Labor That Is Not Lost

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58, WEB)

After a long and careful argument about resurrection, the longest sustained treatment of it anywhere in his letters, Paul lands the whole thing on a practical word. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. The therefore matters; everything he says about your effort rests on everything he just said about the empty tomb.

The fear that quietly eats at a man in a years-long fight is that all his effort adds up to nothing, that the praying and the confessing and the getting up again are just spinning in place while the same struggle returns. It is a reasonable fear, given how little sometimes seems to change. Paul speaks straight to it. Your labor is not in vain, he says, and he does not offer it as a slogan. He grounds it in the resurrection he has just spent an entire chapter defending. Because Christ is raised, nothing done in him is wasted, including the unseen work of a man refusing to quit on his own soul when no one is watching and nothing feels won.

Steadfast and immovable are the words, and they describe endurance more than they describe victory. Paul is not promising you will feel like you are winning, or that the momentum will finally turn in some week you can point to. He is promising that the standing itself counts, that the effort is being recorded and kept by a God who does not lose things and does not overlook the labor of the tired.

So the morning you drag yourself back to prayer with no feeling and little hope, the morning it seems pointless to try again, that is not a wasted morning. In the Lord it holds weight, real weight, even when you cannot see the weight and feel only the emptiness of the effort. Keep laboring. It is landing somewhere, in his hands, and his hands do not drop what is given to them.

Lord, I have feared that all my trying comes to nothing. Make me steadfast, and let me trust your word that in you my labor is not lost, even the parts I cannot see.