Christian Worker Approved by God
The expression “the deeper Christian life” can sound as though Christianity has two levels, one for ordinary believers and another for a smaller group who discover some special spiritual experience, but Scripture presents Christian growth very differently. In Scripture, spiritual depth is the continuing development of faith, knowledge, obedience, discernment, holiness, endurance, and devotion to Jehovah through Jesus Christ. Christian maturity does not arrive through a sudden mystical experience, nor does it consist merely of becoming busier in religious activity, learning more theological vocabulary, or becoming more visible among other Christians. The governing question is far more searching: Is the Christian becoming the kind of person Jehovah approves? Paul places that concern directly before Timothy in 2 Timothy 2:15 when he urges him to present himself to God as an approved worker who has no reason to be ashamed and who rightly handles the word of truth. The command joins together the worker, the work, and the Word, because Christian character cannot safely be separated from Christian service or accurate biblical understanding. A Christian cannot rightly separate what he believes from how he lives, what he teaches from what he practices, or the public worker from the private person known fully by God. This book takes that biblical demand seriously by examining Christian life from the heart outward, asking what must govern the believer’s thinking, habits, ministry, relationships, Bible study, evangelism, endurance, and preparation for the return of Christ. To be approved unto God is therefore not a title to be claimed but a course of faithful discipleship that must be pursued day after day under the authority of Jehovah’s Spirit-inspired Word.
The first danger confronting the Christian worker is the temptation to confuse outward usefulness with inward faithfulness. It is possible to preach, teach, write, evangelize, organize Christian activities, defend sound doctrine, answer difficult questions, and become respected by others while serious weaknesses are developing within the heart. Jesus repeatedly confronted people whose religious appearance exceeded the actual condition of their relationship with God, making clear that external activity can never conceal the inner person from Jehovah. His warning in Matthew 7:21–23 is especially sobering because individuals may address Him as “Lord” and appeal to impressive religious works while still failing to do the will of His Father. His illustration of the two builders in Matthew 7:24–27 presses the same truth from another direction, because both builders hear His words while only the wise man acts upon them and thereby builds upon rock. These passages destroy the comforting assumption that exposure to Christian truth is the same as submission to Christian truth. Jehovah sees motives that congregations cannot see, private habits that audiences cannot observe, hidden resentment behind gracious speech, ambition concealed beneath Christian service, and compromises carefully protected from public knowledge. The worker who desires His approval must therefore become more concerned about what Jehovah sees than about what other people think, because reputation and spiritual reality are not always identical. Genuine Christian service begins when the public and private person are increasingly brought under the same Scriptural authority and the believer desires faithfulness even when no human observer is present.
Because approval before God is inseparable from truth, the Christian worker must learn to approach Scripture with reverence, accuracy, patience, and humility. The Bible is not raw material from which a teacher may construct whatever message fits his preferences, emotions, traditions, audience, or theological assumptions. 2 Timothy 2:15 connects divine approval with rightly handling the word of truth, making accurate interpretation a spiritual and moral responsibility rather than merely an academic interest. Rightly handling Scripture requires attention to words, grammar, immediate context, historical circumstances, literary form, authorial purpose, and the relationship of a passage to the wider teaching of the inspired Scriptures. The historical-grammatical approach therefore seeks the meaning communicated by the inspired writer rather than searching beneath the text for hidden meanings or importing later ideas into words that originally communicated something else. It resists isolated proof texts, uncontrolled allegory, imaginative symbolism, theological traditions imposed upon passages, and personal impressions treated as though they possessed the authority of revelation. This is especially important for Christian workers because an error privately held may harm one individual, while an error confidently taught can influence many people and reproduce itself through an entire congregation or ministry. A Christian who discovers that context, grammar, or stronger biblical evidence overturns one of his previous interpretations should regard correction as progress rather than humiliation, because loyalty to Jehovah’s Word must be greater than loyalty to his own earlier opinion. When the Bible stands above the interpreter rather than beneath him, study becomes an act of submission in which the reader continually allows divine revelation to correct his thinking instead of forcing revelation to confirm what he already wants to believe.
Yet accurate study alone does not make a Christian spiritually mature, because Scripture was given to shape life rather than merely enlarge the amount of religious information stored in the mind. One subtle danger addressed throughout this book is the possibility that Christian activity itself can gradually crowd out the Christian life that activity is supposed to express. A believer may become so occupied with meetings, teaching assignments, evangelism, writing, counseling, congregation responsibilities, helping others, and answering biblical questions that his own careful study, prayer, family duties, self-examination, and necessary physical rest begin to disappear. Martha’s experience in Luke 10:38–42 demonstrates that even legitimate service can become disordered when activity pushes attention to divine instruction into the background. Her difficulty was not that service was wrong but that much serving had produced distraction and anxiety while something spiritually necessary was being neglected. Christian activity therefore cannot be measured merely by how much is being accomplished, because a schedule filled with good things can still become spiritually damaging when it consumes the habits that sustain faithful discipleship. Faithfulness requires wisdom concerning personal limitations, responsibilities, motives, priorities, and the difference between work Jehovah actually requires and burdens a Christian has unnecessarily placed upon himself. Rest, prayer, Bible study, family care, Christian fellowship, evangelism, employment, and service must be ordered rather than allowed to compete chaotically until exhaustion weakens judgment and discouragement begins to control the heart. The aim is not withdrawal from Christian work but sustained service flowing from a life continually strengthened, corrected, and renewed by the Word of God.
