Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles (Complete) (With Active Table of Contents)
We cannot divide the world into spiritual and practical, for the spiritual is the practical. Given our assessment of James 2: Eerdmans, , 6: Abingdon Press, , Eerdmans, , , James follows up his practical guidance about listening see James 1: Here he employs some of the fiercest language in the book. James is no doubt well aware of the Old Testament proverbs that speak about the life-giving power of the tongue e.
Many Christians rightly take care not to harm others through harsh speech at church. Water-cooler gossip, slander, harassment, disparagement of competitors—who has never been injured by harsh words in the workplace, and who has never injured others? Selfish ambition is the opposite of serving the needs of others. The passage is aptly summarized by James 3: In typical fashion, he alludes to a workplace—grain harvesting in this case—to make his point.
He names several elements of peacemaking: All of these can and should be employed by Christians in the workplace. You do not have, because you do not ask. This wraps the two principles into an integral unit. James states this metaphorically as an adulterous love affair with the world, by which he means the wealth and pleasure we are tempted to believe we can find in the world without God James 4: James borrows the metaphor of adultery from the Old Testament prophets, who frequently used it to depict the pursuit of wealth and pleasure as substitutes for God. Although James uses the metaphor of adultery, he is talking about selfish ambition in general.
In the workplace, one temptation is to use others as stepping stones to our own success. James is right that this is a chief source of quarrels. Ironically, selfish ambition may impede success rather than promote it. It can be as simple as delegating work to subordinates, or as complex as coordinating an international project team. But if we have a reputation for stepping on other people to get ahead, how can we expect others to trust and follow our leadership? The remedy lies in submitting to God, who created all people in his image Gen.
Good, then we should begin by helping other workers increase their authority and excellence.
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Does success motivate us? Good, then we should invest in the success of those around us. James moves to a new application in giving a warning specifically about business forecasting. He opens with sobering words: What is your life? Planning ahead, however, is not his concern. Imagining that we are in control of what happens is the problem. The problem is not planning; it is planning as if the future lies in our hands. Most businesses are well aware how unpredictable outcomes are, despite the best planning and execution that money can buy. The annual report of any publicly traded corporation will feature a detailed section on risks the company faces, often running ten or twenty pages.
Why then does James have to remind believers of what ordinary businesses know so well? This is a mistake. Our plans should be flexible and our execution responsive to changing conditions. In one sense, this is simply good business practice. See, for example, Ezekiel Note also that James 1: His words in the beginning of chapter 5 are scathing.
While the gold in their vaults and the robes in their closets may look as shiny as ever, James is so certain of their coming judgment that he can speak as if their riches were already decomposing: The day of slaughter seems to be a reference to the day in which God judges those whom he called to lead and care for his people, but who preyed on them instead Zech. James echoes the Old Testament as he excoriates them for their unjust business practices: And there it stays—they hoard their wealth and ignore the needy around them James 5: The workers were owed wages, but the rich and powerful found a way out of paying them without incurring punishment by the legal system.
Abuses of power include misclassifying employees as independent contractors, inaccurately registering workers in a lower skill code, paying women or minorities less for doing the same job as others, and using children for jobs so dangerous that adults refuse to do them. Misuse of power can never be excused just because it is a so-called standard practice.
Does what I do with money help lift people out of poverty or does it help keep people impoverished? Eerdmans, , ff. James concludes his letter with a variety of exhortations on patience, truthfulness, prayer, confession, and healing. As always, these appeal either to the principle that faithful works must benefit others or that it must be done in dependence on God, or both. And as usual, James makes direct applications to the workplace. James begins with a workplace example to illustrate the looming return of Christ: The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
You also must be patient. He then echoes these words as he draws to a close: Patience at work is a form of dependence on God. But patience is hard in the workplace. That mentality leads to insider trading, Ponzi schemes, and gambling away the grocery money at the slot machines. A production system that rewards poor quality is as bad or worse than the worker who takes advantage of it. There would be no need for oaths and swearing, no retroactive clarifications, no need for contract provisions defining who gets what in the case of misstatements or fraud.
Imagine if sellers always provided maximally informative data about their products, contracts were always clear to all parties, and bosses always gave accurate credit to their subordinates.
Could we succeed in our present jobs or careers? Do we need to change our definition of success? James is inviting us to get specific with God. Many Christians seem strangely reluctant to pray about the specific issues, situations, persons, needs, fears, and questions we encounter every day at work.
James exhorts us to confess our sins to one another, so that we may be healed James 5: We face daily pressure to produce and perform, and we have limited time to act, so we often act without listening, marginalize those who disagree, compete unfairly, hog resources, leave a mess for the next person to clean up, and take out our frustrations on co-workers. We wound and get wounded. The only way to be healed is to confess our sins to one another.
