1 Corinthians 15:58

May 5, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 17:05 in the audio file.

Or, A Pre-resurrection Bucket List

After winning a race a runner might take a victory lap around the track. The event is complete, the blood and sweat are spent, and what’s left is an easy jog in front of the fans to bask in their cheers and applause.

Paul used the race analogy at the end of 1 Corinthians 9, urging all Christians to run to win the prize. In order to do that they would need to discipline their bodies and exercise self-control in all things in order to receive the imperishable goal. The way he wrote in chapter 9 there’s uncertainty about the final outcome. If we don’t run, or if we run the wrong way, we face disqualification and even worse, defeat.

At the end of 1 Corinthians 15 the imperishable is not just a prize received but a body resurrected. The victory here isn’t won by our self-control but by Christ who is the firstfruits from the dead. We don’t run to win resurrection, we receive the gift of “victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 57). Sin lost. Death is dead. Thank God! What is sown perishable will be raised imperishable, what is sown in dishonor will be raised in glory, what is sown in weakness will be raised in power. When the mortal puts on immortality at the return of Christ we will put the final touches on our taunting of death (verses 54-55).

The climax of the chapter, the peak of resurrection truth and glory, comes in verse 57. It is the celebration of grace in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus for our sins. We shall bear the image of the man of heaven (verse 49), God will be all in all (verse 28), and again, thank God!

The subject switches abruptly from raising the dead to raising funds at the start of chapter 16. But between the celebratory high note in 15:57 and the instructions about collecting money in 16:1 is one verse. Grammatically it is connected to verses 1-57 with a “therefore,” and the idea of “vain” connects with a couple comments earlier in the chapter. But what is the good of this verse? Isn’t it kind of a let down after verse 57? And most curiously, how does Paul tie this exhortation with the previous explanation?

In Paul’s mind this is what you do based on the logic and reality of God-given victory over death’s sting. As if he said, “Do you get all that about the dead being raised? Good. So here’s what’s next. Hold my Bible.“

But isn’t what’s next after being told about victory in Jesus to go to Jesus? If life on earth right now is the seed form, wouldn’t the obvious aim be to get to the plant form as soon as possible? These dumb dust bodies are dying; they are sown in weakness (verse 43). There’s so many things we can’t do, so many limits. Why not just bide our time until we’re raised in power? Why not ride out the difficulties of our dust-life now until Jesus returns and let Him subdue all His enemies and we can inherit the kingdom?

What would make more sense is an exhortation to wait, to be patient, to persevere. And those are required attitudes, good things, but not what Paul says.

At its worst this is the (hyper-Dispensational) bunker mentality. Stash some water and cans of beans in the underground shelter and wait for the rapture, or death, or the second coming. At best this is weak, but still disobedient to the Therefore. In light of the certain victory we have work to do; it’s victory labor. In light of Christ’s resurrection and our guaranteed resurrection in Him we have a bucket list to complete; use the bucket until you kick the bucket.

One more thing before we see the exhortation itself. Paul addresses them as my beloved brothers. There were “some” (verse 12) of them who had issues with the resurrection, and “[...]

1 Corinthians 15:50-57

April 28, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:10 in the audio file.

Or, When Death Is Swallowed Up

Sometimes you might think that a preacher should realize he’s made his point already. Sometimes preachers think that the hearers should have grasped the point, but the hearers don’t, so maybe buzzing the tower again might finally get the proper attention. Then there are times when the subject requires more time, a profound subject, a difficult subject, a subject that means a lot.

Paul isn’t done talking about the resurrection of the dead, not just concerning Jesus as the firstfruits, but all those who are in Christ. 1 Corinthians 15 is the longest chapter in the letter, and Paul is still driving home the truth and the triumph of resurrection in Jesus.

Some of the Corinthians weren’t sure how the dead body would be raised and then participate in the eternal, heavenly kingdom. Certain mental images of roving yet rotting flesh don’t belong, and even at the start of this new paragraph in verse 50 Paul agrees with the Corinthians that something has to change. But God has no problems creating or recreating. He made us to bear the image of the man of dust, which seems amazing. And “we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (verse 49), which is no less amazing and no less possible to God.

This penultimate (second-to-last) paragraph in chapter 15 celebrates our upcoming change to immortality and celebrates the victory God gives us over death and sin and the law.

Celebrating Change (verses 50-53)

A couple things indicate that Paul starts a new section with this sentence. He uses the introduction, I tell you this, and he addresses them directly again as brothers. It’s more than a summary of what he’s said, it is an advance on the principle.

Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. The phrase flesh and blood highlights the frailty of man’s body. But we are getting better bodies to inherit the kingdom of God, not no bodies. The second part of verse 50 helps round out the parallel. The part of flesh and blood that’s the primary problem is the perishable part; keep in mind that organic does not equal heavenly (Ha!). So Paul agrees with the Corinthians, as he defines the terms. The resurrection isn’t bodiless, but those bodies will be genetically modified to handle all the glory (verse 43).

We’re going to inherit the kingdom, meaning that we’ll be brought to share in the King Jesus’ reign.

But how do we get to the imperishable state? As we considered in verse 42, this means more than never-ending, it means being brought to the perfection of what the body was meant for. It’s true that we can’t just walk through a celestial door and keep our current condition (who would want to?), let alone go to the grave and just wait for the heart to beat again in the broken body.

Which brings us to the celebration. Behold! I tell you a mystery. Paul wants them, wants us, to look. He wants Christians to join him in recognizing what has not always been known. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

This is a mystery, meaning that it couldn’t be figured out in the wisdom of men. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle…these guys couldn’t see it, and to the degree that the Corinthians were stuck with the categories of worldly philosophy, it’s no wonder that they had questions. Even in light of the Old Testament teaching on what happens after the death of the body, there is some puzzle. Paul says in effect, “Behold!, here’s the missing pages of the manual!”

The first part of the mystery is that not everyone is going to die. We shall not all sleep. Sleep is the metaphor for death, a metaphor that also suggests that[...]

April 21, 2019

Paige Bone

Poppy Bone

Claire Pakinas

1 Corinthians 15:42-49

April 21, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 17:45 in the audio file.

Or, Sown and Raised with the Last Adam

Every Lord’s Day is good and to be received from God as a blessing to His people, but in some ways the brightness of those Sundays are like moons reflecting the full glory of Resurrection Sunday. It doesn’t really matter whether you follow the venerable Bede’s calculations about the proper day of Spring to celebrate the empty tomb, Easter is a highlight of our worshipping year as the body of Christ.

In God’s providence I reached 1 Corinthians 15 at the beginning of March and, though Easter is later on the calendar this year, I didn’t have to stretch the series to make sure to stay in the chapter by this day. This chapter is the definitive chapter on the resurrection of the dead in all of Scripture. It begins with the historic and prophetic facts: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, He was buried, He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and he appeared to Peter, the other apostles, and Paul himself later on. In The Early History of Rome Livy admitted that “the mists of antiquity cannot always be pierced,” but as for Christ, the truth of His resurrection is as open and clear as when the angels rolled back the stone of His tomb.

What some of the Corinthians began to challenge, though, is whether Christ’s resurrection had any meaning for Christians beyond being a point of belief. From verses 12-34 Paul answers this challenge. Christ is the firstfruits from the dead, and that means there will be secondfruits. One resurrection leads to many more.

The second question is, then, when the dead are raised, “with what kind of body do they come?” This is the challenge taken up in verse 35 which we began to consider last Sunday. Without hesitation Paul answered the challenge by pointing to God’s creative flair. The Lord turns bare seeds into fruitful plants, He differentiates kinds of flesh among living things, and He sets suns and moons and stars in the sky. These all point to God’s pattern of making fit as He sees fit. As the poet George Herbert wrote, “He that hath built the world can do much more” (from his 1633 poem, “The Sacrifice”).

The final answers to the question about what sort of body we will have in the resurrection come in verses 42-49. We will see two sets of contrasts. The body will be better than what we have now and that’s because of the better Adam we belong to.

A Better Body (verses 42-44)

Verse 42 opens with a conclusion indicator (“So also” NASB). God made it so that death transforms a seed, and He made many different seeds (verses 37-38). God made more than one kind of flesh (verse 39). God made more than one kind of glory for bodies (verses 40-41). So it is with the resurrection of the dead. The previous verses, though not using the word resurrection, set up this summary at the start of verse 42 which prepares us for more details in the second half of verse 42 through verse 44.

There are four contrasts between the sown and the raised, between the seed-body and the plant-body. These are not just contrasts between the corpse, but the body we live with before being buried. The intensity level rises like four crescendos in these four lines.

An Imperishable Body (verse 42b)

Of all the places to start, this one seems maybe the most obvious. The body we have now is breaking bad. Whether quickly and painfully or not, whether we recognize it or not, it is inevitable. What is sown is perishable. It is in a state of corruption, of gradual decline; the body we have is at best temporary, and at death begins to decompose into dust. This Greek word for perishable (ἀφθαρσία) translates words like “breath” and “vanity” in the OT.