Bible study reaches its proper purpose when what the Christian learns changes the way he thinks, evaluates, chooses, speaks, reacts, and behaves. Romans 12:2 connects transformation with the renewing of the mind, showing that Christian growth requires replacing patterns learned from the surrounding world with thinking shaped by Jehovah’s revealed truth. James 1:22 warns believers to become doers of the Word rather than hearers only, because knowledge that never becomes obedience can actually support spiritual self-deception. This means that reading Scripture should eventually affect anger, sexual conduct, honesty, use of money, family relationships, forgiveness, work habits, entertainment, ambitions, speech, evangelism, and treatment of people with whom we disagree. The Christian does not read merely to complete a daily assignment, collect interesting facts, prepare a sermon, win an argument, or accumulate information that makes him appear knowledgeable before others. He allows Scripture to expose where his reasoning is worldly, where his desires are disordered, where his conscience has become insensitive, and where his established habits contradict what he professes to believe. Lifelong discipleship therefore requires lifelong learning, because no imperfect Christian reaches a stage at which further correction, greater discernment, deeper biblical knowledge, or stronger obedience becomes unnecessary. No amount of years in Christian service should make a worker intellectually proud, resistant to correction, careless in interpretation, or convinced that previous accomplishments guarantee present faithfulness. The mature Bible student continues reading, comparing, thinking, examining, correcting, applying, and obeying because becoming biblically minded is a continuing process by which the Spirit-inspired Word increasingly governs the entire person.
Such growth also requires deliberate self-examination, because spiritual decline rarely begins with a public collapse that everyone immediately recognizes. 2 Corinthians 13:5 directs Christians to examine themselves concerning whether they are in the faith, establishing self-examination as a legitimate part of faithful discipleship rather than an exercise in endless inward anxiety. Self-examination asks whether present conduct agrees with present profession and refuses to rely upon a conversion experience, baptism, years of service, family background, biblical knowledge, or reputation as substitutes for current faithfulness. A Christian may have made excellent decisions ten years ago while presently allowing bitterness, materialism, sexual impurity, dishonesty, spiritual laziness, fear of man, resentment, pride, or neglect of evangelism to gain increasing influence. Matthew 7:21–23 makes clear that religious claims do not replace doing the will of the Father, and this requires the believer to ask not merely whether he is doing religious things but whether he is doing what God actually requires in the manner Scripture directs. Therefore, spiritual examination must lead to concrete action when wrongdoing, neglect, distorted priorities, damaged relationships, or unhealthy habits are discovered. He must ask whether he needs to repent, apologize, abandon a sinful practice, restore neglected Bible study, repair a relationship, correct something he has taught inaccurately, simplify an overloaded schedule, or renew his participation in Christian evangelism. The return of Jesus Christ gives such examination urgency because the Christian does not know how much time remains before Christ returns or before his own present life ends. The wise disciple therefore lives ready for Christ to return tomorrow while planning responsibly enough to remain faithful if Christian work must continue for decades.
Maturity must also reach the whole person, because Christianity cannot safely be confined to a religious compartment that leaves the remainder of life governed by different values. A whole Christian is not someone who has reached sinless perfection but someone whose entire direction of life is increasingly being brought under the authority of Jehovah through Jesus Christ. Romans 12:1 calls believers to present their bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to God, showing that Christian dedication extends into ordinary embodied life rather than appearing only during worship or teaching. This comprehensiveness reaches employment, money, marriage, sexuality, friendship, entertainment, speech, private thought, use of time, family responsibility, treatment of fellow believers, response to enemies, and conduct when no one else is watching. The Great Commission likewise belongs within whole-life discipleship because Jesus commanded His followers to make disciples and teach others to observe what He commanded. Evangelism is therefore not a specialized interest reserved for a few unusually gifted Christians but a responsibility that belongs to the Christian community and requires believers to become capable of communicating biblical truth accurately and respectfully. Yet evangelism is weakened when the person presenting the message lives in obvious contradiction to it, since Christian witness involves both the truth proclaimed and the character of the person proclaiming it. Love must govern the use of truth so that courage does not become arrogance, correction does not become cruelty, apologetics does not become intellectual pride, and disagreement does not become permission to misrepresent another person. The mature worker seeks to speak accurately, reason carefully, listen fairly, act compassionately, and remain courageous because his purpose is not merely to defeat an opponent but to help people understand and respond to the truth of God’s Word.
