Something else we see in the Scriptures here is an example of the distinction between God’s work and our work, our work within God’s work.

We see all of God’s work displayed, and yet we find here in Genesis 2 God showing the clear place He’s given to mankind for their work within His work. This system God has designed is rooted within all the laws of our existence, physical as well as spiritual.

It also important to understand this in order to understand faith and obedience rightly, because we can fall into two extremes: in one we do not believe God’s sovereignty at all and believe that all things in life consists from human choices and chance; in the other, we believe everything is rooted in God’s sovereignty and do not believe human choices matter. In the church today, the latter is the one many fall into in the name of faith. We do not see how essential our own choices and work are to our spiritual and physical lives.

God’s system is our work within His work. He gives a very important place to our work, and God does not violate this. God has assigned to each human being in this world their personal responsibility, and the great misery we too often see is how people do not do the work that is needed in order to work true goodness and life in the world around them.

Our spiritual lives are just like the gardener’s work. If we do not plant and water, do not fertilize, weed, support, and prune, then we will not have a good outcome.

Sadly, mankind generally does not see how important its own personal responsibility and work is, nor just how harmful their neglect of their work, or the working of sinful things is upon the world around them and the world within them. God gave us a very important and powerful place in this world — our own personal responsibility and work. And by this we either starve and poison the world or we cultivate it and do good in it like our Creator.

Idleness is something we can fall into in a wrong understanding of faith. Where we think God’s sovereignty bypasses our own place that He has given us to choose and work all that we do in life. But our work is the entire direction and outcome of our own lives. What we choose is who we will be. Just as God’s work speaks of who He is, so our work will declare who we are. That is why the Bible speaks of our works.

We can misunderstand works to be vain things, and fall into meaningless work—we can see the world is often very busy with work, but its fruit has no real life or goodness in it. So we can do the same, even within our religion. Yet God’s aim for us is to learn what true works are, and to walk in them: “who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.” (Tit 2:14).

Work is not necessarily what we often take it to mean, the doing of something. Many fall into activity and believe this is the will of God. Rather, it is the doing, living, and believing all that is truly of life and godliness.

One of the greatest challenges we have as Christians is to understand what the true nature of good works is. We can be so busy running around in whatever good works seem right in our own eyes, and fail to do the true work to learn the true Spirit of what is actually good and wise.

The duality in life is that of God’s working and that of our own work. This is the utter dignity and purpose that God has given each person in this world. That all of us get to choose how we will live our lives, all of us do a “work” in this world, for better or worse. And God allows all of us to choose what we will. Our choosing never goes beyond God’s power and sovereignty, it is not a power over God, but it is the full power of our own lives.

God is manifesting every person in this world, whether as good, wise, and godly, or sinful and corrupt. We are continually revealing all that is in us by what we choose, live after, and do.

The call of God to all of us is to come within His wisdom in order to truly learn how to live, how to do work that truly is full of life, how to choose what is truly good and wise, and to be saved from the worthlessness in the world.

The Christian needs to learn that our lives as believers are not automatic. Just because God is sovereign does not mean we are on some automatic track to holiness and heaven. This is taught very often in our churches, but each of us must see that it is we ourselves who are choosing to believe this or not. Because of this twisted view of God’s sovereignty, many Christians are idle and/or wasting their lives in a business in God’s name that isn’t truly good and of His Spirit. All of us have a very great work to do in laboring to understand the will of God, and what is truly of Him. And many Christians need to see and understand that they are daily choosing many many things in life.

This personal responsibility does not go away when we become Christians. The promise of Christ is that of a pathway to true living, to knowing how to live a meaningful life. But if we try to cut corners on this, or we don’t labor after this true inner work at all, having our minds, values, spirits, and plans in life renewed, then we fall short of God’s purpose in His grace.

The great deception in the church today is many people blessing themselves as being in the will of God, as being on the right path with God, and being heaven-bound, who are not doing the work that ensures this, that is the substance of this. They bless themselves as being in God’s will when they fail to understand that the work to be done is to know what is truly God’s will and to walk in it—only then can they relish the peace of God for their conscience. They bless themselves as being on the path and as if holiness is somehow theirs when they do not do the work for it; they do not truly labor to obey God at the full depth of His will. And they bless themselves as having all the promises of God, when God’s promises are for those who fear and obey Him.

They have taken Christ to be some banner of favoritism with God, as if God’s grace removed their personal responsibility and work, when God’s grace is the very opposite, helping them to find the true power in their lives by finding the true path of personal responsibility and work in the life of Christ. Far from removing the work, God instead is giving us the means to fulfill it, and this being His grace to us. Whereas in the world, people have no idea how to live this out, how to own their personal responsibility, how to walk in true wisdom, righteousness, and goodness; whereas in Christ, God gives us the true means for all of these.

Rather, it is learning the place of God’s sovereignty as well as our own personal work, and rightly holding these is the power of life and hope to us.

God wants us to see the great meaningfulness and importance of personal responsibility in all that we choose and do. In all that we choose to believe, choose to value, choose to live after, and choose to obey. God is laboring to save us from the corrupted ways that come into these places within us, but He is not seeking to remove the function altogether, as if He is rescuing us from this, rather than from sin corrupting these. Instead, He is laboring to show us the great importance of these and to redeem us in them, so that we, like Him, do true good in this world.