Commentaries, 22 Vols
The wrongdoer may have to confess it to the rest of the department too, if he or she is really going to heal the damage. What is our motivation for confession and healing? So that we may serve the needs of others. Saving someone from death is serving a very deep need! And perhaps— since we are all sinners—someone else will save us from death by turning us from the error of our ways. How are you doing in your work life at being sympathetic and loving, at being compassionate and humble?
Who is that one person that has just been rubbing you wrong, and what might applying this verse look like in your relationship with them? Imagine if tomorrow they were gone, or in crisis, how might you feel? Read one woman's story of grieving with coworkers in her workplace.
Christ has called us to follow him in a world that does not recognize him. We are resident aliens in this strange land, which is not yet our true home. The job of the Christian, then, is to live in this alien land, blessing it until Christ returns and restores the territory to his kingdom. You are living under foreign rule. Like exiles in any country, you do not necessarily enjoy the favor of the rulers of the land where you live.
Nonetheless, God has called us to stay here, to reside in this alien land while conducting the work of Christ 1 Pet. Before continuing, we must understand what it meant to be a priest in ancient Israel. Priests performed two chief functions: In order to say the priestly blessing, priests had to speak for God himself. This means that we must genuinely know the people with whom we work.
For Christian leaders, who a person is and what they do are fully integrated. People cannot be reduced to instruments of production. Christian leadership requires that prayer be fully integrated into the life of work. The whole world groans with the burden of the fall and it is our calling to participate in the healing of this world. Prayer is central to the calling of leadership. It means that Christians are to live lives of exceptional purity in the midst of whatever our livelihoods are. Only so can we offer sacrifices to God and blessings from God on behalf of the people around us.
Peter states this directly: Of course, Christians do not perform the same sacrifice as Jewish priests we do not slaughter animals. Instead, we perform the kind of sacrifice our Lord did: Our workplaces offer daily opportunities for self-sacrifices—small or large. This brief survey of 1 Peter 1: The priestly blessing was commanded by God to be offered by priests in Numbers 6: For the extensive cleansing and consecration process of the high priest on the Day of Atonement, see Leviticus To my eyes, the business was in trouble.
Relationships on the shop floor were tense and deliveries to customers were often late or defective. The problems might have been related to the copious quantities of alcohol consumed by the employees, led by the CEO, my father. I treated every employee with compassion and respect. I instituted more effective manufacturing processes and quality control. The business started turning around. I was ridiculed for not getting drunk. When cursed, I tried to bless. When ridiculed, I quietly went about my job without condemning. Although I had major disagreements with my father, I always tried to show him honor and respect.
The General Epistles and Work | Bible Commentary | Theology of Work
The experience turned into my own personal hell. But over the course of several years, the tide began to turn. Fewer people hung around after work for free beer. Some employees left the company, while others begin to embrace the new values. A sign of the mantle of leadership being passed to me came one day as my dad not me removed the beer barrel. In this situation, my calling as a resident alien and priest could only be incarnated with a posture of humility and self-sacrifice.
Peter addresses this directly in instructions to his readers as foreigners and slaves. In fact, unjust treatment is to be expected 1 Pet. Notice that Peter is talking about suffering unjustly, not suffering from the consequences of your own incompetence, arrogance, or ignorance. Of course, you need to suffer obediently when receiving just punishment. In practical terms, you are not free to disobey those in authority even in order to get what you think is rightfully yours. The fact that you lied to or cheated someone to make up for how they lied to or cheated you does not make your action less evil.
Your call is to do right, even in a hostile work environment 1 Pet. Instead, Christians should treat those in authority—even harsh and unjust masters—with respect and honor. We can submit to authority by disobeying openly and accepting the consequences, as Jesus himself did. Here and throughout the epistle, Peter draws us almost exclusively to the self-sacrifice of Christ as a model. The advice is good for workplace leaders, too. It focuses on serving others. Peter advises humility to the young—in fact, to everyone—when he quotes Proverbs 3: These are not unique to 1 Peter, and we will not expand on them here.
Second Peter reinforces many of the themes we saw in James and 1 Peter concerning the need for holy living and endurance in suffering. We will not repeat these, but instead discuss only chapter 3, which raises a profound challenge to a theology of work. Does our earthly work matter to God? Central to his argument is the bodily resurrection of Jesus, which 1 affirms the goodness of the material world, 2 demonstrates that there is continuity between the present world and new creation, [1] and 3 is a sign that new creation, while not fully realized, has been initiated. Our work is ultimately valuable because the fruits of our labor, having been redeemed and transformed, will have a home in heaven.
Peter is responding here to lawless scoffers who claimed that God would not intervene in history to judge evil 2 Pet. He appears to describe a future that lacks all continuity with the present world; instead, it looks like the annihilation of the cosmos:. A reading of 2 Peter 2: Likewise, Peter carefully describes the world in terms of transformation and testing: This is not to say that 2 Peter is the chief source for the theology of the eternal value of present work, but only that 2 Peter is consistent with such a theology.
