A late middle-aged father is standing next to his boat and a pile of partly mended fishing nets, watching his two sons. He has always assumed that his sons would someday take over his fishing business and help provide for him and his wife when they grew too old to work. But now he watches them do something he never expected: they walk down the shoreline with a young rabbi who has called them to leave their fishing vocation — and their father — in order to follow him.

Suddenly, his envisioned future for him and his sons has become a swirl of uncertainty. What is he feeling? What are his sons feeling?

You may recognize this scene. It comes from Matthew 4:21–22:

Going on from there [Jesus] saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.

When I read this story as a younger man, I didn’t give much thought to Zebedee. I tended to put myself in the place of James and John, following Jesus into a future of fishing for men. The uncertainty of it all felt adventurous and exciting. But now, as a late middle-aged father of adult children, I can’t help but put myself in Zebedee’s place.

Recently, I was discussing with my twentysomething son and daughter-in-law the possible call they’re discerning to follow Jesus to another country for the sake of the gospel. I do feel excited for them, but it’s significantly different when the cost is not leaving to follow Jesus, but being left as my son follows Jesus. I find myself wanting to talk to Zebedee about his experience and get his counsel.

Unless You Hate Your Father

Zebedee’s experience casts these words of Jesus in a whole different light:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

As a younger man, I mainly heard these words pertaining to my father and mother and siblings and friends. Now, I hear them significantly pertaining to me as a father. In order to follow Jesus faithfully, my children must “hate” me for his sake.

Of course, when Jesus says “hate” here, he’s not talking about the kind of affectional hatred we usually mean when we use that word. He’s talking about treasuring, as he does in this text:

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. (Matthew 6:24)

Jesus doesn’t mean here that we should feel revulsive animosity toward money. He’s saying we can’t treasure God and treasure money, because “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). The hatred Jesus is talking about looks like this:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. (Matthew 13:44)

The man in this parable doesn’t feel revulsive animosity toward “all that he has.” He just values the treasure he’s found more than all that he has. So, he “hates” his former possessions by selling them. He knows what’s most valuable and important.

To be a Christian father or mother means not only that we must treasure Jesus more than we treasure our earthly loved ones; it means we must joyfully accept being the object of our Christian child’s “hatred” in this sense. We are part of the “all” that our child is willing to “sell” for the joy of discovering the treasure that is Jesus.

Willing to Be ‘Hated’

As you probably know, we at Desiring God want you (and everyone) to be a Christian Hedonist. We believe the Bible clearly teaches that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. But there’s another side to Christian Hedonism. As we pursue our highest joy in God, we also help others pursue their highest joy in God. Which naturally means we want them to treasure God far above the way they treasure us.

The rubber meets the road most when it comes to fathers and mothers and other dear loved ones. There’s a real felt cost when we actively make difficult, even painful choices to treasure Jesus and his call on our lives more than those precious relationships.

But there’s also a real felt cost when we are on the passive side of such an equation — when we are the father or mother or loved one whom a Christian must “hate” (in the treasuring sense) in order to follow Jesus’s call on their lives. It’s a different experience to count ourselves among the earthly treasures someone must “sell” in order to pursue the joy of the supreme Treasure. It’s a different experience to be sacrificed than it is to sacrifice.

But it’s not any less Christian Hedonistic — not when we truly treasure our children’s pursuit of the greatest Treasure. As Jesus’s disciples, we too must “hate” lesser treasures we truly love (like our children’s nearness) in order to have him. Our willingness to be sacrificed is what this paradoxical hatred looks like from the passive side of the call, when we are not the ones leaving, but the ones who are left. At such a moment, we must keep in mind the whole nature of Jesus’s call:

If anyone comes to me and does not hate . . . even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

Fellowship of the Left Behind

Releasing our children to follow Jesus’s kingdom call is part of how we, as parents, hate our own lives and bear our own cross for Jesus’s sake. And part of what makes his call paradoxical is that this “hating” is not affectional hatred at all. In fact, it’s what love looks like. For as my friend John Piper says,

Love is the overflow of joy in God that meets the needs of others. The overflow is experienced consciously as the pursuit of our joy in the joy of another. (Desiring God, 141)

So, in being left by our children as they pursue their highest joy in the greatest Treasure, we pursue the same prize by hating our own lives in this earthly age. It’s one way we join Jesus on the Calvary road of self-sacrifice for the joy set before us (Hebrews 12:2).

The Calvary road is not an easy road. Jesus told us that “the way is hard that leads to life” (Matthew 7:14). And one of the hard moments on this road is when we’re called to join Zebedee in the fellowship of the left behind, the lesser treasures who release loved ones to pursue their highest joy in the greatest Treasure.

But as it turns out, being left behind isn’t merely, or even mainly, passive — not when we turn this painful experience into an active pursuit of our own highest joy in our greatest Treasure.

What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

Audio Transcript

Happy Monday. Today is Labor Day for many of us, a day when we rest from our work and think of just about anything but work. But here we are, talking about work, and we’re doing it because a number of you have emailed over the years wanting to know about work in eternity. Here’s one version of that email, from a listener named Steve.

“Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast! I have a question about work in heaven — or work in the new creation, to be more exact. First, will we work in the new creation? If so, what types of vocations will be needed? Does the Bible give us any hints here? And if we work, do you think this future vocation will resonate with or consummate some gifting that we always felt drawn to express here on earth, whether or not we could make money doing it here? And if you answer yes to all of this, put on your hat of prediction: What will you be doing in eternity?”

Let’s start with what we know for sure about the eternal future that all of us who are in Christ will definitely enjoy.

