Sermon Tone Analysis

Remember, last week we saw the Apostle Paul declaring the Gospel to the Corinthians that he received and they had received.

Today we come to the next section that begins with the problem the Corinthians were having.

Let’s assume then that the critics are right for a few moments.

Let’s assume that Jesus didn’t rise, that His flesh whatever may possibly be left of it is still rotting in some long ago forgotten Palestinian tomb.

He never came out of the grave at all.

Then what?

If Christ didn’t rise, then what?

For an answer to that question, look at 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 15 … The Apostle Paul postulates this very issue and then proceeds to show the consequence if Christ didn’t rise; and, beloved, this is just why we defend so vigorously the resurrection of Christ.

For if Christ doesn’t rise, as you will see this morning, everything that we count on is lost.

Everything.

Behind the issue in 1 Corinthians 15 was a historical problem in the city of Corinth.

In fact, throughout the book of 1 Corinthians, Paul is discussing problems in the Corinthian church, problems which had arisen because they had allowed their thinking to be conditioned by certain pagan beliefs around them.

They were victimized by the human philosophies which made up the most part of their lives before they were saved; and, even having become Christians, they had still been holding onto some of these old beliefs; and there were some in their midst who were not true believers and held tenaciously to these old forms of pagan religion while carrying out a form of Christianity only.

Among the many philosophical drifts that had found their way into the Corinthian assembly was this one.

The Greeks taught that there was no such thing as a physical, bodily, fleshly resurrection.

They didn’t believe that.

They denied that … It was part and parcel of their philosophy that spirit was good and flesh was evil; and the epitome of attaining good was to abandon the flesh.

To then be reborn in the flesh, resurrected in the flesh, would be to enter a second incarceration.

To enter again into the tomb of the body.

To enter again into a second kind of captivity, a second hell.

For the Greeks, to escape the body was everything.

For example, the Stoics believed that the infinite deity, the infinite mind of the universe was some infinite fire; and a little spark of that fire found its way into the heart of every human; and when that human died, that spark returned to the infinite deity.

The body wasted away in the grave.

They had absolutely no belief in a physical resurrection.

That is why, for example, when the Apostle Paul was preaching on Mars Hill to the erudite philosophers of the city of Athens, and his message was a message of resurrection, they were so shocked and so taken aback by it.

For example, in Acts 17 in verse 18,

Acts 17:18 (KJV 1900)

18 Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him.

And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.

Over in verse 32, it says,

In other words, this was not a part of Greek philosophical religious belief.

They believed in the immortality of the soul, much as reincarnation is believed today, but did not believe in the resurrection of the body.

Plato himself taught that the human body was a prison, and man should long to escape that prison.

Selsus, in 220 A.D., said, “To believe in a physical resurrection is to have the hope of worms.

Who would ever desire … he said … to wish to return in the body that had rotted.”

They had no perception, and so some of the Corinthians were saying, “The dead rise not.

Everything is spiritual.

The dead don’t really rise.”

And so Paul approaches this issue right here … Notice how he begins in verse 12.

literally no resurrection of corpses?”

It is the word here for corpse.

“Some of you are saying there is no resurrection of corpses.”

The definite article is not there in the original.

“Some of you are saying there’s no physical resurrection.

But if Christ be preached, that He rose from the dead, how can you say that?”

And, by the way, that is precisely what is preached about Christ; and that is the content of the eleven verses preceding.

Now, if that is the heart of the message, that Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how can you say there is no resurrection of corpses?

You cannot certainly say, ‘I’m a Christian.

I just don’t believe in the resurrection,’ and yet that is what some would wish to do.

They would want to say that Christ rose in a spiritual way or a soulish way or His influence arose or He is alive insofar as we retain His writings and the spirit of what He said.”

But he is saying, “It is a resurrection of flesh, of corpses of which we speak, and how you possibly say, ‘I’m a Christian,’ and deny that when that is exactly the heart and soul of the Gospel?

We will not relinquish the literal, physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

There can be no giving in at this point; because, if we do, if we give in and say there’s no resurrection, a series of sequential things will take place that are utterly devastating.

Watch them as we flow through the text.

If Christ didn’t rise, if there’s no resurrection of the dead, if corpses stay in the grave and rot, what are the consequences?

Now, let’s watch how Paul frames the argument.

First of all, he comes off of their philosophical orientation that they believe there’s no resurrection of corpses.

Bodies don’t rise.

Spirits do, but not bodies.

They just rot.

Point 1,

The first consequence to that belief:

Christ is not Risen: 13

If you believe there’s no resurrection of corpses, then Christ isn’t risen.

Look at verse 13.

“But if there be no resurrection of corpses, then is Christ not risen.”

That is the first and, by the way, monumental deduction.

If you’re gonna deny a literal physical bodily resurrection of human beings, then Christ didn’t rise; and what Paul is affirming here is that Christ is, in every sense, human.

He is a Man, the 100 percent God.

God of very gods, equal to God in glory and essence.

He is nonetheless 100 percent human.

Human in the fullest capacity of humanness; and if you deny a literal physical bodily resurrection of the dead, then you are stuck with the fact that Christ isn’t risen, because He is a Man.

He died as other men die.

If He doesn’t rise, then there are terrible things which result.

Now, listen, the Bible tells us Christ was a Man.

There are many who have taught that He was not, that he was something less than human.

There were philosophers at this time, the Gnostics, who believed that He was some kind of an ethereal floating spirit that attached Himself temporarily to a physical form; but we believe He was a Man.

In Acts 20 … Acts 2:22, it says,

Acts 2:22 (KJV 1900)

22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know:

In 1 Corinthians 15:21

1 Corinthians 15:21–22 (KJV 1900)

21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.

He is as much a Man as Adam was; and we all know Adam was a man, for he fathered us.

In Galatians 4:4

Galatians 4:4 (KJV 1900)

4 But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

In 1 Timothy 2:5

1 Timothy 2:5 (KJV 1900)

5 For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus;

In Hebrews 2:17

Hebrews 2:17 (KJV 1900)

17 Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.

Who are they?

Same chapter.

“He is not ashamed to call us brethren.”

In Mark 6, He is noted as the Son of Mary.

He is called a carpenter.

They said of Him in John 19, “Behold, the Man.”