"For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead!" (I Corinthians 15:21)
Last week we embarked on what many people consider to be the most important chapter in the Bible (I Corinthians 15), because it sums up the "good news" of the "gospel of Jesus Christ," by which sinners like you and me might believe and trust in Christ, and be "saved," and further answers the proverbial question which everyone at some point in their lives asks: "what happens to me when I die"?
The apostle Paul claimed that he was "delivering to the Corinthians (and therefore to us as well) 'of first importance' what he had received from God, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," and goes on to declare that because He lives, we too will live"!
This is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ which Paul writes that he "preached to them, which they received, in which they stand, and by which they were saved, if they hold fast to what he preached"! The message of the gospel, about which he would later write (in II Corinthians 5:21) that "God (the Father) has made Him (Jesus Christ the Son) who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him"! The same message the apostle John wrote about, in John 3:16, that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life"! That Paul wrote about, in Romans 10:9, where he says, that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved"! And, in Philippians 3:7-10, that "whatever things were gain to him, those things he counted as loss for the sake of Christ, and that he counted all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus His Lord, for whom he suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish so that he might gain Christ, and now be found in Him, not having a righteousness of his own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that he might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death, in order that he might attain to the righteousness of the dead"!
And so, in I Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul goes on to give infallible evidence, and proof, that would stand up in any civil court hearing, that Christ was truly raised from the dead, with a supernaturally resurrected body that key witnesses saw up close and personal, one they touched and heard speak, and ate with, and eventually saw, on the day of Pentecost, "taken up in a cloud to heaven"!
And yet some of the Corinthians, we learned, still didn't believe in the resurrection of Christ! And while others believed in His resurrection, they didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of believers! And so the apostle Paul wrote I Corinthians 15 to set the record straight about the message of the gospel, and of the reality of the bodily resurrection of believers! And he also wrote, in verse 12-19, of the awesome consequences for them, and for us, if Christ wasn't in fact resurrected! And here's what he wrote! The words speak for themselves: "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? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain! Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised! For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins! Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished! If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied!" Wow!
And that set the scene, and the tone, for our lesson last night, on I Corinthians 15:20-35, where Paul responds: "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-born of those who are asleep!" Again, wow! Philips puts it this way: "But the glorious fact is that Christ did rise from the dead; He has become the very first to rise of all who sleep the sleep of death!" Could anyone imagine more glorious and wonderful words? He is risen!! He is risen indeed! Gloria in excelsis deo!
Colossians 1:18 says, "He (Christ) is also head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead!"
I Thessalonians 4:14 says, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus!"
"First fruits"?
Constable explains that Paul uses the metaphor "first fruits" to describe the resurrection of believers some day! He notes that "the Jews (according to Leviticus 23) celebrated Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month of their sacred calendar; and it just so happened that Jesus would die on the day that the Jewish fathers killed the Passover lamb, which was a Friday! The Jews offered a sacrifice of "first fruits" the day after the Sabbath, the day that Christ arose! The first fruits that the Jews offered following the Passover were only the first fruits of the crops that they offered later. Paul saw in this comparison the fact that other believers would rise from the dead just as Jesus did! And so He used the metaphor to assert that the resurrection of believers (those who are asleep) is absolutely inevitable! God Himself guaranteed it!"
Paul writes in verses 21-23, "For since by a man (Adam) came death, by a man (Christ) also came the resurrection of the dead! For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive! But each in his own order; Christ the firstborn, after that those who are Christ's at His coming!"
"And then comes the end, Paul writes (in verses 24-28)...when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power! For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet! The last enemy that will be abolished is death! For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says 'all things are put in subjection,' it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all!" Whew! Confused?
The "end"? Immanuel's Constitution and By-Laws describes in more detail "the future," and the order, of the "end times"! Beginning with the Rapture, when "we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds (speaking of the "dead in Christ, who will rise first,"! according to I Thessalonians 5:16-17) to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord! Christ will then bring a 7-year period of wrath upon the earth, known as the Tribulation, and at the end of this period of judgment He will bodily return with the church to set up a kingdom to rule in righteousness for a thousand years, in what will be known as the Millennium (described in Revelation 19:1-20:6, and in Matthew 13:41-43). The kingdom will end in rebellion against Christ and His people (according to Revelation 20:7-9, after Satan is released), but the rebellion will fail in the face of Christ's victory over Satan and all who oppose Him (Revelation 20:9-10). The unbelieving dead of all time will then be raised and given eternal bodies to face God at the Great White Throne Judgment, after which they will be thrown into the lake of fire for eternal judgment! Believers, on the other hand, will enter a new heaven and new earth prepared for them to enjoy perfect, everlasting fellowship with God!" Whew!
