Our work in the Lord is not in vain

This text is chosen to help us think about the year ahead and the work that the Lord has given us to do. 1 Cor 15:50-58
“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”
As we begin a new year, 2026, there are often mixed emotions. In a way the new year is exciting. New opportunities and adventures. Another feeling however might be wondering what’s the point, is anything truly worth working for or caring about, after all this year is probably not going to be much different from years gone by, and at the end of this year there will be another, and another – 2027, 2028, 2029. It all just continues. We might wonder “how long before the Lord returns?” We might become like the preacher in Ecclesiastes.
“What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? …What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.”

Here Paul reminds us that “our work in the Lord is not in vain.” As such we are to be “steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord.” Paul gives at least two reasons why our work in the Lord is not in vain.
1) Because death has no victory over us. And as such all our good work, our kingdom building work, our love thy neighbour work is not lost at death but is retained, remembered, rewarded, and built upon.
And 2) because death has no sting. Because wrath and sin are removed from death, and therefore we are free from all judgment and are justified by grace. This means that our works before God truly do please Him, because they come to him not as from a criminal before a judge, but as a child before a Father.
Let us do as Paul instructs “be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.”