I read a funny comic strip a few weeks ago. Two people with suit and tie, and tote bag were going door to door proselytizing Jehovah Witness style. They were at a door and the owner was looking at the pamphlet. He says, “This is blank!” The two guys respond, “We’re atheists.”
Some in the Corinthian church believed and promoted the error that there is no resurrection of the dead! So from v.12-34, to show exactly how wrong this error is, Paul uses the, “If it is not true, then…, argument. If there is not resurrection of the dead then Christianity is blank like that pamphlet; it is nothing and there is no God.
Well, from v.24 to 28, Paul shows that if there is no resurrection then the world will not be sorted out and put right. The resurrection of Jesus was the time when God took this messed up world and put it back to order! Notice how the Bible explains this.
Point One: One human messed up the world, one human will put it right. The first Adam brought death to man & God’s creation. In passages like Romans 8, Gen 3, and also Job we learn creation is subjected to frustration and groans under the curse of sin. But here Paul’s focus is on the death Adam brought onto man. By his rebellion against God he sullied our world with death through sin. Notice v.20a, & v.22a. Paul said the same thing in Rom 5.
Adam’s sin brought us spiritual death. Separation from God’s person, his will, and his good purpose for us. Adam’s sin brought physical death too. Now we have to face what hurts us the most; life being taken away from us. This all came to us through Adam’s sin.
But there was another man! The last Adam, he gets us out of this mess. Notice v.21b, v.22b, v.45, and Rom 5:15,18-19. God gave the job to put sinners right to this man! Through him, God, as it were to the problem by the scruff of the neck and set sinners right again! How?
Jesus took death upon him on our behalf and went to battle with it on our behalf – and won! This means as our sin & death was imputed to him, so now his life is imputed to us also…so we are guaranteed to have a resurrection like his. This is why Paul says, Christ is the firstfruits!. This means Jesus is the pioneer to go into resurrection territory where no man has ever gone before – and he takes his children along! Notice v.22-23. All who belong to Christ shall be made alive! First, it was Christ; one day it will be all who belong to him. Of course, this “putting the world & sinners right” has only started it is not finished yet. Be completed at Christ’s 2nd coming - but it has started. This brings me to point two.
Point Two: Through the resurrection of Christ God the Father becomes King of the world (v.24-28). These verses describe God’s final putting-the-world-perfectly right. It describes the work of Jesus, the role of God the Father, and how this world will function forever. It’s about the coming Kingdom of God!
The Jews believed that God’s kingdom would come; but they did not agree on how it would come. Well, the church now knew! Jesus brought the kingdom and by his life, death & especially here, the resurrection! The surprise in God’s plan was that before God’s people would rise at the end of history, one person would first be raised in the middle of history. And this meant God’s order for saving the world was in two phases!
Phase one: The resurrected Jesus is now reigning. (v.25, 26, 27.)
Phase two: God the Father will be all in all (v.24,27-28). Christ victory (phase one) is guaranteed (v.25, 27a). This is why phase two will come. At the last day, the Son of God will, in the final putting-the-world-right, place all things under the order of the Father…that God may be all in all. Is Jesus less than the Father, or the Spirit? No! They are co-equal. The Father is the one from whom all things come, the Son and Spirit are the ones through whom all things come (1 Cor 8:6). There is order in God.
As God Almighty puts the world in its proper order; part of that order, which has been the order eternally in God, is that Jesus will be forever the Father’s true Son…doing all things that please him, handing all things over to him, and always being in subjection to him as God the Son. So in phase two God the Father will reign eternally, and God the Son will be the obedient Son eternally, and God the Spirit will bind them together eternally, and so God will be all in all!
One man messed things up, but another man came to put things right. Death is being reversed, being undone, losing its corrupting power; and this means sin is being conquered! That’s good news! And what’s more at the 2nd coming the living Lord will give all things to the Father and God’s final redemption and justice will happen. But if there is no resurrection…?
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
If there is no resurrection…then what? (Point #3)
My study on the resurrection from 1 Corinthians 15 continues after a two week pause. Not that I have not been thinking about the resurrection, I have. It’s just that I have been busy, but busy in a world where the resurrection has happened. That is encouraging.
