Preached Resurrection Sunday, April 8, 2012
from
1 Corinthians 15:50-58
Theme: Because Jesus rose from the dead, we can live in the daily confidence that death is conquered for us.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
It’s my privilege this morning to share with you what God’s word says about the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The passage I have felt led to share from, however, isn’t so much about the story of the resurrection of Jesus itself. Rather, it’s about the impact that His resurrection is to have on our daily lives.
At the end of 1 Corinthians 15—a great chapter in the New Testament about the resurrection—the apostle Paul writes;
Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord (1 Corinthians 15:50-58).
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I love 1 Corinthians 15. I have gone to it often in order to understand the importance of the resurrection of Jesus. I have, in fact, preached from it many times on this important holiday. And I especially love how it places the resurrection of Jesus Christ at the very center of the Christian faith.
In verse 17, Paul had stressed how the resurrection of Jesus is central to the gospel that he and the other apostles preached; and says to these Christians in Corinth that “if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile . . .” This passage of Scripture is important because it affirms that if it was not actually, literally, factually, historically true that Jesus Christ bodily rose from the dead after his crucifixion, then the whole of Christianity itself is fraudulent—and our faith in Jesus in is nothing more than a tragic waste of time. “But”, as Paul affirms in verse 20, “now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
But as I’ve been studied this great New Testament chapter recently, I’ve had to correct my thinking about it. I used to think that Paul wrote it, primarily, to make sure that the Corinthian Christians believed that Jesus truly rose from the dead. That is not, however, the problem Paul is trying to solve in it. After all, early on in this passage, he affirmed that they already believed that Jesus rose from the dead. He describes the gospel that he preached in verses 3-4 by saying, “For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures . . .”; and then, closes it all out in verse 11 by saying, “so we preach and so you believed.” Clearly, they already believed that Jesus rose from the dead—just as I suspect most of us here today, who are celebrating this holiday, also believe.
The more I have studied this passage, the more convinced I have become that the problem Paul was trying to solve was that they didn’t believe properly about what the implications of Jesus’ resurrection were for them! They believed that Jesus truly rose from the dead; but they didn’t rightly believe that they themselves would also one day be raised in glory because of Him!
Look at what he writes in verse 12. After having affirmed that they believed in the resurrection as he and the other apostles preached it, he then went on to tell them in verse 12, “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?” That word “the dead” in the original language is in the plural. It’s not speaking of the resurrection of Jesus, but of others. In other words, they had come to believe that, though Jesus rose, others would not rise after Him. They believed that Jesus’ resurrection was the only one to occur; and that others who believed on Him—and who were inseparably bound to Him and spiritually united to Him in a saving way—would not also likewise be raised.
Paul went on to speak of the dangerous implications of this error when he wrote,
But if there is no resurrection of the dead [plural], then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead [plural] do not rise. For if the dead [plural] do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable (vv. 13-19).
You see; the problem wasn’t that the Corinthians didn’t rightly understand the nature of the believer’s union with Jesus Christ. They rightly believed that Jesus Christ rose. But they didn’t understand that Jesus is so united to those who believed on Him—and they to Him—that all that happened to Him must also happen to them. Apparently, they were being influenced by false teachers who were persuading them that there was not a future resurrection of “the dead” (plural), and that their fellow believers who were “asleep” in Christ would not one day be risen from the grave. They didn’t realize that, if they say that the dead in Christ do not rise, then they were also saying that Jesus—who is inseparably bound to them—didn’t rise either
And this false teaching was having a destructive impact on their moral behavior. Because of their failure to understand the future resurrection of the saints in Christ, they were not standing strong in the faith, and were growing lax in their personal holiness before the Lord. In verses 33-34, Paul warned them;
Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.” Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame (vv. 33-34).
And all of this makes this morning’s passage very important.
I am supposing that many of us here today profess to have a faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And I’m taking it for granted that those who have placed their faith in the Lord Jesus also have a strong belief in His resurrection from the dead—as we celebrate it today. But for some of us who believe and celebrate His resurrection, the personal implication of that resurrection has not yet become the basis of vital Christian living that it needs to be. Some of us will celebrate Jesus’ resurrection today, and then go home to deny the personal implication of that resurrection by the way we live. We will be sad, or defeated, or discouraged in our Christian lives. We will allow the pressures and trials of life to overwhelm us and overcome us; and we will say—not perhaps so much with our words, but within our hearts and by hour attitude and outlook—”What’s the use. Why keep on trying. Why keep on serving the Lord. What good ever comes from it.”
And the reason for this will be because we have not embraced good theology. It will be because we have not yet understood how united Jesus is to those who have believed on Him—and how true it is that everything that happened to Him with respect to His resurrection unto glory will also happen to them—how “if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” (Romans 8:11)—how Jesus Himself said, “Because I live, you will live also” (John 14:19). If we, as professing believers, live perpetually in discouragement and defeat in our attitude and thoughts, it will be—in large part—because we have not yet take the great implication of the resurrection of Jesus to the next, very personal, very practical step. We will not have come to understand that—no matter what else happens to us—because He lives, we will live also.
