What If?
1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 8 viewsNotes
Transcript
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God 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.
Welcome - continuing in 1 Corinthians 15 - in this chapter Paul speaks about resurrection - both Christ’s resurrection as we saw a couple of weeks ago, and he also speaks about our future resurrection later in the chapter - here he speaks about both together - about how they are inseparable
His point is: since Christ is risen, we too will rise from death.
The “What if” Marvel comics of the 80s. What if someone other than Peter Parker was bitten by a radioactive spider - what if the Incredible Hulk was a villain, etc.
I think we all like to talk about what ifs - it’s often fun and sometimes scary to imagine where we’d be, who we’d be if this or that had been different somewhere in our past
Paul here offers the scariest and darkest “what if” of all.
Quick review of two weeks ago - a great reminder of the Gospel - the what and why - what the basics are (death and resurrection of Christ) and why we should believe the basics (the witness of God working in history)- part of that witness is how it objectively continues to work in us
And I said that Paul was working up to answering an objection that some of the Corinthians had. We have seen throughout the letter that Paul addresses some particular questions or objections the Corinthians had.
And now we get to the objection Paul feels he has to address here: some of the Corinthians were doubting the future resurrection of the body for believers.
So Paul answers them by presenting his “what if.” What if there is no resurrection? Only he doesn’t speculate, he tells them - and us - exactly how things would be different with this “what if.”
And Paul says it would change everything.
And I think like two weeks ago, this passage is a great reminder for us today. Because what Paul is talking about is the ultimate result of all the Gospel truth we discussed last time. The completion of our salvation.
And we need to remember that we are headed for an eternity in the body - in glorified, resurrection bodies.
Because we tend to desire heaven. And that isn’t a bad thing. But what do we mean by that? What is our idea of heaven? The place where our spirits go when we die?
That is not our ultimate destination! That is just temporary. There is a new heaven and new earth - one place where the heavenly and the earthly will dwell together - where God and man will dwell together! - that is our eternal home.
That is the place Jesus promised He would go and prepare - not the temporary non-physical state we will experience if we die before His return.
Paul actually addressed this with the Thessalonian church before he wrote to the Corinthians.
Some in Thessalonica were worried about what would happen to their brothers and sisters in Christ who had already died when Christ returned. Do they miss out on being with Christ bodily?
So Paul tells them:
But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Notice, like in our passage today, Paul uses the term “fallen asleep” here for those who have died in Christ. Because it is a temporary slumber, not permanent bodily death. Those who die will be raised up again. They will awaken from their sleep.
Paul says: “don’t worry about the dead in Christ - they will get their resurrected bodies before even those who are raptured at Christ’s return. The dead in Christ will rise first, then we who remain will be caught up to the air to always be with the Lord.”
Can you imagine that? Seeing all of our brothers and sisters who have died rising from the grave bodily and then ourselves being transformed and meeting Christ at His return?
And then, always being with Him? Like, forever?
Well, one day, we won’t have to imagine it. We’ll see it. Our faith will become sight.
I can’t wait!
And this again is one of the promises of God - and our expectation - that make Christianity stand apart from all other religions and even worldly ideas of death.
In fact, the idea of resurrection and eternal physical life would have been a pretty novel idea to both the Thessalonians and the Corinthians. Because both congregations were in Greece, and the philosophies of the Greeks were pretty uniform in the belief that we get to escape our bodies forever at death.
It is not unlike some eastern religions today where heaven or nirvana is the final escape of the physical body.
But that isn’t what Paul believed. And not just because he said this teaching came from Jesus Himself - though we should all find comfort and hope in that. But it’s also because Paul was a learned Jew, and the Jews believed in bodily resurrection.
It is taught in the Old Testament. One of clearest promises comes from the book of Daniel. Daniel is praying and fasting and an angel appears to him who was sent by God, and he tells Daniel of the future of the world, culminating in the future resurrection of all people:
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
Both the righteous and the unrighteous will be raised - they will wake up from their sleep. And some will live forever, and some will die forever.
But every person is destined to have a physical body in the end.
