A STRIKING PASSAGE: “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is living in idleness and not according to the tradition that you received from us. . . . we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat” (2 Thess. 3:6, 10). When Paul wrote that last sentence, little did he dream that it would find its way into the Soviet constitution. I think the Soviets think it came from Lenin!
This sentence is finding its way not merely into the Soviet constitution, but we are discovering that it is written into the constitutions of our beings and into the constitution of society. It is written into the nature of God: “My Father is working still, and I am working” (John 5:17). It is written everywhere. The creative urge is written into creation. If we violate it we get hurt. We have made the goal of life to get to the place where we don’t have to work. The result? People get so jumpy and jittery and frustrated they are sent to a sanitarium where they are put to work at occupational therapy to regain their shattered health. A divine joke! If people do not work they get stiff and old and die, and then they can’t eat. Or if they linger on they are on diets—then they can’t eat.
Two things regarding economic matters emerged out of the New Testament, and they live on with greater and greater power: (1) distribution according to need—“distribution was made to each as any had need” (Acts 4:35). (2) Contribution according to ability—“If any one will not work, let him not eat.” These two principles—distribution according to need and contribution according to ability—are being more and more adopted throughout the world. They are ruling the development. Communism as the method of realizing these goals failed in the Acts, and it is failing in society now wherever tried, but these two principles live on. They are in the Lord, hence permanent.
O Son of God, Thy wisdom is written in the Word and in us. Thy laws are the laws of our being, hence inescapable. Thou art pressing us to just distribution and to just contribution. Thy will is our freedom. Help us to follow. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: Wesley’s motto is mine: “Never unemployed, and never triflingly employed.”
