Updated: 1/20/20
After Rachel had borne Joseph, Jacob said to Laban, “Send me away, so that I may go to my own home and to my country. Give me my wives and my children for whom I have served you, and let me go, for you know the service I have given you.” Laban said to him, “If now I have found favor in your eyes, wait, because I have learned by using divination that Yahweh has blessed me for your sake.” Then he said, “Name your wages, and I will pay them.” Jacob said to him, “You know how I have served you, and how your livestock have fared with me. For you had little before I came, and it has increased abundantly. Yahweh has blessed you wherever I worked. Now when will I provide for my own household also?” So Laban said, “What will I pay you?” Jacob said, “You will not give me anything. If you will do this thing for me, I will again feed your flock and keep it. Let me walk through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep, and every black one among the sheep, and the spotted and speckled among the goats. These will be my wages” (Genesis 30:25–30).
Jacob’s calling was to carry on the covenant line: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This calling was his lawful inheritance. God had promised his mother Rebecca that the firstborn son would serve the secondborn son (Genesis 25:23). Jacob had purchased the birthright from his older brother Esau for a low price: a bowl of stew (Genesis 25:29–34). Rebecca and Jacob had to deceive Isaac about who Jacob was in order to receive the verbal blessing of the blind old man (Genesis 27).
Because of this deception, Jacob had to flee the wrath of his older brother. He fled away from his father’s flocks. He wound up in a distant region of Canaan. He lived in the household of his uncle. His uncle hired him to keep his flocks for seven years. The payment for this, his uncle promised, would be his daughter Rachel (Genesis 29:18). Jacob loved Rachel. But Laban deceived Jacob. He substituted her older sister, Leah (Genesis 29:25). Then he negotiated with Jacob to remain with them another seven years as payment for Rachel (Genesis 29:30). Jacob agreed. One week later, Laban gave Rachel to be Jacob’s wife, and his term of service began.
Laban believed that he was driving a hard bargain. He thought he would get an extra seven years of service out of his highly productive nephew, who was clearly being blessed by God. Laban wanted to profit from these blessings. Jacob recognized that Laban was in a strong bargaining position because Jacob loved Rachel so greatly. But he was also in a strong bargaining position. God really had blessed his efforts as an employee of his uncle. His uncle wanted to remain the beneficiary of Jacob’s productivity. Seven years later, he negotiated again. He agreed to the terms offered by Jacob. Jacob seemed to be asking for less desirable animals born in Laban’s flocks (Genesis 30:3–34). Why not agree to this? It seemed like an excellent arrangement for Laban. He really was not giving up much. So, he readily agreed. But, as it turned out, there was no way for Jacob to enforce the contract. Laban was in charge. When Jacob finally took his wives and his flocks back to his father’s land, which lawfully belonged to Jacob as the designated heir, they had to flee in the night. In preparation for their departure, he told this to his wives.
Jacob sent and called Rachel and Leah to the field to his flock and said to them, “I see your father's attitude toward me has changed, but the God of my father has been with me. You know that it is with all my strength that I have served your father. Your father has deceived me and changed my wages ten times, but God has not permitted him to hurt me. If he said, ‘The speckled animals will be your wages, then all the flock bore speckled young. If he said, ‘The striped will be your wages,’ then the whole flock bore striped young. In this way God has taken away the livestock of your father and given them to me.”“Once at the time of breeding season, I saw in a dream the male goats that were mating with the flock. The male goats were striped, speckled, and spotted. The angel of God said to me in the dream, ‘Jacob.’ I said, ‘Here I am.’ He said, ‘Lift up your eyes and see all the male goats that are breeding with the flock. They are striped, speckled, and spotted, for I have seen everything that Laban is doing to you. I am the God of Bethel, where you anointed a pillar, where you made a vow to me. Now rise up and leave this land and return to the land of your birth’” (Genesis 31:4–13).
Jacob was not a thief. He was not a thief when he deceived Isaac. He was not a thief when he fled in the night from Laban, taking his cattle with him. The cattle did not belong to Laban. Thus began his journey back to his inheritance. This was his return to his calling. Before he had fled traveled far, Laban caught up with them. Jacob again negotiated with Laban. Laban agreed to the arrangement (Genesis 31:25–55).