And, of course, this promise is also found in the New Testament. Christ taught the very same thing:
Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.
There will be a resurrection of the just and the unjust. Those who are just because they are righteous in Christ will rise bodily to life, and those who are not in Christ will also rise from the grave to be judged in the body.
And this is another wonderful part of the Gospel promise to us that we spoke about two weeks ago. The Gospel isn’t just that Christ died and rose again. It isn’t just that God proved He died and rose again in order to save sinners. It isn’t even just that we have been called by God unto repentance and faith that result in good works in this life, and through which God continues His glorious redemption.
That’s all true and that is all glorious.
But the final Gospel promise, is that Christ also rose again to prove that we, too, will rise again.
We have a sure destination - our eternity with Christ Who is our reward. Our eternity in the body in the new heaven and the new earth with our Savior forever.
Count it! Mark it down and write in permanent marker! This is our future!
We know this will happen. How? Because Christ Who promised it rose from the dead.
And that’s what Paul tells the Corinthians.
And he starts off this section with a question:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
We saw how Paul’s primary focus on the work of Christ was the resurrection - it is what he preached to both Jews and Gentiles. It was what he preached - the matter of first importance that he preached - to the Corinthians.
They were saved through faith in the risen Christ - Who He is and what He has done. So they believed in the resurrection. At least, the resurrection of Christ.
But they doubted or even disputed that there would be a bodily resurrection of believers. Again, while this was the belief of the Jews, this was not the belief of Greek philosophy.
But neither was it the doctrine of the Greek cults. And we have already seen the influence the paganism around them had on the Corinthian church; where the physical was believed to be evil and the spiritual was seen as good.
We saw that some believed this to the point that they thought maybe they should abstain from any physical satisfaction, even sex with their own spouse, because the body should be ignored.
We saw that others believed this to the point that they figured they could abuse their bodies because they would one day be free of them and the body doesn’t really matter.
But we saw - neither of those are true. God created us to be physical and spiritual. In fact, He made the body before He endowed man with a spirit.
Man was always meant to be both. And even though the body dies, ultimately, we will be both in eternity. Physical and spiritual.
Everyone who believes in the resurrected Christ has that sure promise.
And this is why Paul proclaimed Christ as raised from the dead when he preached to the Corinthians.
But now, the Corinthians - because of the pagan influence around them or because of the worldly wisdom they believed - they were doubting the truth of their own bodily resurrection.
So like we saw, it is possible to believe the truth of the Gospel, and also believe something that’s contrary to it. We saw that we do it all the time.
The Corinthians believed in the resurrection of Christ, but disputed the idea that bodily resurrection was either possible or even desirable.
And I have known many a Christian who believes false ideas about the life to come. I was taught falsely about the life to come when I first came to faith.
We need to be careful not to go beyond the Word of God on this. While we don’t know many of the details of the intermediate state, we can be sure that to be absent from the body means we are present with Christ.
Though we don’t have many details of the new heavens and new earth, we can be sure that we will physically live in a restored creation with the Creator Himself.
The Corinthians, though, doubted some of these promises. It didn’t fit in with their way of thinking or what they believed previously.
And this serves as a good warning to us. We all need to be willing to let go what we were first taught if the Bible tells us otherwise. We can’t hold tightly on to what we previously believed if we find it doesn’t match up with the Word of God.
Paul wants to make sure the Corinthians don’t do that.
So, it is a simple argument Paul makes: if Christ was raised, we can be raised.
Why is that so evident to Paul?
Because Christ was raised in His humanity, not His deity - so if we believe that Christ was just like us in every way in His humanity, then why would we believe that resurrection is impossible? Why would we believe it’s not desirable?
Christ said He would rise again, and He did it, and there were hundreds of eyewitnesses to prove it.
Christ promised we would be raised, and then He Himself was raised in order to prove the truth of every last word He spoke.
And either Christ was raised, or He wasn’t. There is no middle ground. There’s no “kinda resurrected” just like there’s no “kinda dead.” And if He was resurrected, then resurrection is not only possible, but good - very good. Our resurrection and glorification should be the desire of our hearts.
