The Creation Mandate, Great Commission, and Your Work

Excerpt taken from Women & Work: Bearing God’s Image and Joining in His Mission Through Our Work edited by Courtney Moore

Chapter 1
The Creation Mandate, Great Commission, and Your Work
Elyse Fitzpatrick

Work. What’s your understanding of that word? What’s your initial response to it? Sometimes when I hear the term, I respond with a groaning sigh, such as when I’ve begun a writing project, and the words and ideas won’t seem to form. Inwardly I complain, When will this work finally be completed? At other times, the term conjures up feelings of purpose and excitement, such as when a writing assignment is going so well that my fingers on the keyboard can’t keep up with the thoughts coursing through my mind. Some of us face what feels like days of meaningless drudgery. Others look over their frenetic schedule, see no break in sight, and wonder, When will I get some time to just breathe?

As I’m writing this, it’s the beginning of summer and everyone seems to be posting pictures of exotic beaches and majestic mountains. And I am here looking at my computer screen. I’m just like you. At times, I love my work; other times, it’s physically painful. There are times I don’t understand why my computer just ate my entire writing project, and other times I send off that final copy via email and am glad I didn’t have to go out to print and ship it. Sometimes I am fully convinced the work I’m doing has meaning (like right now), and other times my best plans for making dinner turn out to be a giant waste of time (and food).

Since work is part of our lives and can be such a source of both frustration and joy, it’s good that we’re taking time to gain an understanding of its place in our lives, particularly as women, and in two key passages from the Bible that define it for us. But first, here’s my premise:

• Work is good.
• Work is fallen.
• Work is redeemed.
• Work is eternal.

Let’s take a moment to unpack these four principles.

Work Is Good
When done for the right reasons, work is virtuous and praiseworthy. We know that work is good because God is a worker. Not only was He the first laborer, but the New Testament tells us that Jesus, together with His Father, continued to work, and ultimately Jesus completed all the work His Father had given Him (Gen. 2:2–3; John 5:17; 17:4). Beginning in Genesis, we read that God worked in creating the worlds and the universe. Not only was God working at the beginning, but He also commanded all His creation to work too. He commanded the vegetation and the animals to grow and produce after their kind. We usually call this work instinct, and you can see it everywhere in nature. Plants and animals work continually to multiply “according to their kind” (Gen. 1:21, 24–25). In fact, that’s really all they do. Every sort of living creature is commanded by God to “be fruitful, multiply, and fill … the earth” (Gen. 1:22). So, of course, they do.

After creating male and female plants and animals and commanding them to work to fill this new world with copies of themselves, God created people. These special beings were to be like their Creator in unique ways. Together they were to represent or image Him and, like Him, rule over “the whole earth” (Gen. 1:26), filling His good creation with replicas of themselves and ultimately of Him.

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. … So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female” (Gen. 1:26–27). Then He called His female and male representatives to image or mirror Him by working as He did. He blessed them and said, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth” (Gen. 1:28).

This command is usually referred to as the Creation Mandate. It is called that because, in it, God set forth His will that these image-bearing creatures would be workers like Him. As equals, the man and woman were to partner together to rule and oversee all He had made, making sure that it flourished and filled every corner of the earth. Then, after the six-day work of creation was complete, God pronounced this wonderful blessing and benediction: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed” (Gen. 1:31, emphasis mine). The plants were very good. The animals were very good. Women and men were very good indeed.

Think of that. As a woman, God has said that your creation was very good indeed. Not only that, but He’s also given you a purpose, a call, a vocation. You are to be like Him, a source of life and blessing. Perhaps you’re wondering how the seemingly insignificant work you do could be a blessing to the earth. Gene Veith Jr. says:

When I go into a restaurant, the waitress who brings me my meal, the cook in the back who prepared it, the delivery men, the wholesalers, the workers in the food-processing factories, the butchers, the farmers, the ranchers, and everyone else in the economic food chain are all being used by God to “give me this day my daily bread.”

We don’t usually think of our jobs as the answer to someone’s prayer as this quote suggests, but our work is much more significant than we imagine at first. When we consider the broad purposes that God is up to in His world, we begin to see how vital our own contribution is. Our seemingly small work turns out to be a vital piece of the larger puzzle that benefits society. All work has meaning and purpose in God’s kingdom. In this way, work is a great good.

We’ve typically been taught to think that the purpose of work is to make enough money to vacation and then retire well. But this mindset is ill-informed. Part of God’s great blessing on the earth is work. The garden of Eden was not an early form of an all-inclusive resort where Adam and Eve floated down a lazy river with nothing to do all day but sip fizzy drinks. No, it was a place where they were to “work it and watch over” the home God had given them (Gen. 2:15). … They were to work together as loving co-regents in this task. Work was joyous and satisfying and filled with shalom, a Hebrew word that speaks of deep peace and flourishing.

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