Note: This transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for accurate information and meaning.
Introduction: The Resurrection of the Dead
Thank you, Jesse. Well, as we continue in worship this morning, we turn our attention to 1 Corinthians 15 again. We’re in the second part of a three-part series through 1 Corinthians 15, looking at the resurrection. Last week, we looked at the resurrection of Christ in particular. Now we move slightly—it still there’s a lot of overlap here—but we’re shifting slightly over to the resurrection of the dead this morning.
That is a central teaching of the Christian faith, a central hope of Christians across millennia: that just as Christ died and rose, he rose so that we might rise from the dead. If you think of things like the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the resurrection of the dead.” That’s a creed that the church has been reciting for centuries. This is something that unites Christians because it’s something the Bible teaches, something that Jesus has purchased for us with his death and his resurrection. So it’s important for us to spend some time dwelling on it, believing in it, and considering the reality of the power of Christ in the resurrection of the dead this morning. So we can believe in the resurrection of the dead. Keep that in your mind as we take a look at 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 12, and we’ll read down through that whole section down to verse 34.
Scripture Reading: 1 Corinthians 15:12-34
But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he has put everything under his feet. Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.
Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.
This is the word of God. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for your grace. We thank you for the work of Christ on our behalf. As we consider the resurrection, we recognize that as Jesus rose, he rose so that we might rise. May that give us great joy, may that give us great freedom this morning. Remind us afresh of our hope in the resurrection of the dead. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.
If Christ Is Not Raised, Your Faith Is Futile
As Paul begins this passage, he starts in verses 12, 13, and 14, beginning this kind of back-and-forth hypothetical question series going on there. He starts with this: “But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.”
He’s going to the reality of the resurrection and emphasizing that there are probably some people who are misunderstanding the reality of the resurrection, some people who are perhaps denying the reality of the resurrection. He’s saying if that’s true, if the resurrection isn’t true, then not even Christ has been raised. Here, we’re talking not about the resurrection of Jesus particularly, but the resurrection of the dead. “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” Undergirding all of our faith, all of the preaching, everything we do here on Sunday mornings—undergirding that is not just the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, but the reality that he brings the resurrection of the dead. Those who hope and trust in Jesus look ahead to the reality that death is not the end, but instead is the entrance into the resurrected life, beholding our Lord Jesus face to face.
So Paul says if the resurrection isn’t true, everything we’re preaching about, everything that you believe, is useless. But the resurrection is true. Because it’s true, as we believe in the resurrection, we can then proclaim the reality of the resurrection, the reality of the gospel, and believe it ourselves. Paul is presenting this reality: look how absurd it is to say the resurrection of the dead is not true if Christ has risen, because it undercuts everything. It wipes away the reality of the gospel if we get rid of the resurrection of the dead.
He doesn’t stop there. In verse 15, he says: “More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.” If the resurrection didn’t happen, and yet we’re saying it happened, we’re saying that God did raise Christ from the dead, then we’re lying. We’re not just lying; we’re lying about God. We’re lying about the character and the power and the activity of the Creator of all things, the one who spoke all of creation into existence by the word of his power.
What Paul is trying to do rhetorically here is to push into the Corinthians and say it’s absurd to say that it’s not true because it makes you a liar. So the truth of the reality of the resurrection supports what we just talked about: our proclamation of the resurrection and our faith in the resurrection. In order for us to preach it and to believe it, it must be true. Rather than us being liars about the resurrection, we are telling the truth about it.
As we proclaim the gospel and believe it, as it’s supported by the reality of its truthfulness, it’s not just true because we say it’s true. As Paul continues in verses 16 to 19, he says this: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
Christ Rose So That We Might Rise
Christ rose so that we might rise. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. The purpose for Christ’s resurrection is that we might be raised with him. Christ didn’t come and live a perfect life, assume human flesh, die the death on the cross, and rise again just because he wanted to do it. He did so for our sake, that we might rise with him. It is his power as the one who created all things and the one by whom all things are created that ensures our resurrection. So the truthfulness of the resurrection is based on the person and the work of Jesus. It is that truth and that power that supports our preaching of the resurrection and our faith in the resurrection.
