But He Was Raised

Let's read Scripture together. We're going to read from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 to 34.

1 Corinthians 15:12–34

That he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

But each in his own order.

Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father,

after destroying every rule and every authority and every power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.

But when it says all things are put in subjection,

it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.

When all things are subjected to him,

then the Son himself will be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him,

that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?

If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

Why are we in danger every hour?

I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I die every day.

What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus?

If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.

Do not be deceived.

Bad company ruins good morals.

Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning.

For some have no knowledge of God, and I say this to your shame.

This is God's holy word.

We are, for three weeks, looking at this chapter, 1 Corinthians 15.

This is week two in the run-up to Easter.

And this chapter is Paul's argument for the resurrection of Jesus.

And it's a formal argument.

So we didn't touch on this last week, but if you were paying attention there,

you might have noticed that this takes the shape of a philosophical argument.

So Paul is writing to Corinthians in what we now call Greece, and it's Greek culture.

And so they were very, very used to very formal arguments.

And Paul here is giving a very formal argument.

And so if you go back through it, you can see, you can notice a lot of if.

So if this is the case, then this must be the case.

If this is not true, then that couldn't be true.

Right?

And he goes back and forth through that very formal, very philosophical, highly intelligible.

And so the section we are in is called the refutation in formal logic.

The first section we looked at last week where he says this is what the gospel is.

It's the history of Jesus.

That's the premise.

So he's saying this is what everybody agrees on, Corinthian.

I preached this to you.

You said you believed it.

The basic premises have been laid down.

But now it's time for the refutation.

And we learn why he has to refute, why he has to give this counter argument.

And it's in verse 12.

So in verse 12 he says,

If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, why are some of you saying there is no resurrection?

So what is Paul coming to refute in this section?

He's saying that there are people in Corinth who are suggesting that even after Paul said,

I saw the physical Jesus alive, and so did 500 other people at least.

He's saying, but some of you in Corinth are saying, yeah, I believe in Christianity,

but I don't believe that Jesus Christ is actually physically alive.

So that's what he has to refute.

That's the refutation.

So he's going to give us his counter argument against that,

and then he's going to say, but then if he has been raised from the dead, this is what that means.

And so that's the very clear two sections.

Now, that means that the Corinthians, though they heard the gospel,

though they said they believed it,

some of them are still very stuck in a pagan worldview.

And a pagan worldview comes from, in this time,

Epicurean philosophy and Stoic philosophy and all sorts of worldviews cultivated by what we call cult religion of the time.

And in all these, there's different views of the afterlife.

And so in Epicureanism and Stoicism, there's an idea that maybe there is no afterlife at all.

So you die, you're dead.

Contemporary scientism might suggest something like that, right?

But for others, there is an afterlife, but it's not physical.

It's only spiritual.

So the main Greek view is that the afterlife is nothing but spiritual, nothing but ethereal.

There's no physical body, right?

And then we learn later in the chapter that some people were even saying that actually, yeah,

the resurrection is real, but it's already happened.

So we say as modern people, what, how could the resurrection already happen?

But what they meant by that was the resurrection is something that happens inside of you.

It's inner life transformation.

So when you believe in Jesus, there's a resurrection that takes place in your soul.

So they were saying the resurrection is not physical, but it has already taken place.

So as soon as you believe, you are resurrected from the inside out, right?

And the past five or six sermons, I don't know who started this, but it has been said twice already in the last two sermons,

that we're on a streak of quoting German intellectuals from the 19th to 20th century.

So I thought, far be it from me to break such a wonderful streak, so I will not break it.

Rudolf Bultmann, 20th century, New Testament scholar in Germany.

He said this about Easter.

He said, Easter is not about the rising of Jesus from the dead.

It's about the rising of faith in the inner life in the first Christians from the deadly moment of the crucifixion.

So Bultmann said, like the Corinthians, some of the Corinthians said that the resurrection is not about physical,

a physical resurrection from the dead, not about that.

