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Prov. 10:4, “He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.”
Slackness is not a virtue but a vice that produces devastating and often irreversible repercussions on our lives, whereas diligence, by the grace of God, nourishes its man. For he who has a slack hand acts treacherously or deceitfully, he shirks his duty, i.e. he does his work negligently, he avoids carrying out his duty or responsibility, he acts foolishly and consequently brings upon himself poverty and shame. By contrast, the person who is diligent carefully considers his actions, he works heartily, he is honest, industrious and mindful of his responsibilities; his diligence, by the grace of God, yields a bountiful harvest. This is true both in physical matters and in spiritual realm. Although the context of this verse in Scripture points us to physical matters, I am going to focus on its spiritual application, its implications in our life in relationship to Christ our Lord and Saviour.
Our life in union with our Lord requires that we take up our own cross daily and follow Him (cf. Luke 9:23). Bearing one’s cross presupposes the willingness to suffer rejection, affliction, persecution, hatred from the world, and even martyrdom, because of the name that is associated with the cross, i.e. the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Yet our Lord commands us, his disciples, to carry our cross daily and to follow Him wherever He goes. This shift in our lives, which demands that we deny ourselves, also comes with new responsibilities for us. As followers of Christ, we are to live for Christ; we are no longer our own master, but Christ’s slaves – a slave honours his master, a slave serves and obeys his master. As Christ’s slaves, we must be obedient to Him, as we seek to be conformed to his image, and we are to serve and honour Him as well.
Submission to the Lord requires diligence and starts with a frequent devotion to the reading of Holy Scripture, a constant renewing of the mind, so as to discern the will of God and to know who He Himself says He is, and thus be able to obey and revere Him as God and to serve Him with fear and trembling. For He has given us a special and perfect revelation of who He is in his own spoken Word, i.e. the Bible; and we cannot obey or serve Him if we do not search the pages of Scripture to see his revealed glory. In other words, it is only through the diligent reading of Sacred Scripture, the feeding of oneself on the Word of God, that one can know the attributes of God, that one can contemplate his Holiness; it is by reading and pondering on the Word of God that we can have a proper view of God, a sufficient knowledge of the godliness of God, a thorough understanding of our moral corruption and of the sinfulness of sin. This knowledge is what produces in us the fear of God (i.e. reverence): when we contemplate, when we gaze upon the holiness of God, when we catch a glance of his glory, it shatters our pride by projecting back to us, like a mirror, the vileness and impureness of our own hearts.
The knowledge of God is critical to Christian living, for it infuses our hearts with the fear of the Lord and directs us to obedience; it shatters our self-righteousness and frees us from worry. But only those who seek the Lord, as one searches for a hidden treasure, can know who He says He is. That is to say, to know God, one must seek Him, one must spend time in his Word; and those who find Him are recompensed. Prov. 2:1-5 read, “My son, if you receive my words, and treasure my commands within you, so that you incline your ear to wisdom, and apply your heart to understanding; yes, if you cry out for discernment, and lift up your voice for understanding, if you seek her as silver, and search for her as for hidden treasures; then you will understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”
The knowledge of God is a great treasure to every soul. Every man who does not search the Scripture, the idler, he who neglects the Word of God, deprives his soul of the spiritual treasures revealed to us in the pages of Scripture. But he who earnestly and constantly searches for the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and power revealed to us in Scripture understands the fear of the Lord and finds the knowledge of God. What a blessed treasure this is for his soul! For “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight” (Prov. 9:10). And as James 3:17 says, “the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.”
The wisdom that comes from God garnishes our heads with a garland of grace and crowns us with glory; it leads us on the path of righteousness. Wisdom guides our steps, it keeps us from stumbling and frees us from all hindrances. Wisdom is life to the souls who find her. Prov. 3:13-18 tells us, “Happy is the man who finds wisdom, and the man who gains understanding; for her proceeds are better than the profits of silver, and her gain than fine gold. She is more precious than rubies, and all the things you may desire cannot compare with her. Length of days is in her right hand, in her left hand riches and honor. Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who take hold of her, and happy are all who retain her.”