But remember, this is not bad news for a seed. A see[...]

1 Corinthians 15:35-41

April 14, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:45 in the audio file.

Or, A Consideration of God’s (Re)Creative Flair

I know you know this, but knowing God makes a difference. Knowing what He says about Himself, knowing what He says about His works, knowing more about how He works as we listen to His word and look at His world, really does shape how we answer life and death and afterlife questions. Those who “have no knowledge of God” (1 Corinthians 15:34) will necessarily have a trapped view of what is possible. Idolators don’t have better and broader imaginations, it’s the ones who fear the Lord who made heaven and earth who are truly able to think big.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 15 because there were “some” in the church who said that “there is no resurrection of the dead” (verse 12). After he reminded them about the historical and apostolic witness to the resurrection (verses 1-11) he began to work through the logical consequences denying the resurrection and also God’s promise of the future kingdom of the resurrected (verses 12-34).

In verses 34 through 49 Paul picks up not just on the fact of future resurrection but on the kind of resurrection Christians have coming in Christ. Instead of “some” Paul addresses a “someone” in verse 34 who asks about the “kind of body” that the resurrected will have. There are some fascinating answers which we’ll begin to find this morning and even more to celebrate next week on Resurrection Sunday.

For today in verses 34-41 we’ll see an objection to resurrection and the first two responses.

A Challenging Question about Bodily Resurrection (verse 35)

Whether or not Paul had a particular person in mind, he was familiar with this question. But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”

These two questions scratch at the same thing; the second question clarifies what’s meant by the first. How means more than what way it will happen, but more what state it will take once it’s happened. The problem is with the body. This is the first time that Paul has used the word body in the chapter, and it is a key word from here to the end (used twelve times from verse 35 to 53).

What kind of body, what sort of body, what form/mold will the risen carcass have? What make and model of moving corpse are we talking about? Are we really hoping for the decomposing dead to wake up and start walking around again? Best case scenario: the body parts broke down in one spot in the ground. But how does resuscitation help those bodies that were broken in pieces or burned? Don’t molecules get reused and make new bonds in other living things? How is that going to work? It’s a rotting mess.

The Greek wise-guys thought resurrection was crazy. When the Greeks in Athens heard Paul preaching resurrection they figured he was talking about some foreign god (Acts 17:18). It’s not that everyone denied that there would be any sort of existence after life on earth, but it was monstrous to consider that a crop of corpses would be revitalized, sort of Holy Spirit zombies. More than that, with such a serious gulf between earthly things and heavenly things, how could the earthly inhabit the heavenly? There is more about that explicitly in verses 42-49.

This debater assumes that there is no good answer. “Because the Corinthians could not fathom how this was possible, they had abandoned any trust that it was possible” (Garland).

A First Response Regarding God-Given Bodily Types of Change (verses 36-38)

Paul’s immediate response to the questions in verse 35 shows that he takes them to be scoffing questions not curiosity questions.

You foolish person! This person is lacking understanding, he is senseless. The Greek word for foolish (ἄφρων) nega[...]

1 Corinthians 15:29-34

April 7, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 15:15 in the audio file.

Or, Foolish Risks and No Restraints Without the Resurrection

One of the things I often say at the beginning of our liturgy is that we are meeting in the name of the risen Lord, and that changes things. We are not merely a club, a social gathering, a people looking for something extra to do on Sunday morning. If Jesus is not Lord, and more importantly, if Jesus is not risen from the dead, then we should go home and find the best distractions and forget about all the efforts that go into believing. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, it’s too hard and we’re wasting a bunch of time we could be using to get drunk.

What we do really does come from what we believe. The fruit depends on the root; action grows out of creed and conviction. It is possible to mess this up, or to make it look like it’s messed up. There are many Christians who prioritize lining up their beliefs, like organizing tools on the workbench, who never actually build anything. I refer to these types as truth tubes, as if the goal of doctrine was to collect it, or switching the analogy back, to keep the truth-tools clean. But those Christians who study the Bible and take a lot of sermon notes and whose lives are unrighteous/miserable just demonstrate that what they believe is that right “beliefs” are important. It’s more important to outline and memorize the instruction manual than it is to plug the cord into the actual electric socket.

