1 Corinthians 15:12-21

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.

But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

 

If Christ is not risen from the dead, our faith is vain, we have no hope. We are of all men most miserable.

Paul doesn’t mince any words in this famous chapter about the resurrection.

As a matter of fact, he says that Christianity lives or dies on the resurrection. That’s how important it is.

Our faith and our hope rest on the resurrection.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, our faith is vain or empty. It contains nothing of any meaning or value. We will perish. We will not be saved. There is no eternal life.

Or as Epicurus said, “Death need not concern us because when we exist death does not, and when death exists, we do not.”

Pretty depressing, huh.

Of course, this is Epicurus of the Epicurean school of philosophy. Paul met some of these guys on Mars Hill in Athens. Their philosophy is: eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

Sounds like not much has changed from ancient Greece to now. Many in our culture have the same philosophy. There is no God. There is no resurrection. There is no heaven. There is just oblivion. Talk about your most miserable of men!

But it’s like they say in real estate. There are only 3 important things to consider when buying real estate: Location, Location, and Location.

In some ways it’s the same for us and our faith. When we consider our faith and our hope, 3 important things to consider are: Resurrection, Resurrection, and Resurrection.

Of course, there are many important subjects and lessons in the word of God in addition to the resurrection. Subjects critical to our faith like the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross for our sins. And other wonderful truths like grace, mercy, love, election, predestination, sanctification, and many more.

Paul says here that if Christ was not raised, we are still in our sins.

It’s also true that if Jesus had not died on the cross for our sins, we would have had to pay for those sins with our eternal death.

The cross was for God.

The resurrection is for us.

What does that mean?

Jesus sacrificed himself to God, not us. He offered himself up to God for our sins.

And then we were justified by the resurrection. In other words, we were declared just by God when God raised Jesus from the dead.

Romans 4:24-25 … if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.

The resurrection was God’s way of declaring to us that He had accepted the sacrifice of His son for our sins.

The famous 18^th century theologian Jonathan Edwards put it this way:

“For if Christ were not risen, it would be evidence that God was not yet satisfied for [our] sins. Now the resurrection is God declaring his satisfaction; he thereby declared that it was enough; Christ was thereby released from his work; Christ, as he was Mediator, is thereby justified.”

Justified means to be declared righteous.

There are many aspects to justification that are covered in scripture. They are all important.

We are justified by the blood of Christ. We are justified by grace. We are justified by faith. We are justified by works. We are justified by the resurrection.

These are all different aspects or types of justification, and they have different meanings in different contexts. If they are not “rightly divided”, it leads to confusion, contradiction, and errant beliefs.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, He was declaring to the whole world that His people are now righteous, because He had accepted the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins.

Imagine that the whole world was waiting in suspense after Jesus died and was buried.

Everyone is waiting in anticipation. Did it work? What does God think? Was it good enough? Is this going to save us? It’s like waiting beside the radio on VE day in 1945, or beside the TV watching the Gulf War in the 1990’s. Is it over? Did we win?

And then on that glorious Sunday morning, Jesus comes out of the grave! Victory! It’s over! Jesus wins! The war is over! No more death!

1 Corinthians 15:54-57 … Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

I love Paul’s sarcasm here. O death, where is THY sting? O grave, where is THY victory?

Take that DEATH! Take that you GRAVE!

As he so eloquently expounds about many subjects, C.S. Lewis observes this about the resurrection:

“The New Testament writers speak as if Christ’s achievement in rising from the dead was the first event of its kind in the whole history of the universe. He is the ‘first fruits’, the ‘pioneer of life’. He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so. This is the beginning of the New Creation: a new chapter in cosmic history has opened.”

It’s almost impossible to overemphasize the importance of the resurrection to our Christian faith.

Paul is exuberant and almost hyperbolic in this beautiful resurrection chapter. The language is poetic, and it is rapturous as it reaches a crescendo at the end.

Paul flatly states that our faith absolutely depends on the resurrection. As Luke recounts the sermons and teachings of Paul, Peter and the other apostles and disciples in the book of Acts, they almost always emphasize and conclude with the resurrection. When Paul is at Mars Hill, and when he is trying to persuade King Agrippa, he concludes with the resurrection. Same with Peter on the Day of Pentecost in Acts 2.

The resurrection is profoundly important as a historical event, as a theological doctrine, and as the ground of our faith and hope.

It is arguably the most important event to man in the history of the world.

But what does it mean to you personally?

Gary Habermas, a historian, theologian and professor at Liberty University, has written extensively on the subject of the resurrection. His book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus is one of the best books outlining a defense based on the historical evidence for the resurrection. When Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ, interviewed Gary and asked him about the importance of the resurrection, he gave the expected scholarly and theological answer. But then Gary surprised Lee by getting personal.

He told a story about when his wife Debbie was slowly dying of stomach cancer in 1995.

“I sat on our porch. My wife was upstairs dying. Except for a few weeks, she was home through it all. It was an awful time. This was the worst thing that could possibly happen. But do you know what was amazing? My students would call me—not just one but several of them—and say, ‘At a time like this, aren’t you glad about the Resurrection?’ As sober as those circumstances were, I had to smile for two reasons. First, my students were trying to cheer me up with my own teaching. And second, it worked. As I would sit there, I’d picture Job, who went through all that terrible stuff and asked questions of God, but then God turned the tables and asked him a few questions. I knew if God were to come to me, I’d ask only one question: ‘Lord, why is Debbie up there in bed?’ And I think God would respond by asking gently, ‘Gary, did I raise my Son from the dead?’ … It was a horribly emotional time for me, but I couldn’t get around the fact that the Resurrection is the answer for her suffering … I believe that with all my heart. If there’s a resurrection, there’s a heaven. If Jesus was raised, Debbie was raised. And I will be someday, too. Then I’ll see them both.”

May the Lord bless you to rejoice every day in the resurrection of our Lord.