Before our birth in Christ, we used to live and walk as it pleased us, outside the perfect will and the revealed truth of God, groping about in the darkness, without hope nor life. For we did not nor could we accept or understand the things of the Spirit. But the grace of God has been revealed to us in Christ Jesus our Lord and Saviour. In Him we are born of the Spirit, and the Spirit has enabled us to accept and to understand to things of the Spirit. Besides these blessed gifts, our Lord has provided us with means of grace, i.e. his Word, the sacraments, and prayer. These means of grace are meant to strengthen our faith in Christ and our wills to flee from sin, they help us to rest exclusively in our Saviour, and enable us to grow in grace. The first-century saints understood the indispensability of these means and devoted themselves diligently to them. Acts 2:42 tells us they “devoted themselves to the Apostles' teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
I believe there are a number of questions we need to ask ourselves today: Do we, as the early Christians, devote ourselves to the means of grace granted to us by the Spirit of grace? How often do we search and meditate on the Word of God, that we may know Him more? Do we faithfully and regularly study Holy Scripture? In what manner do we treat fellowship and the breaking of bread? What does our prayer life look like? How devoted are we to prayer? The Lord declares in Jer. 33:3, “Call to Me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known.” But how often do we call upon the Lord to tell us those great and hidden things He has promised to reveal to us?
Is it our habit to renew our minds on God’s Word, so that we may know Him more, discern his will for us and glorify Him for who He is? How often do we wrestle with the Lord on our knees? How often do we make supplication for all the saints? How often do we repent of our sins and seek the Lord’s help to overcome the flesh? Is it our habit to minister to ourselves, to commune daily with our heavenly Father through prayer, exalting his holy name and giving Him thanks? Do we enjoy being alone with our Lord? Or are we rather lazy when it comes to reading God's Word and spending time in prayer? Without a doubt I can affirm that a vast number of Christians today do not have that devotion commanded of every disciple of Christ and which was a defining characteristic of the first-century saints.
Ps. 145:18 says, “The Lord is near to all who call on Him, to all who call on Him in truth.” To grow in sanctification, we must consider the means of grace we have been gifted with. To be able to grow from one level of holiness to the next, we must constantly keep our gaze upon the glory of our God. The searching of Scripture, of the hidden treasures of God’s wisdom and power, which have been revealed to us in our Lord Jesus Christ, yields tremendous riches to the soul. He who does not devote his time to the reading of God’s Word deprives his own soul of the only true wisdom, of the truth that is able to save him, and he falls prey to the foolishness of this world; he is swept away by the doctrines of demons and seduced by the tricks of Satan. But he who constantly renews his mind in the Scripture cannot stumble; the Word of God is the Light to his soul. His heart and mind are fed daily by the truth of life, which enables him to grow in grace and frees him from the bondage of the evil passions and lust of the flesh. The psalmist understands this, hence he praises the Lord in Ps. 119:165, saying, “Great peace have those who love your law, and nothing causes them to stumble.”
Those who heedfully and constantly search the Scripture, who regularly partake of the Lord’s Supper and spend time in prayer, that they may pursue and live a life that is holy and acceptable to God, are most likely to grow in faith and love and to become rich in good works. For the person who diligently searches the Scripture increases in wisdom and knowledge, knowledge of God and his attributes; he also gains discernment. By contrast, the person who fails to toil for wisdom deprives himself of sound doctrine; he lacks discernment. Also, the person who spends time in prayer benefits from a rich communion with God, through which his belief is strengthened, and he is empowered to faithfully serve the Lord.
A lot of Christians today have abandoned the means of grace in the dark corner of their closet, and they seek them out only occasionally or when trouble hits home. But how can we get closer to our God if we rarely go to Him in prayer? How can we honour and serve Him if we know little about Him, because we scarcely spend time in his Word? How can we identify with our Lord when, out of disobedience, we refrain from water baptism? Through baptism we identify with our Lord Jesus Christ in his death, burial and resurrection. It is a public affirmation of our faith in our Saviour, a testimony of our union to Him. Water baptism symbolizes the death of the old self and the new life that we live in and for Christ. It is a process through which we declare that we have turned away from our sins and affirm our desire to follow our Lord Jesus Christ. It is a testimony to the internal work of regeneration initially accomplished by the Holy Spirit through the instrumentality of God’s word.
