1 Corinthians 15

Paul has heard that some of the people in the Corinthian church have been saying that there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead.

This opinion has popped up in history from time to time beginning with the Gnostics.  Today Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus did not rise from the dead.  It takes some hermeneutical gymnastic and for some cults, their own private translation of the scriptures to dace around Paul’s meaning here.

Before bringing the physical resurrection of Jesus to the church’s attention, he first gives us the inspired record of the Gospel’s summary.

Jesus died, was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures (v3-4).  This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ whereby all who profess Jesus’ name have hope of salvation and eternal life (v1-2).

Not only this but there are many eyewitnesses that give in collaboration an infallible proof of His physical resurrection. In Luke’s version of the gospel, eye witnesses record Jesus eating fish, a piece of valuable information if you think His resurrection was just an apparition.

The hope of eternal life is secured in the resurrection of Jesus Christ in so that if did not raise physically from the dead, then all our faith and preaching in Christ is vain (v14).   It does not do to just have a physical death, for there would only be forgiveness, but death of the body remains.  Those born in their sins are not waiting to discover that they are sinners in the day of judgement, but we are in death already. Every human being born, apart from Christ, was born already in the state of death and alienation from God.

There must also be a restoring of the life we lost when Adam sinned. There must be a life that replaces the one we squandered.  Someone else must share their inheritance with us that we might enjoy again what we lost in sin. Jesus gave us His life for payment of sin and the canceling of a debt, but He rose again to life that all who died with Him would also have life.  For in Adam all die, but those in Christ shall be made alive (v22).

Interesting enough, we who yet live must die daily. We die to the body of sin and its desire and awake to God’s righteousness that has been made in us. Through this daily dying to sin and awaking to God, god works in us a testimony of power that cannot be conveyed any other way than through the patient waiting for His return.

We do this in hope of a body we inherit, all thanks to the work of Jesus’ resurrection, a body like unto His. This hope is infallibly. steadfast in the work of Christ. Therefore we make ourselves steadfast (v58) in this life, through its sufferings and trials. We labor to bring others to Christ not by word only but the power of Christ that lives within us.  That power is seen when we stand in faith, wage war against sin, and live in God’s righteousness.