Kings and Queens
From the beginning of the story, God has been looking for partners.
The imagery of humanity’s relationship to God is not of puppets on a string, with God up in heaven playing around. Rather, it’s of partners, God’s representatives on earth, kings and queens, ruling over his world.
Biblical View of Work Shows Partnership with God
Think about it: God could have made humans from the dust, like he did with Adam, but instead he chose to work through marriage and family.
He could have made food fall from the sky, like he did with manna in the exodus, but instead he chose to work through farming and agriculture and trade.
He could have put Adam and Eve into a city, like he’s going to do in the New Jerusalem, but instead he chose to put the proto-humans in the Garden and give them a shot at starting a civilization from scratch.
Why? Because God is looking for partners.
And that’s a dangerous game for God to play.
In Genesis 1:28, humans are commanded to “fill the earth and subdue it.” This word subdue is intriguing. In Hebrew it’s kabash, where we get the saying, “Put the kibosh on it!” (Come on, that’s cool.) It can mean to exploit or enslave or abuse or even to rape. But it can also mean to tame something that’s wild, to bring order out of chaos, to bring harmony out of discord. Once again, it’s king and queen language.
Biblical View of Work and Human Responsibility
There are good kings, and there are bad kings.
There are good monarchs, under whose rule a kingdom thrives — civilization grows and expands, the earth flourishes.
And there are evil tyrants, whose reigns are marked by oppression and injustice — dehumanizing people and stripping bare the soil of the earth.
It all depends on what kind of ruler you have.
What is the Old Testament but the story of one ruler after another, trying to do what Adam was supposed to do — rule over the earth in a life-giving way — but failing, often miserably?
Ever read through 1 and 2 Kings? With each Hebrew king that comes to power, you get your hopes up — maybe, just maybe he’ll be the one to fix it all — and then your hopes are dashed, time after time after time. By the end of the Old Testament, you’re thinking, How in the world is God going to fix this mess?
And it’s not just them, it’s us.
I’ve failed.
So have you.
Biblical View of Work Fulfilled in Christ
But where Adam and Abraham and Israel and you and I all failed, Jesus didn’t.
He did what Adam was supposed to do but couldn’t. What Israel was supposed to do but couldn’t. What we were supposed to do but couldn’t.
That’s why immediately after his resurrection he’s called “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords” and “the ruler of the kings of the earth.”
Even the closing line in the gospel about how Jesus “was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God” isn’t a statement about Jesus’ absence from the world, as much as his presence.
What’s he doing at the “right hand of God”?
Ruling over the earth.
And what’s the first thing Jesus does with his rule? He shares it with us.
Why? Because from the beginning of the story God has been looking for partners.
Biblical View of Work in Everyday Life
Is this starting to come full circle for you?
This is what we were made for.
Now, let’s take a step back. What does this mean for us today? All this talk about kings and queens is fine, but we don’t live in the ancient Near East. And most of us aren’t royalty. So what does this mean if you’re a server at a restaurant? A full-time mom? A landscape architect? A high school student? A nanny? An anesthesiologist?
Well, a lot.
For starters it means that your work is a core part of your humanness. You are made in the image of a working God. God is king over the world, and you’re a king, a queen — royalty — ruling on his behalf. Gathering up the creation’s praise and somehow pushing it back to God himself.
Biblical View of Work as Worship and Calling
When you get up tomorrow morning and go to your job or school or whatever it is you do with your life, you’re not just earning money to pay the bills or learning microbiology or raising kids or serving at your local church or nonprofit. You’re being human. You’re ruling over the earth.
Secondly, this means we need to think of work as a good thing. When God was done working, he sat back and said, This is really good. That’s how we should view our work.
So many people think of work as the curse. I hear it all the time, I hate my job. Work is the curse. But nothing could be further from the truth. Work is cursed, yes — more on that later. But work itself is the exact opposite — a blessing. And no, that’s not a misprint. In the creation story we read, “God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful . . . fill the earth . . . subdue it . . . rule . . .’ ” A blessing in Genesis is a weighty, strong thing — it’s a gift from the Creator God to generate life, fertility, and well-being. And what is God’s blessing over humans? Work.
We’ll get into what “be fruitful” and “fill the earth” mean in the next chapter, but for now, it’s basically the work of building civilization. God’s original intent was always for human beings to join him in his seven-day rhythm of work and rest. We need to recapture this stunning vision of humanness.
And then lastly, this means that every human on the planet is bursting with raw, uncut potential.
You are bursting with raw, uncut potential. You have the blood of royalty in your veins.
So wherever you’re at — here’s the first takeaway: You’re royalty. A king or queen. Made to rule, to subdue. You have a dizzying amount of pent-up potential in you — to do good or to do evil.
What kind of ruler will you be?
You were made to do good — to mirror and mimic what God is like to the world. To stand at the interface between the Creator and his creation, implementing God’s creative, generous blessing over all the earth and giving voice to the creation’s worship.
Adapted from GARDEN CITY by John Mark Comer. Used by permission.
