Enjoying the Toil (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25)

“There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25)

This week, our church basement flooded after we received 6-7 inches of rain in the course of a couple hours. The creek behind the church rose into the parking lot, ran down our basement stairwell, and put the entire basement two inches under water.

As we toiled with buckets in hand, one of the guys asked me: “Isn’t this the time for you to share some deep spiritual wisdom?” My response: “Well, I just read some of Ecclesiastes this morning!”

In both Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 and 3:12-14, Solomon declares that there is nothing better for a person than to enjoy their food, drink, and, yes, even their toil. There is satisfaction to be found in enjoying a well-made meal, a tasty cup of coffee (something even Solomon never got to enjoy!), and doing hard work–whether that is your nine-to-five job, a labor-intensive hobby, or bailing water out of a basement.

And yet, Solomon has also just remarked that when he looked at his toil under the sun, he hated it (Eccl 2:18)! Why? Because whatever he gained from it, he would eventually have to leave to someone else. He found this absurd, vanity, meaningless. Why work hard when whatever you gain doesn’t last or will be passed on to a fool?

If you look to work to get you things you think will make you happy, you will always be let down in the end. You will come to hate your toil. But if you look for the simple satisfaction of hard work done well, you will find a much better way to live under the sun. It is not always fun. But it is a gift from God (Eccl 3:13).

Life under the sun (i.e., life in this present fallen world) often seems absurd and meaningless. You replace carpet one week and a couple weeks later the basement floods again. You wash dishes only to dirty them again. The work doesn’t stop and sometimes it seems like it is for nothing. But when we take stock of our brief lives here on earth and remember what really matters, we can find enjoyment from God even in the toil.

Solomon also goes on to add that “whatever God does endures forever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it. God has done it, so that people fear before him,” (Eccl 3:14). Our work will fade. Our greatest accomplishments and richest achievements will pass from memory. But God’s works last forever so that we might come to know and worship him.

We can enjoy the satisfaction of hard work done well even though we know our work won’t last because we know, worship, trust, and love the God whose works last forever.

Bad Theology Suffocates Love (1 Timothy 1:3-5)

Last week, a minor league baseball team forfeited a game because several players on the team refused to wear rainbow, “Pride” affirming jerseys. Several major league players also received backlash for displaying Bible verses on their baseball caps during a game marketed as a “LGBTQ Pride Night.” It is all too common for these kinds of stands to be labeled “unloving” in our society. And LGBTQ issues are just one example of this. Today if you contradict anyone’s beliefs, you risk being labeled a hater.

But the apostle Paul offers a different diagnosis. He writes to Timothy:

“As I urged you when I was going to Macedonia, remain at Ephesus so that you may charge certain persons not to teach any different doctrine, nor to devote themselves to myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the stewardship from God that is by faith. The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.” (1 Timothy 1:3-5)

According to Paul, Timothy risks undermining love in the church if he lets false teaching and sin continue unchecked. False doctrine suffocates love. But biblical doctrine revives love. Biblical doctrine leads us to the God who is Love and defines love and lavishes his love upon us in Jesus.

Paul wants Timothy to charge the church to teach only true, biblical doctrine for the sake of love. The goal (telos) of promoting good theology and confronting bad theology is love. To allow false doctrine to go unchecked in the church is profoundly unloving. It is unloving to let lies rage like wildfire among Christ’s people. It is unloving to ignore distortions of the gospel, distortions of God’s character, or distortions of God’s commands.

The standard of truth the church should promote is the “stewardship from God that is by faith.” This stewardship is the sound doctrine of Scripture that we receive by faith. Anything that rejects, denies, or distorts this stewardship will not end up on the path to love.

But when the church promotes biblical teaching, the church pursues love that has a solid foundation in purity of heart, a good conscience, and a sincere faith (1 Tim 1:5). Good theology promotes the purity of our hearts. We find cleansing in Christ, and God creates a clean heart in us as we believe the gospel. Biblical teaching also properly aligns our inner compass of right and wrong based on God’s standards. And sound doctrine fans our faith into flame by showing us the wonder of who God is and what he has done.

In contrast, bad theology muddies our hearts. It leads us to believe lies about God, the world, and other people. False teaching misaligns our inner sense of right and wrong. It also corrupts our faith and makes it looks fake, because it is man-made and not based on God’s truth. False doctrine shipwrecks our faith and drowns our love (1 Tim 1:19-20).

Therefore, if love is our telos, we will confront false doctrine and proclaim biblical truth without apology. Love should be our aim. Love should also influence our manner of proclaiming the truth. We don’t want to be jerks. We want people to see the beauty of the gospel and the beauty of living God’s way.

The most loving way to live is not ignoring sin and bad theology. The most loving way to live is graciously pointing people to God’s truth in Scripture as we live it out ourselves. Lord, help us to pursue this kind of love in the church by pressing into the sound doctrine of your Word.

It’s a Trap! The Fear of Man vs. Faith in God (Proverbs 29:25)

“The fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe.” (Proverbs 29:25)

According to Proverbs 29:25, an alarm should sound off in our hearts every time we begin to make a decision based on the fear of what other people will do or think–it’s a trap. The fear of man is a trap. It’s a snare that we often walk into everyday.