Because truth matters so greatly, Christians must also develop the discernment necessary to recognize false teaching and the interpretive habits that produce it. Jesus warned about false prophets appearing in deceptive forms, and the apostles repeatedly warned that distorted teaching would arise both outside and inside Christian congregations. Paul’s warning in Acts of the Apostles 20:29–30 shows that danger can come from people who speak twisted things while seeking followers, making personality, confidence, popularity, and religious vocabulary unreliable measures of truth. False teaching often gains influence not because every statement is obviously false but because biblical words are removed from context, important qualifications are ignored, emotional appeals replace careful exegesis, human tradition is granted Scriptural authority, or conclusions are asserted more confidently than the evidence permits. The safeguard is not suspiciousness toward everyone who teaches but disciplined comparison of every religious claim with the inspired Word accurately understood. Christians must learn to distinguish between what Scripture explicitly states, what can responsibly be inferred from several passages, what remains uncertain, and what God has simply not revealed. Teachers carry special responsibility because James 3:1 warns that those who teach will receive stricter judgment, making careful preparation, intellectual honesty, and willingness to correct error essential features of Christian service. Humility is indispensable because the Christian most confident that he can never be deceived may become especially vulnerable when pride prevents him from examining his assumptions. Discernment grows when believers know Scripture well enough to recognize not merely teachings that sound strange but interpretations that fail because they disregard context, grammar, history, authorial intent, or the harmony of biblical revelation.
All these concerns finally lead to endurance, because Christian faithfulness is measured across a course rather than by isolated moments of enthusiasm. Scripture repeatedly presents the Christian life as something that must be continued, maintained, guarded, strengthened, and carried faithfully toward its appointed goal. Hebrews 12:1 tells believers to run with endurance the race set before them, and Jesus states in Matthew 24:13 that the one who endures to the end will be saved. Endurance normally develops through daily faithfulness long before severe opposition arrives, because habits formed in ordinary circumstances prepare the believer to stand when pressure becomes greater. When weariness, disappointment, sickness, opposition, financial difficulty, human imperfection, persecution, or the consequences of living in a wicked world place heavy pressure upon a Christian, temporary discouragement does not mean that Jehovah’s truth has changed or that faithful service has become pointless. Repentance is also essential to endurance because Christian perseverance does not mean pretending never to fail; it means refusing to protect wrongdoing, excuse deliberate sin, or allow failure to become a settled pattern of rebellion. Salvation remains a journey in which believers continue exercising faith in Christ’s sacrifice, obeying Jehovah, correcting wrongdoing, strengthening Christian qualities, rejecting what Scripture condemns, and pressing forward toward the promised gift of eternal life. The Christian worker therefore does not live upon yesterday’s obedience, yesterday’s Bible study, yesterday’s evangelism, or yesterday’s reputation, because present faithfulness cannot be replaced by a record of past usefulness. Finishing the race well requires ordinary disciplines maintained over time: accurate study, prayer, self-control, Christian fellowship, evangelism, repentance, humility, moral vigilance, responsible rest, courageous obedience, and an enduring determination to remain under the authority of Jehovah’s Word.
The pages ahead are written for Christians who want more than the appearance of spiritual seriousness and more than the temporary excitement that can accompany religious activity. They call the reader to examine whether Christ is truly the foundation beneath his life, whether Scripture actually governs his thinking, whether his private conduct agrees with his public profession, and whether his service grows out of genuine devotion rather than replacing it. They refuse the idea that Christian maturity can be reduced to knowledge alone, because sound doctrine that never governs conduct leaves the believer knowing truths he is refusing to obey. They also refuse the opposite error of treating sincerity as sufficient while neglecting accurate doctrine, because zeal detached from sound biblical interpretation can spread error with extraordinary confidence. Instead, the Christian worker is called to become a serious student and obedient doer of the Word, a humble learner and courageous teacher, a faithful evangelizer and responsible steward, a person prepared for Christ’s return while diligently fulfilling present responsibilities. The reader should therefore approach these chapters not primarily as descriptions of what other Christians ought to become but as an opportunity to place his own beliefs, motives, habits, priorities, methods, and conduct before the searching authority of Scripture. He should read with the willingness to retain what is biblical, abandon what is wrong, strengthen what is weak, correct what has become distorted, and continue developing whatever contributes to faithful discipleship. The proper response to biblical truth is not admiration from a safe distance but obedient action, because the wise man in Jesus’ illustration is distinguished precisely by hearing His words and doing them. That is the concern running through Approved Unto God: that the Christian worker may increasingly become a person who loves Jehovah, follows Jesus Christ, handles the Word of truth accurately, fulfills the responsibilities of discipleship, and continues faithfully on the path to life.
About the Author
EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).
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