Aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, so that you may walk properly before outsiders and be dependent on no one.
The ambition is quietness, honest business, and hands that work.
Week 1 of 4
A quiet life
Godly work does not need an audience. It needs a man who will do it.
Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your hands.
1 Thessalonians 4:11
Paul tells the church to aspire to a quiet life, to tend their own affairs, and to work with their hands, so that they walk properly toward outsiders and need nothing from anyone. That is a strange ambition for a man who wants his labor to be seen. Colossians adds the direction: work as for the Lord, not for men. The temptation is either laziness or theater. Both leave a house exposed. Quiet work is love with a time card.
Scripture
Formal study reading, written for this series
Formal study reading, written for this series
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
The real employer is the Lord. That kills both slacking and showing off.
We hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.
Busyness that is not work is still idleness.
NASB, the Amplified, and the ESV open on Bible Hub. The Legacy Standard Bible opens on its own reader. Close, Expanded, and Easy on this page are original study readings. WEB is the World English Bible, public domain.
Quiet is the manner, not the absence of effort
Philotimeisthai is to love honor, to be ambitious. Paul aims that ambition at a quiet life. He is correcting people who treated the Lord’s coming as a reason to stop working, and he is correcting the need to be important. A husband can fail his house by refusing work, or by making every hour a performance of how hard he works. The command is hands, quietness, and walking properly before people who do not share your faith.
Colossians cuts the audience down to one. If you work for men, you will sulk when they do not notice and boast when they do. If you work for the Lord Christ, ordinary work becomes service. That includes the job you do not love. Heartily does not mean theatrically. It means from the soul, toward him.
In the house
Stop narrating your exhaustion as if it were a gift they should applaud. Do the work. Then come out of it enough to be a husband and a father, which is also work.
If idleness has a costume — schemes, scrolling, a spirituality that never lifts a hand — name it. Eat your own bread. If the work is crushing you, that is a different problem. Get help. Do not baptize either laziness or despair.
Seven days
At the table
- 1Are you ambitious for a quiet faithfulness, or for being seen as the provider?
- 2Where are you busy without actually working?
- 3Who is your real audience when you labor?
- 4Does your house receive a man, or only the story of his tiredness?
Your note
Stays on this device. No account.
A prayer
Lord Christ, I serve you, not an audience. Make me ambitious to live quietly and to work with my hands. Forgive the idleness I have called waiting on you, and the boasting I have called honesty. Let my house eat bread that was earned in quiet, and let them have a husband who can leave the work in your hands when the day is over. Amen.