Can a Christian Do Any Job?

Introduction

"If what I do at church is God's work, whose work is what I do outside of church?" The question comes from Patrick Butsapu, pastor and author of the book Le travail selon Dieu (Work According to God), guest on the second episode of the podcast "La Foi en vrai" from Église du Tabernacle, in Paris's 18th arrondissement. At the microphone, Hélène Cofi, a member of the church, asks him about Jesus' relationship to work and about a question many Christians face when choosing a career: are some jobs more worthy than others?

The pastor's answer starts in Nazareth, where Jesus was known for years as the carpenter, the son of Mary. It moves on to Paul, who made tents, and to Abraham, Moses, Joseph and Daniel, then turns to ambition, false humility, faithfulness and work lived as an act of worship. This article presents his teaching, keeping his examples and his phrasing, along with the professional testimony Hélène Cofi shares during the episode.

If you wonder whether your job matters to God, or whether you are allowed to aim higher without betraying your faith, this message is for you.

Message Outline

1. Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth

When Jesus begins to teach, the people of his neighborhood and his town are astonished. They say: "Isn't this the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother called Mary?" They even mention his brothers (Matthew 13:54-55). In the Gospel of Mark, it is Jesus himself who is called the carpenter (Mark 6:3). In other words, throughout the years before his three years of public ministry, he was known as an ordinary person, not as someone who had come to teach things that would turn the world upside down.

• The Greek word used is tekton. At the time, it meant more than a woodworker: these craftsmen also worked with metal and clay, and they were handymen. "Jesus could put his hand to anything."
• Being a tekton means having clients, and surely some difficult ones. Jesus may well have had occasions to negotiate a price, to ask: "What quality do you want? Do you want me to make it this way?" Jesus lived work.
• That is why most of his teachings and parables speak from the context of the working world. But he did not stop at images: he gave truths for professional life.

The pastor cites several. Jesus says it is important to pay taxes: "I would have liked him not to talk about it, but he talks about it anyway" (Matthew 22:21). He shows how to keep your treasure in a place where the thief cannot reach it (Matthew 6:19-20). He speaks of the worker who deserves his wages (Luke 10:7). He speaks of doing for others what you would want them to do for you (Matthew 7:12). These are principles we use every day in our working lives.

Why? Because Jesus was a worker himself, and he understands that our Christian life, and even our understanding of the kingdom, show in the way we work each day and in how we deal with others. "Christ, I would say, was in touch with work."

2. Men of God in Public Life

Hélène Cofi points out that, in the New Testament, other figures carry out an evangelistic ministry while also having a job on the side, with real transactions. The pastor thinks first of Paul, who made tents (Acts 18:3) and who writes to the Thessalonians that anyone unwilling to work should not eat either (2 Thessalonians 3:10). Paul speaks of the value of everyday work.

But Paul is not the first in the Bible. Already in the Old Testament:

• Abraham was a livestock breeder.
• Moses was a shepherd.
• Joseph was a political administrator in Egypt.
• Daniel held high positions in the administration of different empires.

These are people who worked with God. We recognize them today for who they are, but the positions they held were not in the temple: they were in public life. They showed how God can work with us, and through us, in public life. "These are examples, truly, for me to follow."

The pastor tells of a visit from a colleague a few years ago: "Pastor, where I am a pastor today, I am not seen as being as committed to the work of God, because I also work in the secular or profane world. What do you think?" His answer was a question: was Paul, who made tents, any less an apostle than Peter, who worked only in what we consider the work of God? When we work, it is up to us to see how God has called us.

3. Are Some Jobs More Worthy Than Others?

Hélène Cofi pushes further. Building houses or sewing tents are not quite today's jobs. Now there are jobs in the stock market, in financial markets, and still agriculture, medicine, social work. Faced with all these opportunities, especially when you are in the middle of choosing a career, can we consider some jobs more worthy than others? Are all Christians called to become doctors, social workers or farmers, because it is easier to link those jobs to something that would please God, caring for people or caring for the earth?

"That is a very good question," the pastor replies, having himself worked in international development. His job was to help underdeveloped communities rise out of poverty, with projects that directly touched people's well-being. People would say to him: "Isn't what you do good?" People think service jobs are in a class apart, because they provide a direct service, you can see the beneficiaries, and you can measure how it improves their lives.

