Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Corinthians 15:58

"Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord." — 1 Corinthians 15:58 (ASV)

Therefore, my beloved brethren. In view of the great and glorious truths that have been revealed to us regarding the resurrection, Paul closes this entire important discussion with an exhortation to that firmness in the faith that should result from truths so glorious, and from hopes so elevated as these truths are suited to impart. The exhortation is so plain that it needs little explanation; it so obviously follows from the argument Paul pursued that there is little need to attempt to enforce it.

Be ye steadfast. edraioi, from edra. Seated, sedentary (Robinson); perhaps with an allusion to a statue (Bloomfield); or perhaps to wrestling, and to standing one's ground (Wolf). Whatever the allusion may be, the sense is clear. Be firm, strong, confident in the faith, in view of the truth that you will be raised up. Do not be shaken or agitated by strife, temptations, and the cares of life. Be fixed in the faith, and do not let the power of sin, or the sophistry of pretended philosophy, or the arts of the enemy of the soul, seduce you from the faith of the gospel.

Unmoveable. Firm, fixed, stable, unmoved. This is probably a stronger expression than the former, though meaning substantially the same thing—that we are to be firm and unshaken in our Christian hopes and in our faith in the gospel.

Always abounding in the work of the Lord. Always engaged in doing the will of God, in promoting His glory, and advancing His kingdom. The phrase means not only to be engaged in this, but to be engaged diligently, laboriously, excelling in this. The "work of the Lord" here means that which the Lord requires: all the appropriate duties of Christians. Paul exhorts them to practice every Christian virtue and to do all that they could do to further the gospel among men.

Forasmuch as ye know. Greek, Knowing. You know it by the arguments that have been urged for the truth of the gospel, by your deep conviction that that gospel is true.

Your labour is not in vain. It will be rewarded. It is not as if you were to die and never live again. There will be a resurrection, and you will be suitably recompensed then. What you do for the honor of God will not only be accompanied by an approving conscience and happiness here, but will be met with the glorious and eternal rewards of heaven.

In the Lord. This probably means, "Your labor or work in the Lord—that is, in the cause of the Lord—will not be in vain." And the sentiment of the whole verse is that the hope of the resurrection and of future glory should stimulate us to great and self-denying efforts in honor of Him who has revealed that doctrine and who graciously purposes to reward us there. Other men are influenced and excited to great efforts by the hope of honor, pleasure, or wealth. Christians should be excited to toil and self-denial by the prospect of immortal glory and by the assurance that their hopes are not in vain and will not deceive them.

Thus closes this chapter of inimitable beauty and of unequaled power of argumentation. Such is the prospect that is before the Christian. He will indeed die like other men. But his death is a sleep—a calm, gentle, undisturbed sleep, in the expectation of being awakened again to a brighter day (1 Corinthians 15:6).

He has the assurance that his Savior rose, and that his people will therefore also rise (1 Corinthians 15:12–20). He encounters peril, privation, and persecution; he may be ridiculed and despised; he may be subjected to danger, or doomed to fight with wild beasts, or to contend with men who resemble wild beasts; he may be doomed to the pains and terrors of martyrdom at the stake; but he has the assurance that all these are temporary, and that before him there is a world of eternal glory (1 Corinthians 15:29–32).

He may be poor, unhonored, and apparently without an earthly friend or protector, but his Savior and Redeemer reigns (1 Corinthians 15:25). He may be opposed by wicked men, his name slandered, his body tortured, and his peace marred, but his enemies will all be subdued (1 Corinthians 15:26–27).

He will himself die and sleep in his grave, but he will live again (1 Corinthians 15:22–23). He has painful proof that his body is corruptible, but it will be incorruptible; that it is now vile, but it will be glorious; that it is weak, frail, feeble, but it will yet be strong and no more subject to disease or decay (1 Corinthians 15:42–43).

And he will be brought under the power of death, but death will be robbed of its honors and despoiled of its triumph. Its sting is taken from the saint, and it is changed to a blessing. It is now not the dreaded monster, the king of terrors; it is a friend that comes to remove him from a world of toil to a world of rest, from a life of sin to a life of glory.

The grave is not to him the gloomy abode, the permanent resting-place of his body; it is a place of rest for a little time, welcome as a bed of down to a weary frame, where he may lie down and repose after the fatigues of the day and gently wait for the morning.

He has nothing to fear in death; nothing to fear in the dying pang, the gloom, the chill, the sweat, the paleness, the fixedness of death; nothing to fear in the chill, the darkness, the silence, the corruption of the grave. All this is on the way to immortality and is closely and indissolubly connected with immortality (1 Corinthians 15:55–57).

And in view of all this, we should be patient, faithful, laborious, self-denying; we should engage with zeal in the work of the Lord; we should calmly wait until our change comes (1 Corinthians 15:58). No other system of religion has any such hopes as this; no other system does anything to dispel the gloom or drive away the horrors of the grave.

How foolish is the one who rejects the gospel—the only system that brings life and immortality to light! How foolish to reject the doctrine of the resurrection and to lie down in the grave without peace, without hope, without any belief that there will be a world of glory, living without God and dying like an animal.

And yet infidelity seeks and claims its chief triumphs in the attempt to convince poor dying mortals that they have no solid ground of hope, that the universe is "without a Father and without a God;" that the grave terminates the career of humanity forever, and that in the grave they sink away to eternal annihilation.

Strange that people should seek such degradation! Strange that all people, conscious that they must die, do not at once greet Christianity as their best friend and hail the doctrine of the future state and of the resurrection as that which is adapted to meet the deeply-felt evils of this world, to fill the desponding mind with peace, and to sustain the soul in the temptations and trials of life, and in the gloom and agony of death!