(upbeat music) - Good Monday morning everyone, and thank you for listening to the podcast. Well, is it sinful to fall short of excellence in our work? This is a great question, relevant for businessmen, for stay-at-home wives, for volunteers, for students, for all of us. And the question comes to us from a listener named Dylan.

Here's what he asks. Pastor Jen, hello to you, and thank you for taking my question. In Colossians 3, verses 22 to 24, Paul exhorts his readers to work heartily as for the Lord and not for men. Does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin? How do we apply God's view of work to cleaning our house, writing a paper for school, or working a nine to five job?

I've been feeling guilty about the way I handle these things for months now, and I'm not sure if I'm being self-righteous or if I'm being disobedient to the Lord. Is Paul describing a type of excellence in all that we do? Let me begin with an illustration from my ministry from about 30 years ago.

We were wrestling at the time in our church with how to think about expectations of excellence in music, in worship services. And there was one group that stressed technical excellence and quoted 2 Samuel 24, 24, "I will not offer anything to the Lord my God that cost me nothing." Which being applied in our situation meant, "I will not offer God any music in our worship services that has not cost me an extraordinary effort of practice so as to make it technically excellent, even flawless." Then there was another group, or maybe I should say it was me.

(both laughing) And my pushback, gentle pushback, I appreciated that kind of commitment to excellence. However, my gentle pushback to this emphasis was in the Christian church, God not only cares about whether we are excellent musicians, but also cares about whether we are excellent forgivers. That's the way I stated it.

Whether we are excellent in patience, excellent in long suffering. For example, patience and forgiveness, if someone's musical effort was not flawless. In other words, when it comes to excellence in the Christian life, we dare not ever limit it to the way a person does a skill or the way a person does a craft.

But we must always take into account excellence in attitudes, excellence in emotions, excellent in relationships. God has lots more to say in his word about whether we are angry in our attitude than he does about whether we're competent in our skill. The way we finally worked this out among our people and among our leaders was to use the phrase as our goal, undistracting excellence.

In other words, there is something bigger and deeper and more important going on in this service than the technical quality of music. Not unimportant, it's just not most important. The aim here is to know God, meet God, love God, treasure God, trust God, enjoy God. Those are all acts of the heart and mind.

Everything else is subservient to that in this service, helping people get to that, including the excellence of our performances, whether it's music or sound system or lighting or heating or air conditioning or preaching or the clothing that we wear. Everything is to remove obstacles, undistracting, remove obstacles and to serve knowing God, meeting God, loving God, treasuring God, trusting God, enjoying God.

We captured that goal by putting the adjective undistracting in front of the word excellence. It implied that not only might shoddy work distract from meeting God, the person continually makes mistakes. Everybody's going to be embarrassed, they're going to be distracted, that's not going to work. But also excessive finesse might distract from the spiritual reality of encountering God.

And I'm thinking of this in preaching, not just music. I mean, a sermon can be so shoddy in its order and clarity that it doesn't help. And it can be so rhetorically refined that it distracts and doesn't help. So the criterion ceased to be a kind of abstract view of technical excellence and became a spiritual goal of removing obstacles from people's seeing and savoring Christ.

Now, Dylan is asking about Colossians 3, 22 to 24 and how it calls us to excellence. Here's the text. Bond servants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye service as people pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily.

It's literally ekpsukes, from the soul. Work from the soul as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord, you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. What a great text. I think Dylan is right to draw principles for all of us from these verses, even though they are directed to slaves and masters.

And I say that because verse 17, just above this paragraph, says, whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus. And I think Paul is simply applying that global principle for all of us to the slave master relationship so that all of us can learn from his application.

And I would point to three things that he says. One, don't just try to be outwardly pleasing to people while your heart doesn't care about the people and doesn't care really about what quality of work you do, as long as they think it's good. It's eye service, that's man pleasing.

In other words, don't be a hypocrite. If you're going to give the impression outwardly to your boss or your teacher or your spouse or your friend that you are doing something to please them, then do something really to please them. Don't be a hypocrite. Don't be a double tongued or a double behavior person who outwardly wants them to have a sense of being pleased with their eyes.

And deep down, you haven't done good work at all. And you're concealing it from them. That would significantly affect the quality of work you do if you had that kind of mindset. And Paul says, don't have it. Second, whatever job you have and whomever it is that you are working for as a Christian, always think of Jesus Christ as the one to whom you will give an account for the quality of your work and the quality of your attitudes in the work.

So verse 24 says, you are serving the Lord Christ, meaning whoever else you're serving, you are really serving Christ in serving them. So whatever quality of attitude and quality of work you would do if Christ were your immediate supervisor, do that kind of work with that kind of attitude.

And third, Paul says, keep in mind that your reward for the good you do will come from the Lord, even if it doesn't come from man. So clearly, Paul is implying, one, knowing that we shouldn't be hypocrites or deceitful men pleasers, and knowing that ultimately our supervisor for this homework or housework or job work is the Lord Jesus himself.

And three, knowing that our reward comes from him, not primarily from the teachers or spouses or bosses, all of that will exert an influence on the quality of work we do and the good attitudes with which we do it. And then Dylan asks, does this mean that any work not done in excellence is sin?

And if that question is to be answered with precision, I would say the answer is no, not always. It's not always sin. It's not that simple. For example, if you decide to paint your own bedroom rather than hire a professional painter, because you think God wants you to give the several hundred dollars you might pay the painter to some missionary friend, and yet you're not a very skilled painter, how will God look upon the exactness of the line between the beige wall and the white ceiling where they meet each other up in the corner?

I'm speaking from experience here. A skilled painter gets a little bead, I've seen him do this, gets a little bead of paint on the end of his brush and he drags it, this perfect little bead, he drags it along that line with such amazing precision that the line between the edge, between the beige wall and the white ceiling is perfect.

Now my lines, my lines between the beige wall and the white ceiling are wavy. (both laughing) - If you like waves. - Here's my answer. God will not view my wavy edges as sin. He won't, even though they are not technically excellent, like a painter could make them. Bigger things are at stake, in other words.

But if I advertise myself as a painter with my present skill and I go into somebody else's bedroom and I paint their wall with wavy edges of beige on the wall and white on the ceiling with a wavy line in between, hoping they won't see it and how shoddy it is compared to what a real painter could do, that will be sin.

And the same thing applies to so many situations. It's not sin to make a B in algebra class instead of an A, that's not. If you work hard, do your best. It's not sin to make five sales this week instead of 10 if you're doing your best. And I would define your best like this.

That's the last thing I'd say, I think. Your best is defined as a fallible effort to take into account all relevant factors like sleep. I need sleep. And health and family and my age and energy and gifting and other relationships that need to be tended to. And then when all is said and done, you entrust yourself to the grace of Christ who died for you so that you could enjoy his excellent forgiveness.

- Very good, thank you, Pastor John. This episode in Colossians 3 and pursuing excellence in our work reminds me of two related episodes in the podcast archive. You can check those out. Check out "How to Fight Laziness," that's ABJ 79, and "How Do I Glorify God in My Job?" That's ABJ 1121.

Both are relevant to this episode. Check them out, ABJ 79 and 1121. And thank you for joining us today. You can ask a question of your own. Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast all at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn. Well, what is the easiest step of love? What's the easiest way to love others?

We're gonna look at it tomorrow, and you can do it before you get out of bed in the morning, in fact. Stay tuned for that. I'm your host Tony Reink. You will see you back here on Wednesday. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)