I Call It Doing A Favor

You finished the job, they paid you, and on the way home you described it to yourself as doing somebody a favor.

You do it out loud too. Oh, I did him a favor. I helped her out with it. I sorted it for them. And then the money went into the account, at the agreed figure, for work that took you most of a day.

The favor word is doing something to you and I want to name it, because it is not generosity. A favor is unpaid by definition. The moment money is agreed, it is trade, and trade is an honest word that the Bible uses constantly without once lowering its voice.

And you are not confused. You know what happened. You wrote it in the book. You just cannot say it without softening it.

I am not going to tell you to value yourself more. I am going to talk about what happens to a man who keeps describing paid work as a gift, because it has a cost and the cost is not in the money.

Faithful in a small thing

There is a line of Jesus about small amounts and small jobs, and it is usually quoted at people about money. Read it the other way for a minute.

He is talking about what it means to be trusted, and He says something that puts weight on the smallest thing a person does.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10, King James Version)

You are being trusted with something real, and the size of it has never once decided whether it counts. Luke 16:10 puts the least and the much on the same scale and refuses to treat the small job as a lesser category, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a porch handover with a wallet coming out.

Notice what that does to the word favor. If the least thing a man does is the measure of how he handles everything, then there is no such thing as a job too small to be called a job.

The chair you repaired yesterday is not a favor with money attached. It is work, and the verse treats it as the same substance as the largest thing you will ever do.

You have been doing the thing Scripture calls being faithful, and it has never once been a lesser thing for being small. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a saying about stewardship land on a man carrying a chair out to a porch, and Luke 16:10 holds the least and the much together without any difference in seriousness between them.

What the soft word takes away

Let me say what the favor word is actually for, and it is not kindness.

It is cover. A favor cannot be done badly, because nothing was promised. A favor cannot be late. A favor cannot be complained about, and a favor cannot be reviewed. While it is a favor, you are untouchable, and you have arranged that without ever deciding to.

You were shielding yourself from a standard, and you have never once needed to hide from one. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own softened word has been arranging, and the written word puts faithfulness in the least thing on the same footing as faithfulness in much in Luke 16:10.

And look at what it takes away in exchange. If it was a favor then the payment was charity, which means somebody was being kind to you rather than buying something from you. Every time you use that word you turn a customer into a benefactor and yourself into somebody being carried.

That is not humility. It is a worse position than the one you are actually in.

You are not being carried by these people and you never were. His Spirit is the one who puts a man back on his own feet about his own trade, and Luke 16:10 describes being entrusted with a small thing as the very thing God is watching, rather than as something to apologize for.

Work, and the price of it

So here is the change, and it happens in one sentence at the end of a job.

Say what it was and what it cost. I have sorted the hinge and the leg, and that is the figure we said. Flat, friendly, no jokes either side of it.

You are able to let a payment be a payment, and taking it has never once been the same as taking something. Luke 16:10 makes the smallest piece of work a matter of faithfulness rather than of favors, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain closing sentence possible for a man who has always mumbled the end of one.

You will want to add something. Most men do. No rush with it. Whenever suits. Do not worry about it.

Leave all of that out. It is not generosity, it is an escape hatch, and it makes the other person awkward rather than comfortable.

You were never required to make a customer comfortable about paying you, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a plain word past the instinct to apologize for a price, and the written word treats the least job as the measure of a man in Luke 16:10 without softening a syllable of it.