Planning for a Biblical Retirement

During our most recent Wednesday night prayer meeting we had a discussion on retirement. Retirement is such an expected and anticipated part of our lives today that I wonder how many truly think about the issue from a critical, biblical perspective.

Although the Bible doesn't address the issue directly, we discussed two important biblical themes that should guide our thinking on this issue.

1. God created us to work. Genesis 1:26-28 (the creation mandate) gave mankind a task. In Genesis 2:5-9, God placed Adam in the garden to work it, to keep it, and in so doing, to fulfill his part of the creation mandate. So we are created with work in mind.
2. The other pertinent biblical truth comes from passages like Hebrews 11:8-10. God's people (the people of faith who belong to God's Kingdom) are people who live in this world for the world to come. God's people do not spend their lives now living for themselves. God's people live for the resurrection. They can suffer today, struggle today, and even want today, all looking to tomorrow when God makes all things new.

Therefore, combining those two important strands together, we came up with three principles for thinking about retirement:

1. If God created us to work, the only thing that should stop us from working is the lack of physical ability.
   1. Our physical abilities fade and deteriorate as a result of the curse. The curse interferes with our ability to fulfill God’s creation mandate. That makes sense and is reasonable. We shouldn’t like it, but we should acknowledge that there will be a time when we cannot work because of the effect of the curse on our bodies, and we should humbly submit to that in anticipation of glory and new, strengthened bodies.
   2. However, other than our diminished physical abilities, nothing should prevent us from working. If we just can’t wait to quit working, we need to ask ourselves why? Why do we want to stop working so badly? And what are we wanting to quit working for? What are we going to do? If the desire in our heart is just to be done working because we hate to work, then we're denying the creation purposes of God (that's sin).
   3. So in thinking about retirement, we want to first ask: do we long to retire because we hate work and want to be done with it?
      
2. Second principle – do we long to retire, or do we plan to retire, so that we can focus on ourselves, indulge ourselves, and give ourselves the finer things?
   1. Here’s the problem with that: as we learned from Hebrews, God’s people do not live to indulge themselves today. This life is not a time of indulging and fattening and laying around in a lazy boy with a remote permanently glued to my hand.
   2. That kind of life is saying, “Hey, I only get one shot at this and I need to get my enjoyment in today. I need to get my pleasures in today.”
   3. The New Testament says, “Deny yourself.” Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me in my death.” God says, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.”
   4. The disciple of Christ lives in this world as a stranger and alien, spending himself or herself for the cause of Christ all the way to death. A faithful Christian does not slow down in his/her pursuit of the Kingdom of God as he/she approaches death. That's akin to a runner giving up as he approaches the finish line. That's ridiculous!
   5. God forbid we give up working so we can focus on building our own kingdoms and fattening our flesh when God says that the days are short, he is coming back, and millions are preparing to perish eternally.
      
3. Third Principle - retirement could be great. There’s a way that retirement could actually be quite glorious. It could be that if and only if it wasn’t really retirement at all, but rather simply a changing from devoting yourself from one work to another.
   1. Giving up isn’t an option. Saying, “Well, I’ve put in my time, now it’s time to live for myself” is perhaps damnable.
   2. But a Christian, hotly pursuing the advance of God’s Kingdom, passionately desiring to finish life strong, could easily say, “I’ve planned for and saved enough money so that at this point in my life, I could give up this source of income and not be a burden to anyone else (if you can't say that, retirement is not an option) so I’m finally able now to devote all my energies to promoting the Kingdom of God. I’m going to give up this place of work for that kind of work."
   3. That would be quite glorious! What a way to finish strong.
   4. Of course, a Christian doesn’t have to do that. Just like Paul said to the former thieves, a Christian could keep on working well beyond what he or she “needs” in order to give radically to those in need.

So there it is. When you get to that point in your life where you have the financial means to provide for your necessities the rest of your life (assuming you’re still physically capable) you have a decision to make: do I continue here at this place and in this way so as to make more to give away and serve other brothers and sisters, or do I leave here and pursue more time consuming ministries and missions which I was unable to heretofore because of my time commitments at the job place? That’s the decision. Not, Do I quit or do I keep going? But just where do I keep going.