Word of Salvation – Vol.51 No.21 – June 2006
But Christ Has Been Raised!
A Sermon by Rev John Haverland
on 1 Corinthians 15:12-23
Scripture Reading: Daniel 12
Theme: Paul explains the logical consequences of not believing in the resurrection of Christ.
Purpose: To emphasise the importance of the resurrection of Christ to our faith and to show that it guarantees our physical resurrection.
Congregation,
Probably most of us here have had family members or friends who have died. You may have attended their funeral service. You may have stood by their grave side as the coffin was lowered into the ground. You may have cried and shed tears with the loss of this loved one who has died.
But when someone dies with a sincere faith in Christ, then we do not grieve as those who have no hope. We do not mourn like unbelievers. We are confident that this person has gone to be with the Lord. We know that he or she is in heaven today. And we are confident that one day Jesus will return and the dead will be raised and we will meet each other again. This is what comforts us in our sorrow and gives us consolation when we cry. We are looking forward – forward to the second coming of Christ our Lord; forward to the physical resurrection to eternal life!
This is so fundamental to the Christian faith that if you take this away you undercut all we believe. “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised” (vs 13). This resurrection of believers is dependant on the resurrection of Jesus. They stand or fall together. Both are necessary articles of Christian faith. In the Apostle’s Creed we confess that, “On the third day he rose again from the dead”, and we state that we believe in “The resurrection of the body”. These two articles belong together.
The Apostle Paul emphasised this for the Christians in Corinth because there were some who were saying that there “is no resurrection of the dead.” They accepted that the soul would live on after death but they did not believe in a physical resurrection of the body. Probably one of the main reasons for this was that Corinth was an important city in what we now call Greece and it was saturated with Greek philosophy. There were a few different strands and varieties of Greek thinking, but central to all of them was a low view of the human body. The Greeks put all the emphasis on the soul or the spirit of a person.
This is why they also had a low view of manual labour and physical work. The highest pursuits had to do with the mind and the spirit. They saw the body as a prison. When you died your soul would be released from its physical prison. In Greek thinking there was therefore no place for a physical resurrection of the body. Why would you want your soul to be imprisoned again in its body after you had been freed by death!?
This thinking had influenced some of the believers in the church. They believed that after death their soul would live on but they did not expect a physical resurrection. Paul wrote this chapter to counter this mistaken view. He strongly argued for the resurrection of the body and connected this with the resurrection of our Lord. He pointed out that if they believed in the resurrection of Jesus, then they had to believe in their own resurrection.
To make this point more strongly he turned it around. Verse 13 says, “If there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ has been raised.” The two are inseparable – they are linked together:
If Christ was raised, then we will be raised;
if we will be raised, then Christ was raised.
Then to make the point even further, Paul develops the implications of not believing in the resurrection of Jesus. What if Jesus has not been raised? This can be a helpful way of dealing with our doubts. All of us have some doubts at times – doubts about the reality and truth of the Christian faith. We have moments when we are perplexed and puzzled. There are difficulties that come up in our minds, or nagging questions that won’t go away. Even the great Christian writer C S Lewis said that there were times when the Christian faith seemed to him incredible. One way to deal with these doubts is to think through the consequences of our doubt; to take that question or that difficulty and work it through; to take it to its logical conclusion – what if our doubts were true? Where would that leave us?
Paul applied this method to the matter of the resurrection. He asked, “What if Jesus has not been raised from the dead? What then? What are the implications of this?”
He drew out a number of conclusions. If Christ has not been raised then:
1. Our Preaching is Pointless
2. The Apostles are liars
3. Our Faith is Futile
4. We have no hope.
1. First of all then, OUR PREACHING WOULD BE POINTLESS.
Verse 14: “If Christ has not been raised our preaching is useless.”
The word “useless” means vain or meaningless or empty. If Jesus has not been raised there is nothing to preach about. We would be wasting our breath. We could preach about the cross and about the death of Jesus, but we could not preach about his resurrection, or justification by faith, or the second coming. If you take away the resurrection of Jesus you take away the good news of the gospel. That Jesus was raised is essential to our salvation. “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Rom 4:25).
Liberal theologians and pastors do not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ. They deny that he physically rose from the dead. It seems surprising that they should keep preaching. If Jesus has not been raised, there is no good news, there is nothing to say; preaching is empty and pointless; we have nothing to communicate. If Jesus has not been raised then our preaching is useless.
2. Secondly, if Jesus has not been raised we must also conclude that THE APOSTLES WERE LIARS.
Verse 15: “More than that, but we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.”
A witness is someone who has seen something happen and who then tells another what he saw. In verses 5-8 of this chapter Paul listed the people who had seen Jesus: Peter, then the twelve, then 500 others at the same time, then James, then the apostles and last of all to Paul himself. All of these people had seen him alive. They had heard him speak and seen him eat. Many of them had touched him. They testified that they had seen a risen Jesus. Paul listed all of them so that the believers in Corinth could go and speak to these people and ask them questions about what they had seen. But if Jesus had not been raised, then all these people would be false witnesses, liars. They would be claiming to have seen something that did not happen.