Sometimes we wrestle with those realities. We wrestle with sharing the gospel, we wrestle with believing the gospel and the truth of the resurrection, and we wrestle with believing that the resurrection of the dead is true.
When we’re at a funeral for someone we love, or a viewing, and we see the casket open in front of us, and we observe the person’s body there, the reality of death is so jarring to us. We see the person that we knew and we loved, but who is lifeless. We think that there’s no way that could be. Sometimes people, as they experience the reality of death, go into a sort of psychosis to the point that they delude themselves into thinking that their loved one isn’t dead at all. They carry on life as though their loved one is there with them, even though they’re not.
You and I, in those bigger ways and small ways, go through life wrestling with the reality of death. We wrestle because in those moments of our wrestling, we fail to believe the truthfulness of the resurrection of the dead. Jesus rose, and he is bringing all those who die in him with him to resurrection. We fail to believe it for ourselves.
I was talking to a young adult this week in our church having coffee, and we were talking about the reality that our sin and our lack of faith are all microcosms of our struggle with death. When we sin, we’re choosing death rather than life. When we fail to trust in Jesus, we’re looking at death more than we’re looking at the life that Jesus offers.
So our lives are full of this tension and this struggle between life and death. We feel like death is so overpowering most days. As we look at our insecurities and our anxieties that we face in life, our disappointments, our fears, even our anger is rooted in this battle between life and death because we are so captivated by the reality of death that we yell at our kids and our partners. We’re so fearful of death that is coming that we do anything to medicate ourselves, to numb ourselves to that reality, whether it be television, or food, or alcohol, or other things along those lines. We try to numb to escape the reality of death.
But what Paul’s encouraging us in 1 Corinthians 15 is to press into the reality of death, because on the other side of death is resurrection. Death does not have the final word in the grand story of the universe. Instead, the resurrection of Jesus does, as we talked about last week.
As we struggle with the truthfulness of the resurrection—and we can understand why folks like the Sadducees and others in the Old Testament times wrestled with the resurrection. That’s why Paul’s addressing it, right? They’re struggling with the resurrection of the dead because it seems impossible. It seems crazy to us. But what’s impossible to us is not impossible to the Lord. The one who spoke all things into existence, the one who holds us together even now, he’s done that. He’s brought resurrection. He’s brought life where there is death, and he’s destroyed it through the power of Jesus.
When Is My Faith Enough?
As we think about believing it, the resurrection of the dead is meant to be proclaimed, shared, and believed. Even as we wrestle and struggle, a question that comes to our mind as Christians is: When do I believe enough? When is my faith enough? When am I confident and assured enough about the resurrection of the dead, about Jesus, about the contents of scripture, whatever it may be? When am I—maybe it’s your morality—when am I enough?
I was talking to Bruce before the service about this. The thing that pops into my mind when I think about how you know that your faith is enough: when you’re lying in bed at night, being overwhelmed by anxiety, being overwhelmed by fear, uncertainty, who do you call out to? When you’re in a place of desperation, where do you go? If you cry out to Jesus in those moments, there’s that kernel of faith. There’s that reality that when everything seems lost, you’re grabbing for Jesus.
That faith isn’t perfect, it’s not shiny, it’s not where it needs to be—well, it’s where it needs to be—but it’s not where it should be eventually. But it’s enough.
So as we proclaim the resurrection to folks, as we share about the gospel, we say, “Hey, I struggle with the reality of death. I struggle with all manner of sin. I struggle with who Jesus is at times. But what I’m confident in is that he saves. And that when we cry out to him, he comes running to us.” We can do that because the resurrection is true because of the work of Jesus on our behalf.
The Firstfruits of the Resurrection
Just as we proclaim and believe it, we also receive the victory of Jesus. Verses 20 down to verse 28 emphasize that particularly in verse 20 there: “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.”
