"Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ."
— Colossians 3:23-24 (ESV)
Paul writes these words to slaves. Not to executives, not to artists with meaningful vocations, not to people whose work feels significant. He writes them to those at the bottom of the social order, doing work they did not choose for people who did not see them. If the instruction to "work heartily" has any ground to stand on, it has to hold there — in conditions where no human recognition is forthcoming and no dignity is being conferred. The fact that it does is what makes the verse worth examining carefully.
The word translated "heartily" is ek psyches — literally, "from the soul." Paul is not urging greater efficiency or visible productivity. He is describing an orientation of the whole inner person toward the task at hand. The opposite of ek psyches is not laziness; it is the hollow compliance of someone going through motions for an audience that no longer compels them. Paul is asking for something more fundamental than output: he is asking for presence, for full engagement, for the kind of work that comes from a person rather than from a function.
The pivot that makes this possible is the phrase "as for the Lord and not for men." The grammar here is comparative, not additive. Paul does not say "work for the Lord in addition to working for men." He reframes the entire transaction. Whatever the external structure of your work — whoever signs the timesheet, whoever benefits, whoever evaluates your performance — the actual audience is different. The Lord Christ is watching. Not as an inspector, but as the one you are ultimately serving. The meaning of daily work is not assigned by the significance of the task or the response of those around you. It is assigned by the one receiving it.
This is what transforms rather than simply motivates. Motivation from external recognition is real but fragile — it rises and falls with the visibility of what you do and the gratitude of those around you. When you write code that no one reads, clean a room that will be dirty again tomorrow, build something in obscurity with no guarantee of return — the motivation that draws on human approval will dry up. But work offered to the Lord does not depend on that circuit. It draws from something that does not fluctuate with circumstances.
Verse 24 grounds the command in a promise: "from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward." The inheritance here is not a productivity bonus. In the context of Colossians, it refers to the full participation in God's new creation — the final settlement of everything begun in Christ. Paul is pointing the workers' eyes beyond the present transaction entirely. What you do today is not evaluated only by what it produces today. There is a ledger that runs longer than any earthly employment arrangement, and the one keeping it is both just and generous.
The last clause is the simplest and perhaps the most clarifying: "You are serving the Lord Christ." Not "you should think of it as serving." Not "it can feel like serving." Present tense, indicative mood. You are serving him — right now, in whatever work this verse encounters you in. The mundane task before you is, in fact, already an act of service to the one who holds all things. That is not a nice framework to impose on reality. According to Paul, it is the reality.
// Application
- Identify the specific work before you this week that feels lowest in meaning — the task that earns no recognition, the effort that seems to produce nothing visible. Bring Colossians 3:23 directly into contact with it. The verse is most needed where meaning feels thinnest.
- Notice when your engagement with work is calibrated to your audience. When no one is watching, when the feedback has dried up, when the work feels invisible — does your effort change? Ek psyches is not dependent on observers. Examine what you are actually working for.
- Let the reframing be concrete, not abstract. Before a task, practice a brief, explicit acknowledgment: this is being offered to the Lord. Not as a ritual, but as a reorientation of who you are working for in that moment.
- Resist the split between "sacred" and "secular" work. Paul addresses slaves doing ordinary household labor. The category of work that qualifies for ek psyches is "whatever you do." Code, cleaning, correspondence, caregiving — none of it is outside the scope of the instruction.
Prayer: Lord, I confess that my engagement with work runs on human approval more than I want to admit. When recognition is absent, I slow down. When the task feels invisible, I bring less of myself to it. Forgive me for the hollowness. Teach me what it means to work ek psyches — from the soul — because the one I am serving is you. Let me bring full presence to the ordinary things before me today, knowing you receive them. And let the inheritance you promise be more real to me than the evaluations of those around me. Amen.
← Back to Journal