“Adorned With Christ in All of Life: Work” — a Refresh & Restore Bible Study

Christ Has Come: The Promised King & His Gift of Peace (Advent 2025) – Refresh & Restore | A JustKeithHarris.com Podcast

Christ Has Come – Week 3Episode Title: The Promised King & His Gift of JoyLuke 1:39–56In this Advent episode of Christ Has Come, Keith Harris turns to Luke 1 and invites us to slow down and listen to the joy that begins stirring before Bethlehem. Long before angels sing to shepherds, joy breaks the silence in the hill country of Judea—through a Spirit-filled confession, a leaping child, and the worshipful song of a young woman who trusts the promises of God.Together, we explore:What biblical joy is—and what it isn’t, distinguishing it from fleeting happiness or emotional highs.How joy appears before the word is even spoken, as John the Baptist leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb at the presence of the unborn Messiah.Why Mary’s joy is rooted not in circumstances but in God’s mercy, as she magnifies the Lord and rejoices in God her Savior.The meaning and message of the Magnificat, a Scripture-saturated song that celebrates God’s great reversal—lifting the lowly, filling the hungry, and humbling the proud.How Mary’s joy points beyond herself to Jesus, the promised King who fulfills God’s covenant promises and secures lasting joy through His saving work.This episode reminds us that joy is not something we manufacture—it’s something we receive, and it grows wherever Jesus is trusted. Advent teaches us that true joy is found not in having life figured out, but in the presence of Christ and the mercy He brings.If you would like to see a written version of this study, complete with footnotes and cross-references, you can find it here.

1. Christ Has Come: The Promised King & His Gift of Peace (Advent 2025) 26:00
2. Christ Has Come: The Promised King & His Gift of PEACE (Advent 2025) 22:47
3. Christ Has Come: The Promised King & His Gift of HOPE (Advent 2025) 24:58
4. Thankful: Learning to Number Our Days (Refresh & Restore) 21:21
5. "Strengthen What Remains: Jesus's Letter to the Church at Sardis" (The KING is Coming) 20:30

Greetings Sojourners!

Today’s Bible study has put me through the wringer. As I have said many times over, these Bible studies are not just for you but that they work on me first. It hit me as I type this final version that there is a great irony to how it has taken me so long to finish this Bible study. This Bible study is on what it means to be adorned with Christ in our vocations, and one of my vocations being an English teacher, one would think that the irony of me being unable to find the time to serve the Lord in writing this Bible study is because I have been working much more than usual. More than realizing the irony, though, is me sitting here and pondering whether my hard work of the last month or so has been “as for the Lord” or “for men” (Colossians 3:23).

For me, work has always been an easy idol. I like to work. I thrive when I get to multitask (with a reasonable number of tasks). I like the feeling of accomplishment I get when a task is complete, or a project goes well. Both of my vocations stem from God’s calling on my life and involve helping people in various capacities. Getting to see people receive needed help, whether it be the lightbulb clicking on when a student learns something or helping someone seek Christ, gives me an indescribable feeling. But, if I am not careful, I will take on more and more and more until I lose myself in the work.

I need accountability in this area, and I have people who are committed to helping me strike a correct balance in this area of my life so that I do not overindulge. I know I am a workaholic. I must be careful because I am a teetotaler and will add and add and add until I burn myself out. I know this because I have been there, having burned out and swapped careers just before my 30^th birthday. It is part of the reason that I believe the Lord has allowed me to slowly ease back into pastoral ministry. I had to divorce my identity from my work and let Him define me in light of who He has made, is making, and will make me to be.

So, to answer my earlier question – and unfortunately confess to y’all, dear Sojourners: I have leaned more toward working for man than God as of late. Knowing that is, as they say, half the battle. Now, is the time for repentance.

Lest you think I am exaggerating because work is a good thing invented by God, too much of it or having it out of the balance of rest that exhibits faith in Jesus’s strength over my own reveals that I am not bearing fruit accordingly, namely the self-control that comes from being in Christ (Galatians 5:22-23). Look at a few passages of Scripture that illustrate this:

• Proverb 25:16 – If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit.
• 1 Corinthians 9:25 – Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable.
• Titus 2:11-12 – For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

We will revisit these later on as we seek to apply our passage today, but it should be clear here that too much of a good thing can be bad – and yes, God invented work, so it is (or at least it was meant to be) good when done according to His Word and will.

