A Beautiful Death: Take up the cross, follow Jesus to work
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During my first year after high school, I worked at a popular restaurant in Austin. I hated it. I had to deal with people all day, and I hated people. I was irrationally annoyed with the very people who paid my paycheck. If only I could have been paid without having to put up with their peculiarities and needs.
But sometime after I left my job at the restaurant, I met Jesus. Sometimes I find myself wishing I could go back and pick up a few shifts at a restaurant again. Since I trusted and began to follow Jesus, I have come to appreciate serving people. Now, I’m a little sad about how I squandered the opportunity to serve food like Jesus would have. But God is gracious, and as a pastor, I have plenty of opportunities to serve people in the middle of their peculiarities and needs.
And when someone new finds out how I spend my days, one thing they often say is something like, “Wow! How could you deal with people and all of their issues on that level every day?” I often answer, “I’m so glad you asked! You see, I have this motto …”
If you want to find joy in your job without going through the trouble of finding a new one, maybe my motto will help you like it helped me, “I am a servant, and I am already dead.”
Living the Christian life well requires each believer to personally identify with Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus said, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28). He also commanded that each of his disciples “must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:23-24). The only reason you would carry a cross is if you are about to be crucified. And I know that “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). This kind of living death is so beautiful because the Bible proclaims, “if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection” (Romans 6:5). There is nothing more beautiful than the likeness of his resurrection. There is nothing more powerful or joyful than Jesus’ resurrection
No matter what you do for a living, you can do it with that same beauty, power and joy. But first, you have to die to yourself. You have to make your work focus on serving others and glorifying God rather than making a living for yourself. If we die to ourselves and our own self-interest, “He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11). Every employer, client and customer loves being served selflessly by someone who does their work well. The Christ follower serves selflessly by definition and they do it well when they do it by the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead.
If you’re a person who loves practical steps in a matter like this, I’m sorry that the Bible is frustratingly vague about this. It would be terribly nice if one of the books of the Bible were an employee manual for Christians. It seems, though, that the main strategy the Holy Spirit adopted for helping you die to yourself at work is to aim at your beliefs about yourself. That’s why Jesus repeatedly challenged people to take up their cross to follow him, and to deny themselves, and to value following him above everything else, even family. If you put Jesus in the place he deserves, denying yourself should flow naturally.
In my own life, I began repeating a simple motto to myself every morning. It was challenging co-workers that led me to intentionally and repeatedly remind myself that “I am a servant, and I am already dead.”