1 Corinthians 15

Every day is not a wonderful day. Every thought is not a happy one. There is much anguish, loss, and misery in this age. One strategy of facing up to our pain is to do what we can to get some notoriety immediately, perhaps through an emphasis on our own gifts, especially if they look pretty supernatural and spiritual. That strategy leads one to focus on self, and to devote oneself to the task of self-promotion. It does not lead to love, and it is not the way of the cross. Whatever might be the message or theme of the day in the self pick-me-up plan, it must necessarily be of little importance in the whole scheme of things as God has arranged the world.

There is a better way. There are some things to focus on that are of first importance. These things comprise the outline of what the Apostle Paul calls the gospel or good news that was preached to the Corinthian church and to every church where Paul had an opportunity to preach. This gospel is a way by which a person can remain standing in a shaky world of trouble. Everything less than the gospel is not spiritually stable. This gospel is the way that a person can be both saved and kept, brought somehow beyond the limits of loss and emptiness all around us.

Our gifts are not of first importance to this gospel, but something else is of the greatest significance to the gospel, to God, to Christ, to heaven, and if anything is as it ought to be, to the church in every time and place: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, He was buried, and then was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. This fact of resurrection was well-attested through a number of resurrection appearances, one involving more than 500 people, some of whom were still alive at the time when Paul wrote First Corinthians.

Why is this so important? The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are central to the entire plan of God in creation and redemption. Without these truths, we have no sense of our place in God’s eternal plan, a plan that calls for a world-wide resurrection of the dead, and the unveiling of the permanent kingdom of restored humanity in the presence of the Almighty. Why does Paul insist that this death and resurrection was in accordance with the Scriptures? This plan of God was known to Him from before all time, and was recorded for our benefit in the Hebrew Bible, that we might more certainly understand that the faith we believe in is from God, and not from men.

The Apostle Paul was one of the people that saw the resurrected Christ, though not at the same time as others. Paul saw Him after Jesus’ ascension into heavenly glory. He notes the irregularity of this appearance by comparing it to one “untimely born.” The Apostle is very aware of his unworthiness for this mercy, for he was traveling on his way to persecute Jewish Christians when he saw Jesus. Nonetheless, God likes to surprise us all when it comes to His choice of people. He so often uses failures to bring His success to the weak. And He used a cross to win His greatest victory over evil. If we are anything in our giftedness, it is because of the grace of God.

The death and resurrection of Christ are the key points in our holding on to the Christian hope of the coming fulfillment of the age of resurrection. Our Christ died for a purpose, to win for His Father a resurrection people. His death was not in vain. His resurrection from the grave powerfully testifies to the truth of His accomplishments. But there are some in Corinth who have not gotten the point of all this. There are those who claim that there is no future resurrection of the dead. Others change the meaning of the bodily resurrection entirely, and decide that the resurrection of sorts, (all the resurrection that there will ever be in their thinking), has already occurred, apparently in a secret spiritual way. Both groups are utterly deceived.

If they were right, then the apostles were liars, and God made a horrible mistake on the cross, since it will never accomplish what He abundantly claimed that it would according to the Hebrew Scriptures. Without resurrection, the dead are all lost, there is no hope, there is no point to preaching, and there is no forgiveness of sins, since Christ must not have been raised either.

This is all nonsense. Christ has been raised, and by Him has come a general resurrection of the dead. An end to the plan of God is coming that is worthy of all His greatness. Nothing less will do, and the full resurrection kingdom will be delivered to the Father in accord with the promise of the Son. This fact is of such great importance. It is worth the kind of suffering that Paul faced in order to proclaim it. Though we cannot understand the glories of the biology of resurrection, this does not make it false. We cannot understand the biology of the first creation. Why should we be surprised that the re-creation or renewal of people and the world should be beyond us?

Rather than delving into the secrets of the Almighty, we should simply believe what He has told us. There are those with heavenly bodies even now, just as there are those with earthly bodies. One day we shall enjoy a world that is imperishable, and we ourselves will never perish. As Christ is, so shall we be in due time. Even now death has lost something of its sting, for through our mortal death, we will be freed from this perishing world, and brought to God is His heavens. But what sting will be left in death when there is no more death? What sting will be left in sin, when there is no more sin?

This is the content of our hope, though we may see it as in a shadowy mirror, yet even now, the just shall live by faith. Even now, gospel labors, and true labors in the Lord are not in vain. They are full of meaning because of the certainty of the hope that Christ has won for His people. Therefore we have every reason in the world to abound in the work of the Lord today, for our works will follow us into a new world of unfading glory, where our Redeemer, even now, lives and reigns.