And as we’ve seen, we have every reason to believe God will keep His promises. Including the promise of resurrection.
But if the Corinthians believed resurrection was not possible, then Paul lays out the only logical implication. The “what if” of resurrection.
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
Either resurrection happens, or it doesn’t. And if resurrection is not possible, then Christ can’t have been raised.
Very simply: if we believe in the resurrection of Christ, which was promised and which was fulfilled, then we have to believe that our promised resurrection will be fulfilled.
Or, if we don’t believe in resurrection, then Christ couldn’t have been raised, and we have no reason to believe anything.
The Corinthians would have no reason to believe anything Paul taught them. All he just talked about - the death and resurrection of Christ - the work God does through the Gospel and both in and through us. Why believe any of it?
We don’t even have a reason to believe Jesus was the Messiah.
So none of us would have any reason to believe anything Jesus taught or anything we read in the Gospel accounts.
And that’s what Paul says next. If we think there can be no resurrection, and we can’t then believe that Christ was raised, what does that mean?
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
Again, Paul focuses on the resurrection throughout this section. It is so important for the rest of the Gospel to hold together.
Because if Christ is not raised from the dead, then there is no salvation, so preaching has no point. And remember what Paul said, the Gospel of Christ crucified and raised not only saved us, but it is saving us.
So not only would we not be declared righteous before God if Christ is not raised - we have no way to become more righteous in practice. Holy living is impossible.
In other words, there is no point to the Christian life even in this world without the resurrection of Christ. The preaching of the Word is in vain if we do not preach a resurrected Savior Who was actually resurrected.
And if He was not resurrected, that means our faith is in vain. Faith is useless if we don’t have faith in a resurrected Savior, because we have faith in a lie.
Again, God proved Himself faithful and just when Christ was raised. Without that proof, why should we believe at all?
Paul’s whole point in the previous passage was that the resurrection is our proof - it is our reason to believe. It is an objective and verifiable fact.
Do you see how Paul is not arguing for a mystical, unexplainable kind of faith? Something you feel but don’t really know to be true intellectually? That is not the faith we are called to!!
Our faith in Christ is based on the fact that He objectively rose from the grave!
That is the heart of the Gospel, and if we preach that, and it isn’t true, what does that mean? It means more than empty preaching. It means more than a useless faith. It is even worse than all that.
We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
Again, in the simplest terms, if there is no resurrection of the body, then Christ has not actually been raised. And if Christ is not raised… if the resurrection is not a fact... then we preach and believe a God of our own making.
We misrepresent the One True God. We misinterpret the Old Testament promises, and the writers of the New Testament misrepresented God and His promises.
In other words, if Christ is not raised, the New Testament is a lie.
As we saw, the Old and New Testaments form a complete whole, that reveal God and His plan of redemption for the elect. And that plan was Jesus. It was always Jesus.
The Old Testament spoke of Christ, Paul said. Now, with the Holy Spirit illuminating our minds, we can see what was once hidden but is now the revealed plan of God from eternity past. Paul wrote about this earlier in the letter.
The New Testament bears witness to the death and resurrection of Christ, and reveal all it means for us. It reveals the fulness of God’s salvation. It tells us what we are and what we are becoming until we are raised as what we will always be.
Unless… Christ is not raised. Then it’s all lies. It is as made up as any work of fiction.
And if there is no resurrection of the body, then that’s exactly what it is:
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, then what we preach as the Gospel, is empty. It’s vanity.
And if that’s the case, our “faith” does us no good - if we believe something not based in reality, it is utterly useless. It’s the true vanity of vanities.
And if our faith is in vain, then we make God a liar because we misrepresent Him.
And if that’s the case, Paul says:
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
If Christ has not been raised, we are still in our sins. We are not justified before God. We are not declared righteous based on the atoning work of Christ. We are still enemies of God. Hell-bound enemies of God.
We still have a sure end, but it wouldn’t be the one we hope for.
And what’s more, we can’t live pleasing to Him in this life.
In fact, all the talk about grace and faith and justification and atonement and redemption and propitiation and glory - it all means nothing if Christ stayed dead.