Christ is raised as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Christ goes ahead of us into the resurrection. But he doesn’t go into the resurrection just because, like I said before. In the bulletin, there’s a quote there from Ambrose of Milan, one of the church fathers:
“How grave an offense it is not to believe in the resurrection of the dead. If we do not rise again, Christ died in vain and did not rise again. For if he did not rise for us, he did not rise at all because there is no reason why he should rise for himself.”
Everything Jesus does, including the resurrection of the dead, is for you. He doesn’t need any of it. That’s what God says to the Psalmist: “I own the cattle on a thousand hills. You can’t give me anything that I need.” He’s not rising again just because he wants to—I mean he is—but he wants to because he wants to save you. He wants to give you the resurrection.
That’s perhaps the most powerful point underscoring the reliability, the reality, and the worthiness of the resurrection of the dead to proclaim to others: Jesus did it because he wants us. He wants to give us life. He’s the God of the universe; he doesn’t have to.
Yet, he goes ahead as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.”
Christ as the Better Adam
Christ is coming as the true and the better Adam. Maybe you’ve heard that phrase before. Adam, our first father, the first man created—created perfectly to live in perfect communion with God, to oversee God’s creation, to subdue it and fill it—rather than living in communion with God, in relationship with God, he sinned against the Lord. The Lord’s requirement of Adam and Eve was simple: don’t eat the forbidden fruit. And what did they do? Like a toddler drawn to a red button, they went for the fruit.
Because Adam sinned, we sin. Our sin is inherited. Through the generations, each one of us, if we traced back long enough, we’d find the root of our sin is Adam. That can sometimes be hard for us to think about, to think that from the time you were conceived, you were sinful. Even when you were a cute little baby, you were sinful.
Sarah and I joke around a lot—well, I joke more than my wife does about this—but whenever our kids as infants and small babies display anger, jealousy, or do the thing we tell them not to do, I joke and I say, “Oh, it’s original sin,” pointing back to the sin they inherited from us—well, Sarah and I first—but going all the way back to Adam. You see these realities, even in cute little babies, that sin is there. It’s not egregious, it’s not crazy, but it’s sin.
We wrestle with that because we’re like, “Well, how could that be? They can’t think, they can’t do all these things.” Sin is a problem that can’t be extinguished by good behavior or our perfect track record, because we’re all bent in the wrong direction. But just as sin came through one man, Adam, the new and better Adam, the perfect Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ—through him, all receive resurrection as they trust in him.
We don’t come to the resurrection of the dead because we’ve tallied up enough good works for ourselves to outweigh the bad stuff. We inherit resurrection from Jesus because he went ahead on our behalf. He was perfectly obedient so that we might receive the fruit of that obedience.
The Destruction of Death
Christ’s victory starts there. It starts with his achieving of resurrection for us so that we might rise, and that we might overcome the reality of sin that we received from Adam by receiving the overwhelming reality of the resurrection from Jesus.
But it doesn’t just start there with our personal salvation and our personal relationship with God. As he continues in verse 24: “Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he has put everything under his feet.”
Jesus is not just coming to bring us resurrection, but he’s also coming to bring about the destruction of all that threatens the reality of that resurrection. He’s not just canceling out the reality of our individual deaths; he’s canceling out the reality of death itself. Death will be no more. Death is going to be destroyed. It’s already destroyed and is being destroyed. There is a day that will come when death will be no more, when the tombs will open, when we’ll rise from our graves, when the sea will give up its dead.
There’s a day where the resurrection can’t be held back and can’t be stopped because death is no more. Death has been destroyed through Jesus.
The purpose of that is so that God will be all in all. Verse 28: “When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.” That’s referring to the sovereignty and the power of the Lord, God’s reign over all things.
But I think it’s also pointing us to the reality that there’s a day that is coming that all these things that distract us from God and distract us from relationship with the Lord, distract us from our submission to God ourselves—namely, death—will no longer be there to inhibit our relationship with God. Death was the consequence of Adam and Eve falling out of relationship with God, of sinning against God. There’s a day that is coming that that consequence will no longer be there. That barrier to our communion with the Lord face to face will no longer exist. The only reality that will exist is resurrection—the resurrection of the dead.
