Sermon Tone Analysis

1 Corinthians 15:12-28

Christ Has Indeed Been Raised From the Dead!

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

More than that, 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.

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

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

Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

/But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

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

But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.

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

The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

For he “has put everything under his feet.”

Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ.

When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all./

How strange that anyone claiming to know Jesus, the Risen Son of God, would question that He lives!

How strange that one professing to have been born from above should cast doubt on the resurrection of Jesus!

Yet, it is a tragic fact of history that from earliest days the Church of Jesus Christ has been infiltrated by ecclesiastical termites who endeavour to render the house of God an empty façade.

At no time in history has the infiltration of these destructive clerics been more advanced than in this day late in the Age of Grace.

As the return of Christ draws nigh, the activities of those who would cast doubt on the resurrection becomes more frenetic and more frantic.

Is there no answer to the efforts of religious pagans to destroy the Faith once delivered to the saints?

Is the Bible powerless against their insistent tirades?

Has the honest seeker of truth no defence against such overt wickedness from Christian pulpits?

Since the fatal virus was introduced during the first days of the Faith of Jesus Christ, God provided an answer which proved adequate then and which proves sufficient still – if it is but applied.

That answer is an appeal to the very foundation of the Faith of Jesus Christ – His conquest over death by the resurrection from the dead.

*The Threat of Practical Atheists in the Church of Christ* (*verse 12*) – Time magazine recently published as its cover story an article entitled Does Heaven Exist?.

The article wanders in the wilderness of theological sophistry without ever coming to a cogent conclusion.

Cited without comment are both evangelicals and liberals, neither wishing to offend the other and therefore avoiding the real issue of whether the dead indeed live on.

Such religious postulations without knowledge are not new; they are as ancient at the serpent in the Garden who first raised doubt of God’s veracity.

For many believers, the declaration of the Word that Christ is risen from the grave is sufficient to quell any doubts which may arise.

Others, however, are shaken by the sincerity of those questioning the Word of God; or they are intimidated by the apparent scholarship of these christianised pagans.

Consequently, there are always some swept along as flotsam and jetsam by the putrid tide of destructive criticism.

Practical atheists are destructive simply because they can undermine the faith of the unwary or the weak.

Even within the Church of God in Corinth, a church which the Apostle Paul had himself established on the foundation of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, there were those present who openly and seriously affirmed there was no resurrection of the dead!

Perhaps these people were unduly influenced by their pagan philosophical and religious training from prior years.

In that ancient city there would have been representatives of three distinct schools of philosophical thought, each holding a particular view on the subject of the resurrection.

Epicureans were blank materialists.

They denied any existence at all beyond death, just as materialist today believe in utter extinction.

Such people believed, and today believe, that death ends it all.

The position of the Stoic was that at death the soul was merged in deity with the utter loss of personality.

That concept has persisted to this day in what is generally described as absorption, in which the spirit returns back to its source and is absorbed back into the ultimate divine mind or being.

Platonism, while insisting upon the immortality of the soul, denied the idea of bodily resurrection.

Today, we would add that many, adopting eastern thought, teach reincarnation, wherein the soul or spirit is continually recycled from one form to another – even from human to animal or animal to human.

Another concept is soul sleep, in which the body dies and disintegrates, while the soul or spirit sleeps.

This view has become popular among some professed evangelicals, though most commonly espoused among adherents of the cult of Seventh Day Adventism.

In all these views, human personality and individuality are forever lost at death.

Whatever, if anything, survives is no longer a person, no longer an individual, no longer a unique being.

All alike are opposed to truth.

The confident assertions of those in Corinth doubting the resurrection served to discourage godly living and growth in grace; for after all, if there is no resurrection man need not concern himself with giving an account to God.

Those who live without hope live for the moment.

Thus, all the problems of the Corinthian heresy would ultimately find their origin in this doubt of the resurrection.

The exclusiveness which created classes of Christians, the schismatic attitude which infected so much of the congregation, the attempt to live for the moment while forgetting the future, the failure to progress in holiness in this present life – all alike find their origin in this one grave denial.

Like an unchecked plague, the virus of unbelief spread through the congregation until the Apostle was compelled to address the matter.

When he did so, he did so masterfully and to the benefit of all Christians throughout the ages until Christ Himself shall return.

Practical atheists, for that is what such people who deny the resurrection are, destroy the work of God.

Their deadly message insures that the church dies, and that faith shrivels, and that love ceases.

Whenever you hear someone doubt that Christ is risen from the dead, mark that person as a pagan.

Disregard any titles they may boast, discount any scholarship to which they may lay claim, they are ignorant and dishonest and destructive.

The destruction of the foundation of the Faith serves to enervate Christian witness and participation in missionary advance.

*The Implications of Denying the Christian Message* (*verses 13-19*) – Paul listed seven consequences, four theological and three personal, which of necessity must hold if the dead rise not.

Those seven consequences are worthy of consideration, if for no other reason than to alert each of us to the danger of questioning the Word of God.

Weighing each of them in their turn will serve as a primer for a virile theology of the resurrection.

Christ has not been raised from the dead (*verse 13*).

This is the first consequence if there is no resurrection from the dead.

/If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised/.

Perhaps the Corinthians doubters got around this through appeal to a belief that Christ was not human, that He only appeared to be human.

However, such a view is far from what is presented in the Word of God.

John appears to have written to correct just such an incipient view.

In the preamble to his first letter he stated: /That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.

The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.

We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.

And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ/ [*1 John 1:1-3*].

He stated that the Apostles saw Jesus, intently and carefully scrutinised Him, handling Him with their hands.

Consequently, John here affirms that Jesus is fully human.

Later, in his second letter, John will warn believers against those who deny this.

/Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world.

Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist/ [*2 John 7*].

It is a serious matter to deny that Jesus shared out human condition.

Yet, if we deny that the dead are raised, that is precisely what we are doing.

We are no different from the Jehovah’s Witness who denies that Jesus raised bodily, if we deny the resurrection.

Christian preaching, and your faith as well, are useless (*verse 14*).

Then if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.

If there is no resurrection, Christian preaching is futile and meaningless.

The heart of the Gospel is Christ’s death and resurrection.

If He has not raised, we are not justified.

If He did not rise from the dead, He cannot be the Son of God.

Apart from the resurrection Jesus could not have conquered sin or death or hell, and those three great evils would still be victorious.

Without the resurrection the Good News would be bad news, and there would be nothing worth preaching.

Without the resurrection the Gospel would be empty, a hopeless mumbling of meaningless nonsense.

Unless our Lord conquered sin and death, making a way for us to follow in that victory, there is no Good News for us to proclaim.

If there were no Good News, then even faith in Him would be worthless.

A dead Saviour cannot give life.

If the dead are not raised, then Christ did not rise and neither can we anticipate rising from the dead.

In that case all the believers of all the ages have believed for nothing, lived for nothing, and died for a sick, futile dream.