But, when we are hearing and doing the word well, we Christians appear foolish, especially to the world. Why do we do such weird things? Why are we willing to go through such difficult things? Why do we avoid so many things, and don’t just join them in the party? They are surprised that we don’t drown ourselves with them in the flood of decadence (1 Peter 4:3-4). The answer to all those questions is the same: Jesus Christ our Lord is risen from the dead.

Paul already said the preaching is stupid, and actually fallacious/false/bogus, if Jesus is still dead. He said that there is no forgiveness and there is no hope of reunion with our believing loved ones who’ve already died if there is no resurrection. But then he affirmed, “in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits” of all those who will be raised and the firstfruits of the kingdom that God has predestined to win through the Son’s resurrection.

Now in verses 29-34 Paul demonstrates three kinds of profitless behaviors if Christ isn’t risen. Why go through rituals, why face risks, and why pursue righteousness?

Why Submit to Rituals? (verse 29)

As a pre-question to Paul’s question, why would preachers try to preach this verse unless Jesus is risen from the dead? Ha! There are apparently some 40 different interpretations of this verse (Thiselton), and it is usually regarded as one of, if not the, most difficult verses to understand in 1 Corinthians. Even John MacArthur, usually known for putting his interpretive foot down even if it’s only on a thin pole in the middle of the pond, says that he’s unwilling to be dogmatic about what it means, and more comfortable acknowledging what it can not mean.

Here’s what it says: Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

In the second century some heretics did start practicing vicarious or “in the place of” baptisms, and the Mormons still have it as part of their practice today.

But Paul loves baptism, he wrote about baptism in numerous letters, and he never says 1) that baptism saves (as in baptismal regeneration), or 2) that baptism can fix a lack of faith, or 3) that one person can be baptized as a substitute for someone else, [...]

1 Corinthians 15:20-28

March 31, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 17:30 in the audio file.

Or, The Line of Christ’s Dominion

 

The resurrection of Christ from the dead is core event of the gospel. Paul started reminding the Corinthians of the gospel at the start of 1 Corinthians 15 and he will keep doing so through the entirely of this longest chapter in the letter. He talks about no other single doctrinal subject so long as he does the resurrection. Without it there is no good news.

It is good news about what? I don’t mean that as a question about the content of the message again; Paul has reviewed the death and resurrection message preached and believed. We learn from the gospel something about our condition, our need, and our hope. We were in our sins, so Christ died for our sins. If He is not raised then we are still in our sins, we are not forgiven, and we are (spiritually) dead and will be (eternally) dead when we (physically) die. These are very personal problems, and Paul addressed them in verses 17-19. The consequences if Christ has not been raised are disastrous. Faith is worthless and death wins and “we are of all people most to be pitied.” The apostolic logic demonstrates that our is faith empty and futile if Christ has not been raised.

This, however, is not the case. “In fact Christ has been raised,” and insert exclamation point! The logical obverse means that whatever was not true if Christ has not been raised in verses 12-19 is actually true since He has been. So our faith is in a fullness of truth, and it is very fruitful.

But while this paragraph starts with the opposite premise, again, that Christ has been raised, Paul doesn’t return to encourage us about preaching and faith and forgiveness. He seems to be following up on whether or not the apostles were misrepresenting God. The gospel of the resurrection is good news for us, but it cannot be separated from the good news of revelation of God’s nature and God’s purpose for and in the world. The cross and the empty tomb is at the center of God’s work because it is at the center of God.

Verses 20-28 show how God works, and in doing so tell us about God Himself. God’s mission in Christ is about abolishing death for the sake of His full and final dominion.

Resurrection Representation (verses 20-22)

Here is the firstfruits of personal advantages. These verses answer, Who is the resurrection good for?

We cannot appreciate our problem or our salvation or God’s nature without the concept of representation. God likes representatives; He came up with the idea.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Here is the clear contrast to the false premise of the Corinthians in the previous verses. Christ has been raised from the dead, and this is what’s referred to as a divine passive, meaning that God is the subject behind the action. Christ was raised by the Father, and this is important because anyone who is raised is raised by the same God with resurrection power.

Christ is the firstfruits, a unique word that usually referred to part of the harvest that represented the rest of it. “[T]he term signifies the pledge of the remainder…the assurance of a full harvest…the first installment” (De Boer quoted by Thiselton). Christ comes first and Christ represents those who have fallen asleep, the group Paul mentioned in verse 18 as falling asleep “in Christ,” so those who believed in Christ. Christ is the atoning sacrifice for, the Lord of, and the representative of believers.

Both verses 21 and 22 begin with the word “for”; both offer explanation on Christ as firstfruits.

First, For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection from the dead. We’ll see names for each man in the next v[...]