In Genesis 2:15, we see that God put Adam into “the garden of Eden to work it and keep it”. This is not so much a mandate as it is a role or calling for Adam, and as his descendants, we have roles and callings as well. Initially, this work was easy for Adam as he was tasked with naming the animals in Eden and later his wife. God gave Adam the task of being “fruitful” and multiplying in order that the earth would be filled in Genesis 1:28, which the Bible describes as a part of God blessing them. These tasks were good and enjoyable – and probably much less of the toil we associate with work because, at the time, there was no sin in the world, no death (Genesis 1:31, Romans 5:12). Once the Fall occurred when Adam and Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 3:6), death and sin began to reign in the earth (Romans 5:17), and God cursed the ground, the very same ground that Adam had been tasked to keep and work (Genesis 3:17-19). Adam’s sin took that good and fruitful work and turned it to toil with the addition of pain and thorns and thistles and sweat and dust (Genesis 3:17-19). Work went from something that was good and revolved around the role God assigned and calling He gave as a blessing and introduced the toil and fruitless labor that we know all too well.

This is why we need Colossians 3:22-4:1. Because of the Fall, the image of God in us has been marred by sin, but God, when He saves us, begins conforming us to the image of His Son Jesus rather than the world around us (Romans 8:29, 12:1-2). We saw this earlier in Colossians 3:9-10 when Paul told the Colossian church (and us) that we are to be putting “off the old self with its practices” and putting “on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator”. We need Colossians 3:22-4:1 to see what we need to take off and what we need to put on. We need to understand that God has placed us in our vocations as His ambassadors and missionaries (2 Corinthians 5:19-20) and ask the Lord to let our work be adorned with Christ rather than conformed to this fallen world.

Bondservants, Obey in Everything Those Who are Your Earthly Masters (vv. 3:22-25)

On the surface, this passage is about slaves obeying their masters. That is what it is about.

What This Does NOT Mean

As we covered in our study of Philemon, the God of the Bible is not associated with the slavery that comes to mind from colonial America or present-day human trafficking. You can look back at the Appendices from that Bible study and see God’s stance on the treatment of slaves and on the ungodly horrors visited on people in chattel slavery and around the world today; He is against such things. When the Holy Spirit breathed this out and had Paul to write it down, He was not condoning chattel slavery or human trafficking – plain and simple (see Appendix III — Bible Passages Condemning Practices Related to Chattel Slavery and Modern-Day Slavery/Human Trafficking). So, operating under the presupposition that what Paul is talking about here is not that^[2], let’s dive in and see what He does mean here.

What Does It Mean, Then?

The word translated “bondservant” in the ESV is the Greek word doulos. It can – and probably should – be simply translated as slave, but there is a connotation^[3] in the present that is wrapped up in the sinful atrocities of chattel slavery as well as in the continued sinful treatment of African Americans in the century plus following the Civil War in the Deep South. Bondservant does not really have a connotation and allows for the denotation, or definition, of what God has for us here. That word doulos refered to a slave, “one who is in a permanent relation of servitude to another” where their will is “altogether consumed in the will of the other”, and it references one being “bound to serve”.^[4] It is closer to the modern understanding of an indentured servant than it is to modern understanding of slavery.

It would be a cop-out and over-generalization to say that this is all that there was, especially throughout the Roman empire and around the world at that time. There were wicked masters, and when they were bad, they were terrible. Some slaves were severely mistreated. But there were those who served out their debt and returned to regular life. There were even some who would seek to remain in the service of their master after their debt was paid. Roman slavery was associated with vocation. These bondservants could be teachers or builders or whatever skills they had that could generate enough revenue to pay off their debt. In some cases, it was quite like work releases for people who are incarcerated today – or even in the way trustees are given responsibility or management oversight.

The emphasis here is less about the way they were taught and more about how those who found themselves bonded to a master and have confessed Jesus as Lord will serve. The emphasis is on their service rather than the quality of their master. Their service is to be marked by obedience “in everything” (Colossians 3:22). Their service is to flow out of sincere hearts and their fear of the Lord rather than “by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers” (Colossians 3:22). Whatever was required of them was a call to “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” because they were “serving the Lord Christ” and receiving the only reward that mattered from Him (Colossians 3:23-24). Those who are saved have submitted themselves to Jesus as Lord – as kurios, the Greek word for the master of a doulos. And this is what their heavenly Lord and Master required of them – what He requires of us.