It's about this inner life transformation that occurs within you.

And these apostles and these disciples had seen the crucifixion.

It was horrific.

Their master murdered, but they experienced resurrection because they all of a sudden said,

even though he's dead, I can still believe in him.

Bultmann says that's resurrection.

And some of the Corinthians are saying that.

So Paul says, does the resurrection transform your inner life?

Yes, absolutely.

But in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about something physical, something real life history.

That's the core to the gospel.

Now, Tom Wright, a retired professor from St. Andrews,

he wrote a 700-page book about this chapter.

All right?

And I say that just to say, we're not going to cover everything.

Okay?

And at the beginning of Tom Wright's book on this chapter, he says,

I wish I had enough pages to cover everything in this chapter.

Okay?

So we can only get the biggest ideas across today and leave it.

Every single clause has so much in this argument.

But let me just give you the two big ideas.

And the two big ideas are just this, that Paul says, first, the deadly consequences of denying the physical resurrection of Jesus.

What does it cost if you deny the resurrection of Jesus physically?

And then he turns and says, but he was raised.

And so here is the transformative reality of the fact that he actually is alive.

So those two things.

The problem if you deny it, but the beauty when you see it's true.

The power.

All right?

So first, the problem if you deny it.

Now, if you look at verse 13, he says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

So that is what we call an argument from the universal to the particular.

So he says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is dead.

He's not raised.

Right?

So what is he doing?

He's saying, if you believe Corinthian or a 21st century person, if there is no such thing as resurrection,

then that means Christ was never raised.

Right?

The universal to the particular.

Yeah?

And so one of the things that that verse does for us today is it shows us that we've got to be aware of a very untrue,

a false view that we have as 21st century people of first century people,

of people from the pre-modern world.

And that's the idea that people in the first century were so gullible that they believed people could rise from the dead.

And Paul says here in verse 13 that people in Corinth in the first century are saying,

Jesus obviously is not alive because there is no such thing as resurrection from the dead.

Right?

So in the 21st century, sometimes as modern people, we look back and think these pre-modern people,

the only reason they believe this is because they were gullible.

And they haven't yet come to the claims of modern science.

But as modern people, we know that the science is very clear.

The science is very clear.

People die and they don't come back.

Right?

Decay does not reverse in that way.

And what this helps us to see is we have to avoid any sense of chronological snobbery.

Because the science was pretty clear in the first century as well.

Right?

One out of one people that died did not come back from the dead.

And so we didn't, you know, modern science has helped us see this so much.

No.

We've always known, everybody knows that nobody comes back from the dead.

And we see here that that's exactly what Corinthians were saying.

And we know that even Jewish believers were saying the same thing.

The Sadducees in the Gospels did not believe in resurrection.

They said resurrection is impossible.

The only afterlife there is is a spiritual afterlife.

And you see what Paul is saying?

Yes.

The science is clear.

One out of one people never come back from the dead.

Which is why this will convert you in your seats.

That's the point.

Because this is so consistent, it happened.

Therefore, this will change you in your seat.

It will convert you on the spot.

And you think about what Paul is saying if you back up to verse 8 and following when he says,

Think about my life.

Paul did not believe in Jesus.

He did not follow Jesus.

He did not believe in the resurrection.

Not at all.

And in fact, if you think about his life a little bit deeper,

you realize that his whole well-being was wrapped up in denying the resurrection.

So, he made his money by denying the resurrection.

His identity was to hate the Christian world and to ultimately seek the death of anybody who believed in it.

Right?

His whole identity.

His well-being.

You know, Paul had a life plan like we all like to talk about today.

And he had mapped it out really well.

And as a young man, he was very successful.

And his whole success depended on killing Christians.

He's saying, People don't come back from the dead, but I saw him.

And it changed my life.

It converted me on the spot.

I gave my life away to him.

That's exactly the point.

That's the point.

And so, we can't come and say something very silly like,

Well, first century people were gullible.