Jacob was a good negotiator. He was a good negotiator because he had God on his side, and he knew it. Laban also knew it. Initially, when Jacob fled his father’s house, which was his lawful inheritance, Esau refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of Jacob’s claim. But, when they were reunited two decades later, Esau accepted the fact. There was continuing trouble between the heirs of Jacob and the heirs of Esau that lasted right down to the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The Edomites were the sons of Esau. They opposed the Jews. But, in all cases, the heirs of Jacob triumphed over the heirs of Esau until the Roman army triumphed over them all in A.D. 70. At that time, God removed the nation of Israel from the covenant line. He transferred that inheritance to the church. Edom disappeared from history.
The successes of Jacob make it clear that there is nothing wrong with negotiations. It is not immoral to try to get full value for services rendered. Abraham had made this clear in his negotiations with God prior to the judgment of Sodom. Abraham kept trying to persuade God to lower the number of righteous people living in Sodom sufficiently so that it would not be necessary for God to bring judgment against Sodom, where his nephew Lot resided. God kept agreeing with Abraham’s lower figures, which was easy enough for God to do because the only covenant-keepers in Sodom were Lot, his wife, and his two daughters (Genesis 18:22–33). They fled before God’s judgment began.
Jacob spent a total of 20 years away from his lawful inheritance: his land. Esau had remained in charge during his absence. Now it was time for Jacob to collect his inheritance so that he could return to his calling. He was successful in doing so. He gained Esau’s cooperation by offering him large gifts in advance of his return (Genesis 32). It was a good strategy. He knew his brother’s time perspective, which was short term, so he took advantage of this. There is nothing in the account of Jacob’s return to the land of his inheritance that would indicate that he did anything wrong by adopting a strategy of giving gifts to Esau in advance of his arrival in order to keep Esau from killing him and stealing all of his assets (Genesis 32). This is exactly what Esau had wanted to do two decades earlier.
Jacob had to put up with a 20-year interlude in Laban’s household. He had been forced to abandon his calling as the lawful head of the tiny nation of Israel. He had to get a job with his unscrupulous uncle. He stayed on that job for two decades. He did not try to go back home. He built a large inheritance because he negotiated effectively with his uncle. His uncle finally recognized that Jacob and his wives would not stay nearby any longer. Jacob would no longer subordinate himself as an employee, meaning a commissioned employee. Laban recognized that he could extract no more wealth from Jacob. He recognized that he could no longer gain the blessings of the God of Jacob in his capacity as an employer. Jacob departed in peace with a large inheritance. He returned to his calling as the head of the tribe that would receive his share of the blessing that God had promised to his grandfather Abraham.
Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses had this in common: part of their lives were spent in jobs that were not visibly connected to their callings. Abraham was successful in his efforts as a businessman when he was in Ur of the Chaldees. God pulled him out. Obviously, his success in building his flocks had little to do with the promise that God gave him regarding the success of his heirs. He did not have any heirs. He nevertheless departed from the land of his birth in good faith. He was rewarded by God for his faithfulness. In the famous chapter in the epistle to the Hebrews on men of faith, there is more space devoted to Abraham than anyone else. It began with this declaration: “It was by faith that Abraham, when he was called, obeyed and went out to the place that he was to receive as an inheritance. He went out, not knowing where he was going. It was by faith that he lived in the land of promise as a foreigner. He lived in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:8–10). This was surely the correct attitude. This should also be your attitude.
Jacob spent 20 years working for a corrupt employer. He did not complain. He was cheated repeatedly. He did not complain. He accumulated wealth: cattle. His time in exile kept him safe from Esau. It ultimately led to his collection of the inheritance which God had promised his mother that he would receive.
Joseph served Potiphar well as a slave. He was falsely accused by Potiphar’s wife. That ended his slavery. He spent time in prison (Genesis 39). He did not waste any of that time. Everyone he served became dependent on him. This dependence culminated in the dependence of Pharaoh on his advice and also his administrative ability (Genesis 41). His jobs were training grounds for his calling. He saved Egypt from famine. He saved his father’s family from famine.
Moses spent 40 years herding sheep in the wilderness. How was that connected to a great calling? Yet it was. He needed the training in herding sheep in order to become a shepherd to the rebellious sheep of Israel.
