Have I Sinned If I Fall Short of Excellence at Work?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Good Monday morning everyone,

00:00:05.440 | and thank you for listening to the podcast.

00:00:07.000 | Well, is it sinful to fall short of excellence in our work?

00:00:12.000 | This is a great question, relevant for businessmen,

00:00:15.060 | for stay-at-home wives, for volunteers,

00:00:17.020 | for students, for all of us.

00:00:19.060 | And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan.

00:00:21.280 | Here's what he asks.

00:00:22.800 | Pastor Jen, hello to you,

00:00:23.640 | and thank you for taking my question.

00:00:25.600 | In Colossians 3, verses 22 to 24,

00:00:28.000 | Paul exhorts his readers to work heartily

00:00:30.720 | as for the Lord and not for men.

00:00:33.480 | Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin?

00:00:37.240 | How do we apply God's view of work to cleaning our house,

00:00:40.240 | writing a paper for school, or working a nine to five job?

00:00:43.680 | I've been feeling guilty about the way

00:00:45.440 | I handle these things for months now,

00:00:47.320 | and I'm not sure if I'm being self-righteous

00:00:50.200 | or if I'm being disobedient to the Lord.

00:00:52.080 | Is Paul describing a type of excellence in all that we do?

00:00:57.320 | Let me begin with an illustration from my ministry

00:01:00.280 | from about 30 years ago.

00:01:02.340 | We were wrestling at the time in our church

00:01:05.840 | with how to think about expectations of excellence

00:01:09.560 | in music, in worship services.

00:01:12.120 | And there was one group that stressed technical excellence

00:01:16.960 | and quoted 2 Samuel 24, 24,

00:01:20.600 | "I will not offer anything to the Lord my God

00:01:24.440 | that cost me nothing."

00:01:26.920 | Which being applied in our situation meant,

00:01:29.880 | "I will not offer God any music in our worship services

00:01:33.640 | that has not cost me an extraordinary effort of practice

00:01:37.240 | so as to make it technically excellent, even flawless."

00:01:41.120 | Then there was another group,

00:01:42.240 | or maybe I should say it was me.

00:01:44.220 | (both laughing)

00:01:46.120 | And my pushback, gentle pushback,

00:01:49.700 | I appreciated that kind of commitment to excellence.

00:01:51.760 | However, my gentle pushback to this emphasis

00:01:55.840 | was in the Christian church,

00:01:59.760 | God not only cares about whether we are excellent musicians,

00:02:04.760 | but also cares about whether we are excellent forgivers.

00:02:10.600 | That's the way I stated it.

00:02:12.680 | Whether we are excellent in patience,

00:02:15.440 | excellent in long suffering.

00:02:17.480 | For example, patience and forgiveness,

00:02:21.020 | if someone's musical effort was not flawless.

00:02:24.660 | In other words, when it comes to excellence

00:02:27.560 | in the Christian life,

00:02:29.720 | we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill

00:02:34.720 | or the way a person does a craft.

00:02:39.960 | But we must always take into account excellence in attitudes,

00:02:44.920 | excellence in emotions, excellent in relationships.

00:02:49.320 | God has lots more to say in his word

00:02:52.600 | about whether we are angry in our attitude

00:02:56.660 | than he does about whether we're competent in our skill.

00:02:59.660 | The way we finally worked this out among our people

00:03:04.500 | and among our leaders was to use the phrase as our goal,

00:03:09.500 | undistracting excellence.

00:03:12.860 | In other words, there is something bigger and deeper

00:03:17.380 | and more important going on in this service

00:03:20.620 | than the technical quality of music.

00:03:23.740 | Not unimportant, it's just not most important.

00:03:26.500 | The aim here is to know God, meet God, love God,

00:03:30.500 | treasure God, trust God, enjoy God.

00:03:34.300 | Those are all acts of the heart and mind.

00:03:40.160 | Everything else is subservient to that in this service,

00:03:43.740 | helping people get to that,

00:03:45.860 | including the excellence of our performances,

00:03:49.020 | whether it's music or sound system or lighting or heating

00:03:53.580 | or air conditioning or preaching

00:03:56.420 | or the clothing that we wear.

00:03:59.500 | Everything is to remove obstacles, undistracting,

00:04:04.420 | remove obstacles and to serve knowing God,

00:04:09.420 | meeting God, loving God, treasuring God,

00:04:12.780 | trusting God, enjoying God.

00:04:15.620 | We captured that goal by putting the adjective undistracting

00:04:20.620 | in front of the word excellence.

00:04:23.900 | It implied that not only might shoddy work distract

00:04:28.900 | from meeting God, the person continually makes mistakes.