Paul's saying, I wasn't gullible.

I didn't believe it for a second.

But then I saw him.

And 500 people I know about saw him as well.

And even more than that saw him.

This will change you in your seats.

It's not an issue of faith versus science.

The science has always been clear enough.

Everybody's always understood the science.

What is this?

This is an issue of worldview.

So, what is Paul saying?

He's saying, You need a new worldview.

You need to be willing to say,

If God exists and he actually made the world,

then I can believe that he has the power to act into the world by raising somebody from the dead.

It's not an issue of faith versus science.

It's just, Do you believe in God?

If you believe in God, then of course God has the power to raise people from the dead.

He's God.

He made us.

He can do it.

Now, the rest of Paul's argument in this first section

is actually talking to people in Corinth and to us today through God's word,

to anybody who says,

I'm a Christian on the one hand,

but denies the physical resurrection of Jesus on the other hand.

That's really what the rest of the section's about.

So, that's directly the people that he's thinking about here.

And so, what does he say?

Look, he says,

First century Corinthian,

If you say,

I'm a Christian,

but I don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead physically,

he says,

Your faith is empty.

It's futile.

It's vain.

It's vacuous.

My preaching is absolutely pointless.

He says in verse 15,

We, we and the apostles,

we all preach that God raised Jesus from the dead.

And what you've done by denying that is you're saying,

God himself is a liar.

We've misrepresented him.

He's talking there about something broader.

He's saying in the whole Old Testament,

it was all about the moment of the resurrection,

the crucifixion and the resurrection.

And we've been going around teaching the Old Testament saying,

Look, the Old Testament shows that this was always the point.

But if it's not, if it hasn't happened,

then we've made God's entire word to be empty.

You see what he's saying there?

He's saying,

If Jesus is not raised from the dead,

you need to go find a different God.

Martin Luther said,

If Jesus Christ is still dead,

if you can find his bones in Israel,

God is not God.

It's that big.

It's that serious.

The consequences are that big.

And so he wants to say,

Look, the forgiveness of sins

and the power of the gospel

is so wrapped up in this reality

that if you take away the resurrection,

you don't have the forgiveness of sins.

And all the people that have professed faith in Christ

and have died in Corinth,

they are dead in their sins.

They've gone to deal with the Lord.

No, God is not God if this has not happened.

What do we learn here?

We learn this and we'll move on.

The gospel is not good news

if Jesus Christ is still dead.

He's saying that the resurrection has such basicality,

if I could use that word,

basicality to the Christian message.

You can't get underneath it.

It's rock bottom.

And so he's saying that progressive Christianity,

as we call it today,

has always been around.

It was around in the first century.

It's still around with us today.

And he's saying progressive Christianity

is misnamed.

Progressive Christianity,

the idea that you can be a Christian

but deny the physical resurrection of Jesus

is not Christianity at all.

Progressive Christianity is sub-Christian.

It lacks the basicality of the gospel message.

Without the physical resurrection of Jesus,

there is no good news.

We're still dead in our sins and our trespasses.

And as one commentator puts it,

if progressive Christianity saws off the tree branch

that it sits upon, right?

If Jesus was not raised from the dead,

then all you have is mere religion.

This is just mere religion.

And religion is a lame hobby.

Yeah.

Yaroslav Pelikan,

the Yale historian from the 20th century,

he says about this chapter,

he says what Paul is saying

is that if Christ was not raised,

nothing else matters.

But, secondly,

he was raised from the dead.

That's what Paul says here

in the second half from verse 20.

In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.

And so here he gives you,

let me give you three realities,

three things this means for you

if you believe this,

if you know that this is real life history.

This will change you today.

This will bring,

if you're not a Christian,

this,

this,

what I'm about to say,

this has the power

to bring conversion into your life.

It can change you right here,

right today.

If you are a Christian,

it has,

what Paul tells us here,

has the power to transform you

right now in the 21st century,

2025.

And he tells us three things.

