Get to Work
The Hebrew word under the creation mandate — avodah — means labor, service, and worship simultaneously. Not three concepts that share a word. One concept seen from three angles. Adam wasn't placed in the garden to work and then worship. The tending was the worship. That's what Genesis 3 broke, and what the redemption project is trying to restore.
By Steve Wilkins
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
—Genesis 2:15
To work it and keep it. The Hebrew word for "work," avodah, is the same for "manual labor" and "worshipping God." The picture we see here of the human's work is that it was also a form of worship. Work — that is directed toward what God has placed before us is, in fact, worship.
The word, avodah, does triple duty in Hebrew:
Labor — physical, directed work Service — particularly service to a master or king Worship — service directed toward God
These are not three separate concepts that happen to share a word. They are one concept seen from three angles. The Hebrew mind didn't partition them the way the Western mind does.
Adam wasn't placed in the garden to work and worship as separate activities. The cultivation of the garden was the worship. Tending what God had made, in the manner God intended, directed toward the purposes God established — that was the sacred act.
The sacred/secular divide that the Western church has lived with for centuries — Sunday is sacred, Monday is secular — is not in the Hebrew text. It's a philosophical import that we baptized and called theology.
The ordinary, the physical, the daily can be the place of encounter with God rather than the obstacle to it.
Avodah is the Hebrew word underneath that intuition.
If work is worship — avodah — then the Sabbath isn't a cessation of worship. It's a different mode of it. Six days of active avodah — tending, cultivating, producing through directed labor. One day of receptive avodah — resting, receiving, being still in the presence of the One you've been serving all week.
Work as worship. Rest as worship. The entire week becomes worship.
Genesis 3 doesn't just introduce pain into labor. It severs the worshipful quality of work. Suddenly avodah becomes toil — the same activity now stripped of its sacred character, done in sweat and frustration against a cursing ground, rather than in joyful tending of a garden God called good.
The redemption project isn't just saving souls. It's restoring avodah — reconnecting human labor to its original worshipful character. Giving people back work that means something because it's directed toward what God has placed before them.
Work — that is directed toward what God has placed before us is, in fact, worship.
All Scripture quotations are from the New American Standard Bible (NASB), unless otherwise noted.
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