1 Corinthians 15 – Believers’ resurrection (season six, episode two)

Greetings, and welcome to the Faith Chapel Podcast. My name is Jason,

and I am the pastor of Faith Chapel.

We are continuing our resurrection series in the podcast today.

We are looking at the text of 1 Corinthians 15 to glean information about the

reliability of the resurrection of Jesus and what that means for us now and in the future.

In this episode, we look at the logical reasons Paul writes about why we should

believe in our own resurrection.

Because Jesus resurrected, we have hope for our resurrection as well.

Thanks for joining us today.

When we think about the first Easter,

putting ourselves in that situation,

I think most of us would have positive emotions once we understood exactly what

had happened to Jesus. Sure, there would be confusion.

Sure, there would be a lot of questions that we would have.

But the emotions can easily wear off.

You go through time, you go through seasons, you relive that story over and over and over again.

And sometimes Easter just doesn't feel big anymore.

I have one of my children gets super excited in certain moments of the day.

And when this child gets excited, a lot of jumping happens.

This child just jumps all over the place and it's such a joy to see.

And when I think of Easter, that's what I want to be like.

I want to be someone watching my favorite TV show jumping all over the place.

I want to be someone standing at the tomb, smiling from ear to ear.

I want to be like that.

But Easter can be an event that it loses that excitement.

When we go over the same readings year after year, when we learn again about

the women visiting the tomb,

their encounter with the angel, when we hear of what Jesus calling Mary by name

and Mary immediately knowing it was Jesus,

when Thomas sees Jesus for the first time and puts his hands through the scars of Jesus's.

These are amazing stories, but the emotion can be taken out of them.

And we can not get that excited about the biggest event in human history.

And so, in my mind, what

I'm trying to do in the series that we're going through on resurrection is to

show the importance of the resurrection and not just go through the stories that we all know so well,

but to really dive in and say, all right, what is the meat and potatoes of this resurrection story?

Why is it the most important weekend in human history? And so we are going through

1 Corinthians chapter 15, and this is the goal.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

Last week, we talked about how there is evidence of Jesus's resurrection.

Scripture speaks to it. You can go to Psalm 16, 10 or Isaiah 53 and see the

evidence of Scripture testifying to Jesus and his resurrection before it even happened.

Then we can see Paul goes into,

there's more witnesses than that, because there are eyewitnesses who are still

alive to this day, who have seen Jesus resurrected, who know what they saw.

And as Paul is writing this letter to the Corinthians, roughly 25 years after

the resurrection, they are still testifying about it.

These are important, important foundation pieces for what Easter weekend means.

But there's more meat, there's more potatoes in this story than just about what

we read in the gospel accounts about the resurrection of Jesus.

And so Paul today in our scripture lesson is going to be talking about the logical

reasons why the Corinthians should believe in Jesus's resurrection and our own resurrection.

And so we're going to start in verse 12 of 1 Corinthians 15, but let me pray first.

Father, I pray that your word will light our path.

I pray, Father, that your word will be planted by your spirit inside of our hearts.

And I pray, Father, that you will grow it to fruition, bearing many, many, many times.

What you have sowed into us. Jesus, I pray for this in your name. Amen.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 12.

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

So right after Paul makes his case about the evidence for Jesus,

he goes into this statement.

But tell me this, since we preach that Christ rose from the dead,

why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead?

For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either.

So in the section that we're covering today, Paul is going to use rhetoric to drive his point across.

And sometimes when people use rhetoric, they boil down a point that even their

opponents are not going to agree with.

So the Corinthians, Paul has already testified that they do believe that Jesus rose from the grave.

They believe he walked out of that tomb. But what they are saying and what they

are holding on to is a Greco-Roman belief in the evilness of the physical body.

So there's this thought that was pervasive in Greek and Roman thought that the

body is like a vessel that the good soul is trapped into.

And as Corinth is in Greece, their mentality, their beliefs here are still tied to these roots.

That the body is evil, but the soul is good. And so in Greek thought,

death of the physical body is a liberation of the soul.

It's a freeing of the soul from the things that tie it to the evil things of this earth.

