Home Sanctity
To many, home has become merely a place to sleep. A place to store your things. A place to hole up for a while before going out into the world to do the “more important” things. Similarly, things like taking care of household chores, which is a reality for all of us, is often viewed as drudgery. It is a thing we have to do so therefore we do it begrudgingly, as quickly as we can, with the minimal amount of effort required. It is a sort of blindness. It is blindness that says our homes are just a place, or that our choring is nothing more than a menial, repetitive, task. As Christians, if we hold this attitude, it likely means that somewhere along the way we bought into the idea that there is a compartmentalization between what is spiritual and what is not. There is no distinction for the Christian! As Elisabeth Elliot quotes, everything is an affair of the spirit.
“We must not separate the physical from the spiritual. Everything is an affair of the spirit.. We must not make the common mistake of separating “spiritual work” vs. “house work” for example. There is no dichotomy for the Christian. Everything I do is meant to be an offering to Jesus Christ. All that I am, all that I have, all that I do, and all that I suffer is meant to be an offering. Do you suppose that Jesus is more interested or impressed with standing on stage and speaking than He is in the way I iron my husbands shirt? Or clean the bathtub? I don’t think so. I don’t think there is a difference in Gods eyes.” Elisabeth ElliotEven more than these day to day tasks being an offering to Christ, they are also an opportunity for our sanctification. Ligonier Ministries defines sanctification as “the ongoing work of God’s grace whereby He enables believers to put sin to death in their lives and conforms them more and more into the image of Christ.” This is the process we begin to go through once we are saved, and this “refining” is an ongoing work, with the goal being Christlikeness. So, how can simple things like washing the dishes, folding laundry, cleaning the toilet, or organizing the pantry aid in making us more Christlike?
Death To Self:
If there is one shared experience we all have when it comes to doing chores, it is that we certainly don’t always feel like doing them. There are also many tasks that I prefer to do over others. When I notice the temptation to neglect our home or a specific chore I’m putting off because I simply don’t feel like it, or don’t want to do it, I see it as a clear invitation to die to myself. In order to complete the task, it will require me to be brought low, to deny myself and what I want, to serve others and consider them more important than myself, much like Jesus modeled for us. And it doesn’t feel good. My flesh desires to serve myself and do whatever feels good in the moment. But service in this way means acknowledging that if I don’t do it, someone else will have to, and a true servants heart seeks to relieve that burden from someone else.
““If we are going to follow Christ, there will be plenty of opportunities to take up our cross, most of which will be terribly mundane. They are not things that anybody else is going to notice or hear about or for which you will receive any praise.”
Serving In Secret:
Another way in which I believe our home-work can disrupt our flesh and make us more like Christ is by serving in secret. This is quite easy to do at home because most people, besides your immediate family, are not seeing the little things you do on a day to day basis. And our flesh nature, which we aim to put to death, loves to do things in order to get acknowledgement or praise from them. Scripture speaks to this in Matthew 6:1-8, telling us to “be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men to be seen by them” but that “our Father who sees in secret will reward you..” We also see this in the character of Jesus all throughout scripture, who having every reason to glorify himself, continually healed in secret, prayed in secret, and wasn’t motivated by the praise of men. (John 12:43) I am not suggesting that it is wrong to receive encouragement, kind words, or appreciation from friends or family or other believers, but are you expecting it? How do you respond when you don’t get it? Do you feel entitled to it? This is an intention that we must be prayerful about!
Serving in secret also reminds us that our work must be done unto The Lord and no one else. (Colossians 2:23, 1 Corinthians 10:31) In the words of Dr. John Barnett, “A grace energized woman believes that she has been called by God to do the work of homemaking by and for The Lord himself. It is not by her husband or even for her husband, it is a calling by The Lord and she accomplishes it for The Lord.” When we are truly doing our work unto The Lord, we do not get offended when we don’t get praised, we do it joyfully knowing where our reward lies.
Humility:
Accomplishing tasks that seem to be insignificant or even disgusting is also an opportunity to check myself and what I am believing about who I am and what I deserve. In our personal-autonomy obsessed culture, even Christians can so easily fall into the ideology that our lives are about ourselves therefore we are entitled to a certain kind of life. That we are somehow owed something. That we are “above” certain work. But this is the opposite message of the Bible! To think ourselves too high or above certain work is to fundamentally misunderstand who Jesus is and in turn, misunderstand who we are and how we are called to live. It is to think too highly of ourselves than we ought. We must understand this! That we do not live to be served but to serve, and that our lives are no longer our own but are meant to be a living sacrifice to Christ for the sake of others. We all need this humbling reminder and regular call to a right view of self. Even the simplest of tasks can become doorways to Godly humility.
"I appeal to you, therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual worship." -Romans 12:1
The world is really good at making the work of a homemaker look like small, lowly, meaningless work but the Christian has a more accurate view of what is meaningful and what is not. And if this meaningful work is an offering, our “spiritual worship,” an opportunity to be made more like Christ, how differently would we go about doing our daily tasks? How would you fold clothes if you were folding them for Jesus? What would your attitude be like, as you washed another dirty dish, if you knew you were doing it for Him, if you knew that by doing it you would become more like Him? Would you do them carelessly? Would you do the bare-minimum? Would you do it bitterly? I don’t think so. I think we would do them with great care, with reverence, and a quiet happy heart. And our reward, among treasures stored up in heaven, a deep sense of purpose and fulfillment.
Your labor is not in vain, dear reader. It is the “simple” things, the little duties we do everyday, that matter the most. It is by these things that we are made to be more like Christ. Keep on loving your homes. Talk soon!