1 Corinthians 15:12-19

March 24, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 14:15 in the audio file.

Or, The Consequences If Christ Is Not Raised

 

The resurrection of Christ is not only a historical event, it is the hinge of our faith. This paragraph, 1 Corinthians 15:12-19, is a logical linchpin that demonstrates how the wheels of preaching and believing, and the wheels of forgiveness and eternal life, all fall off unless Christ is raised from the dead.

I really have enjoyed working through this paragraph because of Paul’s logic. I’ve been teaching an introductory logic class for my first time this school year, and just a week ago we got to the lesson on hypothetical arguments, the “if…then” arguments. There are at least six different hypothetical or conditional arguments in these verses. His argument here is about the consequences if Christ has not been raised from the dead.

He builds on this logic twice in the paragraph. Note the repetition in verses 13 and 16, and then a repetition in the first part of verse 14 and 17. “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised….” As I said, he cycles through this logic twice, with related, but different conclusions.

We might wonder, however, after reading through verses 1-11, why Paul even goes through this. The gospel preached by Paul and the other apostles (verses 1, 2, 3, 11), the gospel believed by the Corinthians (verses 1, 11), included Christ being “raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared” to Peter and the Twelve and a number of witnesses (verses 3-5). The death and resurrection of Christ is the center of the gospel message and the center of God’s work and couldn’t be left out.

So why were some of the Corinthians having trouble? Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, which He was, as evidenced from the previous paragraph by Paul himself and others, [then] how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? We don’t know who the some were; were there many of the “some”? Were the “some” were leaders or not? We do know that they were Corinthians, and they were apparently Christians, identified with the church enough for Paul to call them some of you, and he was writing to the believers. But if they didn’t believe that Christ was raised from the dead, then what did they believe?

It is possible, though again we don’t know for sure, that some of them thought Christ was raised but that He was the only one. Paul argues in the next paragraph, verses 20-28, that Christ is “the firstfruits,” with more to follow necessarily (secondfruits, thirdfruits, etc.). But in verses 12-19 Paul’s repeated logic concerns Christ’s own resurrection. Maybe it was an issue of being raised not in body but only in spirit. Perhaps this is why Paul talks about “heavenly bodies” and “earthly bodies” later in chapter 15 (verses 35-41). Popular Greek philosophy and mythology in Paul’s day didn’t believe in physical resurrection of flesh and bones. In Plato’s Phaedo, Cebes says that most people fear that at death there is no more existence of body or soul. Socrates tries to argue that the soul is immortal but the body doesn’t continue. In Eumenedies by Aeschulus, Apollo says that if once the blood is gone there is no resurrection (Garland). This is why we’re not surprised that when Paul preached to the Athenians, “Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked” (Acts 17:32).

In this paragraph Paul begins with their false universal premise that: No people are raised from the dead people. And Paul argues the particular from the universal (subimplication): if none are, then certainly Christ couldn’t be. This is the particular he argues from twice, starting in ve[...]

Selected Scriptures

March 17, 2019

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

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Or, An Inquiry into the Blessing on Humanity that Are Thumbs

We’re starting another mini series tonight on the subject of work. Similar to Downhill Apologetics, we received ideas for possible seminar topics after the 2017 seminar and work was recommended. We decided that we’d tackle said subject on Sunday evenings instead of covering it in a one-day seminar, but each pastor will take his stick to the labor piñata before we have a Q&A, where maybe this time we’ll actually let you ask questions, though that is scheduled to be a number of months from now. I get the first whack, and I have a variety of candy I hope you take with you tonight, while still leaving plenty of hull for the other guys to hit.

It may seem like a vocational pastor–one who gets paid to read the Bible, pray, talk with people, and preach sermons–should not get to speak about any other kind of work, because, what are his qualifications? I don’t think that is true by definition, but it is sadly true by experience, including my own. Some of that testimony might be a good way to punch the timecard and get us started.

My dad was a self-employed draftsman. I do not know what either of my grandfathers did for work, either because I forgot, or because I wasn’t that close to them, or because they were both past working age by the time I knew them. We weren’t continuing a family business and I don’t remember any family lessons about work. My dad held a couple jobs for construction companies prior to going out on his own, but from the time I was eight until he died he worked from our converted living room into office, with no door, and with country music playing on 104.5 WQKT whenever he was working.