Jesus said that we will be with him. We will see his glory. We will have the capacity to love him with the very love that the Father has for him (John 17:24–26). The apostle John tells us “we shall see him” and “we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). That includes both sinless purity of heart and the glory of our new resurrection bodies, according to Philippians 3:21. And then in Revelation 21:4, John tells us that God “will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore.” And then Psalm 16:11 twists that around and makes it positive: in God’s presence, we will have “fullness of joy” and “pleasures forevermore.” Now that is for sure.

Six Pointers for Work in Eternity

Now, the question is, Will work be part of our experience of that eternal joy in God’s presence? I think the answer is yes. But I say that not because the Bible has decisive statements to that effect, but because there are significant pointers in that direction. So, I wouldn’t elevate this conviction that I’m going to argue for here to a top-level doctrine, but rather call it a reasonable, probable hope. And if not this, then something way better. I mean, if it turns out that it’s not what you thought it was, it’s going to be better, because we know there will be no sorrow there, no regret, no frustration, no disappointment with God’s decisions about what our happiness should look like.

So, here are my six pointers, and then I’ll end with a caution. These are pointers for why we can be relatively confident there will be work for us to do in the age to come, in our eternity with God.

1. God is a worker.

God himself is a worker, and we will be more like him then, not less than we are now. Genesis 2:2: “On the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done.” And Jesus said in John 5:17, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.” So, God is a worker.

2. God created us to work.

God created man to be a worker before the fall into sin. The curse that fell on man after the fall was not work, but futile work, miserable work, sweaty work that makes us hate it, that makes us want to play instead of working. But God made man from the beginning to work the world, to shape the world.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1:28)

And then, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15).

3. Parables point toward future responsibility.

The parable that describes how Jesus settles accounts with his servants at the second coming suggests that, now that Jesus has come, they will have work given them to do. In Luke 19:17, the master says, “Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.” Now, whether that’s parabolic or metaphorical, it may well point to the fact that we will be given responsibility in the age to come.

4. We are born again for good works.

According to Ephesians 2:10, “We are [God’s] workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” When Paul identified a purpose for the new creature in Christ — us — he said the purpose was work, “good works.”

5. Prophecies of the new creation include work.

Isaiah 65:17–25 describes the new heavens and the new earth to include work.

They shall build houses and inhabit them;     they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. . . .     My chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.They shall not labor in vain     or bear children for calamity. (Isaiah 65:21–23)

Now, the reason I say this is only a pointer, not a decisive statement — even though it may look like that — about work in the final state, is that there is serious disagreement about whether this passage in Isaiah 65 is a description of our final state, because it speaks of bearing children, and Jesus said that in the final state there would be no marriage and, presumably, no bearing of children (Matthew 22:30). And in the age to come, we’re not going to experience death. And yet Isaiah 65:20 says, “The young man shall die a hundred years old” in the new creation.

We know there is no death in the age to come. So, the disagreement is whether these kinds of statements here in Isaiah 65 are somehow metaphorical for eternal life in the age to come — I have never been able to understand how death is a symbol for life — or whether this is a description of a millennial period after the second coming, which is much higher in its blessing than now but not yet the final stage of the new heavens and the new earth. And that would be my view.

“Work itself will be so profoundly satisfying and sweet and enjoyable that nobody will say, ‘I need a weekend.’”

But in either case — whether those are metaphorical statements and we will be working in the final state, or whether this is a next stage of redemptive history in which, yes, there will be work, and maybe pointing to the fact that there’s work in the final state — it seems to me that we can’t settle that with enough certainty to persuade all the evangelicals who love the Bible. I mean, I’ve got a lot of good friends that disagree with me on this. So, I don’t call those verses in Isaiah 65 a decisive, precise statement that there will be work in the final state, but it seems to me it points in that direction.

6. All futility will be gone.

When you take sin out of the heart and out of the world, which will happen in the age to come, the line between work and play becomes almost invisible. What is play when all our work will be totally enjoyable? I mean totally. There is no work now that is totally enjoyable. All work has some element to it we find frustrating or disappointing or futile or discouraging.

Perhaps (this is speculation) there will be sweet weariness of mind and body, the new body getting weary in the age to come such that it needs something different from its usual occupation — namely, rest and play. I don’t know, because work itself will be so profoundly satisfying and sweet and enjoyable that nobody will say, “I need a weekend. I’ve got to have some play time,” because everything will be as happy and satisfying as play. But there may be a difference.

Future Beyond Disappointment

And that word perhaps — I mean, I’ve been using the word perhaps all along — leads me to wrap up with a caution about making more precise statements about the age to come than the Bible gives us warrant to make. There are cautions in the Bible that remind us that the glories of the age to come are going to be beyond our present comprehension and imagination.

In 2 Corinthians 12:4, Paul said he saw things in heaven that no man can utter. In 1 Corinthians 2:9, Paul says that “God has prepared [things] for those who love him” that are beyond human imagination. They’ve never entered into the heart of man. He tells us that our resurrection bodies will be spiritual bodies (1 Corinthians 15:42–49). Well, who can say all that is involved in a spiritual body?

John speaks in Revelation 21:23 of a world in which there will be “no need of sun or moon . . . [because] the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb.” Well, who can imagine a world with no sources of created light, but only God’s light? And in Revelation 21:18, John says the city, New Jerusalem, “was pure gold, like clear glass.” What’s that — gold that is clear as glass? Jonathan Edwards wrote an entire sermon on that text, Revelation 21:18, and here’s the title: “Nothing on Earth Can Represent the Glories of Heaven” — because there is no such thing on earth as gold that is clear as glass, and that’s the way it’s going to be like.

So yes, I think we will work in the final age to come. Whether we will do what we were gifted for here, or whether we will have wholly new giftings, a thousand times greater, or what kind of work John Piper will be doing, I leave in the hands of God, who planned the universe for the happiness of his people in himself. We will not be disappointed.