1Corinthians 15. THE ULTIMATE TRIUMPH. v. 1-11. The resurrection of Christ. v. 12-34. The resurrection of the dead. v. 35-58. The resurrection of the body.
CHRIST’S RESURRECTION: Proofs… The preaching and effect of the Gospel, the facts of the Gospel, and the lives of changed Christians in the days following the resurrection of Christ have impacted the world from that day to this. Those eyewitnesses were changed people and were motivated to carry out the commission of the Lord despite serious opposition and martyrdom for thousands. The essentials of the Gospel have never changed, and it still has the same effect on believers today. Christ (a) died for our sins according to the scriptures. 14 times Paul uses this phrase, giving it authority. (b) Christ was buried. He did not vanish. (c) Christ was raised again. Paul preached it in the Gospel, and the Corinthians received it. The demonstration of the Gospel was a living proof in the soul of the apostle Paul, and all those in this list of witnesses never looked back.
The resurrection of Christ is central to Christianity. The early Christians had no difficulty believing in the resurrection and ascension of Christ. The apostles were there, saw Him, and were with Him after His resurrection. They heard Him speak, saw Him eat, and watched Him ascend into heaven. These two events unleashed a world-changing force that has transformed the lives of people from that day to this day. Without God, death ends all hope, is the final indignity to the body, and is the final frustration to a purposeless life. Christ’s resurrection changed all that. Christians know that Christ’s resurrection opened the doorway to eternal glory for all the redeemed. His resurrection was the promise of our own resurrection. Early Christians who had never seen Jesus (“whom having not seen we love”) actually loved Him. If someone says I love Shakespeare, they really mean they love his writing or his plays. If a widow speaks of her love for her husband, she would say, “I loved him,” not “I love him.” But all Christians speak of their love for Christ as a living person whom we haven’t seen, but we love. We sing to Him, talk to Him, worship Him, and live our lives to please Him. This is not an idealized fantasy or an assumption, but a real response to substantial evidence for Christ’s resurrection.
RESURRECTION: the evidence is in place. 1Pet.1:3-4, 8,21. THE EMPTY TOMB: on the Sunday after His death, the first visitors to His tomb did not find His body – only the grave clothes that were wrapped around Him, lying flat and undisturbed as if the body of Jesus came right through them. Soldier/guards started a preposterous rumor that while they slept, some disciples got past them, rolled away the heavy gravestone, stole the body, hid it, and deliberately concocted a lie that said He had risen from the dead.
THE BEHAVIOR OF THE DISCIPLES UNDER PRESSURE: People will not suffer for a lie they invent for themselves. None of the disciples under tremendous pressure broke down and confessed that the resurrection was a fraud. Even when they saw many people persecuted and executed for believing their story of the resurrection, they did not change their message. Even when they were martyred, they did not change their message.
THE BEHAVIOR OF THE WOMEN AT THE TOMB: they didn’t leave their things there so there would be a shrine and place of pilgrimage like other religions or even superstitious "Christians" do today. They, and all the early Christians, abandoned the tomb. Why? Because it was empty. No one makes a shrine around someone who is alive.
THE TESTIMONY OF EYE-WITNESSES: A list of them is given in 1st Corinthians 15. In various circumstances, at various places, in both large and small groups, they saw Him, spoke to Him, and were even invited to touch Him. He appeared in early morning by a lake, on a mountainside in broad daylight, in the evening behind closed doors, and walking along a road, conversing with the travelers.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION: Greeks did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. There were three views in Corinth: (1) Epicureans: the philosophy of matter only, materialism, no existence after death. (2) Stoics: at death, the soul goes back to Deity, so no personality after death. (3) Platonism: the soul is immortal, but no bodily resurrection. With regard to our salvation, Christianity is validated by the resurrection of Christ. The power that catapulted Christianity onto the stage of world history was the resurrection of Christ [Acts 1:22]. The purpose of the early Christian community was to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The prime function of the Christian community is to witness to the resurrection of our Lord Jesus. The transforming power of the Gospel is not the ethical teachings of Jesus, but the resurrection of Jesus and all the implications that accompany it.
