Theology of Work Part 1

Theology of Work

I just started a class called the Theology of Work. As I was wrapping my head around the concept of Work and how God views work and how we view God according to work, I came up with a

Before and after the Garden (Michelangelo Sistine)

"flow of consciousness" note. I wrote this after a discussion with a good friend, and I thought these ideas were worth sharing. Adam and Eve in the Garden received the first command and it is the command of work to name the animals and to rule and have dominion of Creation. This is often called the "Creation Mandate." It was a freeing, life giving, partnership with God in the ruling, ordering, and reign of creation. However, after the fall our work was cursed “man will toil by the sweat of his brow” and the woman will "bring forth children in pain in childbirth."

God then sent them out of the garden, and from then on God cursed the ground with thistles and

thorns. Work was no longer a blessing but a curse, and men had to struggle and strive to earn which

"Expulsion from Eden" (Doré)

was the exact opposite of what they had from God previously in the garden. God gave them of every fruit of the trees in the Garden. We see this in the scripture “the wages of sin is death” we earn death through the work of our hand after the fall. So, after the fall, work was no longer a wonderful life giving command from God but rather a curse that brought toil, sweat, striving and difficulty. We see this in such scripture as “if a man does not work he cannot eat.” In this we see that laziness is tied to the curse. It is also tied to our need for sustenance. Our sustenance through food is tied to the curse. What are we now sustained by? Our  own toil and effort. We cannot ever really rest. We must keep working to live. We have rests in between, but the commonality between all humans is that we have to work for our sustenance.

Work certainly has hints of the blessing, but also, we sense and see the reality of the curse. We have to work for everything. In this, God sets up our readiness to receive the gospel. God in the gospel has made up for what we lack. He has made up for what we could not, and never will attain in all our striving. We always fall short in our striving which we find in our work. Certainly we achieve things in our work-a-day world. We finish projects, build beautiful structures, help patients, produce beautiful art, and design amazing technology, but our work always falls short. Our work is limited, flawed, never enough. Especially as it pertains to righteousness. We will never be able to do enough to even tip the scales in our direction. The standard for salvation, or to be able to stand before a holy God, would be sinless perfection. Moreover, we would have to be actively completely righteous as Christ was in His active obedience to the Father. But alas, we fall woefully short in our striving. The work of Christ, on the other hand, is plenty. Not just enough, but more than enough.

That is how the writer of Hebrews talks about entering the rest of God. In creation, even God, the creator, worked for six days and on the seventh day he rested. That is why he commanded the seventh day for rest. The writer of Hebrews describes “entering his rest” and that Jesus is our rest. Jesus also describes that he is the “Lord of the Sabbath.” This is fitting. He is not just Lord of the day, but he is also Lord of the rest found on that day. The Sabbath was created so that we could find rest from our constant doing. That complete and final rest was never to be fully found on that day. That day was created for rest so we will one day look to where our true rest comes from. We never find true rest in the 7th day of rest, because the next day we are all back at it again. And the cycle continues. The Sabbath was created for us to build a longing for the true Sabbath. And that true Sabbath is not a day, but rather a person, the creator of days, Jesus Christ himself is the true Sabbath. In Christ we see that he has accomplished our final rest, and "It is Finished” was his cry.

The gospel is the final rest for man. The good news is Christ's cross. When we look at Christ and his work on the cross, upon which he worked on our behalf, to please a God which we could not have pleased, we find rest from our toil. He has pleased a God we could not have pleased, and accomplished a work which we could not have accomplished even if we had had an eternity to do so. God said how pleased he was with his Son, when he said, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” We find our true and final rest in him, because God was finally pleased and propitiated with the work of Christ on the Cross. D.A. Carson wrote in his book Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, "In pagan propitiation, a human being offers a propitiatory sacrifice to make a god propitious. In Christian propitiation, God the Father sets forth Jesus as the propitiation to make himself propitious; God is both the subject and the object of propitiation. God is the one who provides the sacrifice precisely as a way of turning aside his own wrath. God the Father is thus the propitiator and the propitiated, and God the Son is the propitiation." (see source at end of post).