I ask you to look carefully with me at what Paul wrote in our passage this morning. Pay close attention, dear brothers and sisters in Christ; because if you do, it will literally transform the way you live your life. It shows us that, because Jesus rose from the dead, we can live in the daily confidence that—for us—death is utterly conquered!
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Let’s walk through four key affirmations that Paul makes in this passage. The first one is probably an obvious one. But it’s one that explains why we sometimes feel that sense of defeat and frustration. It’s that . . .
1. RIGHT NOW, WE LIVE UNDER THE LIMITATIONS OF A FRAIL, PERISHABLE BODY (v. 50).
In verse 50, Paul wrote; “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption.”
When Paul speaks of “flesh and blood”, he’s speaking of these weak and frail bodies that we indwell. As human beings, we are constituted of two parts—our bodies and our spirits. Our spirits—our inner being—is housed in our bodies. I like what one old Scottish preacher that I used to sit under would say: “This ol’ body of mine isn’t all there is of me. It’s just the case that I’m kept in.” And it’s a “case” that’s frail and limited, because it’s made of flesh and blood. It sometimes gets injured. It sometimes gets sick. If I don’t wash it now and then, it, it gets unpleasant to be around. It grows old, and wrinkled, and gray. It’s also, as Paul says, “perishable”, or “corruptible”. One day—if the Lord Jesus doesn’t come back to this earth before then—it will die.
Now; in 1973, something happened to my spirit that dwells inside this perishable body. I prayed to God, trusted in the cross of Jesus for the forgiveness for my sins, and gave myself to Jesus as My Lord and Savior. The moment that happened, I became a new creature before God. My spirit began to experience eternal life. But my body—the “case” in which my spirit dwells—remained in the same state of perishability. It cannot catch up with where my spirit is, because it’s just perishable flesh and blood. It’s like Paul once wrote elsewhere, “Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). I experience that daily renewal in my spirit; but my outward man is definitely not yet being renewed yet like my inward man. I can tell every time I look in the mirror.
This corruptible, perishable, flesh-and-blood body of mine is not meant for the eternal realities that my spirit already now enjoys. My spirit is already made fit for heaven; but I live in a body that isn’t fit for heaven. And the perishable part of my being often affects the other. Sometimes I’m frustrated by it. It drags me down. My spirit longs to soar in the heights of heavenly things; but my body gets tired and weary and drags along on the earth. It feels limitations, and experiences trials, and suffers temptations.
I think that one of the ways that the devil seeks to bring discouragement to God’s redeemed people—people who love the resurrected Lord Jesus and trust in Him for their salvation—is to get them to forget that they live in perishable bodies that are limited, and that get sick, and that have periods of temptation, and that eventually grow old and die. If the enemy of our souls can keep us from focusing on the fact that Jesus not only rose gloriously from the dead, but has promised that we will one day be raised in glory with Him, then he can easily make us discouraged, and defeated, and focused only on the ‘here-and-now’, and lose our zeal for the future glory that we will enjoy with the Lord.
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Well; it’s true that “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption”. And that was what the Corinthians were focusing in on. And as a result, they were becoming lax and lazy in their zeal for righteousness before the Lord. They were getting discouraged in their devotion to the Lord, and were increasingly giving themselves over to sinful habits and practices. They were increasingly behaving as if they would not one day be raised in glory.
But it’s then that Paul reminds them of what the implication of the resurrection of Jesus was for their own future. He went on to tell them that . . .
2. BECAUSE OF JESUS’ RESURRECTION, WE CAN KNOW THAT THESE FRAIL BODIES OF OURS WILL ONE DAY BE TRANSFORMED (vv. 51-53).
He told them, “Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (vv. 51-53).
When Paul spoke of “a mystery”, it must have made the Corinthians perk up their ears a little bit. They loved mysteries. But it wasn’t the Agatha Christie “who-done-it” kind of mysteries that they loved. They loved the kind of “mysteries” that were involved in the paganistic religions of the Corinthian culture in which they lived. There were lots of cults in those days that had “mysteries” that were only made available to a select few. They were only revealed to those who had been “initiated” into the group. Paul used their “love language”, so to speak; and told them that he was now going to speak a mystery to them. He was going to tell them something that could not be known by human reasoning or study; something that had not been revealed to humankind before, but that was now being revealed to them through Paul by the Holy Spirit. It was something that could never be known by merely looking at these frail bodies of ours.
And it was this: We shall not all sleep—that is, we who love the Lord Jesus shall not all physically die! To “sleep” was Paul’s way of describing a Christian who had died. And it was a good way of describing it; because when someone sleeps, they will eventually wake-up. Death for the Christian is not permanent. But, even though we will not all “sleep”, we will all be changed!