The Lord commands us to pray to Him without ceasing, giving Him thanks in all circumstances (cf. 1 Thess. 5:17-18); the Lord commands us to live “by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Mat. 4:4) and “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Rom. 12:2); the Lord commands us to receive water baptism (Mat. 28:19) and to partake of the Lord’s Supper regularly (Luke 22:19), and He endows us with blessings when we receive these ordinances in faith.
A man who scarcely gathers with other believers, who rarely comes to the Table for the breaking of bread and fellowship with the body of Christ impedes his growth in grace. The Apostle Paul, in order to point out the importance of the Lord’s Supper to the Corinthian church, and by extension to all believers, asked them in 1 Cor. 10:16, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” This reminds us that the ordinances our Lord has commanded us to observe are not mere memorials, for if we neglect them, we will mostly likely fail to trust the Lord’s work in our lives.
When we come to the Lord’s Table, the reality of the cross, the meaning and purpose of our Lord’s suffering and death is captured by our minds as we partake of the bread (which symbolises the body of our Lord which He laid down for his sheep) and the cup (a symbol of our Lord’s precious blood which was shed to cleanse us of all our sins). The gathering at the Lord’s Table is the moment when Christ is alive, when all his work on our behalf is actualized, when his magnificent glory, his tender mercies are manifest to us, and our minds become sensitized to the reality of the perfect life that Christ lived for us and of the benefits of his death for us. The Lord’s Supper is a time of communion, of fellowship with our Lord and with one another, where we, as believers, members of the body of Christ, all share in all that Christ is and in all that He has done.
The indispensability of the means of grace toward our growth in grace is unequivocal. We are saved and sanctified by the Word of God. Every believer, in whom the Word of God abides, regularly partakes of the Lord’s Supper with reverence and he prays regularly in the Spirit, according to the will of God; he prays without ceasing, in order that the eyes of his heart may be enlightened; he always takes refuge at the foot of the cross, he leans on the Throne of grace and earnestly affirms his dependency on his Saviour, who alone is able to sustain, preserve and sanctify him, who alone can grant him victory over sin and the flesh. Every believer who is shaped by God’s Word is constant in prayer, this in order to stand the test in the face of trials and persecution. In other words, he continually seeks the Lord and his strength, he seeks his presence; he draws near the Throne of grace with confidence, so as to receive mercy from the Lord and find grace in time of need; he seeks the Lord, in order that he “may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to Him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Col. 1:9-10).
The means of grace are important sources of spiritual nourishment essential for growth in sanctification. They are provided to us by the Lord in order to strengthen our belief. But to benefit from the treasures they bring to the soul, one must constantly devote himself to them.
Apart from the necessity to diligently devote ourselves to the means of grace, in order to strengthen our belief and further our growth in grace, we are also called, as Christ’s slaves, to serve Him, to bear witness to his supreme greatness and glorious majesty to the world; we are commanded by the Lord to take the Gospel to the ends of the earth. That does not mean we should all get into the pulpit, but rather whatever our calling, wherever the Lord places us, we are to bear witness to Him to the world by the way we conduct ourselves, by our actions and distinctiveness from the world. And whatever gifts the Lord has bestowed upon us, we are to use them to serve Him, to bring glory to his holy name. We must also ‘bear the reproach He endured’ and do all things as for our Lord, in order that his name may be glorified by our bearing of much fruit. As Paul says in Colossians 3:23, “Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men.” For our reward in heaven, our share of glory is conditioned by the measure of our sufferings and of our faithful and effective works in the service of our Lord here on earth. To borrow the words of the Apostle Paul, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.” (Romans 12:11).
Just a footnote here, I am not claiming that we are saved by our works, for salvation is by God’s grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone; nor am I suggesting that, as Christians we are to continue in the flesh that which we began in the Spirit, for “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). In other words, it is the Spirit who regenerates us, it is the Spirit who sanctifies us, and He is going to glorify us; the flesh is of no use at all. Our good works are a testimony of our salvation, of our faith in Christ, which are only the result of the sovereign grace that our God has bestowed upon us through the redemptive work accomplished by his Son for us sinners. But nevertheless, it is on the basis of these works that our Father will reward us once we get to heaven.