Your job should be related to your calling. Your job and your calling probably will not be identical, but they will be related. Your job puts food on the table. Without this, you could not pursue your calling. But never forget this: your job is supposed to be covenantally subordinate to your calling. Begin to take care of your calling before you take care of your job. Be clear in your mind what your calling is before you develop a plan to improve your job performance. But, once this is clear, you must develop a plan to improve your job performance.
Because of the curse on Adam and the curse of the ground (Genesis 3:17–19), man has to work hard in order to survive. This physical toil becomes less of a problem with economic growth, but until about 1800, growth was never sustained for more than a few decades in any geographical area. This forced people to cooperate. In order to benefit from the division of labor, there has to be peace. Peace fosters economic growth. This is because it fosters a greater division of labor, and therefore it fosters greater specialization of production. This in turn leads to increased efficiency. Producers derive more output from the same quantity of inputs.
The apostle Paul was clear about the biblically mandatory nature of work. In his first epistle to the Thessalonian church, Paul wrote this: “We also exhort you to aspire to live quietly, take care of your own responsibilities, and work with your hands, just as we commanded you, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and not be in any need” (I Thessalonians 4:11–12). This was a remarkable statement in Paul’s era. The church was located in a wealthy city on the Greek peninsula. Greek social thought for the aristocratic class was in total opposition to the idea that any member of this class should labor with his hands. Greece had long been a society in which slavery was widespread. In the days of Plato (400 B.C.), something like one-third of the population of Athens was made up of slaves. In the time of Jesus, the city of Rome probably had an equal percentage of slaves. This was in sharp contrast to Mediterranean slavery, in which there might be one or two slaves in a household. All of the members of Mediterranean household worked. Paul was arguing for a totally new social philosophy. He was, symbolically speaking, baptizing manual labor. This was a radical break with classical social theory and classical political economy, which preached leisure as an ideal for the ruling elite. There is nothing in the Bible on leisure as a superior lifestyle to manual labor. On the contrary, it teaches the opposite.
In his second epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul further developed his theory of the legitimacy of work.
Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you avoid every brother who lives a lazy life and does not live according to the traditions you received from us. For you yourselves know it is proper for you to imitate us. We did not live among you as those who had no discipline. We did not eat anyone's food without paying for it. Instead, we worked night and day in difficult labor and hardship, so we might not be a burden to any of you. We did this not because we have no authority. Instead, we did this in order to be an example to you, so that you may imitate us. When we were with you, we commanded you, “The one who is unwilling to work must not eat.” For we hear that some walk idly among you. They do not work but are instead meddlers. Now such ones we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ, that they should work with quietness and eat their own food (II Thessalonians 2:6–12).
This moral principle of mandatory labor is supposed to govern the distribution of charitable resources within the church by the deacons. If somebody is physically or mentally incapable of working, the church can legitimately provide financial assistance or other forms of help. But this does not apply to anyone else who seeks charity from a church. The same principle governs private charities. Resources are in limited supply. There are always lots of people who want support. Put economically, when the price falls, more is demanded. This is the free market’s principle of pricing: at zero price, there is greater demand than supply. This economic principle applies to charitable resources that are offered at below-market prices to people in financial need. Those who administer charity must allocate it in terms of some general moral principle. Paul has set forth this moral principle: “The one who is unwilling to work must not eat.”
Therefore, you should not be discouraged by the fact that nobody is willing to pay you a comfortable wage in order to help you fulfill your personal calling. You should recognize that very few people are ever in a position in which others are willing to do this for them. This means that you probably will have to enter the labor market and seek employment. You will have to exchange your valuable time for a salary or other forms of payment. Your time could otherwise be devoted to your calling, but it is rare for anybody to achieve this. Certainly, the patriarchs of Israel failed to achieve it during their times of exile. It was no different in the early church. Paul did say that people who were God-ordained teachers in a church deserve double payment. “Let the elders who rule well be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work with the word and in teaching. For the scripture says, ‘You shall not put a muzzle on an ox while it treads the grain’ and ‘The laborer is worthy of his wages’” (I Timothy 5:17–18). But he said this about no other ordained church officer. The time that elders spend to prepare teaching materials deserves compensation. It is not that they do not work. But they do not work to provide services that the general public would pay for in a competitive market. Therefore, the church has to pay for these services.