I can only treat them

in the most cursory way

because of time.

But the first thing he says

is that when you realize

the resurrection is real life history,

what it offers to you

is hope when you are facing death.

That's the first big thing

I think Paul wants to tell us.

Now,

all,

every single one of us today,

we are facing death right now.

So facing death is not something

that we will do when we're older.

Facing death is today.

Facing death is right now.

All of us are standing

in the face of death

at any moment,

right?

And Paul says here in verse 22,

in Adam,

all of us have died.

All of us do die because of Adam.

So also in Christ,

all shall be made alive.

Now there he's doing this thing

where he's connecting you,

every single one of us,

to the first man,

Adam.

He's saying there is a deep connection

between you and the first man.

That the first human

that ever came into this world

was a representative

for all of humanity.

As modern Western individualist

as we are,

we struggle very much with this.

We do not want to be willing to say

what this man did matters for me

so many years later.

But most societies in world history

never had a problem with this.

Most societies have had

a communitarian mindset

and have understood

that people represent others.

And we know this to be true

in so many ways, right?

If a president,

if a prime minister declares war,

you go to war, right?

If the prime minister says,

if the parliament says,

we are going to war tomorrow,

then our nation,

our society has gone to war.

They represent us.

And in the same way,

before God,

Adam represented us all.

We are deeply connected to him

so that when he chose

death instead of life,

he's saying there's a deep connection there.

We all die.

But when the second Adam,

but when the second Adam

faced death that we deserved

and disrupted that death

by coming back to life,

he also represented us.

And so he's saying

that there's this deep connection.

We call it Adam Christology.

This deep connection

between us and Adam

and us and Christ

as Christians.

I've used this illustration here

before.

I'll come back to it.

I think it's helpful.

If you're married,

you probably have

a joint credit card

with your spouse.

It's good to have that.

You build your credit a bit, right?

You have a joint credit card.

And if your spouse goes

and spends so much money

on Amazon,

so much money

on shopping on Princess Street

and right out here

on the Royal Mile,

and the debt collector

comes to your door

and knocks on your door

and says you owe

thousands upon thousands

and it's time to pay,

you say,

I didn't spend

any of that money.

And what does

the debt collector say?

It does not matter.

Your name is on the account.

Legally,

you spent every penny.

So you might have not

made a single transaction,

but it's your debt.

You see,

we know that there's

such a thing as legal

connection

that leads

to a representative,

you know,

even

think about it like this.

The debt collector

comes to your door

and says,

you owe so much money.

You say,

there's no way

I could owe that money.

And he says,

oh, you do.

You're legally connected.

But then what do you do?

You say,

look,

I didn't spend

any of that money myself,

but I will pay

every penny of it

because I love them.

And you pay it.

And you know what?

They didn't pay a dime.

They didn't pay,

they spent it all,

but they didn't pay

any of it back.

You paid every penny,

but guess what?

They're debt free.

And in the same way,

he's saying,

in Adam,

his debt became your debt

and boy,

have we accrued

some debt in our lives.

But in Christ,

though he didn't

earn the debt,

he paid every penny of it

and now you're free too.

And so he's saying,

when Jesus rose from the dead,

you were made alive.

Now here's the takeaway,

here's the application.

If you are a believer today,

if you say today,

I know Jesus Christ lives

and I follow him,

don't miss that

what Paul's saying here

and what Paul says

in other parts of the gospel,

of his letters,

is you today are alive.

You today have been made

a new creation.

Don't miss the reality

of your sainthood.

You are alive.

You have been made new.

You are a new creation.

It doesn't just start

at the end of history

when your physical body

is raised from the dead.

You, the second fruit.

He, the first fruit.

No, but right now,

the resurrection does matter

because you are spiritually

made alive

from this very moment,

from the very moment

of his resurrection.

It's true of you.

You're a saint.

You're beloved.

You're adopted.

You're part of his family.

It has changed.

Life is different.

You are not who you used to be,

but by the grace of God,

you can say,

today I am what I am.

