γεωργός

Καὶ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ γεωργός έστιν. — κατὰ Ὶωάννην 15:1β

kai ho pater mou ho georgos estin. — kata Ioannen 15:1b

“And my Father is the earth-worker.” — John 15:1b, translation mine

Human effort has done much to subdue the world, but many things still grow wild around and inside us. If we are insufficient to the task of saving ourselves and the world, one may well ask how it can be done. Christ reminds us that God is the earth-worker. The compound word γεωργός, comprised of the words γῆ (ge, earth) and ἔργον (ergon, work, task, deed), describes this facet of God's personality.

Jesus makes an incisive point in referring to His Father this way. Man's first job, tending the garden of Eden, was patterned after this aspect of the Father. Yet upon Adam's and Eve's disobedience, God cast them out of Eden, saying, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Gen 3:19, ESV). The earthen man, created to cultivate, became the crop in need of cultivation.

Keenly aware of the longstanding rift between God and man, Isaiah wrote:

Let me sing for my beloved my love song concerning his vineyard: My beloved had a vineyard on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones, and planted it with choice vines; he built a watchtower in the midst of it, and hewed out a wine vat in it; and he looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes.
Isaiah 5:1-2, ESV

After man's expulsion from the garden, God had planted Israel to cultivate her as His chosen people, as choice vines, and to instill His Law in them that they might reflect it before the nations. Israel instead refused His cultivation and turned wild, yielding no good fruit.

Despite this, God in His infinite love and mercy planted Christ, the intercessor who at once incorporates and exceeds the Law given Moses. The Father “saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no one to intercede; then His own arm brought him salvation, and his righteousness upheld Him” (Isaiah 59:16, ESV). Where man failed to obey (Isaiah 59:11-15), Christ did only the will of the Father (John 15:19) and fulfilled the Law in its entirety. Beyond this, Christ accepted the full punishment due men for all time, reconciling man to God and reinstating man in the Father's service if man will repent from his sin and believe in the salvific power of Christ's sacrifice.

For our part, all we can do is accept the gift already given, remembering that God is at work in our earthen natures through His grace. We do not work to earn a wage from God, for we are His adopted sons, not hired hands. Rather, we can accept God's ingrafting into Christ's body, the church, through repentance from sin, baptism into Christ, and confession of faith. Once connected with the vine, we can accept His nourishment by reading His Word, relying on His provision, and responding to Him through prayer. Our will shall thus align with His, and we will more readily accept His pruning, casting off the things that keep us from Him and ridding ourselves of the idols which fail to feed us.