“Changed into what?” you might ask? Changed into believing men and women whose bodies are glorified in such a way as to be appropriate “cases” for their glorified spirits to indwell. We will be changed from the weak, perishable physical frailty that characterized Adam after he had sinned, into the physical glory that characterized the Lord Jesus when He was raised from the dead. As Paul put it in verses 47-49;
The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man (vv. 47-49).
And this won’t happen over a long period of time. It’ll happen instantly—in the time it takes for the twinkling of an eye to occur. It’ll happen at the time that the last trumpet blows—announcing our Lord’s return. Paul spoke of this in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17; when he wrote,
For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will by no means precede those who are asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).
Paul says that “the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (v. 52). And I love it that he adds, “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality” (v. 53). Why is it that it “must” happen? It’s because Jesus died for us, and rose again for us, so that those who believe on Him will live forever with Him in eternal glory. And in order for them to live with Him eternally in heavenly glory, they have to have “bodies” that match His in glory!
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So; the first affirmation that Paul makes is that we live—right now—under the frustrating limitations of a perishable body. But the second affirmation he makes is that, because the Son of God took full humanity upon Himself—including a flesh-and-blood human body like our own—died in that body, and rose again in the same body in a state of glory, we who are united to Him by faith can rest assured that these frail bodies of ours will one day be transformed to be like His own!
And now; notice the third affirmation that Paul makes. It’s that . . .
3. THAT COMING TRANSFORMATION WILL RESULT IN DEATH BEING COMPLETELY SWOLLOWED UP IN VICTORY (vv. 54-57).
Paul wrote; “So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory'” (v. 54).
When he said that ‘death is swallowed up in victory”, he quoted from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. And what a picture it gives us! When something gets swallowed up, it’s gone! It becomes absorbed into whatever swallowed it; and it cannot be seen any longer! All that can be seen is what swallowed it up! And that’s what will happen to our old enemy “death” when our bodies are finally raised in glory. Death becomes swallowed up and absorbed into victory; so that death itself is never seen again, and only the victory is what remains! Paul goes on to almost taunt death—quoting from the Greek translation of the thirteenth chapter of the Old Testament prophet Hosea—when he says,
“O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?” (v. 55).
Now; notice carefully what he then goes on to say. “The sting of death is sin . . .” (v. 56a). Death is like a scorpion. It has the ability to sting; and that sting hurts and causes destruction. And Paul says that the sting of death is sin. It is sin that gives death its destructive power. Death would never have even come upon the human race at all if it had not been for sin. Adam, our first father, sinned; and he thus brought the destructive power of death upon all of us. It is as it says in Romans 5:12; “just as through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned . . .” What a painful sting sin is!
Paul goes on to say, “and the strength of sin is the law” (v. 56b). Because of Adam’s sin, each member of Adam’s race now experiences death; and each one of us now has a body that become frail and break-down and die. And even now that death exists, it would never have been the destructive threat that it is if it had not been for the fact that we each had sinned against God’s just and righteous law, and had stood under the threat of judgment for having broken His commandments. The “strength” of sin is expressed in Hebrews 9:27; where it says that “it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment”. The power for sin to bring all this upon us is found in God’s law. The law itself is good, but it makes us guilty before God; because, as Paul wrote in Romans 7:8, “apart from the law sin was dead.”
But then Paul writes, “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 57). In spite of the destructive power of sin through the condemnation of the law, victory—the very victory that swallows up death—is ours as God’s gift of grace to us through His Son Jesus Christ! As Paul wrote in Romans 8:1-2, “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.” Jesus Himself has paid the death penalty for our sins, thus removing sin’s power through the law. And by thus taking the penalty for our sins upon Himself, He has forever removed the “sting” of death itself!
Thanks to Jesus, death is no longer a threat to us! It can no longer hurt us! To show us that it is no longer a threat, He tasted of it for us, and then rose from the dead Himself! And because He lives, we will live also! Death is swallowed up in victory!
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And that leads us to that final affirmation; that . . .
4. THEREFORE, WE WHO FOLLOW JESUS SHOULD REJOICE RIGHT NOW IN THAT COMING VICTORY, AND NEVER GIVE UP (v. 58).
As Paul puts it in verse 58, “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord” (v. 58). The implication of Jesus’ resurrection is that we—too—will be raised with Him in glory. The end of our story is not one of defeat through death, but of victory through life!
I hope that, if you have not yet placed your faith in Jesus Christ your Savior, you will do so today. That’s how you become united to Him in His death, burial and resurrection. ” For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
And if you have trusted Him as your Savior, I hope that you will make very sure that you believe rightly about what His resurrection means to you. Because He lives, you will most certainly live also! Therefore, you can stand fast in your faith, not be moved from it, and give your all for Him; looking ahead to the day when the saying will be brought to pass, “Death is swallowed up in victory”—and “knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord”.