We are in our sins, and we will die in our sins.
Do you see how the logic comes full circle? Either Christ has been raised unto life and so will we be, or He has not, and neither will we be. Because then we are still in our sins. Our faith does us no good - less than no good. It’s utterly futile - it does nothing.
So we’ll stay dead when we die.
And that means:
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
This is what we saw Paul wrote to the Thessalonians to tell them it wasn’t true. He reassured them that those who have fallen asleep - who have died in faith - they aren’t truly dead. They live, and one day, they would live again bodily.
But if Christ has not been raised, he was wrong. They are just… dead.
talking to a friend who recently lost his mom - he saw it as an act of mercy because her mind was not all there and her quality of life was not there - he saw it as a mercy because she was a believer. Because he knew death was not the end and that she would once again be raised to life.
But if Christ has not been raised, none of that is true. It wasn’t mercy. Because she has no hope and neither do any of us. She’s just dead, and so will we be some day.
We are no better off than anyone else. The atheists are right and we should begin living in hopelessness right along side them.
In fact, if the atheists are right and death is just the end, we are actually worse off than them. At least according to Paul. He says:
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
If there is no resurrection, we are the ones living a lie, not the atheists. We have a false hope! We are stuck in our sins and will die, but even what we have in this life - our hope in Christ - if He wasn’t raised, our hope is misplaced, our faith is misplaced, and what we have in this life is utterly pitiable.
Because we are living a lie.
And that means that, for most of us - and for the Corinthians - we would have no hope of salvation. We would still be what Paul would later say Christians no longer are.
We looked at Ephesians 2 last time when we spoke about the Gospel. We read this:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
This is the Gospel that saved us and that continues to save us.
And what does Paul say next?
Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Before Christ, non-Jews were separated from God: from His covenant, from His people, and from salvation.
But in Christ, we are saved by grace through faith, and that salvation makes us one of God’s true spiritual people. And we are joined to all the Old Testament saints who believed. We are grafted into the vine of God’s salvation, Who is Christ.
We saw this earlier in 1 Corinthians. Paul includes these Gentile, Greek speaking believers into the spiritual line of Abraham and the fathers.
The Corinthians were, through their faith, part of the one people of God that has always been.
But… if Christ is not raised, His promises are void, and God’s salvation is only available through the nation of Israel. It is still by grace through faith - but only through the covenant made with Israel.
And that’s a “what if” for you. Because what the Corinthians didn’t know is that they were only about 15 years away from there being no more Israel.
Where would salvation be?
So if there is no resurrection, Christ has not been raised, and we are of all people most to be pitied because of our faith in a lie.
If there is no resurrection, Christ has not been raised. If He has not been raised, the New Testament is a lie and the Old Testament has been woefully misunderstood.
And there is no new covenant, and we remain separated from God.
Again, all together:
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God 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.
It is a terrible and horrifying “what if” indeed.
What if there is no resurrection?
Then we don't have a sure future. And without that sure future, then we have no sure present. Because we live a lie. And if we have no sure present, then we have no past justification that makes us righteous.
In other words: if there is no resurrection, we have nothing.
And we are of all people most to be pitied.
But... thank God Paul doesn’t end the discussion there.
He offered a very dark “what if” - what if there is no resurrection? Then even Christ hasn’t been raised. Ok, so what it Christ hasn’t been raised? Then we are in our sins, with nothing to look forward to in the world to come, and even our misguided hope in this life makes us the most miserable of all people.
But thank God, Paul doesn’t leave the Corinthians with a “what if.” He instead tells them the glorious “what is.”
But in fact … Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Christ has been raised from the dead. Verified and verifiable truth. Planned from eternity past, proclaimed from ages long ago, fulfilled in Christ, and attested to by the eyewitnesses of it all.
And that truth has been passed on to us that we may live in God’s glorious salvation in Jesus Christ.
Christ has been raised from the dead! He is risen!!
It’s not just an Easter focus, brothers and sisters - the whole Gospel, our whole faith, and our whole lives depend on the glorious fact that He is risen! We live because He lives!
And since He has risen, so will we be. He is but the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep - the harvest is still to come!
