Today, we’ll be looking at some hard things. Things that may challenge our assumptions, expose our weaknesses, and call us to a deeper level of examination. This is not intended to condemn, but to illuminate; not intended to discourage, but to encourage, not to tear down, but to till up the soil of our hearts. As we approach this difficult topic, let us do so with humility and an open heart, ready to hear what the Lord is saying to the church
Today we come to the sin of sloth.
For most people, the animal is what first comes to mind when we think of sloth. This animal is humorous, isn’t it? To say it’s slow is an understatement. It seems oblivious, unaware, and obtuse to all going on around it. As humorous as this animal might be, and as humorous as the sloth character in the Zootopia movie might be, when the sin of sloth comes into view all humor vanishes, as we come face to face with a deadly sin.
Thus, we have a great need before us today to define the nature of sloth, so that we would understand it, hate it, and be encouraged to fight it. Throughout the Bible you will be hard pressed to find a single passage that does all of this, but you will find that a single book in the Bible mentions the topic of sloth a lot, and that is the book of Proverbs. So, go ahead and open to Proverbs and be prepared to jump around a bit.
As you’re turning there let me briefly tell you something of the book of Proverbs. This book is a collection of wise sayings from many different people. Its aim is to teach and lead people to, not just any wisdom, but true wisdom that begins with the fear of the Lord. In this light the book of Proverbs contrasts the wise man with the foolish man and shows us how life works best in relation to God and how He made the world. In this way Proverbs isn’t like many other books in the Bible, because it isn’t a book of promises or commands or rules but more a book that tells us general truths. By doing this Proverbs is all about forming us to be the kind of person who embraces what is wise.
There are many more things we could say about Proverbs, but that’ll do for now. If you want to dive deeper come see me and we can do that together. Let’s turn to our subject at hand.
Defining Sloth
Sloth has been defined a bit differently throughout history.[1] One of the first to define this vice was an Egyptian monk named Evagrius on Pontus (345-399). He defined sloth with the Greek word acedia which means ‘a lack of care.’ Later on a theologian named John Cassian (360-435) defined acedia a laziness stemming from a restless unstable soul. Pope Gregory the Great (540-604) picked this up next and described acedia as laziness as well but added that it is a symptom of deep melancholy. Finally, it was Thomas Aquinas who defined acedia as a sadness of soul that leads to an unwillingness to do what love requires.
This shows us that sloth has been seen throughout history as a deadly vice that causes us to be so lazy that we no longer care about ourselves or our neighbors, and because we innately know we should care about these things we grow sad because we know we’re not living as we ought to, and from being sad we grow into a deep melancholy and restlessness of soul that feels busy but never arrives at hard work or peace of mind.
The book of Proverbs shows us much of this. But Proverbs mainly teaches on sloth by putting a case study before us in the person of the sluggard.
Let’s begin in Prov. 6:11-16. There we read, “Go to the ant, O sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise. Without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and want like an armed man.”
Here the sluggard is being compared to the ant. In v6-8 the ant is described as having no chief or ruler but nonetheless it takes the initiative and works hard and enjoys much benefit from that. This is exactly what the sluggard doesn’t do. He does nothing, starts nothing, and so he completes nothing. It follows in v9-11 that the sluggard is warned that his idleness and lazy living will end in a poverty that will surprise him like a robber, even though everyone else can see it coming.
Next go to Prov. 10:26, “Like vinegar to the teeth and smoke to the eyes, so is the sluggard to those who send him.” By mentioning how bothersome and irritating vinegar is to teeth and smoke is to eyes, the sluggard is said to be as bothersome to others. Why are they bothersome? Because they don’t help, they don’t contribute, and they don’t benefit to anything around them. By relying on others for everything they show themselves to be unreliable.
This leads naturally to what we find in Prov. 12:24. There we read, “The hand of the diligent will rule, while the slothful will be put to forced labor.” In other words, because the sluggard is who he is, he won’t be trusted to lead anything in life. Instead he will be forced to work and labor for others who are more diligent.
So what have seen so far? The sluggard shows no initiative, does no hard work, is idle, lazy, enjoys no benefit from labor, is bothersome to others, and will be ruled over by those more diligent. The life of the sluggard is not what life is meant to be.
Next in the list is two passages that display the irrational sad state of the sluggard. In Prov. 22:13 we read, “The sluggard says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!”
