Tim Keller on the Purpose of Your Job, Your Life, and the Universe
Devotion to Christ in the Workplace
Does Monday morning excite you? If so, that’s great, but that’s not how many of us feel. Our jobs challenge us, exhaust us, and sometimes threaten to consume us. So what does devotion to Jesus Christ look like in our workplace environments—whether they be cutthroat or mundane?
From small-town Virginia to the hustle of New York City, Tim Keller spent his life ministering to believers struggling with work. As he discovered and taught, how we work (and why) reveals our deepest values and dearest treasures.
According to Keller, work is not merely a way to earn money or a strategy for self-advancement or a necessary evil to fund truly important things like ministry. Work is a divine calling through which we honor our heavenly Master and love our neighbor in tangible ways.
Not long after Keller planted Redeemer, a soap-opera actor got converted and came to his new pastor asking, “What roles should—and shouldn’t—I take? I assume stories don’t have to be religious to be good for people, but how do I know which stories are good and which are bad?” He also wondered, “How should I think about method acting? This is where you don’t just act angry; you get angry. You tap into something within yourself and really live it. What’s your advice?” Though Keller had the wherewithal to reply to the second question by saying, “That doesn’t sound like a good idea,” he knew he was out of his depth. Despite years of formal theological training and ministry experience, he sensed a gap in his ability to form Christians for daily work. He knew how to encourage deeper involvement in church activities, but here was a young Christian wanting to be discipled for his public life. Years later, Keller would point to this interaction as an “epiphany” that propelled him to think more seriously about the integration of faith and work.1
Tim Keller on the Christian Life
Matt Smethurst
Matt Smethurst distills over 40 years of Tim Keller’s teaching topic by topic—drawing from popular books to lesser-known conference talks, interviews, and sermons—to present practical insight for generations of readers eager to grow in their walk with Christ.
Situating Your Job in a Story
Your vocation will make little sense to you unless you’ve situated it in a significantly larger story. What’s the purpose of my job? is too small a question to start with. We must first ask, What’s the purpose of my life? and, more fundamentally, What’s the purpose of the universe? Only when we’ve surveyed God’s ultimate plan for the world, as revealed in his word, will we duly grasp the implications for our work. This sweeping story unfolds in the major plot points of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Or, Keller notes, we can distill it in four chapters:2
Chapter 1
Where did we come from?
From God: the One and the relational
Chapter 2
Why did things go so wrong?
Because of sin: bondage and condemnation
Chapter 3
What will put things right?
Christ: incarnation, substitution, restoration
Chapter 4
How can I be put right?
Through faith: grace and trust
The Bible’s storyline presents an unfolding drama that powerfully resonates with our jobs:
- Work was created good.
- Work became corrupted by sin.
- Work is being partly redeemed through the Holy Spirit.
- Work will be fully redeemed when Jesus Christ makes all things new.
Work Is Created
The Bible begins with the most productive workweek of all time.3 That’s how we’re meant to think of it. Note the repetition:
And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Gen. 2:2–3)
The narrative then rewinds to focus on the sixth day. Though God was exceedingly pleased with his universe (Gen. 1:31), something was lacking: “There was no man to work the ground” (Gen. 2:5). So the Creator knelt down, as it were, to solve the problem:
Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. (Gen. 2:7–8)
Behold the King of glory, with his hands in the dirt.
No wonder the first image bearer was given a similar occupation: Adam was put “in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). And the job was too much for Adam to handle by himself: “Then the LORD God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him’” (Gen. 2:18). Keller aptly contends, “We see God not only working, but commissioning workers to carry on his work. . . . Though [everything] was good, it was still to a great degree undeveloped. God left creation with deep untapped potential for cultivation that people were to unlock through their labor.”4
Could the Bible begin with a more exalted view of work?
Work Is Cursed
Yet by the time we finish the next chapter in Genesis, the story has become a tragedy. Following Adam and Eve’s rebellion, God pronounces a series of curses, including this:
And to Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to the voice of your wife
and have eaten of the tree
of which I commanded you,
‘You shall not eat of it,’
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;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.” (Gen. 3:17–19)
Behold the King of glory, with his hands in the dirt.