Things have changed

really and truly.

Sainthood is actually real.

The first Adam was given

wonderful life by God

and he traded it for death.

The second Adam,

the very author of life,

he traded his life

for the death we deserved

so that we could have his life.

We're deeply connected

and that means that

because Jesus Christ

was physically raised

from the dead,

you shall be too.

Everything that's true of him

is now true of you.

The second thing

Paul says to us,

Christian friend,

transformative power here,

the second thing he says

is in the face of death now

because of that,

you can say,

God shall be all in all.

So in verse 28,

that's how he ends

this refutation,

this argument.

He says,

when all things

are subjected to God,

the Son himself

subjected to God the Father,

then God shall be all in all.

Now,

what is he saying

when he says

God shall be all in all?

Another way to translate it,

that is,

one day,

when this all wraps up,

God shall be everything

to everyone.

God shall be all in all.

That means he will be

everything to everyone,

meaning all that God is

and all that God has done

throughout world history

will be visible to everyone.

He's saying,

so he has raised Christ

in the middle of history,

but right now,

verses 24 to 28

are saying,

right now,

it doesn't feel that way

because he's writing

to a Corinthian church

who's underneath

the power of the empire.

And in the first century,

the empire,

the emperor

called himself

the pater patriae,

meaning,

I am the father,

the holy father

of the fatherland.

So,

in other words,

the emperor in that time

saw himself

as the divine father

over the people.

And he's saying,

but you've got to understand

when you look at the weakness

of Christ at the cross

and the power of God

in the resurrection,

God is going to subject

every single power

underneath the kingship

of Jesus.

And I know that right now

it doesn't feel that way

exactly.

You don't feel like

every single power

over you in your life

is underneath

the kingship of Jesus.

You look at

political leaders

like they were doing

in the first century

and saying they see themselves

as divine.

And he's saying,

no,

look,

you've got to be patient.

We know that we have

the first fruits of the spirit.

We wait for the resurrection

of the body with patience.

One day,

every power

will be subjected

visibly

and Christ,

God,

will be everything

to everyone.

Everybody will see it.

What was made true

at the middle of history

will come true

at the end of history

and every power,

every demon,

Satan himself,

and then he says,

and even the last enemy,

death,

will be subjected

to his reign.

It will die

and he will be king.

Now that is,

that is why

in verse 29

he says something

that sounds to us

very strange

as Protestant readers.

He says,

is that not why

Paul says

some of you

are being baptized

on behalf of the dead?

What does he mean by that?

It sounds as if

he's saying something like

a person

who's alive today

can seek baptism

and help a person

who's already died

achieve something

in the next life.

So some way

that the sacrament

of baptism

becomes powerful

to somebody

who might

have already died.

But the overwhelming

majority view today

in scholarship

of this

is something

very different

and it requires

us to change

the translation

just a little bit

and it says

this is why

some of you

have been baptized

for the sake

of the dead

or because

of what happened

with the dead.

That's a way

to translate it

and so let me

give you a quote.

This is Anthony Thistleton

one really

important contemporary

commentator

quoting from a woman

named Maria Rader

who wrote a whole book

about this sentence

in 1955.

Okay and I'm

pretty convinced

about what she

thought about it.

This is what she says

what Paul is saying

here is part

of his argument

for why the resurrection

is so powerful

for us when we face death.

And this is what she says

the death of Christians

in Corinth

in the first century

led to the conversion

of many people

that saw them die.

Okay he says

in the first instance

when it says

for the sake of the dead

on behalf of the dead

people in the first century

saw Christians dying

especially Christian relatives

and a sweet mother

would hold the hand

of her son

at her deathbed

and say

I believed in Christ

I will see Christ

today

come with me

turn to Jesus

believe in the truth

of the resurrection

and we will be together.

