Work as Worship: Participation, Not Performance

by Dr. Peter A. Kerr

The light of Christ reaches into every sphere of human life. Scripture is not silent about the workplace; rather, it consistently reveals it as the primary arena of God’s activity. Work and the economy were crafted to encourage interaction, giving, and community. This article proposes that work is not what we endure to live, but one of the primary ways God invites us to share His life.

Nearly all ministry and evangelism in the Bible occur in the workplace. Of Jesus’ 132 public appearances recorded in the New Testament, 122 took place in the marketplace. Of His 52 parables, 45 drew directly from ordinary labor and economic life. Of the 40 divine interventions recorded in Acts, 39 occurred outside religious buildings. Jesus even recruited His twelve disciples from the workplace—calling fishermen, tradesmen, and even tax collectors to follow Him.

Most likely, Jesus Himself labored in the marketplace as a skilled craftsman until His public ministry began around the age of thirty. Scripture tells us His earthly father, Joseph, was a tektōn (τέκτων), a term describing a builder or artisan. While often translated “carpenter,” there was little wood in Nazareth; stonework was far more common, and Jesus uses stone imagery in His analogies rather than wood imagery. Jesus working as a master craftsman is fitting. The word tektōn stands behind English words such as “architect” and “technician,” subtly echoing the deeper truth that all creation came into being through Christ Himself.

Creation, Scripture tells us, occurred by and through the Word. The Old Testament portrays God creating not by force, but by speech—calling reality into being through self-giving expression. Psalm 33:6 declares, “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of His mouth all their host” (NASB). The pairing of word and breath gestures toward the fullness of God’s life, introducing the Spirit alongside the Word.

The New Testament removes all ambiguity. John writes, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being” (John 1:1–3, NASB). The Word is not a tool God uses; the Word is God’s own self-expression, eternally personal and relational. Paul affirms the same truth: “For by Him all things were created… all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1:16–17, NASB).

Hebrews completes the picture by uniting creation, revelation, and sustenance: God “has spoken to us in His Son… through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:2–3, NASB). God creates by speaking Himself, not by issuing external commands. Because creation comes through the Word rather than by coercion, existence itself bears the shape of invitation. God does not force the world into being; He calls it forth in love. The same Word who creates later calls disciples, heals freely, and invites without compulsion. Creation is not merely made by God; it is spoken from within God’s own life—structured by truth, sustained by love, and ordered toward communion.

Human Work as Divine Participation

Human work is meant to mirror this divine work. It is neither a secular necessity nor a spiritual distraction. Work is a form of participation in God’s ongoing care for creation—loving the world toward its flourishing and blessing others through skill, creativity, and service.

God does not affirm work in order to extract productivity, nor does He redeem people in order to conscript labor. God creates because holy love overflows, and human beings work so that they, too, may give. Work was not imposed after creation as a remedy for sin. It was a gift in the garden from the beginning. It exists not merely to sustain biological survival, but to empower people to be generative like the Father, truthful like the Son, and life-giving like the Spirit.

Work was given as a gift and blessing before the curse, although the fall made it less easy to enjoy (Gen 3:17). When seen properly, it belongs to the original goodness of creation as a relational vocation. Work is an invitation to participate in God’s ongoing ordering, sustaining, and blessing of the world and of one another.

Scripture never divides “work” and “worship” into separate realms. Workship by Patrick Lai explores this insight by noting that the Hebrew word avodah means simultaneously work, service, and worship. Daily labor was always meant to be a God-glorifying vocation that integrates faith, life, and love. If holiness is fullness—goodness, truth, and love in radiant unity—then any freely offered act that mirrors this fullness becomes worship by participation.

Work is not valuable because it produces outcomes God lacks. It is valuable because it reflects God’s character. Our labor is an extension of ourselves, and so we have something to offer as self-gift. In giving a quality product/service, and in giving some of our profit, we show love. We are free to show and offer our hearts to our customers and to those we give our stored labor.

When a person works truthfully, lovingly, and responsibly, that work becomes a finite icon of infinite holy love. The task itself may be ordinary or unseen, yet its spiritual significance arises from the manner of participation, not the visibility of the result. God does not need our work. He gifts us the dignity of reflecting His creative life.

This vision corrects multifarious distortions. Work is not merely a mechanism for generating income that can later be “given” to God. Businesspeople are not a pastor’s piggy bank. Work is not a test to prove worth, and money is never a measure of human value. Work is not even neutral space awaiting evangelistic use, though faithful witness within work is deeply needed.

