Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact 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 worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.Paul here confronts some of the members of the church at Corinth who were rejecting the reality of the resurrection of the dead. Some members of the church did not believe that there was a literal resurrection of the dead. Paul responds to the situation by providing four reasons as to the reality of a literal and bodily resurrection.
First, Paul states that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus was not really raised from the dead. And if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then the message of the gospel and Christianity in general is devoid of value and meaningless. I mean, the whole point of Christianity and the gospel is Jesus life, death, and resurrection, isn’t it?
Second, Paul explains that if there is no resurrection, then they and all the other early church leaders were liars and twisted manipulators who misrepresented the nature and character of God by saying that He raised Christ from the dead when he really didn’t. They were liars and manipulators because if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is still dead. Paul’s point is that you can’t have one without the other; either there is a resurrection of the dead for everyone, or there is no resurrection of the dead for anyone, even Christ as 100% God and 100% human.
Third, Paul reveals the reality that if Christ has not been raise from the dead, then all of humanity is still separated from God as a result of their selfishness and sin. But why would that be? The resurrection from the dead provides the proof that God accepted Jesus willingness to be treated as though He lived our selfish and sinful lives so that He could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life. This morning, the reality is that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then we have not been rescued from our selfishness and sin. For while there have been other people who were brought back to life in the Bible, Jesus is different for two reasons.
First, Jesus is the only person in the Bible who predicted that he would die and be raised from the dead before the event actually happened. The resurrection proves that Jesus said who he said he was as our Lord and Leader. Second, while other people in the Bible were brought back to life, they eventually died again. Jesus, however, was raised from the dead never to die again. Our faith and forgiveness is centered in the resurrection; without the resurrection our faith is devoid of any value to rescue and restore us to relationship with God and one another.
Fourth, Paul explains that without the resurrection, those who have professed faith in Christ as His followers and who have died physically instead experience eternal separation from God and an eternal sentence to hell. And the timeless reality that Paul reveals for us is that rejecting the reality of the resurrection results in condemnation. And because of this reality, Paul explains that if we have placed our confident trust in Christ without the reality of the resurrection, then we are pathetic. We are pathetic because we have leveraged our lives for a lie.
Tomorrow, we will look at a third result that occurs when we reject the reality of the resurrection.
What is one question that you may have when it comes to Jesus resurrection?
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