¹¹ To make it your ambition and definitely endeavor to live quietly and peacefully, to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we charged you, 

¹² So that you may bear yourselves becomingly and be correct and honorable and command the respect of the outside world, being dependent on nobody [self-supporting] and having need of nothing.

– 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12Amplified Bible (AMP)

When people consider the sin of slothfulness, they usually do so from a Proverbs perspective. The many verses regarding laziness in Proverbs detail the individual consequences of the sin. In short, the lesson is this: work hard and you’ll be blessed with what you need, but be lazy and you can expect to suffer want. The New Testament mirrors this message in passages like 2 Thessalonians 3:10, but it also brings another point to bear – if you are slothful, you hinder your ability to reach others for Christ.

As 1 Thessalonians 4:12 states, hard work and self-sufficiency will earn the respect of the lost as well as the saved. When lost people respect you, they will be more prone to listen to you when you share the Good News of Christ. For example, an evangelist once spoke at our church, and during his sermon he related this story:

I was visiting a church and the pastor told me about a recent convert to his congregation. There was a businessman the church had been praying for, and the pastor had made several attempts to reach him with the Gospel. The man had always resisted, but one day a small group of saved businessmen paid the fellow a visit. Before they left, the unsaved man trusted Christ, and he told his new brethren why he finally believed.

“The message didn’t mean anything to me coming from the pastor,” he said. “It’s his job to tell others about God. But you guys are like me – you diligently run businesses in the real world – and to see that Jesus is so real to you is what finally made me understand that the Gospel applies to me as well.”

It wasn’t a pastor, a missionary, or an evangelist that won this soul for Christ. It was a small number of businessmen whose diligence in the workplace earned them the respect – and the ear – of a peer.

No sin affects just you. Every sin, including slothfulness, impacts others. If you don’t care that you’ll suffer from your laziness, fine. But care about those you won’t be able to reach because of your sloth. If you struggle with laziness, pray that God will give you the victory over your sin so that you will be better positioned to influence those around you for Christ.