And so it says

this is why many of you

in Corinth

have been baptized

for the sake of the dead

or because you saw

the dead

you saw the people

facing death

even some of them

murdered for their faith

you saw them say

I will hold fast

to the claim

that Jesus Christ

is alive not dead

and I know

that my Redeemer lives

I'll see him

will you not

come and see him

with me?

And so many of you

have turned

and said

I want to be baptized

because you saw

the strength

of people's faith

when they face death.

Now

that gives us

the application

doesn't it?

He's saying

when you see somebody

have you seen

somebody face death

with the hope of Christ?

And he's saying

when you see somebody

face death

with the hope of Christ

and they say

I don't want to die

I hate death

death is the last enemy

but today I know

my Redeemer lives

and I want

I want you

to know that too.

He's saying

that's a powerful witness

and you can say

if you believe that

you can look at death

and say

you are the last enemy

you are evil

I hate you

there's no celebration

in this

there's nothing

to celebrate in death

no not at all

and yet

at the same time

death where is thy sting?

You can say

in the face of death

I hate you

and the lower

you lay me

the higher he'll raise me

and he's saying

that's what it means

people are being baptized

because they saw

people die

in the faith

and they wanted

the same thing

they wanted the hope

of that type of transformation

and so finally

this leads us

to the third thing

final thing

and I'll close with this

Paul says

at the end of this passage

from verse 31

he says

look this

this has to change you today

that's what he says

you can't

friend

look

you can't walk away today

without asking yourself

did Jesus Christ

rise from the dead

or not

physically

if he did

it has to

it means everything

and if he didn't

it means everything

right

and that's what Paul

concludes with

he says from verse 31

why would I die

every single day

if this were not true

so he's writing

here from Ephesus

and in verse 31

he says

why would I go

to the beasts

in Ephesus

every day

if this were not real

if I were lying

and he's probably

not talking there

about going to

literal gladiatorial games

where he confronts

lions and stuff

he's saying that

I'm in Ephesus

right now

preaching this message

and people are trying

to kill me

and every day

I wake up

and I think

what is the point

what is the point

of dying to my

pleasures and desires

every day

and going

to face my death

at the hands

of these Ephesians

leaders

if this were not real

in other words

he's saying

what is the point

Christian

of doing religion

and dying to yourself

every day

every Sunday

by waking up earlier

than you want to

and coming here

if Christ has not

been raised from the dead

what's the point

that's the question

he's asking

and this time

it was very common

that gladiators

on the night before

they were going to

have to go into

the gladiatorial arena

in the Colosseum

in Rome for instance

it was very common

they believed

in only a spiritual

afterlife

no physical afterlife

and so the norm

was if you're a gladiator

and you're fighting

the tigers tomorrow

on the night before

you enjoy the pleasures

of the physical life

to their maximal degree

because you think

my physical life

is over

and that's what

he's referencing here

he quotes Menander

a Greek poet

and says

what does Menander say

eat, live, be merry

tomorrow you're going to die

if there is no

physical resurrection

then you might as well

stop doing religion

and maximize the pleasures

of this life

and he says

but if Christ

has been raised

from the dead

there is a reason

to die to yourself

every single day

and say

I exist to live for him

we could put it this way

in the first half

of the argument

Paul said

if Christ

has not been raised

if Christ is dead

nothing else matters

and in the second half

of the argument

he says

if Christ has been raised

nothing else matters

let us pray

Father

would you take this message

and transform us

in our seats

would you bring

somebody today

who doesn't yet know

the power of the resurrection

to see

the wonder

of

the son of God

raised from the dead

in the middle of history

for the forgiveness

of all sins

and I pray

for many many

Christians here today

that we

Lord

would give our lives away

that we would say

that we would say

this is why

I die to self

Lord

help us to die to self

and live for Christ

Lord

we say today

because you were raised

nothing else matters

let that be

the confession

of our hearts

because you live

we can face tomorrow

because you live

all fear is gone

because you live

we know you hold the future

and life is worth the living

because you live

so that's our prayer

that's our song

right now

we pray it

in Jesus name

Amen