Now, did this mean that they refused to be paid or for their debt to be worked off? Absolutely not. What it meant was, if they were in Christ, the fruit borne by their lives reflected an inheritance greater than any paycheck and that their redemption by the blood of Jesus meant more than being redeemed from earthly servitude. This also does not mean that they are above punishment if they did wrong because, with God, “there is no partiality” and “the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done” (Colossians 3:25). This would also cover if an earthly master required a sinful act from their slave or bondservant. Just like we looked at in the relationships of fathers to children and husbands to wives, being in service to God above all means that we refuse to bow to the call of the world and sin even and especially if it means punishment or persecution (1 Peter 2:20-23). To clarify, this would not include the way a wicked master would punish but is meant to help us understand that, even for saved people, there are consequences for sin.

To be adorned in Christ as one works and serves means that they are serving the Lord above all, no matter their vocation. It means that Jesus has a plan for your vocation that goes beyond what you can see (Ephesians 2:10)! It means your quality of work matters, not because of your earthly masters or bosses but because you belong to Jesus and He has set you apart to shine His “marvelous light” in your workplace and find opportunity to “proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness” (1 Peter 2:9).

Masters, Treat Your Bondservants Justly and Fairly (v. 4:1)

Since slavery was an integrated part of the Roman Empire and the Colossian church clearly had masters in her members, like Philemon, it is important for God to set a standard for how those masters would operate. This extends to those in both vocational authority and other areas of oversight or administration.

What This Does NOT Mean

Again, this does not condone the owning of human beings. This does not condone any authority that does not fit with the Word of God. Throughout the Law in the OT, there are multiple commands on how masters belonging to the Lord need to carry themselves and treat their slaves and servants (Exodus 21:2-11, 20-21; Leviticus 25:39-46; Deuteronomy 15:12-18, 23:15-16, 24:14-15 — see also Appendix I — Bible Passages Discussing the Treatment of Slaves or Servants). And, as we saw in Paul’s letter to Philemon, God – as Lord and Master – has the authority to call earthly masters to release their servants. Earthly mastery has limits. Jesus’s authority has none.

What Does It Mean, Then, to Be a Master Who is Just and Fair?

The way that Paul wrote it here is pretty clear who is in charge: “knowing you also have a Master in heaven” (Colossians 4:1). Earthly masters who are saved imitate their heavenly Master, their Lord Jesus Christ. I do not want to oversimplify this, but it means you are going to be different than most masters, the vast majority of bosses.

In the case of Roman slavery, it could have been a call for them to lose revenue by not having debts paid back because their Lord was calling them to free slaves – completely contrary to the culture around them (see Appendix II — Bible Passages Discussing the Release of Slaves). In the case of vocational authority today – being a boss or having oversight/authority over people, it means that you are called to bear fruit of God’s Spirit being in you. Earthly leaders and bosses like to lead with intimidation, but Jesus was a servant leader. He did not hesitate to humble Himself and wash His disciples feet. Saved bosses can lead by serving and humility as well. Earthly bosses can threaten and demoralize, but Jesus lifts up the lowly. Saved bosses can do the same.

Now, does this mean that a boss or leader who is saved is a pushover and allows their employees to run rough-shod over them? Absolutely not! Jesus holds people accountable for their actions. Jesus is a Master who has expectations for His people, but Jesus is consistent with who He is as He disciplines and corrects. So, if you are an earthly boss and Jesus is Lord, you do not conform to the ways of this world for material or vocational gain; no, you allow who His Spirit has transformed and is transforming you into – how He is conforming you back to the image of God in Christ – set the course for how you deal with people.

In a sense, those bosses who are saved and adorned in Christ function in regard to Christ as Paul describes a bondservant to serve. Saved bosses have a “sincerity of heart” stemming from their fear of the Lord (Colossians 3:22). They “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord [they] will receive the inheritance as [their] reward (Colossians 3:23). They serve the “Lord Christ” (Colossians 3:24).