This victory of Jesus underscores everything else we talked about. This should then give us even more confidence to share it with other people, to believe it ourselves, to understand its trustworthiness and its truthfulness. It’s not us who accomplished it, but it’s Jesus who accomplished it.
Live Boldly and Godly
In verse 29, Paul makes a pretty hard shift. Right up until now, he’s focused very much on the resurrection of the dead, how Jesus is at work in that reality, and then he does a pivot to us, essentially.
“Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?”
In verse 29, Paul’s not saying that we should baptize people for the dead. What he’s saying there is that those people—notice that it says, “Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead?”—emphasizing that there’s this belief in the ancient world that you might baptize people in honor of those who have died and gone before you. The Marcionites were a group historically who did that. He’s basically just saying there’s this general belief in the resurrection of the dead out there. It would be weird for it to exist if there isn’t the resurrection of the dead. So he’s appealing more to natural reality there with that. It’s just a kind of a weird thing that’s thrown in the middle there.
But as he continues in verse 30: “And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’ Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.”
Everything we talked about before this gives us the framework to understand and apply appropriately these last couple of verses. If the reality of the resurrection of the dead is true, that means first that we can live boldly, and we can live lives of godliness. We can live boldly, and we can live lives of confidence because of the resurrection of the dead.
Paul points out some of the activities that he’s doing as an apostle. “If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As you look through Acts, it lines up a lot of the things that Paul went through. He was stoned and cast out of cities, he was shipwrecked, eventually, he was martyred for his faith. He faced all manner of trouble. Death was always a possibility everywhere he went, and yet he went. He did these bold things for the sake of the gospel, sharing the gospel with those who needed it, even though he knew that his life was potentially in danger.
What he’s saying is the reason he could do that was the resurrection of the dead. His hope wasn’t in humanity, his hope wasn’t in him being strong enough to overcome the odds and make it out alive.
If you’ve watched the movies John Wick—very violent, bloody movies—you see Keanu Reeves moving sort of stiffly through the movie, but he’s this kind of master assassin, and he’s taking out everybody in his path. He’s getting attacked from all sides with knives, swords, machine guns, pistols, grenades, and rocket launchers. There’ve been four John Wick movies, which means there’ve been four two-hour events of this guy miraculously making it out alive in each of these situations.
Which is really an impossibility. If you’ve ever talked to anybody who’s actually been in real gunfights and situations, they’re like, “It’s pretty much out of our control whether we live or die in those situations.” We do the best we can, but there’s a whole lot that can go wrong at any moment. But oftentimes, we think about our lives as though we’re the hero in that action movie, that no matter what’s going to happen, we’re going to dodge that RPG in slow motion, we’re going to miss all the bullets, we’re going to deflect the knives, and we’re going to be fine. We’re going to make it out alive because we’re just that much of an awesome action hero.
That’s essentially what Paul is saying: that’s not how I’m doing all this stuff. I’m not doing all this stuff because I’m assured of my own power and my own ability to make it out alive. In fact, he’s almost saying, “I’m doing it knowing that I’m probably going to die. That there’s a very small likelihood that on the other side of whatever this experience is, that I’m going to be living.”
And that’s okay. Because his hope is not in his own power and his own humanity; his hope is in the resurrection of the dead. Death is not the final reality for us as believers, but instead, it’s the beginning of fullness of life in Jesus.
Stop Sinning and Share Jesus
The opposite is true: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.'” Just as we can live boldly, we can therefore step into these uncomfortable spots. A lot of us don’t share the gospel, aren’t generous, aren’t hospitable because we’re afraid. We’re afraid of entering into these uncomfortable relationships with people. What if they’re weird? What if they smell bad? What if we disagree? What if we have an argument? What if they don’t like the fact that I’m talking to them about Jesus? What if they reject me?
