This blog entry continues the study on the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. The last entry covered verses 12 to 17, where the point is made that if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ is not raised and we are yet in our sins. Thanks be to God the dead do rise as we see in Jesus; so there is the truth of the gospel in our world.
Today we look at verse 18 and 19. If the dead do not rise then, “those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (ESV). In other words if the dead are not raised then our loved ones who have died in the Lord have perished permanently.
The word “perish” describing what happened to the loved ones means “destroyed,” “abolished.” What he means is they are annihilated, and will never have life again!
If the dead are not raised then they are still in their sins, they have no hope of life after life after death, and there is no future for them of any kind…they perish along with the rest of mankind! To deny the resurrection of the dead is to deny our past (Christ died for our sins), deny our present (we live in him), and it is to deny our whole future.
If the resurrection were not true we would suffer miserably at losing a loved one. But because there is the hope of the resurrection when we are about to lose a Christian loved one we, like Robert Rayburn said, “can take his or her hand, and in the midst of that heartbreak and that desolation and through the tears of love, we smile, we really smile, inside as well as out, and say with absolute conviction, ‘We shall meet again in heaven and the resurrection’ And, then later, when the pain of the separation is still felt, we say to ourselves: It is only till the resurrection.”
But hearing the news that Jesus Christ did not rise and we will not raise either. Surely, that would make us the most pitiable of men and women.
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