All evil will be utterly consumed, but all that is righteous will find a permanent home in the new creation. Fire not only consumes, it purges. The dissolution does not signal the end of work. Rather, work done for God finds its true end in the new heavens and new earth. What we find true in his body, we also find true in this vision. What we have done—although it is ambivalent at best on its own—once redeemed and transformed, does find a home in the new creation.
Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, ed. Hubbard, and Glenn W, Barker, vol. Continuum, , —77, for thorough discussions of this complex passage. See, for example, Isaiah The New Testament uses fire imagery this way as well: See also Al Wolters, who argues that the fire imagery refers to the process of God refining the world. In chapter 2, John states that genuine knowledge of God is manifested by transformed character and behavior, epitomized in obedience to God:.
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By this we may be sure that we are in him: Again in keeping with James, 1 John regards caring for those in need as one expression of genuine knowledge of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. We walk in the light continually, as a new way of life. Mark Canlis on becoming who we were created to become Click to watch. This has immediate significance to workplace ethics. One specific application of the light metaphor is that we should be open and transparent in our workplace actions. We should welcome scrutiny of our actions, rather than trying to hide our actions from the light of day. We could never defraud investors, falsify quality records, gossip about co-workers, or extort bribes while walking in the light.
In this sense, 1 John 1: But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. He says he is frequently approached by local officials who want him to pay a bribe. The request is always made in secret. It is not a documented, open payment, as is a tip or an expediting fee for faster service.
There are no receipts and the transaction is not recorded anywhere. He has used John 3: I would like to bring in the ambassador, or the management, to get this documented. Work is a highly practical way of loving your neighbor, because work is where you create products and services that meet the needs of people nearby and far away. Work is a spiritual calling. In this sense, 1 John brings us full circle back to James. Both stress that acts of obedience are integral to the Christian life, and indicate how this factors into a theology of work.
We are able to obey God, at work and elsewhere, because we are becoming like Christ, who laid down his life for the benefit of others in need. University of Notre Dame Press, The Second Letter of John fits into the overall framework of the General Epistles, while offering its own insights about life and work in Christ. It is short, but full of practical instruction. Here in 2 John, we find the most extended development of this idea. I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we have been commanded by the Father. But now, dear lady, I ask you, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but one we have had from the beginning, let us love one another.
Regrettably, we often act as though grace, mercy, and peace depend on love minus truth. We may hide or shade uncomfortable truths in our communications with others at work in the misguided belief that telling the truth would not be loving. Or we may fear that telling the truth will lead to conflict or ill will, rather than grace or peace. Thinking we are being merciful, we fail to tell the truth. But love must always begin with the truth.
Love comes to us through Christ, and Christ is the perfect embodiment of the truth of God. That is to say, God knows the way things really are, and he wraps his knowledge in love and brings it to us through his Son. But genuine grace, mercy, and peace come from facing reality and working through difficulties to genuine resolutions. He let employees know on a monthly basis how well they were meeting expectations.
Once a year he told them whether they were top performers, middle performers who needed to improve in specific areas, or bottom performers who were in danger of losing their jobs. How is that kind? If we choose deception, we had better at least admit that we are no longer honest people. Ed Moy, later to become the head of the U. Mint, tells the story of his first job out of college. When he started the job, he had to fill out an expense report for his use of the company car, identifying his personal use of the car and separating this from his company use.
The practice in the office had been had been to list personal use only for the travel from home to work, claiming the rest as company use even if the purpose of the trip was personal. Your report will make the rest of us look bad. But would you really want someone working for you who would lie over such a small thing? How could you trust that person when the stakes were higher?
What are we to do about relationships with deceitful people and false teachers? We may be able to do more for the cause of truth and love by remaining engaged and telling the truth in the midst of deception than by leaving the scene. Besides, if we broke contact with everyone who ever practiced deception, would anyone be left, even ourselves? Perhaps he realizes that whatever else he has to communicate could be misunderstood if presented in the impersonal medium of writing a letter.
Remote communication choices today include video conferencing, telephone, texting, letter, e-mail, social media, and many other variations. But effective communication still requires matching the medium to the nature of the message. E-mail might be the most effective medium for placing an order, for example, but probably not for communicating a performance review. Pat Gelsinger, former senior vice president at Intel Corporation, says,. I have a personal rule. If I go back and forth with somebody in email more than four or five times on the same topic, I stop.
We get on the phone, or we get together face to face. You think they are incompetent since they could not understand the most straightforward thing that you were describing. But it is because of the medium, and it is important to account for this. The wrong medium for a particular communication can easily lead to misunderstanding, which is failure to transmit the truth.
And the wrong medium can also get in the way of showing love. I have never been the same and heartily recommend Calvin to all Christians. Not only does reading Calvin provide an education in Christianity, but the quality of his language provi After experiencing some church difficulties, I thought I needed to make sure that my theology was not the problem.
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