We will rise one day unto eternal life to be with our resurrected Savior forever!
Do we believe it?
So then, just like there are some very dark but necessary results of the “what if,” there are some great and necessary results of the “what is.”
Because we know the “what if,” we know the “what is,” so what’s the “so what?”
Christ told us.
Use Matthew 25 without actually reading. - encourage the congregation to read it this week
-after talking about what would happen following His death and resurrection - from the persecution of the first disciples - to the end of the nation of Israel - to the spread of the Gospel - to the world’s opposition to the Gospel - all the way through His second coming - Jesus tells His disciples three parables as the “so what” to it all
—- parable of the ten virgins to meet the bridegroom - 5 didn’t prepare themselves to wait for His coming - 5 get to be with Him
—-parable of the talents - a man entrusts different amounts to different people and goes away - at his return, those who use what has been entrusted to them as they are able are rewarded, and the one who did not is rejected
—-the final judgment - where He returns and separates the sheep from the goats and they meet their fate based on… what? On what they had done in this life.
You see, all this resurrection talk, it is not just a theological topic for discussion. It isn’t material for lively debates. It is very practical. It is of the greatest importance for us right now.
How do we live in light of our promised resurrection? In light of the fact that we now the end before it will happen?
We need to keep our lamps full of oil - at every moment. According to Jesus, we need to be prepared every second for that glorious future. Because Christ is coming, and when He does, we want to enter into blessedness with Him.
We need to use what has been entrusted to us - which is everything we have - and use it according to our abilities for His sake, and remember that to everyone who has will more be given, and we will have an abundance at Christ’s return.
We need to think about how what we believe affects what we do.
We need to remember that every time we feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, visit the sick and the prisoner, we do it for Christ, and those who do will enter into eternal life - it will prove that the Gospel is true, and that they have true faith - and those who don’t will go away into eternal punishment.
Christ has been raised. So we have been declared righteous, so we can live righteously, and especially since we do have a sure end.
And if our eyes are on the future and if we remember that this life is but an instant compared to eternity - we will live out the Gospel. We will live like we believe we have sure end.
And so I leave you with another “what if.”
And what if we all did just that? Just those of us in this room. What if we all live every moment, out of the faith we have that Christ has been raised and so will we be?
What if we all remembered that the end can come at any time - that our time here is short and there are people who need to hear the Gospel and see the Gospel lived out that they might believe and be saved?
What if we all had the faith to live like everything we have has been entrusted to us by Christ - that all we are and all we have are rightfully His - and we used every bit of it for His glory?
What if we all believed that joyful service, sacrificing for each other, and providing for the needs of others is how we might know we are sheep of the Good Shepherd and how others will see Him in us?
What if?
We would see the world changed. We would see the Gospel go forth and see others - those we love - those we know - affected for Christ.
And we would see God glorified among us.
I leave you with a quote from Gordon Fee from his discussion of this passage:
There seems to be little hope of getting around Paul’s argument, that to deny Christ’s resurrection is tantamount to a denial of Christian existence altogether. Yet many do so—to make the faith more palatable to “modern man,” we are told. But that will scarcely do. What modernity accepts in its place is no longer the Christian faith, which predicates divine forgiveness through Christ’s death on his resurrection. Nothing else is the Christian faith, and those who reject [in practice] the actuality of the resurrection of Christ need to face the consequences of such rejection, that they are bearing false witness against the very God they claim to believe in… It is arrogance of the highest order to think one exists in some continuity with the historic Christian faith when this absolute center core of that faith is brushed aside. That, rather, is an abdication of the Christian faith as it has been preserved for us...
On the other hand, the word for those who accept Christ’s resurrection as reality is a blessed one indeed. It includes not only the forgiveness of sins, and therefore fullness of life in the present, but it also means a glorious future, including a resurrection like Christ’s.
- Gordon Fee
Forgiveness of sins, fullness of life in the present, and a glorious future.
Our faith is not in vain. Because Christ is risen.
Let our lives show forth - objectively and verifiably - that our faith is not in vain.
And let the power of the Gospel go forth from this place.