Your job is your way to support yourself and your family. You should be grateful that you have a job. It provides stability in your life. It enables you to serve God in other areas of life besides salaried work. But it is more than this. It enables you to serve God by serving customers. Your work makes their lives better. If this were not true, they would not pay your employer for the goods or services that the business offers for sale.
Even though you may not like the kind of work that you do at present, you should always be confident that the work does help other people have a better life. In the social division of labor, your employer is providing goods or services that are important to specific customers. The fact that your employer provides these services on a predictable basis is a great benefit to customers. They do not have to worry about whether or not they will be able to buy these goods or services. They can be confident that your company will be there when they want to make a purchase. It has been there in the past. They expect that it will be there in the future. They are probably correct. Your work provides stability in their lives.
You are part of a team. Management provides some degree of coordination for the work of this team. Specialists in marketing seek to predict what customers will be willing and able to purchase in the future. There is an element of uncertainty about this. That is why there are both profits and losses. Income is not automatic. Customers can change their minds. Conditions can change. New competitors can appear, seemingly out of nowhere. There is nothing guaranteed about the success of your employer. You get a predictable salary, but a competitive free market offers no comparable security to employers.
Because someone has put up money to pay you, that person has to find buyers of whatever your output is. You do not how to do this. You do not know how to generate sales. You are not an expert in marketing. You do whatever it is that you are paid to do, and presumably you do it better than other people who would like your job. You should have a degree of confidence about your performance because somebody is paying you a salary to stay on the job. This is a vote of confidence. You should be grateful that God has enabled you to find someone to pay you for whatever service you render to the company. You should have a degree of optimism about your work, even though there will be aspects of your work that you do not like. This is true of everybody’s work. That is what the curse of the ground is all about.
If you really hate your work, and especially if you do not think that it is delivering useful products and services to customers, then you must find another job. You may have to bear some uncertainty in making a career change. Do this. You should not stay in a job that you truly despise. That is bad for your health. It is bad for your mental condition. It is certainly bad for your self-image. But, for as long as you are convinced that the product or service that your company sells to the public is a legitimate one, and superior to at least some of the competition’s performance, you should stop hating your work. Your attitude is not conducive to high-quality production. You should seek to improve your performance. You should do this for the sake of God, who evaluates your performance in terms of whether or not customers are willing to pay for the final output of your efforts.
When you go to work, prepare yourself mentally. Think of how your efforts are making other people’s lives better. It is an honor to be able to do this. You are being allowed to serve God in whatever capacity you have in which you have an advantage over other potential employees would like to have your job. Jobs are not guaranteed by the market. That is because final sales are not guaranteed by the market. Sellers compete against sellers. Buyers compete against buyers. The results of this constant competitive process are not guaranteed to anybody. Conditions can change. Profitable businesses can cease being profitable. Jobs that seem secure can disappear. Your attitude should be one of gratitude. If it isn’t, then either you must change your attitude or else you must find a new job. Do not stay in any career in which you do not have gratitude to consumers, your employer, and to God for having made available this opportunity for service. For as long as you continue to be paid to perform this service, you should be working hard to improve your performance. That is how you serve consumers. It is how you serve your employer. It is how you serve God. Ultimately, it is how you serve yourself. If you are contemptuous about your work, you cannot avoid being contemptuous about your willingness to continue to do this work.
In a familiar phrase in English, we must put food on the table. We have to earn a living. We earn a living by making exchanges. We can earn a living as owners of a small business. This means we will have to find customers for whatever it is that we sell. But the more common exchange is for an employee to enter into a long-term agreement with an employer. The employer agrees to pay the employee money and perhaps other benefits, and the employee agrees to perform services for the employer. Coming to a price for these services and these benefits is a matter of negotiation. Negotiation is necessary in many cases because neither the employee nor the employer knows for sure what the value of the employee’s future output is likely to be. There is great ignorance in such matters. In other words, there is great uncertainty.
