We say Jesus began his ministry at thirty—but the Greek text never says that.
Luke 3:23 reads, “Jesus, when he began, was about thirty years of age…” Most English translations fill in that beginning with the word “ministry.” You’ll find it in the NIV, the ESV, even the Reina Valera in Spanish. But here’s what most people don’t realize: the word “ministry” doesn’t appear in the original Greek. What Luke actually says is much simpler—Jesus was about thirty years old when He began, after His baptism.
Now, I think I get why the translators added the word. After all, it’s right after Jesus is baptized that He starts preaching, teaching, healing, calling disciples. But Jesus’ baptism only marked the beginning of His public ministry.
So we ought to be careful with that kind of language, because it risks giving the impression that the first thirty years of His life didn’t really count for God. As if He were just biding His time in a workshop, waiting for His real ministry to begin.
But Jesus didn’t see life that way—and neither should we.
His Daily Work
You see, the Bible says Jesus was a tekton—a builder (cf. Mark 6:3). Not necessarily a cabinetmaker with sandpaper and dovetail joints, but more likely a laborer—someone who worked with stone, wood, and tools. The kind of man who lifted beams, stacked rocks, and came home with calloused fingers and the armpits of his tunic bleached from sweat and sun.
So let’s imagine for a minute: You step into a time machine and set it for 2,000 years ago. You land in Galilee, on a construction site. And there you see a young man in dusty sandals taking a drink of water. You can tell He’s about twenty-five years old.
You walk over and ask him his name.
He says, “Jesus. From Nazareth.”
And then maybe you ask Him a question. You say, “Jesus, how’s your spiritual life?”
Now at first, that sounds like a pretty good question. The kind of thing Christians might ask each other in the church lobby: “How’s your spiritual life?”
But how do you suppose He’d answer?
Would He say, “Well, if you’re asking if I attend a synagogue–yes, that’s my custom every Sabbath. I even go to the temple at the appointed times and say my prayers before meals and when I go to bed at night. So my spiritual life is good”?
That might be how we’d answer next to the coffee bar at the welcome center.
“The Bible says Jesus was a tekton—a builder. Not necessarily a cabinetmaker with sandpaper and dovetail joints, but more likely a laborer—someone who worked with stone, wood, and tools.”
But I’ve got to think if you asked Jesus that, He might—as He so often does in the Gospels—answer your question with a question of His own. Something like: “What part of my life isn’t spiritual?”
So you try a different angle.
“Okay, Jesus. Are you excited to start your ministry in just a few years?”
And He just chuckles and says, “What makes you think that’s not what I’m already doing?”
The Secular and the Sacred?
You know, for a lot of years, I think I believed the lie that life is fundamentally bifurcated into the secular and the sacred. I just presumed this was how it worked: that “spiritual life” and “ministry” and even “worship” were things you did mostly only on Sundays.
If we’re honest, many of us do treat church like the “spiritual part” of the week—where worship happens, where ministry counts, where we check in with God before heading back to what we call reality on Monday. We praise, we pray, we check the boxes, we take communion like it’s a weekly booster shot.
And real life? That’s working at the courthouse, saluting officers on base, seeing patients, answering phones at the Holiday Inn, teaching in a classroom, climbing poles to fix cable, taking exams, staying home with the kids. I mean, sure: we try to be “good” Christians—watch our language, be kind to strangers, maybe even let someone merge without honking. And we’re always sure to “give a witness” by praying at Applebees. But we don’t think of that as ministry. We don’t think of it as spiritual life.
Somewhere along the way, we started believing that the real ministers are the ones who do public ministry—the ones with titles like “preacher” or “pastor,” the ones who went to Bible college or seminary and got ordained. The rest of us? We’re just trying to get through life and be decent people.
“Somewhere along the way, we started believing that the real ministers are the ones who do public ministry—the ones with titles like “preacher” or “pastor,” the ones who went to Bible college or seminary and got ordained.”
But there are actually a couple of ancient Greek words for that kind of thinking: poppycock and bologna.
It’s simply not true—not according to Scripture. Not according to the gospel.
The Priesthood of All Believers
Here’s what the Bible actually says about the spiritual life and ministry of every believer:
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people.” (1 Peter 2:9-10a ESV)
And the verse does not go on to say, “But that’s only on Sundays when you assemble together as a church for a worship service.” (In fact, calling the gathering a “worship service” is completely alien to the New Testament.)