We were created to work for God’s glory. “For we are his workmanship (as Paul writes), created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). The Lord has called us and prepared us for good works, He has entrusted to us varied gifts, and we are to be good stewards of those gifts; we must use them conscientiously, so as to glorify the Lord; we must be useful, not useless servants. 1 Pet. 4:10-11 says, “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. If anyone speaks, let him speak as the oracles of God. If anyone ministers, let him do it as with the ability which God supplies, that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom belong the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen.”
If we have a slack hand in managing our gifts, this will result in the loss of our heavenly rewards. But our diligence will contribute, by the grace of God, to the laying up of treasures for ourselves in heaven. Those who fail to be good stewards of their gifts, to diligently manage what they have been charged with, become unprofitable and bear the consequences of their slackness, as we learn from the Parable of the Talents in Mat. 25. In this parable, the servant who received one talent from the master, unlike his two companions who received five and two talents respectively, had a slack hand and failed to fructify his talent. As a result of his slothfulness, even the one talent the master gave him before traveling to a far country was taken away from him and given to his fellow servant who gained five more talents besides the five the master delivered to him before his trip. And because he was unprofitable, the slothful servant was cast into the outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
By contrast, his two companions who diligently managed their talents and fructified them were complimented by their master. Because they were faithful and their service to the master effective, he also promoted them and placed them over many things, when they came to him to give account of their stewardship; he said to them one after the other, “Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord” (Mat. 25:21&23).
The Lord our God has endowed each one of us with ‘talents’, according to our ability to manage, and our responsibility is to use them for the furtherance of his Kingdom. While waiting for his return, we must not dig the ground to hide our ‘talents’, like the slothful servant in the Parable of the Talents did. It is written, “The earth which drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected and near to being cursed, whose end is to be burned” (Heb. 6:7-8). We are a field, cultivated by the Lord our God, upon whom He constantly pours out heavenly blessings, expecting a bountiful harvest. As God’s workmanship, we must be fruitful, we are to use our gifts to advance his Kingdom. Lest the Lord say to us when He returns in his glory, ‘You wicked and slothful servant[s]!’ For when our Lord returns, we will give Him account of the way we have managed the resources He has entrusted to us; we are going to answer Him of the way we have responded to our calling.
We are to serve our Lord in a manner that is worthy of Him, we are to labour for his sake with diligence, without regarding our own life, without seeking our own glory, but the glory of our God. For it is written, “Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord deceitfully” (Jer. 48:10). Whoever neglects his calling, whoever makes himself useless or works deceitfully, forfeits his reward in heaven. We must toil and labour diligently, so as to glorify our God; and we will glory in Him when He returns and says to us, “Well done, good and faithful servant[s]. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.”
We are not saved by works, but our toil for Christ’s glory determines our reward in heaven; we are rewarded for our good works. The Lord warns us against slackness in Mat. 25:29, “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away”, declares the Lord. Therefore, we are to be good stewards of the gifts the Lord has entrusted to us, we must respond to our calling and follow the Lord wherever He takes us. In obedience, we are to submit to our King reverently and serve Him faithfully, in order to further his Kingdom. To the praise of the glory of our Heavenly Father and of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Spirit of grace who empowers us for good works, we must not have a slack hand, but be diligent and fruitful in everything we do. For “by this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples”, declares our Lord in John 15:8; and our reward in heaven is going to be measured according to our labour and the fruit we yield for Christ’s glory here on earth.
Therefore, I urge you, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, to devote yourselves thoroughly to the means of grace given to us by our Lord, in order that you may grow in grace and become rich in good works. Be good stewards of the gifts the Lord has entrusted to you, follow Him wherever He takes you, and serve Him with diligence whatever your vocation. For the Lord rewards our work and labour of love we show toward his name (cf. Heb. 6:10 & Mat. 25:34-40). The Apostle Paul had this promise of our Lord in mind, he understood that our labour for the Lord’s sake will be rewarded in due time. Hence, in 1 Cor. 15:58 he exhorts the Corinthian church, and by extension all believers, to devote themselves to the service of the Lord, saying, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”