The Eternal Significance of WorkSample

Yesterday we learned that we are agents of new creation. We know that the work we do today will carry over into the new heavens and new earth, but how? On a recent episode of my podcast, I asked N.T. Wright to explain. Here’s what he said:

The only real model that we have is of course, Jesus’s own resurrection, which is a very mysterious model, because the resurrection body of Jesus is very strange. It does things we didn't expect.

It comes and goes through locked doors. It appears and disappears. It can be touched. It can eat. It can drink. It can talk. It can no doubt, sit at a table and break bread. It's strange. It's as though it inhabits heaven and earth simultaneously. I think that's part of the point.

There's a wonderful line in the American scholar, Ed Sanders’s…book on Jesus…where he says it looks as though the gospel writers in describing Jesus’s resurrection were very much wanting to say something for which they knew they didn't have very good language. I think that's exactly right. 

I think we are in the same bind when it comes to talking about God’s future creation… I use the image of the chalice, the waiting chalice that the world is like a beautiful silver chalice, beautifully carved. As it stands, it is beautiful and haunting and makes you think, “Wow, this is a work of art.” But, of course, it's 10 times more beautiful when you realize what it's meant to be filled with. What it's there for and the role that it plays within the worship of the church and the strange mystery of the sacramental life of the church. 

When we start to see the world and our work within it, in that sense we realize there are other dimensions here. We're not messing around. C.S. Lewis, somewhere when he's talking about seeing people as God sees them, he says, “You have never talked with a mere mortal.” The point is that the people that we meet with and talk with day by day, these are people who have stories which God wants to go on into His ultimate future. Whatever we say and do with and to them will be part of that, whether it's something they have to forgive us for, or something that they will be grateful to us for.

In our human relations, as well as our work, putting everything in the light of that coming new world. As you say, nothing is wasted. This is the allusion to 1 Corinthians 15:58, where Paul says, “Get on with your work in as much as you know that it is not in vain in the Lord.” That is such a wonderful thing. [Your work] may seem little, but it's not going to waste if it's done in Christ and by the Spirit.

This plan was derived from N.T. Wright’s conversation with Jordan Raynor on The Call to Mastery podcast. Click here to listen to the full episode.