If work is done under compulsion, fear, or spiritual anxiety, it fails to properly image holy love, no matter how impressive the results. Selling people things that destroy them is also a selfish warping of what work was intended to be. Instead of gifting products and services work becomes taking. Work is not holy because it is effective, and it is not holy because it advances outcomes.

Instead, Work is holy when it is freely offered in love and truth, accomplished as a gift to the Lord and to others. Work becomes worship not because it is strategically useful for mission, but because worship itself is participatory love. Mission flows from holy love; holy love is never reduced to mission.

Work is already theological. It is already relational. It is already liturgical in the deepest sense: a creaturely offering of presence, attention, and love. Through work, human beings generate goods and services with excellence, trade with one another to meet real needs, and participate in a shared plentitude that blesses communities and honors God.

Consider a small-business owner who runs a repair shop. Nothing about the work appears overtly spiritual. Tools are worn, margins are thin, and the days are long. Yet each morning he opens his doors not to extract the maximum profit possible, but to serve truthfully—repairing what can be fixed, refusing to sell what will harm, charging fairly, and treating customers as neighbors rather than transactions. On difficult days, he absorbs inconvenience so others are not burdened. On good days, he shares the fruit of his labor to bless employees and relieve need. In such work, no sermon is preached and no spotlight is sought, yet holy love is mirrored. The shop becomes a quiet place of participation, where creation is gently tended, trust is honored, and God’s own generosity is reflected through ordinary faithfulness.

Money and Freedom

Work results in money which is stored labor. That storehouse can grant freedom for oneself and for others. It is misused when it is seen as freedom from work and an excuse to self-entertain. It is used properly when it allows expansion of the self in education or purposeful travel, the building of relationships, the pursuit of other creative endeavors, or when it is used to alleviate the suffering of others.

God giving us money is like a parent giving a child an allowance. The child did not really earn it, but the parent wants the child to have something of value so they can freely decide how to expand their interests and pursue their passions. God grants us money to use as we wish without requiring us to invest it in the best things. When asked, He often directs, but providence orchestrates circumstances without scripting obedience.

Work and money are God protecting the open space in which love can be offered rather than coerced. If I give my daughter $10 at a store and tell her to buy a birthday gift for her brother, some self-gift is there because she can use her knowledge of her brother to select something he would like. If I give her $10 with no instructions and she decides to buy a gift for her brother, much more sacrifice is present and so much more love is shown. Money is God gifting us freedom, and what we do with that freedom reflects our hearts…but can also reflect His.   

Breadth and Depth in Human Labor

Work, like love, is not always easy. Understanding God’s breadth-love and depth-love gives work its proper orientation. Breadth-love in work appears as creativity, cultivation, service, excellence, and care for the shared world. Business, art, governance, education, craftsmanship, and innovation all belong here. This work expands, delights, and builds. Here work feels like play, and this is the type of work that will remain in Heaven.

On earth, work sometimes unfolds with more difficulty. Depth-love is needed as labor encounters suffering, injustice, persecution, resistance, and loss. Patience and endurance are required. Work done under constraint or obscurity is not less spiritual. It often mirrors Christ more closely. God’s redeeming descent dignifies work that remains unfinished, resisted, or costly.

Both forms matter. Neither is superior. Work is never ranked by platform, but by participation.

Work, Identity, and Rest

Because God’s holiness is plenary, human worth never derives from output. Work expresses identity; it does not create it. The image of God precedes productivity and survives failure.

Rest is not withdrawal from meaning but participation in trust and reflection upon purpose. Sabbath is not anti-work; it is the confession that God’s love is not sustained by our labor, and that we live not by bread alone. This preserves joy and keeps the focus of work on glorifying God rather than the self.

True work, then, is the freely offered participation of the creature in God’s holy love—reflecting divine goodness, truth, and love through ordinary labor within time, without coercion, anxiety, or the burden of proving worth. It results in stored-labor (wealth) that should be used to gain freedom for further self-expression and self-gift to God and others.

God meant work to be the quiet joy of sharing His life. Before toil, before fear, before survival, work was humanity’s glad participation in God’s own delight—naming, tending, shaping, and blessing a world spoken into being by love. Work was never meant to extract value or prove worth, but to mirror the Creator’s goodness through free, attentive care.

In working, humanity was invited to echo God’s Word in finite ways: to bring order without domination, creativity without grasping, responsibility without anxiety. Work was meant to be communion in motion—the everyday offering of truth, beauty, and love—so that the world might flourish and the worker might rest in the assurance that nothing essential depends on striving, because everything already rests in God.