00:04:34.180 | Everybody's going to be embarrassed,

00:04:35.440 | they're going to be distracted, that's not going to work.

00:04:38.020 | But also excessive finesse might distract

00:04:44.380 | from the spiritual reality of encountering God.

00:04:48.500 | And I'm thinking of this in preaching, not just music.

00:04:51.180 | I mean, a sermon can be so shoddy in its order and clarity

00:04:56.180 | that it doesn't help.

00:04:58.620 | And it can be so rhetorically refined

00:05:02.180 | that it distracts and doesn't help.

00:05:05.420 | So the criterion ceased to be a kind of abstract view

00:05:10.480 | of technical excellence and became a spiritual goal

00:05:15.120 | of removing obstacles from people's seeing

00:05:18.940 | and savoring Christ.

00:05:20.280 | Now, Dylan is asking about Colossians 3, 22 to 24

00:05:25.280 | and how it calls us to excellence.

00:05:28.240 | Here's the text.

00:05:29.480 | Bond servants, obey in everything those

00:05:31.760 | who are your earthly masters,

00:05:33.480 | not by way of eye service as people pleasers,

00:05:37.600 | but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.

00:05:41.320 | Whatever you do, work heartily.

00:05:44.960 | It's literally ekpsukes, from the soul.

00:05:48.440 | Work from the soul as for the Lord and not for men,

00:05:53.440 | knowing that from the Lord,

00:05:56.600 | you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

00:05:59.440 | You are serving the Lord Christ.

00:06:03.700 | What a great text.

00:06:05.040 | I think Dylan is right to draw principles

00:06:09.560 | for all of us from these verses,

00:06:11.720 | even though they are directed to slaves and masters.

00:06:15.760 | And I say that because verse 17,

00:06:18.520 | just above this paragraph, says,

00:06:22.280 | whatever you do in word or deed,

00:06:25.000 | do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus.

00:06:27.880 | And I think Paul is simply applying that global principle

00:06:31.920 | for all of us to the slave master relationship

00:06:34.540 | so that all of us can learn from his application.

00:06:38.120 | And I would point to three things that he says.

00:06:41.720 | One, don't just try to be outwardly pleasing to people

00:06:46.720 | while your heart doesn't care about the people

00:06:51.360 | and doesn't care really about what quality of work you do,

00:06:54.340 | as long as they think it's good.

00:06:56.840 | It's eye service, that's man pleasing.

00:06:59.960 | In other words, don't be a hypocrite.

00:07:02.680 | If you're going to give the impression outwardly

00:07:06.200 | to your boss or your teacher or your spouse or your friend

00:07:11.200 | that you are doing something to please them,

00:07:14.640 | then do something really to please them.

00:07:18.460 | Don't be a hypocrite.

00:07:19.400 | Don't be a double tongued or a double behavior person

00:07:24.400 | who outwardly wants them to have a sense

00:07:28.120 | of being pleased with their eyes.

00:07:30.400 | And deep down, you haven't done good work at all.

00:07:32.560 | And you're concealing it from them.

00:07:34.400 | That would significantly affect the quality of work you do

00:07:38.200 | if you had that kind of mindset.

00:07:39.480 | And Paul says, don't have it.

00:07:41.240 | Second, whatever job you have and whomever it is

00:07:46.240 | that you are working for as a Christian,

00:07:49.120 | always think of Jesus Christ as the one

00:07:52.920 | to whom you will give an account

00:07:54.560 | for the quality of your work

00:07:56.640 | and the quality of your attitudes in the work.

00:08:00.200 | So verse 24 says, you are serving the Lord Christ,

00:08:04.860 | meaning whoever else you're serving,

00:08:08.120 | you are really serving Christ in serving them.

00:08:12.040 | So whatever quality of attitude and quality of work

00:08:17.040 | you would do if Christ were your immediate supervisor,

00:08:22.100 | do that kind of work with that kind of attitude.

00:08:25.780 | And third, Paul says, keep in mind that your reward

00:08:30.780 | for the good you do will come from the Lord,

00:08:35.220 | even if it doesn't come from man.

00:08:39.380 | So clearly, Paul is implying, one,

00:08:44.380 | knowing that we shouldn't be hypocrites

00:08:47.780 | or deceitful men pleasers,

00:08:49.700 | and knowing that ultimately our supervisor

00:08:53.900 | for this homework or housework or job work

00:08:58.900 | is the Lord Jesus himself.

00:09:01.900 | And three, knowing that our reward comes from him,

00:09:06.900 | not primarily from the teachers or spouses or bosses,

00:09:10.740 | all of that will exert an influence

00:09:14.420 | on the quality of work we do

00:09:16.740 | and the good attitudes with which we do it.