Yet even after banishment from Eden—the original exile—Adam retains his vocation: “The Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken” (Gen. 3:23). But work has now become toil. As the father of Noah says, looking at his newborn son, “Out of the ground that the Lord has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29).
In one sense, the whole ensuing story of the Bible is about the promise of a royal deliverer who will end the exile and heal the world, bringing relief to our toil and everlasting rest to our souls. But what about the meantime? The curse remains. The exile persists. Thorns and thistles threaten to sabotage even our best efforts. Even thoughthe kingdom of God has made a personal appearance on earth in the person of Jesus Christ, we still await the renewal and restoration of all things—including the gift of work.5
The iconic words of Isaac Watts may put you in the Christmas spirit, but they are actually about the joy to come at the King’s return:
No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as the curse is found.6
Dignity of All Work
On the topic of work, Keller invoked no one more often than Martin Luther. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformer, having reclaimedm the biblical truth of the priesthood of all believers, loved to highlight the nobility of all human work—no matter how menial:
[Luther] mounted a polemic against the view of vocation prevalent in the medieval church. The church at that time understood itself as the entirety of God’s kingdom on earth, and therefore only work in and for the church could qualify as God’s work. This meant that the only way to be called by God into service was as a monk, priest, or nun. . . . [Secular labor was] akin to the demeaning necessity that the Greeks saw in manual labor. Luther attacked this idea forcefully.7
Indeed, in his expositions of the Psalms, Luther observed that God cares for his creation not directly but indirectly—through our work. Consider, for example, Psalm 145:
The eyes of all look to you,
and you give them their food in due season.
You open your hand;
you satisfy the desire of every living thing. (Ps. 145:15–16)
But how does God feed us? It is not as if heavenly manna plops onto our plates. No, he works through human workers—farmers, drivers, bakers, grocers, and countless others along the way—to provide the food that now sits in your refrigerator or pantry.8 We pray, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11), and God answers by dispatching people to their jobs.
Even in the smallest tasks, the Lord Almighty is working through our work. The implications of this teaching, once they sink in, are explosive. Keller reflects,
Not only are the most modest jobs—like plowing a field or digging a ditch—the “masks” through which God cares for us, but so are the most basic social roles and tasks, such as voting, participating in public institutions, and being a father or mother. These are all God’s callings, all ways of doing God’s work in the world, all ways through which God distributes his gifts to us. Even the humblest farm girl is fulfilling God’s calling. As Luther preached, “God milks the cows through the vocation of the milkmaids.”9
In one of his first sermons at Redeemer, Keller explained it like this:
The glorious teaching of the Bible is you can be a person on an assembly line, you can be just turning a screw, you can be somebody who’s just sweeping a floor—but if you see it as part of the whole complex way God has enabled us to bring the potential out of his creation—then you can do it with joy. Paul was writing to slaves [in Ephesians 6:5–8], and if this theology can work for slaves—if he can say, “Slaves, the menial work you do, you do it for the Lord”—[then you too can] see it as part of everything God made work to be, [and] you can do it with joy.10
Though today we tend to think of vocation and job as synonyms, the former word is far richer. Based on the Latin vocare (“to call”), it means nothing less than a calling—an assignment to serve others—whether you work on one side of the political aisle or in the produce aisle.
And these assignments come ultimately from the sovereign throne of a working God. What could possibly infuse more nobility into an ordinary job? “In Genesis we see God as a gardener, and in the New Testament we see him as a carpenter. No task is too small a vessel to hold the immense dignity of work given by God.”11
Notes:
- Tim Keller, “Why Tim Keller Wants You to Stay in That Job You Hate,” interviewed by Andy Crouch, Christianity Today, April 22, 2013, https:// www .christianity today.com/ (emphasis added). The quote has been lightly edited for clarity. Keller also relates the actor anecdote in “The Dream of the Kingdom,” preached on April 30, 2000, and in a panel discussion at the 2006 Desiring God National Conference. See John Piper, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and JustinTaylor, “A Conversation with the Pastors,” September 29, 2006, https:// www .desiring god .org/.
