Why your work will not be in vain

Between us and the Kingdom of God as a fully realised fact lies death. It cannot but be so. We saw before that the idea of a perfect society under conditions of mortality is impossible. The perfect society cannot lie this side of death. And moreover it cannot be the direct result of our efforts. We all rightly shrink from the phrase "building the Kingdom of God" not because the Kingdom does not call for labour, but because we know that the best work of our hands and brains is too much marred by egotism and pride and impure ambition to be itself fit for the Kingdom. All our social institutions, even the very best that have been produced under Christian influence, have still the taint of sin about them. By their own horizontal development they cannot, as it were, become the Kingdom of God. There is no straight line of development from here to the Kingdom. The outward attestation of that spiritual conviction is the fact of death. Across our path this obliterating shadow lies: not only must we, body, mind and spirit, personality as a whole, go out into the dark unknown, but also all our labours, our achievements in science, in art, in social and political progress - all is destined sometime to be swept away and forgotten. Everything in the end, even if that end be the promised death of the solar system, is destined to be buried in the dust of failure and death. Our faith as Christians is that just as God raised up Jesus from the dead, so will He raise up us from the dead. And that just as all that Jesus had done in the days of His flesh seemed on Easter Saturday to be buried in final failure and oblivion, yet was by God's power raised to new life and power again, so all the faithful labour of God's servants which time seems to bury in the dust of failure, will be raised up, will be found to be there, transfigured, in the new Kingdom. Every faithful act of service, every honest labour to make the world a better place, which seemed to have been forever lost and forgotten in the rubble of history, will be seen on that day to have contributed to the perfect fellowship of God's Kingdom. As Christ, who committed Himself to God and was faithful even when all ended in utter failure and rejection, was by God raised up so that all He had done was found not to be lost, but alive and powerful, so all who have committed their work in faithfulness to God will be by Him raised up to share in the new age, and will find that their labour was not lost, but that it has found its place in the completed Kingdom.

Lesslie Newbigin, Signs Amid The Rubble, p.46f