And so that describes "the end" (which Paul talks about in verse 24-28), "when Christ hands over the kingdom to the God and Father...when all things are subjected to Hims, so that He may be all in all"!
Finally, "in the end," Constable writes, "God will be the head of everything! Romans 11:36 says, "For from Him and through Him, and to Him are all things! To Him be the glory forever, Amen!" MacArthur writes, "Christ will continue to rule because His reign is eternal, but He will reign in His former, full, and glorious place within the Trinity, subject to God the Father in the way eternally designed for Him in full Trinitarian glory"!
In verse 29, the apostle Paul returns to writing about the resurrection of the dead, noting first that some of the Corinthians--even those who claimed not to believe in the resurrection--were apparently involved in "baptizing for the dead"! This was a practice common among some of the pagan religions of that day which had somehow infiltrated the church of Corinth as well! And so Paul here exposed the illogic of some of the Corinthians who claimed not to believe in the bodily resurrection of believers but who still participated in "baptism for the dead"! And especially since no one can be saved by baptism to begin with! And so not even a living person can be saved by baptism, much less a dead person!
Paul then shared how he was willing himself to "die daily" and face and endure suffering and danger every hour because he believed that Christ would raise him and that his resurrected body would continue beyond the grave. And if there was no resurrection (quoting Isaiah 22:13), he reasoned, one might just as well "eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die"!
And so Paul is clear in pointing out that how one believes about the resurrection affects the way one lives! "Become sober-minded, as you ought and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God (or therefore of salvation through Christ, and the hope for life after dead with a resurrected body), and he says that he "speaks this to their shame," implying that they need not only to have a hope for the future themselves but to share it with others, who have no hope!
The resurrection of the dead also gives us hope for being reunited with our loved ones someday as well! Just as David demonstrated after losing the son he had with Bathsheba. II Samuel 12:15-23 records how he fasted and wept while his son was sick but still alive, but once dead returned to normal living because he believed he would be resurrected and see him again some day! "I will go to him, but he will not return to me," he told those who questioned his response!
And David later prayed (in Psalm 17:15), "As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake!"
"What tremendous power the resurrection has, and what wonderful hope it gives," MacArthur writes! Jesus rose from the dead; He is alive; and we also shall live because one day He will raise us up to be with Him eternally! What greater incentive; what greater motive could we have for coming to Him, serving Him, and for living for Him!"
He is risen!
"And because He lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives my fears are gone; for I know, I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living, because He lives...!"
Happy Easter, fellow MOBsters!
Lowell
Last week we embarked on what many people consider to be the most important chapter in the Bible (I Corinthians 15), because it sums up the "good news" of the "gospel of Jesus Christ," by which sinners like you and me might believe and trust in Christ, and be "saved," and further answers the proverbial question which everyone at some point in their lives asks: "what happens to me when I die"?
The apostle Paul claimed that he was "delivering to the Corinthians (and therefore to us as well) 'of first importance' what he had received from God, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures," and goes on to declare that because He lives, we too will live"!
This is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ which Paul writes that he "preached to them, which they received, in which they stand, and by which they were saved, if they hold fast to what he preached"! The message of the gospel, about which he would later write (in II Corinthians 5:21) that "God (the Father) has made Him (Jesus Christ the Son) who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him"! The same message the apostle John wrote about, in John 3:16, that "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life"! That Paul wrote about, in Romans 10:9, where he says, that if you confess with your mouth and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved"! And, in Philippians 3:7-10, that "whatever things were gain to him, those things he counted as loss for the sake of Christ, and that he counted all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus His Lord, for whom he suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish so that he might gain Christ, and now be found in Him, not having a righteousness of his own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that he might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death, in order that he might attain to the righteousness of the dead"!
And so, in I Corinthians 15, the apostle Paul goes on to give infallible evidence, and proof, that would stand up in any civil court hearing, that Christ was truly raised from the dead, with a supernaturally resurrected body that key witnesses saw up close and personal, one they touched and heard speak, and ate with, and eventually saw, on the day of Pentecost, "taken up in a cloud to heaven"!
And yet some of the Corinthians, we learned, still didn't believe in the resurrection of Christ! And while others believed in His resurrection, they didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of believers! And so the apostle Paul wrote I Corinthians 15 to set the record straight about the message of the gospel, and of the reality of the bodily resurrection of believers! And he also wrote, in verse 12-19, of the awesome consequences for them, and for us, if Christ wasn't in fact resurrected! And here's what he wrote! The words speak for themselves: "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? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain! Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised! For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins! Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished! If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied!" Wow!
And that set the scene, and the tone, for our lesson last night, on I Corinthians 15:20-35, where Paul responds: "But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first-born of those who are asleep!" Again, wow! Philips puts it this way: "But the glorious fact is that Christ did rise from the dead; He has become the very first to rise of all who sleep the sleep of death!" Could anyone imagine more glorious and wonderful words? He is risen!! He is risen indeed! Gloria in excelsis deo!
