Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Your Labor Is Not in Vain
1 Corinthians 15:58
58 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. · WEB
The most abstract argument in the letter ends with a reason to keep working on Monday.
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.
The therefore is doing the work of the whole chapter. Fifty-seven verses about witnesses, seeds, Adams, bodies and a trumpet arrive at three imperatives and a reason, and none of the three is contemplative.
Be steadfast, immovable — the two words are nearly synonymous and both mean stay put, which is a pointed thing to say to a congregation that had been shifting between parties and had let a new doctrine in through bad company 1 Corinthians 1:12 1 Corinthians 15:33. Then always abounding in the Lord's work, which is the opposite instruction: not merely holding position but overflowing in activity. Immovable in conviction, restless in work.
And the reason is aimed precisely at the word the chapter has been using against them. In vain has sounded four times in these verses — their faith would be in vain, the preaching in vain, the apostles false witnesses, believers most pitiable 1 Corinthians 15:14 1 Corinthians 15:17 1 Corinthians 15:19. That was the world without a resurrection. Here the same word is answered: your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
The logic runs directly against the motto Paul had quoted a few verses earlier. If the dead are not raised, let's eat and drink, for tomorrow we die 1 Corinthians 15:32 — and everything anyone builds is temporary. If they are raised, then work done for God has a future, and the smallest of it survives. The resurrection is not offered here as a consolation for the dying but as the reason a living person's effort counts.
Which is characteristic of this letter from beginning to end. Every doctrine in it is deployed to change a behavior — the cross against faction, the indwelling Spirit against immorality, the body of Christ against contempt for other members, and now an empty tomb against the suspicion that any of it matters. The last words of the argument are in the Lord, which is where the labor is done and where it is kept.
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