21 Days to Finding Eternal Purpose in Your Daily WorkSample

Over the past five days, we’ve been systematically walking through the biblical narrative of work. Today and tomorrow, we examine the pinnacle of that narrative—Jesus’s death and resurrection—to see how the gospel provides our ultimate source of rest and ambition for our work. First, let’s see how the gospel enables us to rest. Now more than ever, we look to our careers for our sense of worth. It’s why “What do you do?” is often the first question we ask new acquaintances. We all feel a need to impress others with our answers to that question. Why? Because we are all looking for a verdict for our lives—for someone to say we are worthy and our very existence is justified. The beautiful truth of the gospel is Jesus has secured the verdict for us! “We have been justified” not through anything we have done but through what Christ has done on our behalf. Jesus has secured the most important verdict of your life: forgiven and free from death through faith in him. But we’re not just forgiven. God has graciously given us new identities as “co-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17). What does that mean for our work? It means we can work from a position of rest because we don’t need to work to attain something work was never designed to provide. In other words, the gospel frees us from the need to be productive. Ironically, that truth leads us to want to be productive at work. How? That’s the question we will answer tomorrow.