The most common way for somebody to reduce his uncertainty is to get a job with an employer who pays predictable wages. The employer reduces uncertainty by hiring lots of people who perform these services on a regular basis. The employer diversifies his uncertainty (uninsurable outcomes) by employing lots of people. If one person quits, or if he has to be fired for lack of performance, he can usually be replaced rapidly if he has been paid a market price for his services. There will be other potential employees bidding for the job abandoned by the previous employee. Employees compete against employees. Employers compete against employers. This is the nature of free market competition. Only in cases where there is great uncertainty about the value of an employee’s future services do we find negotiation situations in which the employer is directly competing against the employee. This happens in professional athletics on a regular basis. It happens in negotiations regarding mass entertainment. Here is a good rule of thumb: the higher the value of the expected output, the fewer the number of employees capable of performing the service. This gives great bargaining power to potential employees who probably are capable of performing the service. They are not competing against lots of rival employees. The number of competent, high-value potential employees is low, and therefore the bidding is much narrower. There is greater uncertainty about the expected future output of the employee.
This means that the higher the value of your output, the more likely that you will be able to compete successfully for an appropriate wage. There will be fewer people competing against you. If the kind of service you perform is widely appreciated by employers, this is a tremendous advantage. Employers will bid against other employers to hire you. There will not be many people bidding against you. So, the price offered will be higher than it would have been if there had been more competitors for the available job.
Nevertheless, in times of recessions and economic slowdowns, there will be fewer offers from employers. This means that employees will have to lower their expectations and therefore lower their wages. It will be more difficult to get a job offer when the economy is stagnant or falling.
To negotiate effectively, you must have some idea about wages and benefits that are offered to people with skills similar to yours. The wider the geographical range of your job search, the more likely that you will find an employer who will see the value of your productivity, and who will offer you a wage sufficient to lure you away from your present employer. The problem with this is it this strategy will encourage you to move out of your present community. There are major trade-offs to consider. You will not be able to establish your reputation outside of work unless you stay almost all of your life in the same geographical region. You may get a larger salary if you leave the region, but your influence locally will end.
Companies usually offer higher wages to people they are trying to recruit. You may get a large pay increase by moving to a new company, but after this initial increase in your salary, the company will cease giving large raises. An employer will assume that you will not move to a different company. He will also assume that you will have increased your mortgage debt in order to buy a nicer home. You will have less flexibility and less mobility. You will therefore not be able to persuade your employer that he must pay you more in order to retain your services. In order to get a significant raise, you will have to leave your present job. This can be done by moving up the chain of command in your company. Perhaps you can persuade another branch inside the company to hire you at a larger salary. The obvious way to get a raise is to transfer to a new position within your company to which are attached greater responsibilities. Few people will seek out a job like this, and few of those will be qualified to handle the responsibilities. Therefore, you must begin to learn how to deal with such responsibilities; then you have to persuade somebody in another department that you are competent in handling them. There will be relatively few people within the organization who are anxious to take on greater responsibilities.
If you want to earn more money, you must become more efficient. Otherwise, you are going to have to work longer hours at your job. Longer hours at work will take time away from your family, your church, political activity, and whatever your calling may be. It is not easy to improve your efficiency. You have to learn how to do this in your specific job. This is why you have to spend so much time in self-education. You must begin this self-education program early in your career, and you must keep adhering to it throughout your life. This is true in your calling as well as your job. Technological innovation is constantly providing people with better tools of production, but it is also offering a threat to their present income if they do not stay abreast of the tools available for people with their particular responsibilities. It is much easier to get this kind of education today than ever before in history. Online teaching materials are priced low or even free of charge. It takes time to find out what you need to learn in order to advance your career. It takes time in studying the available materials. But it is no longer what it has been throughout history, when education was expensive and unavailable to most adults. You should ask yourself this question: “How much time have I invested or the past year in improving my economic output for my job?” Have you kept records of such activities? You probably have not. I suggest that you begin. You should be able to trace the time and money you have invested in self-education. If you do not keep a record of this, you probably are not systematically pursuing an effective program of self-education.
You should be building a library of books and articles gleaned from the Web. The articles should be stored in a cloud-based database with a search-and-retrieve function. Use appropriate keywords to help you remember these articles. Read the books. Mark up the most important ones. Create summaries that you then post in the database. You want to be able to retrieve this information for the rest of your life. This should be part of your inheritance that goes to someone else who is committed to the same area of service.