What is this? Well here the sluggard is speaking, actually that’s the only thing the sluggard seems to do. And when he speaks he tells of a lion in the street. Now, lions were a real danger in the ancient world, we see many people in the OT have encounters with lions. But all of those encounters were either with caged lions or lions out in the middle of nowhere. It would’ve been very unlikely to see a lion just walking down the street in a crowded area because of how populated those areas were. Also, cities had walls back then to keep out all kinds of things, from enemies to wild animals. Yet, what does the sluggard say? “There is a lion outside! I shall be killed in the streets!” What is he saying? Is his fear possible? Yes. Is it likely? Not in a million years! It’s a hoax, a lie, an invention of his own making. In reality, there’s no lion in the street. This is, as many have said, the sluggard’s imaginary lion. We already know he doesn’t want to work at all, so here he invents a convenient reason just for the purpose of keeping himself comfortable…that is seemingly so urgent that his own life is at stake.
And more so, there is evidence the sluggard stayed comfortable, for far too long. In Prov. 26:13 we read, “The sluggard says, “There is a lion in the road! There is a lion in the streets!” Now we see the sluggard is still telling the same tall tale. Listen what Charles Spurgeon says on this sluggard, “The Sluggard has waited because of that one lion so long that now he believes that there are two lions…He said that he would have waited for a more convenient or safe season, but where is it? It was inconvenient then because there was a lion. Is it more convenient now? Not at all, for now there are two lions! That is always the result of waiting: procrastination never profits; its difficulties always double, and its dangers only thicken.”
How sad is this sluggard? Look further at the verses that follow, Prov. 26:14-16, “As a door turns on its hinges, so does a sluggard on his bed. The sluggard buries his hand in the dish; it wears him out to bring it back to his mouth. The sluggard is wiser in his own eyes than seven men who can answer sensibly.”
As grim as this picture is becoming, we’re not done, there’s more to top all of this off. Prov. 13:4 will come last because it makes such a large contribution, “The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing, while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.” Often we tend to think of the sluggard as one who has no desires in life, but here we find the opposite. The sluggard has great and large desires, pursuits they crave as this verse speaks of. But what happens with these desires and pursuits? Nothing, because they don’t ever act on them. So the sluggard deeply desires the things that hard work will bring, but he is unwilling to work, resulting in anger and bitter distress of soul. These desires pile up in him creating a massive heap of unfulfilled longings in the soul, which ends up weighing him down to the point where he just gives up. Because of all the unmet and unfulfilled desires heaped up in him, now we learn that the life of the sluggard is a life full of pain. And Prov. 21:25 shows us the end of the story, “The desire of the sluggard kills him…”
Ultimately the lazy, restless, idle, bothersome, unfulfilled, empty, and painful life of the slothful sluggard will end in death. What a tragic waste of a life. This is why sloth is among the deadly sins, and this is why it is so dangerous.
Church, time for a hard question. Do you recognize the sluggard in you? Are you slothful? Is your life characterized by laziness, restlessness, or idleness? Do you avoid doing what you need to due to some unrealistic fear? Do you have a pile of unfulfilled desires in you? Remember that book you wanted to read and never started? Remember that small group you wanted to start going to but never have? Remember that person you really wanted to meet with to encourage them but never found the time?
Church, sloth affects us all to varying degrees. This is the problem. What then is the needed medicine to correct slothful souls? Let’s look at that now…
Correcting Sloth (1 Cor. 15:10)
So how do we correct the sin of sloth? The answer I want to give you today is a simple one, but maybe one you aren’t expecting because of how simple it is. The medicine for a slothful heart is…work. But I don’t mean just a put your head down and get it done mentality, I mean work as in a grace fueled effort.
Listen to what Paul says in 1 Cor. 15:9-10, “…by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
Herein lies the remedy to our sloth.
Paul knew himself, he knew he didn’t deserve the grace shown to him. In fact, he knew himself so well that he confessed everything good thing in his life was solely due to God’s grace. Before this in v8 he calls himself one untimely born. In v9 he calls himself the least of all the apostles because he persecuted the Church of God. This all leads to v10 where he says, “…by the grace of God I am what I am.” I’m sure a modern therapist would believe Paul displays all the signs of having low self-esteem. I disagree. I would not only affirm his words here, I would add that we all need to be able to say the same about ourselves, and we can’t truly say this as long as we believe that who we have become is because of our own work, effort, and ability. Paul never preaches the gospel of self-improvement, no. Paul’s gospel, the true gospel, is a call to come to the end of ourselves in order to become someone entirely new.