We shrink back because, again, that goes back to the root that we talked about before: we’re afraid of death. We’re afraid of these microcosms of death in our daily lives. In those moments, we’re focusing just on our own ability to keep ourselves safe and comfortable in that moment. We withdraw from opportunities that God is presenting to us.
But the reality of the resurrection of the dead encourages us to step boldly into those realities, boldly into those places where there’s lions and tigers and bears, oh my. Because if the Lord is with us—and he is—if the Lord goes before us, he will keep us safe. And if he doesn’t keep us safe, and we do die, to live is Christ, to die is gain. It is better for us to die and be with the Lord than it is to live apart from him.
That’s what Paul is trying to constantly coax and massage into the churches in the New Testament, and it’s what we desperately need to hear as well. It’s not just living boldly, but it’s also living godly lives.
“Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’ Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.”
Don’t you wish you could be as blunt as Paul sometimes? “Come back to your senses and stop sinning.” Done. That would solve a lot of our problems, right? But it’s not that easy, is it, for most of us? We wrestle with that reality.
A lot of it goes back, again, to that fear of death, right? A lot of us vacillate from this place of trusting in Jesus, walking in that way, and then becoming discouraged and depressed and feeling as though, “You know what? Death is winning. I’m just going to die tomorrow, might as well just enjoy myself now. Might as well just do whatever I want now because death is coming, it’s fine.” And that leads us in that path.
That’s why Paul says this: “Come back to your senses.” Come to your senses and stop sinning. What’s he saying? Remind yourself death is not the reality for you. Death is not the overriding reality for the believer. Life is. The resurrection of the dead is. If the resurrection of the dead is, then we can be careful to live as God calls us to live. We can love people, we can live lives of boldness and self-sacrifice, caring for those in our lives, because the resurrection is true. Death is not the end. We don’t have to live it up to get every ounce of pleasure in before we die, because the greatest pleasure that we’ll ever know doesn’t even happen until the resurrection.
So we can live lives that reflect the person of God, reflect the person of Jesus. Be careful to be obedient and to share the gospel. “Come back to your senses as you ought and stop sinning, for there are some who are ignorant of God. I say this to your shame.”
This goes back to the top of the passage about preaching and proclaiming the death and the resurrection of Jesus. Sometimes as we are in the reality of our sin—obviously, he’s talking about bad company corrupts good character—who you hang around with is going to shape who you are, no matter what. That’s something to be aware of. It doesn’t mean you don’t hang out at all with people who have bad character; otherwise, how do we share Jesus with them? But it is saying be aware of that reality. Who you’re with is going to shape and form who you are.
But the purpose of coming to your senses and to stop sinning is so that others hear about Jesus. It’s missional. There’s a point to it. The point of godliness is not just so you can sit piously in your palace of purity and perfection and gloat over everybody else who’s not as good as you. The point of godliness, the point of stopping sinning, is so you can help other people go to Jesus. So that other people might hear of the resurrection and believe it, and receive the victory of Jesus over sin and death and the devil.
Conclusion
This morning, friends, we can believe in the resurrection of the dead. We can proclaim it, we can rest in it because it’s true. It’s true because of the victory of Jesus, that he is the firstfruits that goes before us, that he is the one who accomplishes it for us in his death and his resurrection.
Because of all this, we can live in light of the resurrection of the dead by living confidently and boldly, stepping into uncomfortable situations with the gospel, caring for people where we might not want to care for them. We can stop sinning and have freedom from that reality of death. We’ll experience that imperfectly on this side of heaven—let’s be clear about that, it’s not going to be straight in and up into the right—but the main point of that is so we can draw other people to Jesus. We can be beggars who are telling other beggars where to find bread.
So friends, believe in the resurrection of the dead. In Jesus, we have all that we need. We don’t need to fear the reality of death or sickness. Let’s go to prayer.
Father, thank you for your grace that you love us. Remind us each day that death is far less powerful than it seems, that Jesus has the victory. May we rest and trust in him. In his name, we pray. Amen.