Work Was Part of the First Calling

This is an elective on the Sending Path. It is about business as mission: taking a real business to another place and another culture, to glorify God and serve people. The first lesson is not about methods. It goes back to the Bible and asks an earlier question: how are work and mission related?

Many Christians carry an invisible line in their heads: Sunday belongs to God, Monday to Friday belong to the boss. Pastors and missionaries do ‘spiritual work’; the rest of us do ‘secular work’. Is that line in the Bible?

Start with where work came from. Before there was any sin, God put the man into the garden “to cultivate and keep it.” (Gen 2:15) Work was there before the fall. After the fall, God said, “You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life” (Gen 3:17). What was added was the hard labor, not work itself. Work is not a curse. It is part of God’s first calling: to look after the world he made.

Now look at Paul the missionary. In Corinth he met Aquila and Priscilla, and “by trade they were tent makers.” (Acts 18:3) Paul had the same trade, so “he lived with them and worked.” (Acts 18:3) On the Sabbath he reasoned in the synagogue. The missionary we know best in the New Testament spent his weekdays making tents.

Why did Paul work? He gives several reasons. First, so that he would not be a burden: “these hands served my necessities, and those who were with me.” (Acts 20:34) He wrote to the Thessalonians that they had been “working night and day, that we might not burden any of you” (1 Thess 2:9). Second, to set an example: “This was not because we don’t have the right, but to make ourselves an example to you” (2 Thess 3:9). Third, so that he had something to give: working is how we “help the weak,” (Acts 20:35) because the Lord Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” (Acts 20:35)

Notice the words “not because we don’t have the right” (2 Thess 3:9). Paul also wrote, “Even so the Lord ordained that those who proclaim the Good News should live from the Good News” (1 Cor 9:14). A church supporting its full-time workers is a biblical path; Paul working with his hands was another path that he chose. This course is not saying full-time ministry is lesser. It is saying both paths are in the Bible.

Aquila and Priscilla were a married couple in business. They had lived in Rome, moved to Corinth when the emperor expelled the Jews, and later went with Paul to Ephesus (Acts 18:18–19). In Ephesus they heard an educated preacher named Apollos, and “they took him aside, and explained to him the way of God more accurately” (Acts 18:26). Later a church met in their home: Paul sends greetings from them “together with the assembly that is in their house” (1 Cor 16:19), and calls them “my fellow workers in Christ Jesus” (Rom 16:3).

The Bible does not say they moved for the sake of mission; they went to Corinth because they were forced out. It only tells us that wherever their business took them, they welcomed people, taught people, and a church gathered in their home. For them, doing business and serving God were not two separate things.

The last passage has to be read in its context. Just before “whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord,” (Col 3:23) Paul writes, “Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters” (Col 3:22). He was writing to the people with the least choice in that society. Even of their work he could say, “you serve the Lord Christ.” (Col 3:24) How much more is that true of our work today.

Not everyone is meant to go and do business somewhere else. Later lessons will look at what business as mission is, how people did it in history, and what to watch for today. This first lesson lays one foundation: in the Bible, work and mission were never two separate things.