First Corea first principles look at the Bible
Playbook 05 · Money and balance · Law 7

How to work

Work came before the fall, not after it. The Bible’s rule for work is short. Do it well, deal fairly, pay people on time, and don’t let work take the place of God or rest.

The rule

In short: Work diligently; honest weights; wages on time.

“Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23).

The rule underneath: Law 7 · Work honestly

Work diligently; honest weights; wages on time.

Keep it: You have enough, with some to share.
Break it: Laziness brings need, and cheating brings ruin.

Shows up in: Genesis, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Proverbs, Amos, James

Other rules in this book: Protect the weakest, Tell the truth, Enough, and give, Rest

14Thou shalt not oppress an hired servant that is poor and needy, whether he be of thy brethren, or of thy strangers that are in thy land within thy gates: 15At his day thou shalt give him his hire, neither shall the sun go down upon it; for he is poor, and setteth his heart upon it: lest he cry against thee unto the LORD, and it be sin unto thee.Deuteronomy 24:14-15 · KJV

Why it matters

In the Bible, work is not a punishment. Before anything went wrong, God put the first human in a garden “to dress it and to keep it” (Genesis 2:15). Work is part of being made in God’s image: you make, tend, and build.

But work can go wrong two ways. You can cheat: short the customer, hold back the wage, hide the fee. Or you can worship it: work until nothing else is left. The Bible names both.

The steps

1 · Do the work in front of you well. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10). Show up. Finish. Do it the same way when no one is watching (Colossians 3:22 calls the opposite “eyeservice”).

2 · Keep honest scales. In the old world, a cheat used a light weight to sell and a heavy one to buy. “A false balance is abomination to the LORD” (Proverbs 11:1). Today’s scales are prices, fees, hours, and claims. Would the customer feel fooled if they saw how you set the price?

3 · Pay people on time. If anyone works for you, pay the full amount when it is due. “At his day thou shalt give him his hire” (Deuteronomy 24:15). This covers the babysitter, the contractor, and the invoice you are sitting on. James says held-back wages “crieth” to God (James 5:4).

4 · Work so you can give. Paul tells a former thief to work “that he may have to give to him that needeth” (Ephesians 4:28). The goal of work is not only your own need. It is to have something for others.

5 · Mind your own work. “Study to be quiet, and to do your own business, and to work with your own hands” (1 Thessalonians 4:11). Quiet, steady work beats talk. “The talk of the lips tendeth only to penury” (Proverbs 14:23). Penury means being poor.

6 · Stop. “Six days shalt thou labour” means the seventh is not for work (Exodus 20:9–10). Work that never stops has become a master. See Playbook 08 · How to rest.

Where it goes wrong

  • The small cheat. Padding hours, hiding fees, or selling with “the ephah small, and the shekel great” (Amos 8:5): less product, higher price.
  • Paying late because you can. Holding someone’s pay to help your cash flow. The law says not even overnight (Leviticus 19:13).
  • Laziness dressed up. “A little sleep, a little slumber… So shall thy poverty come” (Proverbs 6:10–11).
  • Work as god. Rising early and sitting up late, anxious. “It is vain… for so he giveth his beloved sleep” (Psalm 127:2).
  • Squeezing workers. Pharaoh’s answer to complaints was “Let there more work be laid upon the men” (Exodus 5:9).

One practice

This week

The wage and scales check

  1. Wages. List everyone you owe for work: employees, contractors, sitters, friends who helped. Pay anything overdue this week.
  2. Scales. Pick one price, fee, report, or timesheet you control. Ask: would the other person feel fooled if they saw how it was made? Fix one thing.
  3. Stop time. Write down when your work day ends, and keep it for five days.

Note what you fixed in your journal.

Go deeper
  • The pattern across the Bible. Law of Moses: honest measures (Leviticus 19:35–36); wages before sunset (Deuteronomy 24:14–15); rest for the servant and the animal too (Exodus 20:10). Prophets and history: Amos condemns traders who can’t wait for the sabbath to end so they can cheat again (Amos 8:5); Micah asks if God can call the “bag of deceitful weights” pure (Micah 6:11); Jeremiah pronounces woe on the king who “useth his neighbour’s service without wages” (Jeremiah 22:13); Nehemiah’s wall rises “for the people had a mind to work” (Nehemiah 4:6). Wisdom: the ant (Proverbs 6:6); the skilled worker stands before kings (Proverbs 22:29); the worker whose “heart taketh not rest in the night” (Ecclesiastes 2:23). Gospels: John the Baptist tells soldiers not to extort and to “be content with your wages” (Luke 3:14). Letters: work heartily (Colossians 3:23); work to give (Ephesians 4:28); James 5:1–6.
  • Original words. ʿAbad, the Hebrew verb for “dress” the garden in Genesis 2:15, also means “serve” and “worship.” The same root is used for Israel’s hard labor in Egypt (Exodus 1:13–14). The Bible shows the same act, work, as worship or as slavery, depending on who it serves. Ergon in Greek is plain “work” or “deed.”
  • Work after the fall. Genesis 3:17–19 does not make work the curse. The ground is cursed, and work becomes hard: “in the sweat of thy face.” The work itself was already there in Genesis 2.
  • How the laws interlock. Law 7 carries Law 5 (honest scales are telling the truth with numbers), Law 4 (the worker is often the weaker party), Law 8 (work so you can give), and Law 10 (work has an edge).
  • Worked example. A small business owner runs short one month. The easy fix is to pay two contractors 30 days late. Instead she pays them on time, delays her own draw, and tells her lender. She also finds that one fee on her invoices is confusing, and rewrites it in plain words.

Hard passages

“Servants, obey… your masters” (Colossians 3:22)

What it says Paul tells servants (Greek douloi, often “slaves”) to obey their earthly masters, and in the next chapter tells masters to give “that which is just and equal” (Colossians 4:1). The law of Moses forbids kidnapping people to sell them (Exodus 21:16).

The rule underneath Work honestly, and power serves. Both sides answer to God.

What people added Readers debate whether these texts accept slavery or undercut it from inside (see Philemon). How it has been used: Defenders of slavery in the 1800s often quoted these verses. The 1807 Slave Bible, made for enslaved Africans in the British Caribbean, kept verses telling slaves to obey and left out Galatians 3:28 and the Exodus story.

“If any would not work, neither should he eat”

What it says Paul wrote this to people who had stopped working and were living off others (2 Thessalonians 3:10–11). The same Bible tells farmers to leave part of every harvest for the stranger, the orphan, and the widow (Deuteronomy 24:19).

The rule underneath Work honestly, and protect the weakest. The verse is about would not, not could not.

What people added How it has been used: In 1609 Captain John Smith told the starving Jamestown colony, “he that will not work shall not eat.” Lenin quoted the line in 1917, and the 1936 Soviet constitution wrote it into Article 12.

Is work a curse?

What it says “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19). But work begins in Genesis 2:15, before the fall.

The rule underneath Work is part of the human job. Hardship came later.

What people added Some traditions ranked prayer and study above ordinary work. The Reformers argued that ordinary work is a calling from God. Readers still weigh the two.

Books that feed it

Genesis · Exodus · Leviticus · Deuteronomy · Nehemiah · Proverbs · Ecclesiastes · Amos · Colossians · 2 Thessalonians · James