Every Christian is a priest of the living God—a servant of the Lord Jesus. The kind of worship the Father seeks doesn’t depend on your location or your title. As Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “The hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23, ESV). That means your worship isn’t confined to the GPS coordinates of your church building. It isn’t limited to the pulpit, the communion table, or a Sunday school roster.
God is seeking your worship wherever you are—whether you’re delivering a sermon or delivering Amazon packages, whether you’ve studied biblical languages or struggle to pray aloud in your own native tongue. Every baptized believer carries this calling.
“God is seeking your worship wherever you are—whether you’re delivering a sermon or delivering Amazon packages, whether you’ve studied biblical languages or struggle to pray aloud in your own native tongue.”
The apostle Peter writes, “You have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Peter 1:23, ESV). Just a few verses earlier, he reminds us, “You were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (verses 18–19). That is the ordination of every Christian into ministry—not through human ceremony or religious title, but through the costly grace of Christ.
And Paul makes the same appeal when he writes, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1, ESV). This is not worship reserved for a Sunday morning sanctuary, but a call to offer up your very life—your hands, your labor, your sweat—as an act of ministry every single day.
The Ordinary Becomes Holy
So if worship is all of life, what’s special about the Lord’s Supper?
Let’s be honest—many of us have come to treat it like a ritual checkpoint. I’m not just talking about the now-ubiquitous “rip and sip” kits that appeared during COVID (though I’ve got thoughts about those too). I mean the way we’ve come to think about it. The way the Supper has been quietly separated from the rest of life—as if it’s a brief religious act we perform to stay on God’s good side before Monday morning hits.
But the early church didn’t take it like that.
For one thing, they didn’t meet in formal buildings with pews or stadium seats and pre-packaged plastic cups. They met in homes. And if you read the New Testament with care, it’s pretty clear: the Lord’s Supper wasn’t an isolated or decontextualized ritual tacked onto a liturgy. It wasn’t a symbolic snack but a meal—or at least part of one.
Paul assumes as much in 1 Corinthians 11, where he rebukes the church—not for eating—but for how they were eating: with selfishness, status games, and division. Jude refers to “love feasts” (Jude 12) where believers gathered around shared tables. And Acts 2:42 says the first Christians devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer. The “breaking of bread” wasn’t a liturgical performance. It was dinner. Communion was woven into the fabric of their common life together.
“Communion was woven into the fabric of their common life together.”
When Jesus first instituted the Supper, He and His disciples were in the middle of the Passover meal—a full table likely including lamb, bitter herbs, bread, wine, and other side dishes. And right in the middle of it, He took the most ordinary elements—bread and wine—and gave thanks.
Then He broke the bread and said (I’m paraphrasing), “From now on, this doesn’t just point back to Egypt. This bread doesn’t mean what it used to mean. This is my body. Take and eat in remembrance of me.”
Then He took the cup—the wine already on the table—and said, “This is my blood, poured out for you.”
And notice what He didn’t say:
He didn’t say, “Now I want the professionals to take over from here so this can really count.”
He didn’t hand it to the clergy.
He handed it to fishermen. A tax collector. A zealot. Friends who had often failed Him—and would fail Him again that very night.
He passed the bread to them. He gave the cup to them.
He was saying: You disciples are the priests now. You’re God’s holy nation. You’re the ones who will carry this gospel of mine into a world of darkness. And I’ll go with you, sustaining your ministry, giving you life through my body and blood, through the Spirit.
“He didn’t hand it to the clergy. He handed it to fishermen. A tax collector. A zealot.”
Paul later puts it like this:
“Is not the cup of blessing that we bless a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Corinthians 10:16, ESV)
Paul isn’t waxing metaphorical. He’s saying that something happens in the Supper: koinonia. We aren’t just remembering something ancient. We’re participating in something alive. Someone present. Something that joins us to Christ—and joins us to each other.
Now sure, not all of us have the same role in the church. Some preach. Some shepherd. Some serve in the spotlight. Some do not.
But that’s not the point.
Most of us aren’t trained to give injections at a clinic. We don’t all check baggage at the airport, write code, argue court cases, change brake pads, or rock babies to sleep at 3 a.m.
But all of it—all of it—is ministry when priestly people offer their lives to God as living sacrifices. And that’s because Christ takes what’s common and makes it holy. That’s His ministry. He takes the bread and the wine of your life and says, “This is mine now. Share it in remembrance of me.”
