resting. Liddell is resting even when he is working." If you are gifted with numbers, with technology, or with teaching four-year-olds, you can feel God's pleasure in what you do. Then even your work feels like rest.

7. Working From the Finished Work of Christ

Some seek to justify themselves through money, others through recognition, power, influence or simple professional satisfaction. The bad news: it is never enough.
The good news: it does not have to be this way, because God's greatest work was accomplished in Jesus Christ. We are justified by his finished work, not by our own.
Not by our ten seconds, our hours or our forty years of success, but by the six hours Jesus hung on the cross. His accomplished work is given to us as a gift. We work from what he has done for us, not to obtain it.
The cross is the great justifying work that removes the need for all our little works of self-justification. God saves us from our bad works, but also from our good works done to justify ourselves before our friends, our family, society and ourselves.
Paul writes it in Ephesians 2:8-10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, [...] For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we would walk in them."
The works entrusted to you are a gift from the God who loves you. They are given to you after you have been declared righteous in Christ. They do not guarantee your place before God, they flow from it. "It is the best news in the world."
The message ends with a prayer before communion: to give up justifying ourselves by our works and to receive again the grace of God revealed in the finished work of Christ.

Key Takeaways

The Bible begins with a work week: work matters to God, it is the first thing he does.
Work is not first of all a paycheck: it is using your time and abilities to serve others, whether paid or voluntary.
Work comes before the fall. It has been damaged, but it remains a gift from God and not a curse.
There is no real rest without work, and no flourishing life without rest: you are made for the rhythm of both.
Your work does not justify your existence. You work from the finished work of Jesus on the cross, not to earn your place before God.

Personal Application

What unpaid work do you do today (parent, caregiver, volunteer, student, retiree) that you did not dare to call "work"?
Do you see your work as a curse to be reduced to a minimum, or as a gift from God to serve others?
Does your rest look like God's rest after a finished work, or like lethargy in front of your phone?
Are you more like Harold Abrahams, who works even when he rests, or like Eric Liddell, who rests even when he works?
What are you trying to justify yourself with: money, recognition, influence? What changes for you when you realize that you are already justified by the work of Jesus?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

Is work only a paid job?

No. Andrew Wilson points out that in Genesis 1 and 2, five characters work without being paid: the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, Adam and Eve. He defines work as the use of our time and abilities to serve others and contribute to human flourishing, whether paid or voluntary.

Is work a consequence of the fall?

No. Work exists before the fall: God works and says it is good, then he puts the man in the garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it (Genesis 2:15). The fall damaged work, which can be painful and frustrating, but work itself is a gift from God and not a curse.

What does "Abrahams is working even when he is resting" mean?

Andrew Wilson quotes Tim Keller about the film Chariots of Fire. Harold Abrahams runs to justify his existence: his identity depends on his performance, and he never truly rests. Eric Liddell runs because God made him fast: his performance flows from his identity. In Christ, you work from the finished work of Jesus, and not to justify yourself.