If we read the Bible carefully, we shall see that there are three kinds of labor in human life, not including working at a job to earn a living. The first kind of labor is the labor to be a good person, to have good behavior, and to improve one’s character. In this labor people struggle to be humble, patient, and loving. In the Bible, especially in the New Testament, to work means to do such things. But no one can be saved by works (Eph. 2:8-9). This means that no one can be saved by the works of trying to improve one’s behavior and character, to keep the law, and to be good, patient, kind, and honest. This kind of effort is a real labor, and in the New Testament this is called work.
According to the Bible, the second kind of labor is to worry, to be anxious. What a hard job it is to labor under anxiety! If you could do your job day by day without having any anxiety, you would be a healthy person. However, you may spend more hours each day worrying than you do working. Can you say that you have not had any anxiety, any worry, so far today? Day by day, everyone is anxious. You may be anxious about your health, your job, or a great many other things. I, of course, am not an exception. I have learned from experience that the only way to escape anxiety is to enjoy the Lord. Whenever I am not enjoying Christ, I have anxiety. Christ is versus anxiety. In the Life-study of Philippians we gave a number of messages entitled “A Life Full of Forbearance but without Anxiety.”
The third kind of labor revealed in the Bible is suffering. Suffering is a very hard labor. When we enjoy God in the jubilee, there should not be any suffering. Paul, for example, suffered from a “thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7). Concerning this thorn, he entreated the Lord three times that it might depart from him (v. 8). However, instead of removing the thorn, the Lord said to him, “My grace is sufficient for you.” The Lord seemed to be telling Paul, “No, I shall not remove the thorn, for My grace is sufficient. If you enjoy Me, you will not have any suffering.”
To say that we shall not have suffering when we enjoy the Lord does not mean that our environment will improve. On the contrary, in many cases the environment changes for the worse. Consider the situation of Paul and Silas in Acts 16. Paul and Silas were cast into prison in Philippi. We would expect that this imprisonment would have been a great suffering for them. However, Paul and Silas were not suffering there in prison—they were enjoying the jubilee. They were singing and praising the Lord. Although they were in prison, they had enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
As believers, we should not have the concept that because we are saved, love the Lord Jesus, have given everything to Him, and want to do everything for Him, our environment will be prosperous. No Christian should have this thought. If this is our philosophy of the Christian life, we need to abandon it. Such a view is absolutely wrong.
Many of those who have served the Lord were martyred. For example, John the Baptist, the forerunner of the New Testament, was beheaded. When John sent two of his disciples to ask the Lord to do something for him, He indicated that He would not do anything (Matt. 11:2-5). The Lord went on to say, “Blessed is he who shall not be stumbled in Me” (Matt. 11:6). Here the Lord was indicating to John that He would not do anything to save him from martyrdom; rather, He would leave him in prison to be put to death. Likewise, Peter and Paul were martyred.
Do you think that being a martyr is a matter of suffering? Actually, anyone who is suffering is not qualified to be a martyr. Martyrdom is an experience of jubilee. One martyr, a British missionary killed in the 1930s in China, said as he was being put to death: “Every martyr’s face is like the face of an angel, and every martyr’s heart is like the heart of a lion.” Stephen was certainly not suffering when he was martyred. When he was about to be stoned, his face shone like that of an angel (Acts 6:15). Instead of suffering, Stephen was enjoying the Lord.
If we feel that in a particular environment we are suffering, this indicates that we still love certain things other than God. If we love God uniquely and wholly, we shall not be troubled by any kind of environment. This is the reason the Lord Jesus indicated that we must love Him more than we love our parents, brothers, sisters, wife or children (Matt. 10:37; Luke 14:26). If we feel that it would be a suffering to lose our parents, children, wife, or husband, this means that we do not love God solely. It means that we place our love on something or someone other than God. If we love God solely, giving our love entirely to Him, having nothing to divide our love, we shall not be bothered by whatever happens to us.
Suppose you lose your house. Would that be a suffering to you? Would you still be able to praise the Lord, praising Him even for the loss of your house? If losing your house is a suffering and if you would not praise the Lord for it, this indicates that you love your house as well as God, perhaps more than God. If you did not love your house, you would not suffer as a result of losing it. Rather, you would say, “Hallelujah! My house is gone, but my God is not gone. He is more to me now than before. When I had a good house, God was not so much to me. But now that I have lost my house, God has become much more to me.”
As a father of many children and a grandfather to many more grandchildren, I know that every parent wants his children to be successful. Perhaps you would like your children to be apostles, elders, deacons, or deaconesses, or you may want them to be doctors, lawyers, or computer scientists. But how would you feel if none of your children were an apostle, elder, deacon, or deaconess, or if none of them were in a respected profession? Would you be happy or disappointed? Recently I heard someone praising the Lord that his son had become a medical doctor. But I never heard a parent praising the Lord because his child received a failing grade.
The point of these illustrations is that even seeking Christians may not live a life of jubilee. On the contrary, because they love things other than God, they have suffering instead of enjoyment, satisfaction, and rest.
We all should do our job; however, we should not labor in the sense of struggling to be good, worrying, dreaming, and suffering. We should be able to say, “I only love my God. He is my portion. Nothing and no one apart from Him is my portion. A new car, a nice house, a good promotion, the top salary—all these are not a real portion to me.”