He has provided an answer to the work that cursed us in the Fall, and by his grace we have and will enter our rest in him. On that day, we must work and toil no more. He will at long last be our final rest!

From D. A. Carson, 

Scandalous: The Cross and Resurrection of Jesus

Quoted By R.C. Sproul in The Work of Christ

R.C. Sproul 

Kindle Position 1611

WHO IS YOUR SCAPEGOAT

AGNUS DEI THE SCAPEGOAT (TISSOT)

When I played high school basketball our teammates had a funny phrase that we threw around in pressure situations during a game. We would ask sort of as a motivation, "you gonna be a hero or a goat?" What we were asking each other was, "are you able stop step up and make that crucial free throw, or make that game wining three pointer?" Of course we all wanted to be the hero. No one wants to be the goat! That figure of speech comes from the Old Testament when the priest would place their hands on the head of the scapegoat, recite the sins of the people out loud, and in so doing transferred the sins of the people to the scapegoat. Following the ceremony a person would lead the goat out into the wilderness. It is unclear what exactly happened there. Some believe the term "Azazel" was the name ascribed to the goat, or the place where the goat went into the wilderness, or maybe a demon, spirit, or a god that was allowed by YHWH to destroy the goat after he went into the wilderness. 

Angus dei is the theological term for Christ as savior and or usually an image of Christ represented as the lamb of God. I want to propose that Jesus is our "Agnus Dei", and he is also our scapegoat as James Tissot has proposed in his painting. The concept exists quite deeply in this Old Testament practice as a part of the Day of Atonement. Jesus is our scapegoat, and he is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He also is the scapegoat that has our sins transmitted to him. He does not just take our sins away and throw them into the deepest ocean, they have been transmitted to him so that we can have full expiation. I would like to show how Jesus is a type of the scapegoat, but a much better version. 

 The Scape Goat was...

1. ...Part of the sin offering on the day of atonement (Lev 16:5,7). On the other hand, Jesus was our sin offering on the day of his atonement (Rom 3:25; Heb 9:5,11-14).
2. ...Chosen by casting lots (Lev 16:8). Likewise, Jesus was chosen before the foundation of the world by the council of the Holy Trinity to take away our sin (1 Pet 1:18-20; Rev 13:8; 1 Cor 2:7-10). 
3. ...Transferred the sins of Israel by the High Priest by confessing them with both hands upon its head (Lev 16:21). God transferred our sins to Jesus when we confess Him with our mouth by faith (2 Cor 5:21; Rom 4:22-24, Rom 10:9-10). 
4. ...Sent into the wilderness by the hands of a fit person (Lev 16:21,22). Jesus was similarly

   

   THE SCAPEGOAT (WILLIAM HOLMAN HUNT)

   driven into the wilderness by the Spirit for temptation, however, he actively obeyed. Whereas the scapegoat was sent in the wilderness to die, Jesus was sent into the wilderness to overcome temptation and engage in his active obedience. His active obedience is as necessary to our propitiation as his avoidance of sin. 
5. ...Unclean and communicated it to the high priest (Lev 16:24), and the man who led the scapegoat away (Lev 16:26). Whereas the scapegoat communicated uncleanness to the High Priest and the person who led him away, Jesus on the other hand communicates cleanness and righteousness through his perfect life and expiatory death (2 Cor 5:21). 
6. ...An obvious type of Christ (Isa 53:6, 11, 12). We can clearly see Jesus in the scapegoat practice. In Isaiah 53 we see that God laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was the once and for all final scapegoat never more to yearly lay hands on a goat to transmit the sins of the people, we have once and for all laid our hands on Jesus and God has transmitted our sins onto him. He has credited us with his righteousness by grace through faith so that we don't have to rely on the blood of sheep, goats, and bulls, "for it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Heb 10:4)." Now we can rely on Christ's blood by faith.

So instead of us trying to be our own Goats anymore we have a savior who is the Scape Goat on our behalf so that we can play the hero in God's eyes. When he applies the work of Christ to our account God only sees Christ the hero of all of history, and our heroic victorious Lamb. He is the G.O.A.T. The Greatest Of All Time indeed! Praise the Lord!