There were only a couple worldview stories that my dad told me, not that he used that vocabulary, but as I would interpret what little he said to me growing up. The main story, the one he repeated most often, the one with expectations attached to it, and the one he was willing to sacrifice for, was that I was going to and graduation from college. He had not done either. And in his line of work that lack of having a degree kept him from charging as much as an architect could, and it kept him dependent on architects to “approve” his plans. Especially the latter stuck in his craw such that whatever I did, I would be getting a college diploma.

What he wanted for me was not necessarily the opportunity to be more independent, the reason for going to and graduating from college was so that I could get a job that paid me more money. And the reason that I would want more money was so that I could provide for a family and have it be more comfortable.

I saw him being generous, but I don’t even remember him telling me that I should be. I saw him being diligent, but he never said that diligence was virtuous by itself apart from enabling you to pay your bills. From the time I started school he repeatedly told me his expectations and committed himself to helping me pay for the first year of college, but he expected me to do whatever it took to finish.

I guess this seemed fine, especially since I wanted to be a baseball player. Getting drafted by a professional team straight out of high school was never my aspiration, so playing baseball in college and then going pro seemed great. The summer before my senior year of high school I started to desire to be a pastor, which is its own story, and one that my dad hated at least for a while before he settled into a longer disappointment, but at least for me, I was satisfied going to Bible college and playing baseball before going pro.

Work was only a way to pay bills and buy toys. While growing up I mowed yards in our neighborhood, I worked for an independent painter cleaning up after him, I worked at TCBY for a while, but none of that was what I thought brought glory to God. When[...]

1 Corinthians 15:5-11

March 17, 2019

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 17:52 in the audio file.

Or, Reminders of the Many Resurrection Witnesses

The death and resurrection of Christ is the center of God’s work, and the resurrection in particular puts everything that happens to us now into perspective. Without the resurrection we are hoping in vain and working in vain; preaching (and listening to preaching) is certainly pointless. In light of the resurrection we have all confidence to spend and be spent for Christ’s sake.

Resurrection dominates 1 Corinthians 15. “Some,” whoever exactly they are, had begun to question the resurrection. Paul addresses them and begins to make arguments to them in verse 12. In the first 11 verses he is reminding the church of the gospel, he’s reminding them of their common ground. He wasn’t telling them a new story, nor a make-believe story. He delivered to them as of first importance the gospel message.

I explained last week that I think the message involves two main points (verses 3-5): Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and Christ was raised from the dead on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. There are two additional actions, He was buried and He appeared. I think both of these corroborate a respective event. He died, and was so dead that they buried Him. He rose again, and was so alive that many witnesses could testify to having seen Him alive.

This is where we left off in verse 5. There are six different witnesses to whom Christ appeared in verses 5-8, at which point Paul talks a little more about himself and his place in this list in verses 9-10, before returning to tie a bow on the reminders of the message in verse 11. The verb appeared appears four times in four consecutive verses, with two instances assumed.

I’m not planning to take us back to the Scriptural records of each of these appearances, mostly because Paul himself doesn’t do that, and also because there isn’t a Scriptural record for some of these except than in this passage. But as we are reminded about the many witnesses I do want to comment on why Paul chose these witnesses to corroborate the resurrection.

Most significantly missing from this list are the women, such as the two Mary’s, and it was some of the women who were actually first to see the risen Lord according to the Gospel accounts. That means Paul wasn’t being exhaustive, he wasn’t listing every single individual or episode of Jesus’ appearances. So there must be something important for the ones he does mention.

Christ Appeared to Peter

There is more about Jesus predicting that Peter would deny Him before Jesus’ crucifixion than there is about Jesus appearing to him after His resurrection. Peter saw Jesus later in the day of resurrection with the other apostles who were gathered together (John 20:19-23), though Peter had run to see the empty tomb earlier in the day (John 20:3-10). It may be that Christ appeared to Peter before that evening (Luke 24:34). We also know about an extended conversation that Jesus had with Peter about feeding the sheep (John 21:15-19).

Paul regularly calls Simon Cephas (1 Corinthians 1:12; 3:22; 9;5), meaning “rock,” the Aramaic name that is translated as “Peter” in Greek. Jesus called Simon “Cephas” (John 1:42). Peter was the outspoken leader of the disciples. Had Peter not seen Jesus, Peter would have been upset, and he would have raised a stink much more than Thomas did. Paul considered Peter as the apostle “entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised” (Galatians 2:7), and no list of witnesses would be complete without him.

Christ Appeared to the Twelve Disciples

Closely connected to Peter were the original Twelve. We know that actually only eleven (see Mark 16:14) of the Twelve could have seen the resurrected Ch[...]