Your Life Ministry
If Jesus didn’t wait until age thirty to start His “real” ministry, and if He didn’t draw a hard line between spiritual life and everyday life—between the Lord’s Supper and a common meal—then neither should we. If the ordinary can be holy, and the common can be consecrated, then we need to rethink how we live our Monday through Saturday.
Because your spiritual life isn’t confined to an auditorium or church “sanctuary.” Your worship isn’t limited to a pinch of bread and sip of juice that you take with other believers. It’s out there, too—in your job, within your home, on your field trip bus.
So let’s get practical.
Here are some ways Scripture calls you to live like a priest of Christ, right where you are.
1. Work as if Working for the Lord—Because You Are
“Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men… You are serving the Lord Christ.” (Colossians 3:23–24 ESV)
I get addressed as “minister” because I preach and get paid for it. But if you’re in Christ, so are you. Scripture doesn’t carve out a special category for church staff. It says: whatever you do, do it for the Lord.
That means your work—your real, paid, ordinary work—matters to God. Not just the part where you pray with a coworker or listen to Christian music in the breakroom. The work itself, with your daily routine and tasks, deadlines and online conference meetings. The way you show up and carry responsibility.
God doesn’t hand out gold stars for being visible in a pulpit. He’s “no respecter of persons” (Act. 10:34, KJV). He looks for faithfulness, wherever it appears. So do your job—no matter your calling—like He’s the one watching—because He is. The word of God is clear: “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
“It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
2. Offer Your Whole Life to God—Not Just the Churchy Stuff
“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God—which is your spiritual worship.” (Romans 12:1 ESV)
Under the old covenant, God’s people approached the Lord’s presence through the temple—through the veil, the altar, the priest. They had to travel to the tabernacle or the temple to draw near to Him. But now, the veil has been torn (Matthew 27:51). The final sacrifice has been offered (Hebrews 10:12). And the temple of God? That’s you. You are where the Spirit dwells.
Again, Paul says, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1, ESV). That means your actual, physical life—your body, your hands, your calendar, your paycheck, your fatigue, your work, your presence in the lives of others.
When you sit for hours with a friend whose spouse has left and the family is unraveling…
When you choose integrity at work—even when no one’s watching and the productivity AI isn’t tracking your clicks or movements…
When you bounce a crying baby on your knee and wonder if all you’re doing is distracting everyone around you trying to hear the sermon…
That’s not a distraction from worship. That is worship.
Because God isn’t just watching what happens up front during the service on Sunday morning. He doesn’t dwell in buildings made by human hands (Acts 17:24). He’s dwelling in you—and receiving the offering of your life.
“He doesn’t dwell in buildings made by human hands. He’s dwelling in you—and receiving the offering of your life.”
3. Let Your Light Shine—Right Where You Are
“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16, ESV)
Ministry isn’t about doing something different. But it is about doing what you do—differently. The world is watching. Not necessarily to scrutinize your failures, but to see whether your life carries the aroma of a priest offering sacrifice before the presence of God.
When you show patience while others snap…when you stay honest while others cut corners…when you serve joyfully instead of bitterly—that’s your light. And it shines bright. You really are the light of the world, Jesus says. You may never preach a sermon. But with a life like that, you’re illuminating the gospel all the same.
And the point is, in Christ, whatever we do in His name becomes holy.
Just like the meal of bread and wine that disciples take in Christ’s memory.
“In Christ, whatever we do in His name becomes holy. Just like the meal of bread and wine that disciples take in Christ’s memory.”
Bringing Everything to the Table
The bread and the cup are ordinary things. But Christ rescues the ordinary and gives it new meaning. He takes what’s common and makes it sacred. And in the same way, He takes our lives—our work, our homes, our gifts—and draws them into His own ministry.
That’s what the Lord’s Supper table reminds us of. That everyone who takes the bread and this cup is an equal participant in the life of Christ. Doesn’t matter your language, your background, your résumé. Whether you sweep floors, run a business, teach algebra, or change diapers—your life has been caught up into something spiritual. Something holy. Something that belongs to God on Monday morning. Tuesday afternoon stuck in traffic. Thursday when you’ve hit the wall. And Friday when the work week is done.
Not just when you feel religious.
Christ brings it all to the table.
Your ministry has already begun.
