Pieces of Work

American English is filled with all sorts of idioms that can leave learners of the language more than a little confused. An idiom is a phrase or expression of which the actual meaning is different from the meanings of each word separately.

If we say that someone is “under the weather,” for example, most Americans understand that phrase to mean that the person isn’t feeling well. A non-American, on the other hand, might wonder why a person would be standing outside “under the weather” and what that has to do with him or her missing work today – unless, of course, it’s “raining cats and dogs” which must be a very unusual meteorological storm of airborne house pets that would certainly explain the reason for one’s absence. Of course, if one does make it to work, one must “pitch in” and be “on the ball” or “face the music.”

You get the idea.

Some idioms are downright confusing, especially when they refer to another person. Take the expression “piece of work.” When we refer to someone as a piece of work, it is never a compliment. It’s an idiom reserved for a person whose pattern of speech and behavior is worthy of contempt and to whom one should always “give the cold shoulder.” If your co-worker is always late, if he often makes inappropriate comments in meetings, if he cheats on his time card and if he is known to be stepping out on his wife, you might say that he is “a piece of work.”

Or she is a piece of work, as, for example, the late comedian Joan Rivers. She freely admitted that she was a “piece of work.” And the highly acclaimed documentary about her is called Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. According to a couple of sources, this documentary film about the life and career of Rivers follows her for 14 months, mostly when she was 75, and makes an effort to “[peel] away the mask” and expose the “struggles, sacrifices and joy of living life as a groundbreaking female performer.” The film earned high critical praise, a conclusion based on several metrics, including a score of 91 on Rotten Tomatoes. The late Roger Ebert, renowned film critic, wrote that Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is “fascinating and has a lot of laughs in it. It’s more than that. It’s the portrait of a woman who will not accept defeat, who will not slow down, who must prove herself over and again. A brave and stubborn woman, smart as a whip, superbly skilled.”

“Superbly skilled” … not only at being funny, but at being mean, opinionated, harsh (almost abusive), critical … and so on. She was … “a piece of work.”

But this particular expression wasn’t always used in a negative context. The Oxford English Dictionary cites the first use of the phrase “piece of work” occurring in the year 1473 to refer to a product or something manufactured. Even today, “piece work” refers to work paid for according to the amount produced. The original meaning was all about making something useful.

Related to this is the word “masterpiece” which refers to an outstanding “piece” of art. Whether it was utilitarian or aesthetically pleasing, a “piece of work” used to mean something good had been produced.

And here in our Epistle for today, the apostle Paul calls us – we who are followers of Jesus – a piece of work, or pieces of work. In Ephesians 2, Paul seems to put this whole idiomatic discussion into perspective by comparing the relative value of the product to the one who is doing the making. It’s a “before and after” look at human beings who, before putting their faith in Christ, are the “piece work” of “the ruler of the power of the air.”

When Jesus begins working in their lives, however, they are God’s “workmanship,” pieces of work made to work for God’s glory.

Paul begins by plainly telling the Ephesians that before coming to Christ, they were “dead through the trespasses and sins” in which they once lived, “following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit at work in those who are disobedient” (vv. 1-2).

Some commentators suggest that Paul’s use of both “trespasses” and “sins” was a way of delineating between Jews and Gentiles. Jews “trespassed” against the law of God while Gentiles “sinned” apart from God – the former knowing that they were trespassing and the latter unaware that their pagan lifestyle was an offense to God. Both, however, were subject to the “ruler of the power of the air” who was at “work” manufacturing them into “children of wrath” (vv. 3-4). Before faith in Christ, human beings are real “pieces of work” who are driven by “the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses” (v. 3).

We aren’t what we were created to be, says Paul, and it’s all because we allowed ourselves to be shaped and manufactured by “the course of this world” (v. 2).

The implication here, too, is that the character and quality of a piece of work depends on the artist who is doing the workmanship. In this case, it’s the devil and our own sinful nature, and the results are not pretty.

But if the Artist is God, then this becomes a different story.

In the coming of Christ, God has taken over the manufacturing process in order to restore humans to “pieces of work” that are not only God’s masterful handiwork, but also useful for God’s purposes. Two of the most powerful words in the Scriptures are found in verse 4: “But God …” Despite our being useless, dead pieces of the devil’s work, God didn’t give up on humans created in the imago Dei. The God who is “rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ” (vv. 4-5).

In the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, God entered into our broken condition and repurposed us for his work by defeating death and sin along with it.

This is the “grace” by which we have been ‘saved” – not just saved from the work of sin and death, but saved for the work God intended us to undertake from the beginning (v. 5). Here’s that “before and after” component again. From … and for.

That work is all God’s through God’s grace. It’s not the result of our own “works” but rather through the “gift” of God’s grace working in us that we are saved (v. 8). God has to take over the manufacturing process or we remain broken and useless. Our résumés before receiving the grace of God in Christ are nothing to boast about (v. 9). But when we put our faith in Christ and his work on our behalf, we are saved from the dead end way of sin and death.

And we are also saved for the work God has prepared for us to do from the beginning. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand for us to do” (v. 10). The purpose of God’s work of salvation is to renew us and enable us to join in his work. Humans were originally created to be God’s regents, God’s representatives, to reign over the Earth and reflect God’s glory in God’s good creation (Genesis 1:26-27). We were created as God’s crowning masterpiece of creation – created in God’s image to do God’s work in the world.

Because of God’s grace, we can look at everyone around us, even those “pieces of work” who seem to be hopeless cases, and recognize that God’s grace can change them into a masterpiece. If we’ve been transformed by God’s grace ourselves, we can and should testify to that fact and help others to know and experience what God has done for them in Christ. Actually, that’s a big part of the work God has prepared for us to do. We are God’s “pieces of work,” made so that we can work for God and the Gloria Dei.

You are a piece of work – God’s work. And that’s a good thing.