Work is a blessing, not a curse.Thank God it’s Monday! Bridge the Sunday gap to Monday.Bridge the Sacred and Secular divide.Work is a ministry, not just a job.Work as Worship – work is more than a paycheck.Receive blessings from God and be a blessing at work.Keep an empty seat for Jesus at work – a reminder to invite Jesus to intervene, integrate our faith at work.Take Jesus to work – don’t leave Jesus at home. Don’t lock Jesus outside of your office.Embrace and enjoy our work with God’s 5P blessings – His Presence, Power, Promises, Provisions, Pleasant surprises.
SUBSCRIBE

65: Showing mercy (Jude 1:22-23)

Scripture ReadingJude 1:22-23

The brief letter of Jude paints a startling picture of one very dysfunctional workplace—a church blighted by ungodly leaders. Some of the problems are unique to churches, such as heresy. Others could occur in a secular workplace: rejection of authority, slander, violence, and greed. The worst abuses are perpetrated by leaders who gorge themselves at the expense of their flocks. Jude’s words apply equally to church leaders misappropriating church funds for their own pleasures, executives plundering a corporate pension fund to prop up reported profits (and thus their bonuses), or employees surfing the web on company time.

In the face of this malfeasance, Jude gives a command as surprising in the workplace as in the church: Have mercy. Jude is not afraid to take strong action against evil. His mercy is not soft or weak, as his images of fire, fear, and defiled bodies indicate. Jude’s mercy is severe. But it is mercy nonetheless, for its hope is not merely to punish the offenders but to save them.

This severe mercy may be what some workplace situations require. Someone who commits fraud, harasses other workers, or lies to customers cannot be let off lightly. That leads only to greater evil. But discipline cannot turn into mere revenge. In Christ’s eyes, no person is beyond hope. The godly leader treats each person with respect and tries to discern what kind of discipline might lead them back into the fold.

Prayer: Lord, thank you for your great mercy. Help me show mercy to others, even while holding them accountable. Amen.

For Further Exploration: Read Jude from the Theology of Work Bible Commentary.


Author: Theology of Work Project

Theology of Work Project Online Materials by Theology of Work Project, Inc. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.theologyofwork.org

You are free to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), and remix (to adapt the work) for non-commercial use only, under the condition that you must attribute the work to the Theology of Work Project, Inc., but not in any way that suggests that it endorses you or your use of the work.

© 2014 by the Theology of Work Project, Inc.

Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.