Introduction
As we have looked at the grand story of work, God’s work in all creation, we see God’s design and vision for work (to go into the “wild and waste” and bring “order and beauty”), we see how humans ruined work (the environment of work is now made more difficult by sin), and the seed of hope for redemption (Genesis 3:15). We looked briefly at where all of this is headed in new creation (Revelation 22). So what is our part in all of this? How do we see our work within this context and story?
God’s design for work is turning the “wild and waste” into “order and beauty.”
Revelation 21:1-5a (ESV)
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”
We want to see our work and labor matter, and they only matter within the context of the biblical story and discipleship to Jesus.
The Resurrection Changes Our Work
1 Corinthians 15:1-8 (ESV)
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you— unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
1 Corinthians 15:12-13, 17-22 (ESV)
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised… And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
If there is no resurrection of the dead and Christ wasn’t raised from the dead, then he is just another victim of sin and evil and death. That has been the fate of all humans, that is not a new story. What makes the gospel good news and a game changer and reorients your view of the world is what seems inevitable is not inevitable anymore. What seemed like the last word: death, as a result of sin and evil, is no longer the last word.
1 Corinthians 15:18-22 (ESV)
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
If you have the worldview that God created the earth separate from heaven and then we ruined it, and that God came to earth in Jesus so that those who look to him fro forgiveness can go to heaven when you die, and one day God will just wipe it all off the map, then much of what Scripture is revealing to us won’t make any sense. If this is your worldview, it will lead you to a dead-end in thinking about work in a Christian way. Essentially, whatever your work has no future. You hit the grave, and boom, you fly away and your work will not last. Many just think of heaven as one big vacation. If this is how you see God’s world and work, it is not what Scripture teaches us. We need to rethink all of this in accordance with the Scriptures.
The story of the Bible begins with earth and heaven overlapping and unified. It portrays the image of the garden where God and man take afternoon strolls in the afternoon at the breezy time of day. The vision is that God’s space and man’s space completely overlap, and one with each other. God commissions the humans to work and flourish in spreading the garden into the rest of creation and for the benefit of others, into the formless and void to bring order and beauty. But God gives the humans a choice as to how they will go about doing their work: will they trust and depend on God’s definition of good in the exercise of their moral judgment, or will they seize that power for themselves, defining good and bad on their own terms? They choose rebellion.
Because of man’s sin, the “age of sin and death” begins, subjecting the world to corruption and brokenness and darkness. But God cannot be fully pushed out of His creation. Even though mankind tries to create little pockets of autonomy, God is still at work and is presently working for His ultimate will. The storyline of the Bible climaxes with God reclaiming and redeeming His world in Christ Jesus. In Christ, God takes into Himself the sin and death at the cross. At the cross, Jesus absorbs all of the sin and evil of the serpent and takes it into death with Him.
His resurrection means that sin and death do not have the final word, but that God’s realm of Life is now accessible in the world of death. What the resurrection of Jesus enables is a slow, partial moving forward of this reclaiming and redemption of God’s world. Jesus’ prayer He gave us is for His kingdom to come and His will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” We are asking God to take over more of us, to absorb the pain and the sin and evil and my selfishness, so that more and more of my life could be taken over by heaven. We are called to take more and more of God’s redemptive work into our lives, taking the wild wasteland’s of our hearts and lives and transforming them to goodness, and allow that work to flow into the totality of our lives, including our work.
If this is the story, what is the meaning of our work as Christians? Work is something that we do in the present age, but we are working for Jesus and working for an “inheritance.” Somehow, when I work in the present for Jesus, I am making a contribution to the world that is to come.
1 Corinthians 15:49-50 (ESV)
Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
The world compromised by sin and death as we experience it now cannot inherit the new world to come without a profound transformation. God does not scrap this world or our bodies, but transforms it all at a fundamental level, like Jesus’ resurrection.
1 Corinthians 15:51-57 (ESV)
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.
What he is saying is that because of the cross and the resurrection, we do not believe in vain, nor do we live in vain. Jesus is the first fruits of the resurrection of the dead, the first human that sin and death do not have any sway over anymore. If I humble myself, turning to Jesus, surrendering to Him, and I grab onto Him, what becomes true of Him becomes true of me. That becomes the basis for my hope. There are parts of me that need to die at the cross with Jesus if I am to become the fully alive human God wants me to be. We can make progress in this transformation in this life by allowing Him, but His grace, to transform us. But one day, we will be completely changed and transformed. This isn’t just for individuals, but for all of creation being fundamentally transformed.
What is our response to such an incredible possibility?
1 Corinthians 15:58 (ESV)
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.
This means that your workplace, the people you work with, the kinds of contributions you make to the world, somehow moves God’s kingdom plan of transformation forward and lasts into the new creation.
There are two modes of working: one is just to go to work and go through the motions, working with the same mindset as everyone else. There is no future in this mode of working. The second is to recognize your work done in the Lord, that work is not in vain. That work will somehow make it into the world to come.
If I belong to Jesus, I do not belong to myself. Our work is to be an expression of our gratitude to the one who gave Himself for me. What kind of work qualifies as working for the Lord?
That’s what we will look at next weekend when we look at Colossians 3 and how we work for Jesus.
COLOSSIANS!!!!!!!!