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You had one job.
The internet teems with examples of work projects that fell just a tad short of perfection: misspelled words, mislabeled products, toilets installed upside-down, and highway direction signs that appear to beckon drivers into walls or over a precipice.
You had just one thing to do. And if you mess that up, everybody will know it.
The Bible’s version of “you had one job” appears in I Corinthians chapter 13.
That’s where the apostle Paul writes that no matter what circumstances we will face today, there’s only one right response. That response is love. Our call is to love God from dawn until dusk, and love everyone who crosses our path the way God loves us.
There’s something in human nature, however, that pushes back hard against that simple directive.
We can think of a lot of things that seem more important than love.
How about supernatural gifts – amazing talents that will profoundly impact other people? But Paul isn’t having it: “If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate” (I Cor 13:1, The Message).
Even if the Holy Spirit should gift us with an extraordinary ability, it will turn out to be worthless if we flunk our “one job,” which is to love.
How about superior insight?
This is the central temptation of our day. We love to be right. We love being known as the Smartest Person in the Room. Or at least the Most Spiritually Informed Person in the Pew.
But again, Paul is ruthless: “If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, ‘Jump,’ and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing” (verse 2).
Superior insight seems like an awesome thing. But without love, it turns us into spiritual also-rans.
Bible commentator William Barclay writes, “More people have been brought into the church by the kindness of real Christian love than by all the theological arguments in the world, and more people have been driven from the church by the hardness and ugliness of so-called Christianity than by all the doubts in the world.”
Lots of people might try out a church named Grace. But not many people would line up to worship at a place called The We’re-Right-And-We-Know-It Church.
How about supreme commitment? That should top everything, right?
Commitment matters. It matters immensely. But it’s not Job One.
Paul writes, “If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love” (verse 3).
If we love God and love others, everything else – supernatural gifts, superior insight, and supreme commitment – will take care of itself.
We have one job.
If we get that right, we’re on our way to getting everything else right.
Otherwise, we’ll all need to go back to shcool.