- Timothy Keller, Shaped by the Gospel: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2016), 34–43, chart on 36. Elsewhere he writes, “Without an understanding of the gospel [story], we will be either naïvely utopian or cynically disillusioned. We will be demonizing something that isn’t bad enough to explain the mess we are in; and we will be idolizing something that isn’t powerful enough to get us out of it. This is, in the end, what all other worldviews do.” Timothy Keller, Every Good Endeavor: Connecting Your Work to God’s Work, with Katherine Leary Alsdorf (New York: Penguin, 2012), 161. He then sketches some biblical implications for a few fields of work: business (164–68), journalism (169–70), higher education (171–73), the arts (173–75), and medicine (175–80).
- Keller comments, “The Bible begins talking about work as soon as it begins talking about anything—that is how important and basic it is.” Keller, Every GoodEndeavor, 19.
- Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 22.
- Keller had little patience for a triumphalist perspective on work: “[We must settle] one sure fact: Nothing will be put perfectly right . . . until the ‘day of Christ’ at the end of history (Phil. 1:6; 3:12). Until then all creation ‘groans’ (Rom. 8:22) and is subject to decay and weakness. So work will be put completely right only when heaven is reunited with earth and we find ourselves in our ‘true country.’ To talk about fully redeeming work is sometimes naïvete, sometimes hubris.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 150–51 (emphasis original).
- Isaac Watts (1674–1748), “Joy to the World” (1719), Hymnary.org.
- Keller,Every Good Endeavor, 58. He also remarks, “While the Greek thinkers saw ordinary work, especially manual labor, as relegating human beings to the animal level, the Bible sees all work as distinguishing human beings from animals and elevating them to a place of dignity. Old Testament scholar Victor Hamilton notes that in surrounding cultures such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, the king or others of royal blood might be called the ‘image of God’; but, he notes, that rarefied term ‘was not applied to the canal digger or to the mason who worked on the ziggurat. . . . [But Genesis 1 uses] royal language to describe simply ‘man.’ In God’s eyes all of mankind is royal. The Bible democratizes the royalistic and exclusivistic concepts of the nations that surrounded Israel.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 36. Keller cites V. P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1990), 135.
- One implication of this, of course, is that we should appreciate many contributions from nonbelievers. Since culture is a complex cocktail of “brilliant truth, marred half-truths, and overt resistance to the truth,” in our workplaces we should expect to see real darkness punctuated by flashes of God’s common grace. Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 198. Moreover, “The doctrine of sin means that believers are never as good as our true worldview should make us. Similarly, the doctrine of grace means that unbelievers are never as messed up as their false worldview should make them. . . . Ultimately, a grasp of the gospel and of biblical teaching on cultural engagement should lead Christians to be the most appreciative of the hands of God behind the work of our colleagues and neighbors.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 195, 197. He also suggests, “Christians who understand biblical doctrine ought to be the ones who appreciate the work of non-Christians the most. We know we are saved by grace alone, and therefore we are not [necessarily] better fathers or mothers, better artists and businesspersons, than those who do not believe as we do. Our gospel-trained eyes can see the world ablaze with the glory of God’s work through the people he has created and called—in everything from the simplest actions, such as milking a cow, to the most brilliant artistic or historic achievements.” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 64.
- Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 61. The Luther quote is paraphrased from Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, vol. 21, Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat, ed. J. Pelikan (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1958), 237. According to Psalm 147, God “strengthens the bars of your gates” (147:13) and “makes peace in your borders” (147:14). In other words, he provides safety and security for a city through lawmakers, law enforcement, military personnel, those working in government and politics, and so on.
- Tim Keller, “Feeling His Pleasure,” preached on October 22, 1989. Keller clarifies, “Slavery in the Greco-Roman world was not the same as the New World institution that developed in the wake of the African slave trade. Slavery in Paul’s time was not race-based and was seldom lifelong. It was more like what we would call Tim indentured servitude. But for our purposes . . . consider this: If slave owners are told they must not manage workers in pride and through fear, how much more should this be true of employers today? And if slaves are told it is possible to find satisfaction and meaning in their work, how much more should this be true of workers today?” Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 219 (emphasis original).
- Keller, Every Good Endeavor, 37.
This article is adapted from Tim Keller on the Christian Life: The Transforming Power of the Gospel by Matt Smethurst.
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