1. Loving

  1. Being a Christian in work is being loving. To follow Jesus Christ in our work means being loving because Jesus is love. Jesus, as well as His Father, is love. Jesus loves us as well as His Father.150 We love Jesus as well as His Father. From the Holy Spirit we receive the heart, wisdom, and strength to work lovingly.151
  2. If everything that we do in life we do out of love, then the same applies to our work.152 Work is charity, not in the sense of deeds for nothing, but deeds out of love. Charity, therefore, is our work.
  3. By loving the people in our work, we are following God’s commandment to love our neighbors.153 To love our neighbors in work means to love everyone who depends on our actions.
  4. By loving the people in our work, we recognize their humanity, God as their Creator, and Jesus who also died for their sins. To disregard someone’s humanity is unloving and a denial of God.
  5. By loving the people in our work, we show love for what God has created. To love God means to love what He has made.
  6. By loving the people in our work, we pass on the love God gives us.154
  7. By loving the people in our work, we reciprocate the love God gives us.155
  8. By loving the people in our work, we follow Jesus who himself even loves the greatest sinner.156
  9. By loving the people in our work, we bestow to them the most beautiful thing God created us with: our heart.
  10. By loving the people in our work, we mirror who God is, namely love.157 Therefore, it damns God if we hate anyone in our work. This is why God damns hate.
  11. Real love toward the other means continuing to love the other even though they continue to hate, deceive, and frustrate us. Even if someone treats us badly at work, real love requires we continue to treat them as a creation of God’s goodness. Even if they have ill will towards us, we continue to be kind to them; if they are so unreasonable, we remain reasonable; if they are the devil himself, we continue to spread Jesus’ love.
  12. Jesus’ command to love our enemies means, with regards to work, loving our greatest competitor, our greatest adversary, and our greatest threat.158
  13. Love means we do not treat the other person heartlessly. When we make decisions that affect others, we do not do so indifferently. When we make decisions that hurt others, we do so with pain in our hearts.
  14. Love is the beating heart of our work.159 We do our work not grudgingly but wholeheartedly;160 not numbly but passionately.161 We do our work to show our love towards God162 and humanity.163
  1. John 3:16, 1 John 4:16
  2. Romans 5:5
  3. Luke 10:25-28, Romans 12:10, Romans 13:8, 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 1 Corinthians 16:14; Galatians 5:6, Galatians 5:22
  4. Matthew 5:43-45
  5. John 7:38
  6. 1 John 4:7-21
  7. Ephesians 5:1-2
  1. 1 John 4:16
  2. Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:35
  3. Luke 10:25-28
  4. Ephesians 6:6
  5. Titus 2:14
  6. Matthew 22:37
  7. Matthew 22:39

Questions

  1. Which Bible verse about love do I find particularly appealing and provides guidance for what working lovingly means (to me)?
  2. To what extent do I agree with the above summary of what working lovingly means?
  3. Are there any missing elements in the above list of what working lovingly means? If so, which ones?
  4. How would I personally describe what working lovingly means for Christians?
  5. How would I describe concretely what working lovingly means for me?
  6. To what extent do I subscribe to the idea that loving is an important characteristic/virtue for Christians in their work?
  7. To what extent do I subscribe to the idea that loving is an important guideline/principle for the behavior of Christians in their work?
  8. To what extent is loving an important virtue and principle for me in my work?
  9. How do I experience the importance of love in my work?
  10. Do I work to bring love? Do I do so wholeheartedly?
  11. To what extent can I work lovingly in my work?
  12. How often have I recently brought love to my work?
  13. How loving am I in my work? How does it show?
  14. To what extent do I use loving as a principle for my behavior in my work? Could I illustrate this using the decisions I have recently made in my work?
  15. When I look back at my working life, could I say that I have increasingly become more loving in my behavior?
  16. To what extent do people I work with think I act lovingly in my work? What have they said to me about this?
  17. To what extent do I think God thinks I act lovingly in my work?
  18. How can I become and act more lovingly in my work? How would I do this concretely?
  19. Which elements of working lovingly am I going to bring more of in my next working day?
Table of contents