And so this is what Paul is combating here. This is what he is trying to get

the Corinthians to see in this narrative. Because Paul comes from a Jewish perspective.

And after God created man and woman, after he breathed into us the breath of

life, God looks at his creation in its physical form and he says, it's very good.

It's very good. And so the Jewish thought in this day is completely opposite.

It understood how God's creation was good inherently and how sin came and corrupted.

But this isn't a negative about the body.

It's a negative about the spiritual forces of darkness in this world.

And so this argument starts trying to attack their belief that the physical body is bad.

And Paul ties it to the point that if we don't resurrect from the grave,

then there's no possible way Jesus would resurrect.

There's no reason for it. This is not something that you can hold on to.

That one is true and one is not true.

And again, he uses rhetoric throughout this to try to drive that point home.

In the next two verses, we read, And if Christ has not been raised,

then all our preaching is useless,

and your faith is useless, and we apostles would all be lying about God.

For we have said that God raised Christ from the grave.

All right, he's boiling it down to a point that where logically he's saying,

all right, you say there's no resurrection from the grave,

then how can Jesus be resurrected from the grave if there is no such thing as

a resurrection of the grave? And then you go further.

Paul is pushing them further down this ladder saying, okay, then if Jesus isn't

resurrected, then our faith is useless, and I myself am lying to you.

Again, he is driving, he's trying to go the logic route to prove that there

is a resurrection from the grave.

And he's pointing them down, this is where your line of reasoning goes.

If we don't resurrect, then Jesus didn't resurrect.

If Jesus didn't resurrect, then

your faith is useless. If your faith is useless, hey, we are lying to you.

So Paul here is really trying to drive these points home to get them to believe

and to understand that the resurrection of Jesus is so important to our faith

that we have to believe it,

that we, and not just that we have to believe it, hold on to it like it's a,

just like blind faith,

but he's already talked about, hey, scriptures testified.

This is what happened. This is what they said. And these eyewitnesses that are

many of them are still alive to this day. This is what they say happened.

And see how these line up.

See how these line up. And so he is, again, speaking in this rhetorical sense

that the resurrection, our resurrection is so closely tied to Jesus's resurrection.

And that is the basis of our faith. Easter weekend is the basis of our faith.

And he goes a little bit further in these next two verses.

And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.

So Paul here argues two different patterns. So one of them we find elsewhere in his writings.

Paul testifies in the book of Philippians that it's difficult for him to decide

what he really needs to do because going,

dying a physical death and going to Jesus is far better for him than staying on this planet.

But being here means effective ministry, that he is teaching people about this.

And in this statement, we understand and believe that Paul is saying,

my spirit does go up to God when I die.

And Jesus testifies to this when the thief on the cross, when Jesus says to

the thief on the cross, today you will be with me in paradise.

So it's Paul is saying, and the Greeks would believe that our souls get to go and be with God.

But Paul's saying much more than that. He's saying much more than that.

He's saying when Jesus comes back, our physical bodies are going to come alive.

Our physical bodies are going to be resurrected as well.

And this is why the Corinthians are having this struggle here.

This is why some of them are not believing it.

And he says something in these verses that is quite curious.

He says, and if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you

are still guilty of your sins.

You see, for Paul, his understanding, his belief here is that the cross of Jesus is meaningless.

It's absolutely meaningless unless the tomb is empty on Sunday morning.

If Jesus isn't resurrected from the grave, then our sins were not paid for on the cross.

Now, please understand that Jesus's death on the cross was so important to our faith.

It's so important to our understanding of how we commune with God and how we

can be in connection with him.

And we've talked about on Ash Wednesday how we have this written notice of the

charges against us, that God,

the sins that we have done in this world, that God takes from us and he put on Jesus at the cross.

And scripture also declares that there is no forgiveness of sins without the shedding of blood.

And so the cross is so critically important, but there is no way in Paul's mind

that it is the end statement.

There is no way that what Jesus did on Friday would matter at all if the tomb was not empty on Sunday.

They are so closely tied together.

They're basically one event, Paul says.

