‘How Then Should We Work? Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work’

For many Christians, work often seems only a “means to an end.”  Many today have bought into the notion that leisure is good and work is bad.  Others have been misled by the sacred/secular distinction which teaches that only working in the church is “real” Christian service.  This has not always been the case. The Reformers taught that all labor accepted as a calling and performed “as unto the Lord” was noble, yet this truth has slipped dramatically both in today’s Church and our present culture. Paul Helm in his book The Callings: The Gospel in the World, suggests, “Work is part of a Christian’s calling…this biblical idea has had a profound influence in Europe and North America since the Reformation but has largely been forgotten, due to the eclipse of the influence of the Christian gospel from national life.”

In his article, “How Then Should We Work? Rediscovering the Biblical Doctrine of Work,” IFWE’s co-founder Hugh Whelchel seeks first to understand how the church has wandered so far from the Biblical truth of vocational calling; second, to define the Biblical principle of all work as calling; and finally, to offer some direction for rediscovering this lost doctrine of work.