Labor of Love

Scripture – 1 Thessalonians 1:2-3 (NRSV)

We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

Devotion

In yesterday’s Life for Leaders devotion, we began looking at the prayer of thanksgiving in 1 Thessalonians 1:3. We saw that Paul and his colleagues were regularly giving thanks to God for the “work of faith” of the Thessalonian Christians. In addition, they also thanked God for their converts’ “labor of love.”

The Greek word translated here as “labor” (kopos) is similar in meaning to the word in verse 3 translated as “work” (ergon; my spellcheck wants to turn ergon into “ergonomics.” Indeed the words are related. “Ergonomics” comes from the Greek combination of ergon-work and nomos-law.) The Greek word kopos, however, has a distinctive nuance not found in ergon. Kopos doesn’t mean any sort of work, any human effort. Rather, it refers to work that is particularly difficult, burdensome, and even painful. By referring to the “labor of love” of the Thessalonians, Paul and Co. are implying not only that the Thessalonian Christians lived out their love, but also that they did so in a particularly difficult and demanding way.

In our culture, we often emphasize the sweet, pleasurable, and romantic dimensions of love. We celebrate love on Valentine’s Day with chocolates, flowers, and special cards. This isn’t necessarily bad. Romantic love in the right context is the enjoyment of God‘s good gifts. But we can often overlook the fact that genuine love isn’t only sweet and amorous. Real love often leads us into actions that are challenging, arduous, and uncomfortable. True love leads to laborious behavior.

When I think of people I have known whose love has required labor, many memories flood my mind. I think of a man in my church in Irvine whose wife was plagued with numerous physical ailments. For years and years, until she died, this man cared for his wife in costly and difficult ways. Or I think of a friend of mine whose adult daughter has Down Syndrome. Though her daughter is highly functioning in many ways – her memory for movie trivia far outstrips mine – she still requires much more oversight than the average 24-year-old adult. My friend expresses her love for her daughter in ways that would certainly be called laborious. Also, I think of my daughter who teaches high school in an underserved district in Northern California. Yes, teaching is her job and she seeks to excel in it as a committed professional. But so often what motivates her to work doubly hard is her love for her students. She deeply cares for them as people and wants to help them flourish in life. So she puts in the extra hours because of her love for them.

I’m sure you can think of examples from your own life of people whose love becomes incarnate in labor. I expect there are times when your love for others has been expressed in costly and difficult ways. 1 Thessalonians would encourage you to hang in there, to keep on loving even when it’s hard.

Of course, the ultimate demonstration of love expressed in labor comes from the life and especially the death of Jesus. The very Son of God came to earth as a human being out of love (John 3:16, Philippians 2:5-11). The love of God in Christ is what led Christ to the cross, to a degree of suffering we can only begin to imagine. For Jesus, love was indeed a labor. His example moves us and inspires us to imitate. When we remember what Jesus did and how this has affected our lives, we are encouraged to express our love in the form of labor, whether for our families, our neighbors, our colleagues at work, or the hurting people of the world. When we love in costly and painful ways, we follow the example of our Lord. Our hearts are drawn near to him and we hear in our spirits his voice saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the High Calling archive, hosted by the Theology of Work Project. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: https://www.theologyofwork.org/the-high-calling/daily-reflection/labor-love

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