This past semester, I’ve been meeting with a few students here at SBU to read and talk about a book by John MacArthur (The Gospel According to Jesus). One of the things we’ve come back to time and again in our discussion is how Christians should see all of life through the lens of the Bible. Nothing escapes. Jesus and his Word touch everything.

In other words, we never turn off being Christians. It matters at every moment. We are Christians, if we are Christians, all the time.

That’s some of what Paul is pressing into the church in Corinth. They’ve written him a letter to make some reports about various issues (1:11; 5:1; 11:18; 15:2) and ask a few questions (7:1, 25; 8:1; 12:1; 16:1, 12). Paul writes to address the situations reported, to answer their questions, and ultimately apply the message of Jesus to each issue (Jim Hamilton has an excellent overview of the message of 1 Corinthians in God’s Glory in Salvation Through Judgment, 457–461).

In 1 Cor 8, Paul launches into an extended discussion (chapters 8–10) about idolatry and how to love your neighbor (see David Garland’s in-depth treatment of 1 Cor 8–10 in this commentary). Paul wants the Corinthians to flee idolatry (don’t associate with false gods by eating at pagan festivals or feasts). As they flee idols, they should love their neighbors (i.e., sacrifice their freedom to serve others). He brings that discussion to a close with this all-encompassing statement: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything to the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).

That’s the principle at the end of those three chapters. Everything should aim at the glory of God. How you approach food offered to idols and how you use your freedom in relation to others. Everything is for God’s glory. The phrase I’ve adopted over the last several months to help me think about the overarching principle of 1 Cor 10:31 is this: “All of Christ for all of Life.” That phrase helps me remember that Christ is both Savior and Lord, and all of life should aim at his glory.

For the Glory of God? We parrot that sort of thing all the time. “Live for God’s glory.” Or “do your homework for the glory of God,” and “Make sure you glorify God in your relationship.” But what does that mean? For now, I’ll assume John Piper gets it right (in this article; the Gospel Project also has a helpful video). So, let’s define God’s glory as “the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections” (Piper). Glory, then, is God’s greatness. His beauty. His worth. And the question is: how do we live so that his greatness, beauty, and worth are displayed in our lives? 

There’s a lot to say about how to answer that question. In this short article, I’m only going to press this idea in one direction. How do you live for God’s glory at work? I think you do that in two ways: (a) being a Christian at work and (b) thinking about your work from a Christian worldview. After all, “if religion does not speak to our work lives, then it has nothing to say about what we do with the vast majority of our time” (Nancy Pearcy, Total Truth, 36).

Being a Christian at Work—to work for God’s glory certainly means to do your work with Christian character (e.g., honesty, excellence, goodness, dependability, grace, kindness, joy, etc.). If you work at a bank, for instance, don’t steal. Work hard. Show up on time. Be trustworthy and kind. That’s what we normally mean by working for God’s glory. We should act like Christians at the workplace (indeed, everywhere we go). This, it seems, is something Christians mostly understand. We are called to “do [our] best, and don’t commit any obvious sins” (Pearcy, 36). In short, to work for God’s glory is to work as a Christian. You are characterized by the fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23); you work as one who is a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17); you do not look and act and feel like the unbelievers around you.

Thinking about Work as a Christian—but undertaking your work for the glory of God means more than simply acting Christianly at work. It also means “having a biblical framework on the work itself” (Pearcy, 37). Thus, to undertake your vocation for God’s glory, you should give sustained thought to how your vocation itself actually contributes to God’s purposes in the world.

As an example, if you’re a nurse, you should certainly aim at acting Christianly while on your shift (be kind, hopeful, patient, gentle, morally upright, etc). But you should also have an intellectual grasp of how the nursing vocation itself aims at God’s glory. And it certainly does! Nursing is others-oriented. A nurse aims to serve, to offer healing, and to help overcome the effects of a fallen world on our bodies and bones.

Now change vocations. Imagine you’re a law enforcement officer. The very work you do aims at upholding justice and righteousness, putting God’s justice and righteousness on display (cf. Jer 9:24). Or think about the housekeeping staff at a University. The housekeeping staff tend and care for God’s creation, putting things in order before anyone ever shows up at school. Serving people. Justice and righteousness. Order and creation care. All aim to honor the God who created people in his image, is perfectly righteous and just, and has given us this world to tend and manage.

In summary, to aim at God’s glory is to work as a Christian and to think about your work from a Christian point of view. When you’ve taken the time to think about how your vocational endeavor fits into God’s kingdom purposes, all of a sudden, the importance of what you’re doing is promoted to its proper place. There is no sacred and secular divide. There are no merely secular jobs that don’t have anything to do with the sacred. No, in God’s economy, the pastor and plumber both do sacred work, putting God’s beauty, worth, and purposes on display.

And when people ask why you work the way you do, why you think about your vocation in such terms, point them to the God whose beauty, value, and worth demand and deserve our all.

There’s more to say. Much more. But let’s end with a call to action: take time this week to do two things:

1. Create a bullet-point list of the character traits that should mark you as a Christian while you’re at work and…
2. Write one or two paragraphs in a journal (or somewhere) that explains in succinct form how you think your vocational calling contributes to God’s purposes in the world.