[on: “give us this day our daily bread”]
“Behold, thus God wishes to indicate to us how He cares for us in all our need, and faithfully provides also for our temporal support. And although He abundantly grants and preserves these things even to the wicked and knaves, yet He wishes that we pray for them, in order that we may recognize that we receive them from His hand, and may feel His paternal goodness toward us therein. For when He withdraws His hand, nothing can prosper nor be maintained in the end, as, indeed, we daily see and experience. How much trouble there is now in the world only on account of bad coin, yea, on account of daily oppression and raising of prices in common trade, bargaining and labor on the part of those who wantonly oppress the poor and deprive them of their daily bread! This we must suffer indeed; but let them take care that they do not lose the common intercession, and beware lest this petition in the Lord’s Prayer be against them. ” – Martin Luther “The Large Catechism” (The Lord’s Prayer #82-84)
As I mentioned before I’m looking for a job and was wondering if Christians were promised employment anywhere in Scripture. Thus far, I have been unable to find any such promise, and have tried to understand the biblical basis of employment/work. In examining the account of the Fall I think it was clear that the stress, uncertainty, and difficulty of labour is a part of the larger curse humanity brang upon itself. As the image of God was destroyed in the Fall, so the bounty, comfort, and normality of labour is gone. The Scriptures do assume man works though. St. Paul rebuked the Thessalonians for giving up their jobs in false piety declaring: ” this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thes. 3:10). This aphorism has been variously cited by John Smith in the expedition to America, and even Vladomir Lenin during the Russian Revolution. It truly seems to be a universal principle.
Christ teaches us to pray for employment implicitly in asking for ‘daily bread’ and it’s interesting that St. Paul again links working and eating. With this in mind, perhaps it is safe to say that God can end the lives of those He wishes, whenever He wishes, but until then it is our duty to sustain our bodies however we can, and to pray for the blessing of employment to feed us, recognizing that when we receive it, it is purely from His Fatherly goodness and not from merit – since even the wicked receive it. So Christianity doesn’t promise anyone employment, but it gives the working man reason to be thankful and helps him to understand that his work is there so he can live his necessities (I.E. eat) and not for extravagence. In such a framework, a man is obliged to work only enough to support himself, constantly relying on God and thanking Him for every blessing, knowing that like the blessings of life, peace, and health, they can be revoked whenever it pleases God to remove them, or the Devil to attack them. This frees a man from the abuses of both the waste of Marxism and the decadent excess of Capitalism.
TLDR: No.
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