Notice that v10 places two massive realities before us. It places the reality of grace before us as well as the reality of hard work. But notice how Paul says what he says here, how these two realities of grace and work relate to each other. He says “By the grace of God I am what I am.” So Paul admits freely that he is what is only by the grace of God and not by his own hard work. But see what God’s grace in Paul leads to? It leads to hard work! “His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them…” And this isn’t all he says, he freely admits once again that even this hard work of his doesn’t come from him, but comes from grace, “…though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
So, for Paul, living life in God’s grace…given to him in the gospel…looks like working hard for the gospel. See that? Paul got grace and got to work! Church, is that you? If you’ve received the grace of God, you need to know that grace isn’t given in vain, no, God’s grace leads to a new life that’s characterized by hard work.
This hard work is the remedy for the sluggard, it’s the means by which all his unfulfilled desires can actually be met. The good news for the sluggard is not that he or she must do something. The good news for the sluggard is that something has already been done. The sluggard looks at good things and the hard work required to get them and responds by saying “meh.” Not Jesus. The eternal Son of God looked at the hardest thing, becoming man, living sinlessly, dying as a substitute for sinners, He looked at that and said, “With My Father’s and the Spirit’s help, I can do that.”
This gospel is good news for the sluggard, because Jesus has already done the hard thing for us, and once the slothful soul sees that and is changed by that they will feel a new willingness to do hard things for the One who bore the cross for them. The sluggard doesn’t need more discipline, the sluggard doesn’t need to just stop being lazy, the sluggard needs the gospel! And from getting the gospel and being a recipient of such grace, the sluggard will be changed by that grace, made new by that grace, and the hard work they once feared and avoided now becomes a joy and a pleasure.
Yet, I fear you’ll misunderstand this. Thinking that I’m merely objectifying my subjective preferences. I am up early, I do love the structured life, the disciplined life, am I merely telling you to all be like me? Well, if 1 Cor. 15:10 weren’t in the Bible you’d be right, but is…so you’re wrong.
I also fear that my generation has told you many lies about this hard work. Most everyone in my generation writes books, not on the theme of hard work and discipline, but on the nature of burn out and working too much. I feel we’ve lost track somewhere along the way. The only modern author I’ve seen to write a comprehensive overview on the danger of sloth and the pursuit of diligence, is a South Korean author Nam Joon Kim. We need to learn from our Korean friends in this.
How do we put this into practice? Two steps.
Step one: repent from sloth. Sloth abounds in the Church today. “Sluggards, sluggards everywhere!” We must own it and admit that we are a slothful generation, scrolling ourselves to death. We have much to repent of and much we need to turn away from. I know most of your schedules are already filled to the brim, but I fear our schedules betray us, revealing our hearts true affections because busy as we may be, what kind of busyness controls our schedules? Worldly endeavors, worldly lifestyles, worldly accomplishments, or worldly pursuits? At the end of his life Paul said he felt like he had been poured out like a drink offering…while most of our lives are aimed at increasing comfort until the end. This is deep in us. We need to take it to the Lord, confess it, and ask Him for help in turning away from it.
Step two: pursue hard work. Rest in gospel grace yes, but learn anew what gospel grace leads to. Church, if you’re not wearing out for the kingdom in the sphere where God has placed you, you haven’t got grace, or you haven’t understood the grace you’ve been given. Puritan Thomas Manton once said, “Everlasting joys will not drop into the mouths of the lazy soul; these things are not trifles, they will cost us diligence and seriousness.”[2]
Pursue hard work in prayer.
Pursue hard work in the Word.
Pursue hard work where God has placed you.
If you do this, life will be hard, you’ll have many highs and lows, but you’ll live a full life, and it won’t be wasted.
Conclusion:
Hear these words from 2 Peter 1:5-9, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.”
[1] Trent Casto, From Sloth to Diligence, The Death of the Deadly Sins: Embracing the Virtues that Transform Lives, ed. Daniel M. Doriani (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2025) 106.
[2] Thomas Manton, quoted in Casto, The Death of the Deadly Sins, 115.