What exactly is the fear of man? According to Duane Garrett, “The ‘fear of man’ describes any situation in which one is anxious about not offending another person.”^[1] The fear of man is when the primary grid for how we live our lives is how people will respond to our words and actions. It leads us stay silent when a coworker cuts corners because we fear what might happen if we speak up. Or we do not confront sin in a friend because we are afraid of the repercussions. Or we do not share the gospel because we fear rejection. In other words, it leads us into a failure to do what is right because we fear the risk of making other people angry, hurt, and so on.

The fear of man is all over our world today. We are a society afraid of being offensive. We fear getting cancelled by the politically correct mob. At home, every decision can easily become about how we can make everybody happy. At work or school, we alter our behavior according to the people we are with. At church, we put on a mask because we don’t want people to find out what we’re really like.

But this is all a trap. We think acting this way will keep us safe. We think, “As long as we can keep everyone happy, everything will be okay.” But this is a lie. Living according to the fear of man will not keep us safe. We may avoid hard conversations. We may do our utmost to go with the flow and stay comfortable. We may earn a trophy for being the world’s #1 people pleaser. But in the end, we will not be safe.

We will live in constant worry. Our judgment about what is right will be clouded. Our courage will fail. And we will be held accountable by God (not people!) for how we lived. The fear of man is a trap.

True safety comes from trusting in the Lord and living according to his will. The person who trusts in Lord will be kept safe in the end because God’s ways are always best and God alone can give us true safety.

Therefore, the safest place for us is living by faith in what God says is good and right, not worrying about offending or angering other people. This doesn’t mean we never consider how our words or actions might make another person feel. It is clearly not wrong to want other people to be happy or feel loved! However, their will and desires are not always best. But God’s will is always best, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.

This proverb also doesn’t mean bad things will never happen to us if we just trust God. Both Scripture and reality teach us otherwise. People will get angry with us. We may have relational conflict. But in the end, the safest place to live is always faith in what God says, not fear of how people will react.

Duane A. Garrett, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, vol. 14, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1993), 233. ↩︎

In Christ, You’re a Saint

“You’re a saint.” You’ve probably heard that phrase applied to someone who just did something really nice. Someone just agreed to help you clean up your shed this weekend, and you tell them, “Thank you so much! You’re a saint!”

Even though this phrase may feel a little archaic, it captures one of the few ways we use the word saint today: someone who is extra holy or extra nice. Or we may think that a saint is a super godly person from the past, or maybe they are the older, super-spiritual men and women in the church.

But then here comes Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:2 where he opens his letter with these words:

“To the church of God at Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called as saints, with all those in every place who call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord—both their Lord and ours.” (CSB)

Paul opens this letter to a church filled with dysfunction (see for example 1 Cor 5), and he calls them saints. Paul does not address this letter just to the extra holy people in the church. He addresses the letter to the whole church and says they are called as saints.

In 1 Corinthians 1:1, Paul has just used a similar phrase for himself: “Paul, called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by God’s will” (CSB). Paul is called as an apostle. The Corinthian church is called as saints, God’s holy people. Even this dysfunctional church remains God’s holy people. They are called by God to be saints.

The rest of verse 2 helps fill in what it means to be a saint:

Saints are those who call upon Jesus as Lord.

Paul writes that the Corinthians are called as saints along with everyone else who calls on Jesus’s Name. Everyone who trusts in Christ alone for salvation and submits to him as Lord is a saint. Becoming a saint isn’t something you earn by doing extra holy stuff. Becoming a saint is what happens when you call on the Lord Jesus Christ to rescue you. You have a new identity.

Sainthood is a calling, not an achievement.

Paul also describes the Corinthians as “saints by calling”. God had called them to be saints. This doesn’t mean they were called to achieve sainthood anymore than Paul’s calling as an apostle meant he had to achieve his apostleship (he’ll let the Corinthians know he is an apostle only by the mercy of God, see 2 Cor 4:1).

The calling here refers to the effectual call of God that calls us into fellowship with Christ (1 Cor 1:9). In 1 Corinthians 1:26-30, Paul connects the believer’s calling with God’s choosing (see also Jude 1; Rev 17:14). When they consider their calling, they will see that God has chosen what is weak and foolish to shame the strong and powerful of the world. We are saints only because we are chosen by the sovereign grace of God. We are called by God to be set apart as his people.

Both God’s sovereignty and human responsibility are in view here. God calls us to be saints as we call on the Name of the Lord. God’s call always comes first (this is the biblical pattern; for example, think about Abraham who was called out by God before he called upon God, Gen 12:1-3; 13:4). Yet, saints also call upon the Name of the Lord. Saints are called by God as his holy ones who call upon Jesus’s Name.

In this way, saints have a holy position before God because of Jesus.

A saint is a sanctified person. Paul refers here not to our progressive growth in Christ, but to our position before God. Positionally, everyone who is united to Jesus by faith is sanctified and set apart to God as a saint (a holy one).

Therefore, a saint is a person who is set apart to God by merits of their union with Jesus. They are called to be saints because they are called into fellowship with Jesus (1 Cor 1:9). Every believer is a saint. Every believer belongs to the holy people of God. To be a saint means to be set apart to God because you belong to Jesus. This is now your identity in Christ.

Therefore, Christian, you are a saint. You might recoil at that or laugh it off as just archaic language. But Paul used the term for the Corinthians (and other churches) to encourage them that they are God’s holy people and to motivate them to live out this new identity that they have in Jesus.

Like the church in first-century Corinth, we are often pretty clunky at living this out. Yet even in our continued struggle with sin, we remain God’s people called to become what we already are—holy. In Jesus, we are saints. Let’s live like it by God’s grace.