The remainder of Colossians 4:1 highlights what that looks like as Paul tells the masters that they should treat their bondservants “justly and fairly”. This is where the tough part of leadership comes in. If an employee has committed some sort of infraction that necessitates firing them, a godly master fires them. If there is a process that is to be followed to do so, the process is followed. This would prohibit office politics and replace it with a yearning to be just and fair as Jesus has been just and fair with them. In some cases, where grace and mercy can be shown, this calls for that, too – all in balance with how the Word teaches us and the Spirit of God leads, and all contrary to the way that this fallen world operates.

Wrapping Up

So, what does that look like? If you are like me, you look at some of this and it seems like this is a good way to get taken advantage of or to sign up to get a lot of extra junk to put up with at work. It is important to remember that our work is not our identity. Jesus gives us an identity in Him by redeeming us from the power of sin and death, rescuing us from the wrath of God, and eternally adopting us into His family. And we get to be adorned with Him and bear His family name into whatever vocation He has for us.

Here are some principles to consider:

• Do everything for the Lord (v. 3:17). Whatever your job and whatever your task, work as if Jesus Himself had tasked you with it. This gives work meaning and views it in light of the Kingdom of God and not in whatever earthly kingdom you are employed at.
• Work with sincerity and integrity (v. 3:22). Employees should not work merely for status and approval but should consistently act with the understanding that their ultimate accountability is to God.
• Work heartily and diligently (v. 3:23). Workers should put their best effort into their work, recognizing that this is part of the calling of their Lord Jesus Christ. This calls for a strong work ethic – not a calling for workaholism – because the work is as to the Lord not men.
• Focus on eternal rewards rather than temporal ones (v. 3:24). Earthly compensation matters. It does. It is a big reason why we have and need jobs. The Bible is not against us earning wages and even says if you do not work, you do not eat. But there is more to working than a paycheck. There is an inheritance from the Father for those who serve Him. This mindset helps maintain perspective, especially if your work environment is challenging or worse. If you work for a paycheck or merely for retirement, there are limits to your service. If you work for the One who has made a place for you in heaven (and based on His merit, not yours), your perspective changes.
• Be accountable for what you do wrong (v. 3:25). Remember, God is a just God and is pro-discipline. An earmark of being in Christ is repentance. One of the best ways you can exhibit what Jesus has done in you through His salvation is by repenting when you have messed up. This is not a popular viewpoint, but even if your wrongdoing costs you your job, your standing with Jesus is based on His righteousness not your own — which is good news: God is pro-grace!
• If you have authority over employees, treat them justly and fairly (v. 4:1). Treat employees as Jesus treats you. It really is that simple. No amount of earthly success or status is worth conforming to the world when Jesus has transformed you into something better.
• Realize you are accountable to God (v. 4:1). This is true for believers whether you are a boss or an employee. If you have confessed Jesus as Lord, He is your master. He calls the shots. What He says goes. And serving Him even at the expense of losing a job is worth it. He will still be here when all of this passes away.
• Do not let work become an idol (Proverb 25:16, 1 Corinthians 9:25, Titus 2:11-12). It is easy to get into the mindset that because you work as unto the Lord that you cannot quit or stop. The God who ordained work also ordained rest. He did not bring us from death to life in Him for our lives to be wrapped up in our vocations. Jesus gives us wisdom and self-control. While He may call some people to a single vocation and calling for their whole lives, He does not do that with everyone. Follow Him and be willing to change or quit if that is what He has for you. At the same token, be willing to dig in where you are if that is what He has for you.

This has not been my favorite Bible study. I have had to take a step back and realize that I am susceptible to getting my work life out of whack, even when I thought I had it all worked out. The good news is Jesus is the God who saves and a Lord who is active in the lives of His servants. No matter how many times I mess up, I can approach His throne and receive grace and mercy, which He has in an inexhaustible supply.

What about you? I do not mean to meddle, but I exhort you, dear Sojourner, to look at your life and your work and test it according to the Word of God. How can you apply this and shine more brightly His marvelous light rather than working in such a way that you hide the light of Christ.

Know this: I am praying for you and asking God to work in and through your work.

Hallelujah, and amen!

^[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Col 3:22–4:1.

^[2] Look back at the Jesus Over Us Bible study of Paul’s letter to Philemon for more info on this subject.

^[3] Connotation is the thoughts and emotions associated with a word; whereas denotation is the definition of the word.

^[4] Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000).