If someone who is an expert in some area related to your job is willing to spend time with you to discuss the basics of success, take advantage of this. I recommend making recordings of your discussions. Make summaries of the highlights which, you will post in the database. This information may be valuable to you in the future even if you do not see ways of applying it in the present. Cultivate a relationship with a mentor. He may be willing to devote time to you if he sees that you have promise. You should do the same with a younger person when you become an expert.
I return to the comment made by my former pastor, Rev. Henry Coray. He lived to age 98. He wrote Christian historical novels. He had a successful pastorate. He spent several years in China as a missionary in the early 1930s. He spoke fluent Chinese. He was a talented man. He once said from the pulpit that we are immortal until the day that God has scheduled for us to die, and on that day, we cannot escape death. I think this is the best way to look at the time that you have available to you. It is in finite supply.
Time is your only your irreplaceable resource. Every hour that you spend working for a salary is an hour that you have lost. You could have used that hour for many purposes. You could devote more time to your calling. You could start a small business. You could spend more time with your family. You study to could teach a Sunday school class. You could become a deacon. You could take a course related to your business or anything else. This is why you must be very careful not to let your employer begin to demand more hours for the same salary. You would also be wise not to take an offer of a larger salary for the sake of a longer work week. Whatever is the normal work week for a salaried employee in your community, use this as the limit. Only when the economy is in a recession, and there is a risk that you will be fired, should you work more than whatever this normal work week is. It is easy for an employer to begin to extract more free hours from employees. You must do what you can to have an escape route from any business that follows this as a corporate policy. You must have balance in your Christian life.
There is another factor to consider. As you get older, you will become more aware that you are running out of time. The value of the time that you have remaining begins to rise in relation to the value of the money that you could earn by working longer hours at your job or your business. The money is always tempting, but there is a limit to the amount of time that you will be granted by God. I am here referring to productive time. In the final years of your life, you may not be sufficiently productive to earn a living. I call that the Barzillai factor (II Samuel 19:31–37). You should prefer to be a Caleb (Joshua 6:6–14), but sometimes biology works against you. You must be prepared for a shorter lifetime of marketable output.
Another factor is this: as you get older, you have less time to rebound from a mistake in your career or your investment strategy. Mistakes become a greater threat to your lifestyle in your later years. Also, from a psychological standpoint, it is usually more difficult for an older person to rebound emotionally from a setback than it is for a younger person. Therefore, you should accept greater levels of uncertainty when you are young than when you are old. You should start more projects when you are young. You should spend more time in your activism. This will cut into your early years’ income from your job, which means that you will have less financial capital to invest. I recommend that you budget your time very carefully. In the long run, it is better to use your time well for your calling when you are young than when you are old. You will have greater impact in your old age if the productivity of your calling has compounded over time. It is better to leave a major legacy in that area in which you would be most difficult to replace than to leave a large financial inheritance to children who may not do productive things with the money.
You must accept all responsibility associated with your particular task. You must do whatever you can to make certain that you meet the written and informal requirements associated with this task. Most people are not rigorous in their attention to details. They let things slide. They take this attitude regarding their work: do just enough to get by. This is the wrong attitude. The correct goal for a covenant-keeper is to excel at every task he is assigned. This should be your goal. If you are incapable of performing at this level after a few months of dedicated efforts, then you must either get further training, or else you must go to your boss and tell him that you are just not capable of performing the task. Do not do substandard work. Get a reputation for being a reliable, punctual, and above-average performer. You are representing Christ to those around you. If you do a sloppy job, people will not be impressed by your personal testimony regarding your salvation and your deeply religious motivation. People respect good work. They respect punctuality. They respect predictability. There is an old phrase: “Actions speak louder than words.” It is an accurate phrase. Jesus was clear on this point. He asked His critics this question:
But what do you think? A man had two sons. He went to the first and said, ‘Son, go work today in the vineyard.’ The son answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went. Then the man went to the second son and said the same thing. He answered and said, ‘I will go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two sons did his father's will?" They said, ‘The first one’ (Matthew 21:28–32a).
They answered correctly, but in doing so, they condemned themselves. Jesus told them that they were the true second-born sons. Covenant-breakers listened to Christ’s message of redemption by God’s grace, and they believed it. The Jewish leaders listened, and they did not believe it. The second son had a good attitude, but he did not follow through. The first son had a bad attitude, but he changed his mind and did follow through. The second son was covenantally the first son, meaning the firstborn son. This meant gentiles.