By the way, before I go to my point today let me point out that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece of a novel, The Brothers Karamazov ends with the good news of the resurrection. The speech at the stone given to the boys of the Russian village by Alyosha concludes with Alyosha’s affirmation, “Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!” “Ah, how splendid it will be!” shouted one of the boys. It the midst of all the sin and injustice in the novel, Dostoevsky gives the answer of God…resurrection.
Anyway, to our study. We are looking at 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 where Paul asserts the certainty of the resurrection by showing the absurdity of everything if there was not resurrection. We have covered his first two points. If the dead are not raised then Christ is not raised and therefore we are still in sin. And two, if the dead are not raised then our loved ones who have died have perished permanently.
Here is Paul’s third point. If the dead are not raised then there is no point in believing in Jesus (v.19). If there is no resurrection Paul was misrepresenting God. Ministers do the same if they preach the resurrection. There is no point in preaching Jesus if Jesus is still dead. But also, for us, there in no point in believing in him. If all he was a good guru, a good teacher, and even a great miracle worker, but stayed dead when the Romans killed him…our faith is empty and our religion really is a crutch…and people should feel sorry for us. If the dead are not raised and Jesus is not raised then Albert Schweitzer was right.
As N.T. Wright put it… “If there is no resurrection, what’s the point of being a Christian in the first place? Hated, reviled, persecuted, struggling with sin – if this is all there, surely it would be better to throw in the towel, to admit that another philosophy of life can make life easier.” If Jesus did not rise from the dead but still has our sins, if he is the Son of God but stayed dead and did not destroy sin and death, if his atoning death was not sufficient and all we have to believe in is a Messiah who died we have not hope at all! There is no point in this!
But…v.20, “Christ has in fact been raised from the dead.” Robert Chandlish: “Therefore, we as well as those who have fallen asleep in Jesus have a hope that neither death nor sin can touch. Christian’s who fall asleep before the great day of resurrection are alive and forgiven now. We also, believing, are not in our sins.”
By the way, before I go to my point today let me point out that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s masterpiece of a novel, The Brothers Karamazov ends with the good news of the resurrection. The speech at the stone given to the boys of the Russian village by Alyosha concludes with Alyosha’s affirmation, “Certainly we shall all rise again, certainly we shall see each other and shall tell each other with joy and gladness all that has happened!” “Ah, how splendid it will be!” shouted one of the boys. It the midst of all the sin and injustice in the novel, Dostoevsky gives the answer of God…resurrection.
Anyway, to our study. We are looking at 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 where Paul asserts the certainty of the resurrection by showing the absurdity of everything if there was not resurrection. We have covered his first two points. If the dead are not raised then Christ is not raised and therefore we are still in sin. And two, if the dead are not raised then our loved ones who have died have perished permanently.
Here is Paul’s third point. If the dead are not raised then there is no point in believing in Jesus (v.19). If there is no resurrection Paul was misrepresenting God. Ministers do the same if they preach the resurrection. There is no point in preaching Jesus if Jesus is still dead. But also, for us, there in no point in believing in him. If all he was a good guru, a good teacher, and even a great miracle worker, but stayed dead when the Romans killed him…our faith is empty and our religion really is a crutch…and people should feel sorry for us. If the dead are not raised and Jesus is not raised then Albert Schweitzer was right.
As N.T. Wright put it… “If there is no resurrection, what’s the point of being a Christian in the first place? Hated, reviled, persecuted, struggling with sin – if this is all there, surely it would be better to throw in the towel, to admit that another philosophy of life can make life easier.” If Jesus did not rise from the dead but still has our sins, if he is the Son of God but stayed dead and did not destroy sin and death, if his atoning death was not sufficient and all we have to believe in is a Messiah who died we have not hope at all! There is no point in this!
But…v.20, “Christ has in fact been raised from the dead.” Robert Chandlish: “Therefore, we as well as those who have fallen asleep in Jesus have a hope that neither death nor sin can touch. Christian’s who fall asleep before the great day of resurrection are alive and forgiven now. We also, believing, are not in our sins.”
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