• "Unfortunately, or curiously, the Bible does not rank work that way."
• Biblically, all work is a service, a work of help. Work serves people's well-being, whether you see it directly or not, and God uses it to accomplish his purposes.
• The pastor quotes Dorothy Sayers, whom he introduces as an English researcher: "The real Christian work is any work done well." When you do your work well, it becomes Christian work. It is not only what you do at church, nor only what you do for direct beneficiaries whom you can evaluate. It is when you do it well, knowing that people benefit from it and that there is a God watching whom you are serving.
• He also quotes Martin Luther: "If you are called to mop the floor, do it..." (the end of the quotation is inaudible in the recording).

The danger is to belittle what others do because we tell ourselves they are not serving God. "And often, it is we pastors who make this mistake." We think we are in God's service and that others help us do God's work: their work lets them earn money to support us, who do the work of God. Yet God works with all of us, only in different places.

Paul was an apostle when he made tents. It did not stop him from remaining an apostle serving God. He served God here, he served God there, so that God would find his glory in everything he did. Hence the question the pastor always asks: "If what I do at church is God's work, whose work is what I do outside of church?" To his knowledge, there is no hierarchy in work.

4. Ambition: Good or Bad?

If all work can be God's work, what place should work take in our lives? What guideposts should we set when we have big professional ambitions? For the pastor, the answer comes down to one thing: what sits at the center of the ambition.

• "Ambition becomes bad when I am at the center of that ambition, when my gain is at the center of that ambition, when my power is at the center of that ambition."
• But when ambition is tied to God's purpose, it becomes something positive. Ambition in itself is not bad: you have to re-examine your motives. Why do I want something bigger than this?
• "I think we serve an ambitious God." He creates two people and tells them: "Fill the earth" (Genesis 1:28). How could two people fill the earth if they cannot see bigger than what they already live, if they cannot think better than what they see now?
• The problem is the direction of the thinking: "Am I thinking these things for myself, or for God?"

The counterexample is the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:4). These people set to work, and they were truly ambitious. But their ambition was this: let us build ourselves a tower, let this tower make us a name, let us find our identity in what we build, let us make ourselves secure through this ambition. God was not in it. They were even defying God, and their project kept them from spreading across the world as God wanted.

5. Dreaming Big with God, Far from False Humility

In contrast to Babel, there is another mistake, more discreet in churches: false humility. Thinking that, just because I am a Christian, I should not aim high, and in fact settling for mediocrity. "Yet we have an excellent God. How can we say we have an excellent God and settle for mediocrity?"

"Something that still pains me is when Christians do not do things well." The pastor reports a prayer he heard recently from someone who asked God that Christians would be able to use their heads, "because you gave them a head." Many Christians do not use the brain God placed between their two ears. God created it so that we could develop it, use it and accomplish things with him.

• Accomplishing things with God means being willing to look at what does not yet exist, but which we can bring about together with God: injustice at work to fight, services and products to create so that people's lives are a little easier than they are now. "We are called to dream this kind of thing with God."
• He cites a saying attributed to C. S. Lewis: often, we forget that God has called us to greatness, and we end up living a life of smallness.
• The right questions to ask: what good will this bring into people's lives? Why do I want to reach that level of work? Is it so that God's glory may be experienced there too?

To illustrate, the pastor recounts a recent conversation with a friend who worked at Meta, in California, in the Bay Area, in senior management. She told him: "When I found myself in those spaces, that is where I understood that God had put me here for a mission." Certain conversations took place there, they needed a Christian point of view, and she was the only Christian among all those people. "There, I understood that it is for a time like this that he placed me here," a phrase that recalls Esther 4:14.

The pastor's conclusion: dreaming big in order to be able to work with God at every level where he places us is not bad. It is something to encourage. "I encourage people to do better. But not only for themselves, not to make a name for themselves, not to earn more, but so that God uses them there too."

6. Work as an Act of Worship

The pastor then turns the question back to the host. He knows a little of Hélène Cofi's path, where God started with her in her career and where she is now. Did she get there by chance, or is it something she also sought and envisioned?

In her answer, Hélène Cofi speaks of worship. She sought to work by doing the job well, as an act of worship, expecting no reward, expecting no particular identity from it, and, "several of my managers can testify to this," not specifically to get a paycheck in return, but to do the work well.