In a joint effort, each participant relies on the performance of all of the others. This is the meaning of the division of labor. Each participant specializes in what he does best. He can do this safely in a group only because there is a plan coordinating everyone’s efforts, and everyone strives to make certain that he performs predictably. This is why someone who does not perform well is a liability in any joint effort. A common phrase is this one: “He does not pull his own weight.” You should work in such a way that this is never said of you by anybody on the team. People who do not pull their own weight are not invited to participate in productive projects. They are liabilities. This should never be the case for covenant-keepers. To be a liability in any productive joint effort undermines the testimony of the worker so designated by his peers. Here are three rules of success. If you follow these rules religiously, you are not going to be a failure.
1. Do what you say you are going to do.
2. Do it at the price you agreed on (or a little lower).
3. Complete your work on time (or a little early).
You might be amazed at how few people predictably follow these three rules. If you invariably follow these three rules, managers will seek your participation in profitable joint projects. This is the pathway to career advancement.
You should create a scheduling system that enables you to see where you are chronologically in any project. There should be deadlines on a regular basis throughout the project. If management has not provided these deadlines, then you must provide them on your own authority, and you must alert your immediate supervisor to the existence of your schedule. You must make certain that it is satisfactory with him. Then you must stick to it. If you miss a deadline, immediately inform him of this. Make certain that he does not become dependent on you if you are not capable of meeting these deadlines. It is better to ask to be removed from the job than to perform at a substandard level. Do not disappoint the manager, your immediate supervisor, and your fellow workers.
It takes self-discipline to create a schedule and then stick to it. This is why so few people seem to be able to do this. They are not self-disciplined. They require constant intervention on the part of supervisors. These people are liabilities. They eat up the time of their supervisors. Their supervisors should not have to micromanage these low-performance employees. These employees will not be promoted. Promotion always involves greater responsibility, and their supervisors will not trust them. Neither will their peers. Nobody wishes to become dependent on a substandard performer.
Your goal for your job should be a constant increase of the amount of responsibility that has been assigned to you. This is how you gain influence. This is the steppingstone to leadership in every organization. The model for this is Jesus. Earlier models are the lives of Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. They had important callings, but all of them were first required by God to perform on the job. This was their training ground. This is how God screened to them for greater responsibility. They proved to themselves, to others, and to God that they were ready to exercise responsibility in their jobs. Their jobs were complementary to their callings.
If you are weak in the area of time management, it is imperative that you learn how to budget your time. It is more important to budget your time than to budget your money. If you budget your time, you will be able to budget your money. The other way around is not necessarily the case. Some people can budget their money, but they are terrible about time management. Time management is more important because it has to do with performance on the job. Other people become dependent on you. If you run out of money before the end of the month, not many people outside your family will be affected. In contrast, if you run out of time before your work is completed, everybody on the project will be negatively affected. You will get a bad reputation. Do not get a bad reputation.
Jesus set forth this principle of subordination to someone with power.
You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. Instead, whoever strikes you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone wishes to go to court with you and takes away your coat, let that person also have your cloak. Whoever compels you to go one mile, go with him two. Give to anyone who asks you, and do not turn away from anyone who wishes to borrow from you (Matthew 5:38–42).
This is how you buy favor from people with power. Jesus gave this recommendation to His listeners. They were under Roman authority. If the leaders had taken His advice, the Jews would not have revolted in A.D. 66. The Roman army would not have come against the nation, and it would not have burned the temple in A.D. 70.
This principle applies to people who are employed for a salary. It is wise to be subordinate. It is wise to go the extra mile. This is why you should perform at an above-average level. Within the limits of your work week, which should not be longer than the week required of your peers, you should be ready to serve at a moment’s notice. You should gain the reputation of being somebody who can be called on in a crisis, and who will deliver whatever is required on a predictable basis. There are not many people who can do this. You should become one of them.
