The Resurrection Changes Everything!
Millions of young Muslims have tragically allowed themselves to be killed in war and terrorism, believing that martyrdom speeds their way to heaven. Mormons try to work their way up the ladder of extra-terrestrial privilege and power. Jehovah’s Witnesses hope that sufficient obedience will enable them to be one of the 144,000 who get to enjoy the new heavens as well as the new earth. Eastern religionists hope for nirvana—to be absorbed into the cosmic consciousness, which is all that there really is. Against all of these perspectives Paul’s
Christianity lives or dies with the claim of Christ’s resurrection
Timothy Keller describes the resurrection as “the hinge upon which the story of the world pivots.”
The Resurrection is the Heart of the Gospel (1-11; 20-28)
Corinth was not the only church puzzled by resurrection of the dead. Paul confronted confusion over the fate of believers in Thessalonica who died before the parousia (1 Thess. 4:13–18). Somewhat later false teachers turn up claiming that the resurrection has occurred already (2 Tim. 2:17–18).
The Ancient Creed
Anthony Flew, one of the most respected atheistic philosophers within the last fifty or sixty years, claims: “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.”3 Flew eventually became a theist, but he did not become a Christian. Though he thought the evidence was strong for the resurrection, he never actually embraced it.
From Paul, on through the New Testament, through the Apostolic Fathers and through the great theologians at the end of the second century (e.g., Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen), we find a remarkably consistent set of beliefs about what will happen to God’s people ultimately after death.
The early Christians held firmly to a view of a future hope that focused on resurrection.
The early Christians held firmly, as did the Pharisaic Jews, to a two-step belief about the future: first an interim waiting period, and second a new bodily existence in a newly remade world. Let me stress again, there is nothing like this in paganism.
within early Christianity there is virtually no spectrum of belief about resurrection.
because of the early Christian belief in Jesus as Messiah, we find the development of the very early belief that Jesus is Lord—and therefore that Caesar is not.
God’s Plan to Reign Supreme
As firstfruits Christ is the “first one” to have been raised: “the first or best part of belongings or possessions” in lexicographic usage (vv. 20–23). As such, however, Christ is also “a representation of the rest” (my italics).41 This prepares the way for Paul’s theology of Christ as the last Adam (vv. 21–22).
The Resurrection is the Hope of Christianity (12-19; 29-34)
The Resurrection is the Healing of the Body (35-58)
Sir Winston Churchill declares: “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, What is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”1
God’s intention is not that Christians would be disembodied souls floating around in the clouds, but that they would live with him forever as whole persons, both body and soul
“Resurrection means endless hope, but no resurrection means hopeless end