Paul said, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor 15:10). Open your Bible and find out what that life is like. Rise to it and reject the hypocrisy that has by unholy alliance and careless admixture weakened us. Fight the battle “in the strength of his might” (Eph 6:10). 

My oldest son, Benjamin, and I just finished simultaneously reading the classic, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville. We read individually, slowly, in spare moments, and sometimes in strange places, but with sustained interest. It was R. C. Sproul’s favorite book (see here). Behind his desk was an oil painting of Moby Dick, the indomitable white whale, himself.

I often read single paragraphs in the book containing several words I did not know, but were inviting to learn. Among them were numerous terms related to whaling ships, the process of whaling and the exterior and interior of various kinds of whales. Among all those challenging words, Benjamin harpooned a favorite new one that he helped me understand. Let’s think about that word a moment. The word is sinecure (ˈsīnəkyo͝or,ˈsinəˌkyo͝or/). The word is a noun for a position that offers easy work for a distinguished title.

“Be it said, that in this vocation of whaling, sinecures are unknown; dignity and danger go hand in hand; till you get to be Captain, the higher you rise the harder you toil.” (Chapter 110)

This information was provided by the narrator to describe the work of a seminal character in the book named Queepueg, a harpooner, who not only had the distinction of being such, a highly respected position among the crew, but had to also plunge himself deep into the interior of the conquered whale which was strapped to the side of the ship. In the belly of the whale, he would cut out masses of the whale’s carcass that were then melted down to become whale oil, the commodity that was the end goal of the whaling industry in the 1800s. The narrator was noting that with Queepueg’s distinction came much danger and hard work. The office was not a sinecure.

The word is from the Medieval Latin words, sine, meaning “without,” and cure. It came from the religious world in which there were offices that were granted as titles with income yet with little if any actual pastoral responsibilities. Since much of true pastoral work biblically must be about “the cure of souls,” a job that takes the pastor into the belly of the problems of the church’s members, and calls for hard work to instruct them for the sake of godliness, such offices without those labors were sinecures. They were notable in title only, without concomitant labors. Jesus called such people “hirelings” in John 10. When the wolf comes, they let the sheep scatter because they do not care for the sheep.

The professing believer himself might find such a moniker fitting, if he bears the lofty and meaningful title of Christian, yet does not labor and bear his own cross as Christ called him to. Christianity is not a sinecure, a position of note without work. Though it is not our work that saves us, we are called to it. It is in the position itself. Note how Paul stated this very point as he describes the purpose of the death of Christ:

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