The way Paul puts this suggests that this would even raise a question about the reliability of God himself. “We are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God (literally “against God”) that he raised Christ from the dead.” If Christ has not been raised, the truthfulness of God himself is then called into question.
Without the resurrection preaching is pointless, the apostles are liars, and, thirdly:
3. YOUR FAITH IS USELESS.
In verse 14 Paul states that without the resurrection “our preaching” and “your faith” are “useless” – they are vain, empty, meaningless. In verse 17 he uses a slightly different word – “futile” – which means that your faith is fruitless or worthless; it doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t take you anywhere.
Faith must be grounded in fact. Without a foundation in fact, it becomes fiction. If there is no risen Christ then we believe in a dead saviour who is no saviour at all. We have nothing to believe in. Faith has no content, no object, no substance, no point.
But Paul takes this a step further even. If Christ has not been raised you are “still in your sins” (vs 17b). This shows us that Jesus not only needed to die but he also needed to rise. We are saved not only by his death but also by his resurrection. If Christ has not been raised we have no assurance that our sins have been paid for. We would still be dead in our trespasses and sins. If Jesus has not been raised we have no proof that he paid for sin, or that he conquered death, or that he defeated Satan. Without the resurrection there is no assurance of reconciliation with God, of redemption from sin, of eternal life; there is no hope of salvation. Without the resurrection of Christ faith would be futile.
4. And finally, without the resurrection we would have NO HOPE.
If Christ has not been raised then “those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost” (vs 18). They have perished – they are lost forever. This means that they are under God’s wrath and condemnation and so they will suffer the eternal punishment of hell. This is the implication if Christ has not been raised.
But there is also an implication for us who are living – Verse 19: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied more than all men.” If Jesus has not been raised, then we are deluded and self-deceived and we will be bitterly disappointed at death. We are people to be pitied. If Jesus has not been raised, then we are living a vain hope and we might as well live it up in this life; we might as well “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!”
These are the consequences that follow if Jesus was not raised from the dead. Putting it like this shows how futile and useless faith would be.
But then Paul dismissed all these hypothetical arguments because they were all built on a false premise, a wrong basis. He contrasted all that he had written with this next marvellous statement: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead” (vs 20). The word “but” is used to introduce some of the most outstanding statements to be found in the Bible. Of all the ‘buts’ in the Bible, this is one of the most important. “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!”
He is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (vs 20b). The word “firstfruits” was used for the first sheaf gathered from the harvest. It was reaped, threshed, ground into flour and then offered to God in thankfulness for his provision and in confidence that the rest of the harvest would follow. In the same way the resurrection of Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection – that he was raised is the guarantee that one day we will be raised.
Jesus was not the first person to be raised from the dead. Think of the son of the widow of Zarephath raised by Elijah and the son of the Shunammite woman raised by Elisha. Think of the son of the widow from Nain and of Lazarus, both raised by Jesus himself. But all these people died again.
Just as the death of Jesus was unique, so too was his resurrection. His resurrection was representative and effective. He functioned as a new representative of humanity and as a counterpart to Adam. God placed Adam in the position of being the representative of the human race. Adam sinned and he died. His sin and death passed on to all the rest of the human race so that we are all born in sin and we all die. Then God sent a second Adam – His Son, the Lord Jesus. Jesus came as a new representative of humanity. God is consistent. We are saved in the same way we were lost – through a human representative.
Through Adam came sin and death.
Through Christ came righteousness and life.
“For as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive” (vs 22).
“But each in his own turn” (vs 23). First the Lord Jesus was raised. Then, one day, Jesus will come, and we will all be raised – that is, all who have put their hope and trust in the Lord Jesus, all who have believed in him. This means that all those possibilities that Paul raised are false. “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead!” This means that pastors can continue to preach because preaching has purpose.
It is the proclamation of the good news about a Risen and Living Saviour. Preaching will be used by the Spirit of this Risen Lord to bring people to repentance and faith in Christ. Preachers can declare with confidence that, “If you confess with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). This is what we preach.
That Christ was raised means that the apostles were true witnesses, including Paul himself. He had seen the risen Christ on the Damascus road and he gave a true testimony to what he had seen. Today you can read his testimony in the Bible.
This means that your faith is certain and your sins are paid for. The resurrection was the proof that the victory over sin had been won.
“The strife is o’er, the battle done,
the victory of life is won,
the song of triumph has begun, Alleluia!”
Jesus has been raised and he is alive and he has sent his Spirit to apply to us all the benefits he gained for us through his death. Jesus is in heaven today and he is interceding for us at the right hand of the Father, reminding His Father of all that he has done on our behalf.
Finally, this means that you can live with hope. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ are saved. They are with the Lord. They are already in heaven. To fall asleep in Christ is a wonderful thing. There is comfort and hope in that. If you believe in Jesus, when you die your soul goes to be with him in heaven.
But there is a hope even beyond that; just as we believe in the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus, so too we believe that, when he comes, we who believe will also be raised with him with our glorious resurrection bodies.
And so we will be with the Lord forever.
We can comfort one another with these words.
Amen.