In business emergencies, you should be willing to work longer than the standard work week, but make sure that your immediate superior does not get the idea that you are willing to do this in normal times. This may seem to be a violation of the principle of going the extra mile. But you have responsibilities outside your job. Your boss should not think of you as being compliant to demands that are not placed on everybody in your job classification. You must not be regarded as weak-willed. You must be regarded as someone who is reliable in a crisis. People who are reliable are very seldom weak-willed. They exercise responsibility. Their supervisors know that they have responsibilities outside of the business. This is why you must gain the reputation of being somebody who can be trusted to perform on time at an above-average level, not because you are weak-willed, but because this is the way you perform in every area of life. Others are dependent on you, and you must not let them down. Your supervisor had better be aware of this. This is especially important in regard to the time you devote to your family. When children are little, parents have a calling with respect to their children. They are in a unique position as heads of a household. Children learn what it means to be a responsible adult by means of watching their parents at close range. Do not work for any company that expects you to sacrifice time with your family. Find a better employer. If you are a competent worker, and if you can demonstrate this to other potential employers, you do not need to work for a demanding employer who does not respect the family responsibilities of the employees.
An important reason for performing at an above-average level is at this will enable you to gain leadership among your peers. People will see how you perform on the job. If they are in the same department, they will notice if you perform well under pressure. They will know if you are carrying your own weight. It is difficult for anyone who is perceived as a slacker to gain influence among his peers. They do not trust him. They do not wish to become dependent on him. They will not take him seriously when he voices opinions on anything related to the job.
If you are new in a department, you must strive to demonstrate both your dedication and your competence. You may not master the job early, but you should continue to strive for mastery. This sends a signal to your peers. It tells them that you are serious about the job. This means you are serious about not letting them down. They do not wish to become dependent on anyone who is not dedicated to the team effort. To the extent that you are participating in a team-related division of labor project, your peers will expect you to perform adequately, and you will gain influence if you consistently perform at an above-average level.
It will take time for you to develop this reputation. People want to see how you perform over at least a one-year period. But if you do perform well, word will spread within the group. If you do this without voicing your opinions, this is far better positioning for future leadership. It indicates that you are not trying to push other people around. If you have performed well for a year, and if you are continuing to improve your performance, then your peers will begin to take you more seriously when you speak out on issues that are not related directly to work. People are interested in the opinions of high-performing colleagues. They want to know how they can become high-performing workers.
When you are new on the job, it never hurts to ask your peers specific questions about what is required for a particular task. People will not expect you to know all of the details if you are new on the job. They will expect you to begin to improve your performance. When you ask someone else’s opinion, and you show interest in what he says, this is a great way to gain people’s trust. If you begin to change your behavior in terms of what the other person has recommended, that carries a great deal of weight.
You should be striving to gain leadership in your job. You are representing Christ. You should be a good representative.
You should regard your job as a gift from God. You should regard it as an opportunity for service. Effective service is a means of dominion in history. It is how we prove to ourselves and to others that we are capable of performing effectively. We should be able to perform at an above-average level after a few years. We should be constantly progressing in our understanding of the tasks which have been assigned to us.
Someone pays you to perform a particular service. Yiu are being paid because you have demonstrated the value of your output. You should constantly be striving to improve the value of your output. This is a testimony to the world around you. It is also a testimony to God that you take his gift of employment seriously. This is the message of the parable of the talents and the parable of the minas. When God entrusts you with responsibility, you are to strive for above-average performance. The crucial aspect of dominion is the willingness to accept responsibility, and then meet the demands that have been assigned it to you. Influence flows to those who accept responsibility. Most people do not want to accept additional responsibility. You should not be like most people.
Your job should be consistent with your calling. It should reinforce your calling. It may have to fund your calling. Your calling is primary. Your job is secondary. You are should be more replaceable in your job than you are in your calling. This is the definition of a calling: it is difficult to replace someone who ceases to perform whatever services he had previously provided.
Do not treat your job as if it were your calling unless you are sure that this really is the case. Do not sacrifice your calling for the sake of endless promotions and raises. Recognize that your time is limited, and the impact that you will have on your successors in your calling will probably be much greater than the influence you will have on your successors in your job. It is highly unlikely that you will be remembered for your performance in your job a year after you die or retire unless you run the company or a division. I doubt that anyone remembered the apostle Paul in the field of tent making. In the field of letter writing, no one in history has ever been equally influential. His letters changed civilization. That was his calling, not his job.
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