00:09:21.520 | And then Dylan asks, does this mean

00:09:25.800 | that any work not done in excellence is sin?

00:09:30.600 | And if that question is to be answered with precision,

00:09:33.300 | I would say the answer is no, not always.

00:09:38.300 | It's not always sin.

00:09:39.920 | It's not that simple.

00:09:42.160 | For example, if you decide to paint your own bedroom

00:09:47.160 | rather than hire a professional painter,

00:09:50.920 | because you think God wants you to give the several hundred

00:09:54.880 | dollars you might pay the painter

00:09:57.920 | to some missionary friend,

00:10:00.060 | and yet you're not a very skilled painter,

00:10:04.940 | how will God look upon the exactness of the line

00:10:10.860 | between the beige wall and the white ceiling

00:10:15.960 | where they meet each other up in the corner?

00:10:18.520 | I'm speaking from experience here.

00:10:20.640 | A skilled painter gets a little bead,

00:10:25.160 | I've seen him do this,

00:10:26.080 | gets a little bead of paint on the end of his brush

00:10:30.000 | and he drags it, this perfect little bead,

00:10:33.560 | he drags it along that line with such amazing precision

00:10:38.560 | that the line between the edge,

00:10:41.960 | between the beige wall and the white ceiling is perfect.

00:10:46.040 | Now my lines, my lines between the beige wall

00:10:50.720 | and the white ceiling are wavy.

00:10:53.220 | (both laughing)

00:10:55.200 | - If you like waves.

00:10:56.800 | - Here's my answer.

00:10:57.960 | God will not view my wavy edges as sin.

00:11:02.960 | He won't, even though they are not technically excellent,

00:11:08.460 | like a painter could make them.

00:11:11.560 | Bigger things are at stake, in other words.

00:11:14.520 | But if I advertise myself as a painter

00:11:19.120 | with my present skill and I go into somebody else's bedroom

00:11:23.600 | and I paint their wall with wavy edges

00:11:27.800 | of beige on the wall and white on the ceiling

00:11:30.800 | with a wavy line in between,

00:11:33.160 | hoping they won't see it and how shoddy it is

00:11:36.760 | compared to what a real painter could do,

00:11:38.760 | that will be sin.

00:11:41.880 | And the same thing applies to so many situations.

00:11:45.520 | It's not sin to make a B in algebra class

00:11:50.520 | instead of an A, that's not.

00:11:53.320 | If you work hard, do your best.

00:11:56.920 | It's not sin to make five sales this week instead of 10

00:12:01.920 | if you're doing your best.

00:12:03.960 | And I would define your best like this.

00:12:07.320 | That's the last thing I'd say, I think.

00:12:09.960 | Your best is defined as a fallible effort

00:12:14.960 | to take into account all relevant factors like sleep.

00:12:21.640 | I need sleep.

00:12:23.240 | And health and family and my age and energy and gifting

00:12:28.240 | and other relationships that need to be tended to.

00:12:33.240 | And then when all is said and done,

00:12:36.400 | you entrust yourself to the grace of Christ

00:12:41.160 | who died for you so that you could enjoy

00:12:45.160 | his excellent forgiveness.

00:12:48.220 | - Very good, thank you, Pastor John.

00:12:51.320 | This episode in Colossians 3 and pursuing excellence

00:12:53.560 | in our work reminds me of two related episodes

00:12:55.520 | in the podcast archive.

00:12:56.520 | You can check those out.

00:12:57.840 | Check out "How to Fight Laziness," that's ABJ 79,

00:13:02.000 | and "How Do I Glorify God in My Job?"

00:13:04.600 | That's ABJ 1121.

00:13:06.560 | Both are relevant to this episode.

00:13:08.120 | Check them out, ABJ 79 and 1121.

00:13:11.280 | And thank you for joining us today.

00:13:13.360 | You can ask a question of your own.

00:13:14.720 | Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast

00:13:16.960 | all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:13:20.800 | Well, what is the easiest step of love?

00:13:25.280 | What's the easiest way to love others?

00:13:28.600 | We're gonna look at it tomorrow,

00:13:29.920 | and you can do it before you get out of bed

00:13:32.200 | in the morning, in fact.

00:13:34.480 | Stay tuned for that.

00:13:35.680 | I'm your host Tony Reink.

00:13:36.520 | You will see you back here on Wednesday.

00:13:38.880 | (upbeat music)

00:13:41.480 | (upbeat music)

00:13:44.080 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Have I Sinned If I Fall Short of Excellence at Work?

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