• This act of worship was rewarded according to God's will: little by little, she was entrusted with great responsibilities. "It is in that small act of worship that, little by little, these greater responsibilities were entrusted to me."
• She echoes the testimony of the Californian: in certain circles that you reach after being given responsibilities, your worth is ultimately what you bring and who you are when you are in those places.
• She remembers a very regular prayer: that God would give her his wisdom, that he would share it with her. In discussions where the stakes involved hundreds of employees, "I felt small," and she really needed it to be God's wisdom living in her so she could go through this work telling herself: I am doing something for God, I am careful about what I do, I want to keep living in acts of worship.

The pastor agrees: he holds on to everything she has just said, but returns to one concept: faithfulness.

7. Faithfulness First: What Would Christ Do?

"Faithfulness is not opposed to ambition." First, you need to know that God does not call us first to fame or wealth. He calls us to faithfulness, faithful in what he entrusts us to do.

• In the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), the master does not commend his servants according to the amount earned, but according to their faithfulness with what was entrusted to them.
• When you are faithful in small things, you will be entrusted with great things again (Luke 16:10). Being faithful in what is small, we can also dream of what is great, and remain faithful, because it is faithfulness that counts for God, whatever the level.
• "If I am faithful in what is small, may I be faithful in what is great, may I be faithful in what is beyond me."
• Ambition, if it is tied to faithfulness to God, becomes something positive, and even something to encourage. We remain faithful to God, and that is how we walk step by step with Jesus in what we do every day.

The pastor ends on the presence of Christ in the working world. What Jesus does on earth today is what he had already begun to do when he was here, and he does it through us. And it is at work that we have the most contact with many people. How do I live this every day, to represent Christ in what I do?

To find out, he offers a simple test to ask yourself from time to time in these settings: "What would Christ do? What would Christ have done? Would he want better than this? Would he want mediocrity, or would he seek excellence? When you find the answer to that, do what Christ would have done." That is when you will be the hand and the foot that Christ is using to serve and do good to the community.

Key Takeaways

• Jesus was known for years as the carpenter of Nazareth. He surely had clients, perhaps prices to negotiate, and his teachings on taxes, the worker's wages or the golden rule come from someone who lived work.
• The Bible does not rank jobs. All work done well, serving people's well-being, is Christian work, at church as well as outside it.
• Ambition is not bad in itself. It becomes bad when my gain, my power or my name is at the center, as at Babel. Tied to God's purpose, it is to be encouraged.
• False humility that settles for mediocrity does not give glory to an excellent God. We are called to dream big with God and to use the head he has given us.
• God calls us first to faithfulness, not to fame or wealth. Faithful in the small, you can aim at the great by always asking yourself: what would Christ do here?

Personal Application

1. If what you do at church is God's work, how do you regard what you do at work from Monday to Friday: a parenthesis, or also God's work?
2. What is at the center of your professional ambition right now: you, your gain, your power, or God's purpose and people's good?
3. In which area of your work have you settled into mediocrity out of false humility, when you could do better with the abilities God has given you?
4. Can you, like Hélène Cofi, make your work an act of worship this week, expecting no reward and no identity from it?
5. Facing a concrete decision this week, what answer do you give to the question: "What would Christ have done here?"

Verses Cited

• Matthew 13:54-55
• Mark 6:3
• Matthew 22:21
• Matthew 6:19-20
• Luke 10:7
• Matthew 7:12
• Acts 18:3
• 2 Thessalonians 3:10
• Genesis 1:28
• Genesis 11:4
• Esther 4:14
• Matthew 25:14-30
• Luke 16:10

Frequently Asked Questions

Are some jobs more worthy than others for a Christian?

No. Patrick Butsapu explains that the Bible does not rank work. All work is a service that contributes to people's well-being, whether you see it directly or not, and God uses it to accomplish his purposes. He quotes Dorothy Sayers: the real Christian work is any work done well.

Can a Christian have professional ambition?

Yes, ambition in itself is not bad. It becomes bad when I am at the center, when my gain or my power is at the center. Tied to God's purpose and to faithfulness, it becomes positive and even something to encourage. The pastor reminds us that we serve an ambitious God, who told two people: "Fill the earth."

How can I know whether I am representing Christ at work?

Patrick Butsapu suggests regularly asking yourself: what would Christ do here? Would he want better than this? Would he seek mediocrity or excellence? When you have the answer, do what Christ would have done. That is when you become the hand and the foot that Christ uses to do good to the community.