Paul and all Bible-believing preachers are false witnesses and liars if there is no resurrection. The faith of Christians is unreal if there is no resurrection. Dead saints have perished if there is no resurrection. In regard to the program of God, the whole of human history until His coming looked forward to this redemptive work that was foretold. “But now…,” life in Christ is new. “In Christ shall all be made alive…” Christ is the first to be raised to endless life. He is “the first fruits.” The Christians’ resurrection is a sure fact because we belong to Him... “they that are Christ’s.” The ongoing saga of human history after the resurrection doesn't conclude with the words, “then cometh the end.” The initiation of Christ’s kingdom will be accomplished. “He must reign.” The whole future of humanity ultimately centers on the resurrection. “
You may ask, “Why should I believe in Him unless I can see and touch Him?" That is like saying, "I will not deceive myself into thinking an electric light comes on just because I touch the switch. I must see the man at the power station who connects the main switch.” When the Lord ascended, He promised that He would, and He did, send the Holy Spirit. The evidence of the risen Christ is seen in the experience and power of those in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. If you press the switch of repentance and faith, the light and power of the Spirit will come on in your heart.
The resurrection and ascension of Jesus opened the way for the unprecedented invasion into our world of the Holy Spirit of God. Joel prophesied it 800 years before. When people received the Holy Spirit, it opened up a personal fellowship with God. The cross of Christ reveals man’s basic problem – hostility against God. Some of those who were involved heard Peter preach and were called upon to repent and face up to the resurrected Jesus, who was Lord and Christ. If they wanted to be saved, they were to demonstrate their sincerity by calling on the name of the Lord. Then they were baptized as evidence of the reality of their profession.
In regard to our present condition, baptism is useless if there is no resurrection because the very teaching of baptism includes death, burial, and resurrection. By coming out of the water of baptism, we identify ourselves as having spiritual life now, and we are alive in Christ forevermore. The physical suffering thousands of believers have experienced for Christ is useless if there is no resurrection. Paul endured suffering all through his Christian life for the sake of the Gospel. He knew, as we also know, that there is a future ahead beyond the grave that constrains God's people to evangelize so lost sinners can be saved. Physical suffering that is endured in the body will end in glory at the resurrection of believers. Those who do not believe in the resurrection have been in the wrong company and listening to the wrong teachers if they think there is no resurrection.
When the subject of the resurrection of our bodies comes up in conversations we have with people, usually there are two questions they have: “How will it happen? And what will we be like? What kind of body will we have?” They are concerned with the manner of the resurrection because it reveals the mind of the one who denies it, and they wonder how a disintegrated body can be reconstructed. The scripture is plain that when we die, it is like a seed that dies and disintegrates, but the One who gives life, our Lord Jesus Christ, is the source of life that comes from death. A seed can't bring life until it dies. That life-process bears the characteristic of the Lord. He was "the corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died." By His death, He has brought eternal life, His kind of life, to millions of people. The new life He had at resurrection was real life, but in a far more superior way than the previous limitations He chose to put upon Himself as our representative substitute. We will still be known by our personalities as individual persons who began our life on earth in the natural sphere. In our new spiritual life after the resurrection, we will have spiritual bodies. We will not just be spirits, but spirits with bodies made like His body of glory.
“What body?” is asked because one cannot imagine resurrection. The apostle Paul makes it clear that our old bodies will not be reconstructed to be like they were before. It will be our body; there is continuity, so our identity will be maintained, but there are fundamental differences. It will be raised in glory, not dishonor, when we die. Weakness gives way to death, but in the resurrection, the body will be raised in power far greater than anything we have known because of our sin nature. Two answers come from the two questions. One comes from nature: a new body arises from the death of the old body, by nature's design. Life comes from death. There are mysteries we can’t explain, but we believe what happens before our eyes. Each seed has a body of its own. “God giveth it a body.” “How are the dead raised?” God giveth it a body. With what body? Just as there is variety in nature in seeds, animals, and stars, so there will be in our resurrected bodies. "We will know even as we are known." Incorruption, honor, power, spiritual, heavenly are descriptions of the new resurrected bodies of the saints. With what body? Some things we are best to leave with God. “As it pleaseth Him.”
The coming of the Lord is both an assurance and a challenge. The “first fruits” is Christ; the harvest is the saints. The assurance is that we believe what has been revealed to us by God, but it is beyond our finding out by the intellect. This we know: we shall be changed. As the seed changes after it dies, so does the body of the believer. We know we shall continue to exist, but we will be changed, and we will have both a personality and a body. We know not all Christians will sleep in death. Some will be alive when the Lord comes for the Church. Those believing saints alive at the rapture of the Church will be instantaneously changed. We are wise if we remember this can happen at any time, and we live daily on the edge of this event.
The challenge to believers is not to fear death, both the action and the fact. We look beyond the grave and all that is associated with the whole region of departed spirits. For believers, we are absent from the body and present with the Lord. The sting of death, the fear and foreboding caused by the strength of the law, which is caused by sin, is not something to be concerned about. The ultimate appeal of the whole letter is in verse 58 and is the answer to verse 9 of chapter 1.