When Jesus walked out of the tomb, it was him declaring sin to be defeated because

the wages of sin is death, but Jesus defeated death.

And so he holds the keys now. He is in power.

He is in charge. and these together make up what we remember on Good Friday

and what we celebrate on Sunday.

They are so closely tied together.

You cannot have one of them without the other or they both lose their meaning.

They both lose their meaning. And then he ends this section by saying,

in that case, if we are still guilty of our sins, all who have died believing in Christ are lost.

And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.

Paul understands that without the cross and the tomb,

the sacrifices that Jesus asks of us, the sacrifices of loving our enemies,

praying for those who persecute us.

The sacrifice that Jesus says, if you want to be the greatest in the kingdom

of heaven, you have to serve everyone.

You have to be the servant to all. Those are literal sacrifices for us.

Those are things that we have to swallow our pride and humble ourselves before God to go out and do.

But Paul Sears says it's lunacy to do that. unless there is a resurrection from the dead.

We are most to be pitied, most to be pitied in this entire world.

If Jesus didn't die for the forgiveness of our sins and three days later rise from the dead.

That is a profound statement.

That is a profound statement.

And so Paul here is really trying

to get the Corinthians to understand this idea and the concept of how important

it is to understand that our physical bodies are going to be resurrected again.

Now for us, as we march closer and closer to Easter, Easter this year is on March 31st.

And as we march closer and closer to Easter, my hope is that this can take on added meaning for us.

When we see the empty tomb, when we experience the stories of Easter,

my hope is that we are able to understand, we are able to comprehend.

All right, when Jesus rises from the dead, that means we're going to rise from the dead.

This means the promise of Jesus in the gospel of John, where he says,

I am going to prepare a place for you.

And if I'm going to prepare a place for you, I'm going to come back to bring

you to where I am. It's true.

Jesus talks about how there will be a feast in the kingdom of heaven.

A wedding feast is how he describes it.

And the only way that that makes sense is from a physical standpoint.

Jesus, when he appeared to his disciples, he said, all right,

I want you to come and touch me so that you know that I am not a ghost.

Do you have something here to eat so I can again prove to you that I am a resurrected body?

This is what our future holds for us who believe in Jesus.

And as we go through seasons of our life where there is grieving and mourning and loss in ourselves,

we can declare like Martha in the story of Lazarus' raising,

I know that my loved one will be raised up at your coming, at the end of this age.

We hold on to what Paul says and what Jesus says, that those that we have lost

already are with him in eternity.

But we have so much hope for that physical reunion where we can embrace,

where we can hug God and our loved ones.

It's such an important concept that Paul takes this whole chapter to divulge it.

And I want you to think of this in terms of Paul building a house.

The foundation, the most important piece of this is the evidence that we have

for Jesus and his resurrection.

Eyewitness testimony and the testimony of scripture that we find fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

We laid that foundation last week. Now, the rhetoric that he uses to declare,

that we are, that we will be resurrected because Jesus was resurrected.

I want you to think of that as like the framing of the house.

And Paul is just building it more and more, the case to believe that Easter Sunday is so important.

And as we get there, I hope the meat and potatoes that this chapter will provide

for us will make it so that our emotions,

cause us to jump around the room in excitement because it is that big.

And it's something that we...

I pray that we experience in a tangible way on March 31st. Let me pray.

Lord, we come before you today and we ask for your mercy and your grace to be upon us.

Father, I pray that as we dive more and more into this chapter,

the reality of Easter being just another story goes by the wayside,

but that it becomes more and more important to us,

in our hearts and in our souls.

And Father, I pray that we celebrate you,

with joy and thanksgiving as we learn more and more about what the death of

Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus means.

Jesus, I lay this all at your feet as our King and Master and Lord. Amen.

Thank you again for joining us in our discussion of the logical reasons we should

trust in our resurrection.

As we enter Holy Week, the resurrection is an important topic to understand

to aid in our own celebrations of what the resurrection of Jesus means.

Next week, we will continue looking at 1 Corinthians 15 and study how believing

in Jesus gives us eternal life. If you would like more information about Faith

Chapel and its ministries, please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Have a great week.