Colossians 1:18 says, "He (Christ) is also head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead!"
I Thessalonians 4:14 says, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus!"
"First fruits"?
Constable explains that Paul uses the metaphor "first fruits" to describe the resurrection of believers some day! He notes that "the Jews (according to Leviticus 23) celebrated Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month of their sacred calendar; and it just so happened that Jesus would die on the day that the Jewish fathers killed the Passover lamb, which was a Friday! The Jews offered a sacrifice of "first fruits" the day after the Sabbath, the day that Christ arose! The first fruits that the Jews offered following the Passover were only the first fruits of the crops that they offered later. Paul saw in this comparison the fact that other believers would rise from the dead just as Jesus did! And so He used the metaphor to assert that the resurrection of believers (those who are asleep) is absolutely inevitable! God Himself guaranteed it!"
Paul writes in verses 21-23, "For since by a man (Adam) came death, by a man (Christ) also came the resurrection of the dead! For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive! But each in his own order; Christ the firstborn, after that those who are Christ's at His coming!"
"And then comes the end, Paul writes (in verses 24-28)...when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power! For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet! The last enemy that will be abolished is death! For He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says 'all things are put in subjection,' it is evident that He is excepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all!" Whew! Confused?
The "end"? Immanuel's Constitution and By-Laws describes in more detail "the future," and the order, of the "end times"! Beginning with the Rapture, when "we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds (speaking of the "dead in Christ, who will rise first,"! according to I Thessalonians 5:16-17) to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord! Christ will then bring a 7-year period of wrath upon the earth, known as the Tribulation, and at the end of this period of judgment He will bodily return with the church to set up a kingdom to rule in righteousness for a thousand years, in what will be known as the Millennium (described in Revelation 19:1-20:6, and in Matthew 13:41-43). The kingdom will end in rebellion against Christ and His people (according to Revelation 20:7-9, after Satan is released), but the rebellion will fail in the face of Christ's victory over Satan and all who oppose Him (Revelation 20:9-10). The unbelieving dead of all time will then be raised and given eternal bodies to face God at the Great White Throne Judgment, after which they will be thrown into the lake of fire for eternal judgment! Believers, on the other hand, will enter a new heaven and new earth prepared for them to enjoy perfect, everlasting fellowship with God!" Whew!
And so that describes "the end" (which Paul talks about in verse 24-28), "when Christ hands over the kingdom to the God and Father...when all things are subjected to Hims, so that He may be all in all"!
Finally, "in the end," Constable writes, "God will be the head of everything! Romans 11:36 says, "For from Him and through Him, and to Him are all things! To Him be the glory forever, Amen!" MacArthur writes, "Christ will continue to rule because His reign is eternal, but He will reign in His former, full, and glorious place within the Trinity, subject to God the Father in the way eternally designed for Him in full Trinitarian glory"!
In verse 29, the apostle Paul returns to writing about the resurrection of the dead, noting first that some of the Corinthians--even those who claimed not to believe in the resurrection--were apparently involved in "baptizing for the dead"! This was a practice common among some of the pagan religions of that day which had somehow infiltrated the church of Corinth as well! And so Paul here exposed the illogic of some of the Corinthians who claimed not to believe in the bodily resurrection of believers but who still participated in "baptism for the dead"! And especially since no one can be saved by baptism to begin with! And so not even a living person can be saved by baptism, much less a dead person!
Paul then shared how he was willing himself to "die daily" and face and endure suffering and danger every hour because he believed that Christ would raise him and that his resurrected body would continue beyond the grave. And if there was no resurrection (quoting Isaiah 22:13), he reasoned, one might just as well "eat and drink, for tomorrow we may die"!
And so Paul is clear in pointing out that how one believes about the resurrection affects the way one lives! "Become sober-minded, as you ought and stop sinning; for some have no knowledge of God (or therefore of salvation through Christ, and the hope for life after dead with a resurrected body), and he says that he "speaks this to their shame," implying that they need not only to have a hope for the future themselves but to share it with others, who have no hope!
The resurrection of the dead also gives us hope for being reunited with our loved ones someday as well! Just as David demonstrated after losing the son he had with Bathsheba. II Samuel 12:15-23 records how he fasted and wept while his son was sick but still alive, but once dead returned to normal living because he believed he would be resurrected and see him again some day! "I will go to him, but he will not return to me," he told those who questioned his response!
And David later prayed (in Psalm 17:15), "As for me, I shall behold Your face in righteousness; I will be satisfied with Your likeness when I awake!"
"What tremendous power the resurrection has, and what wonderful hope it gives," MacArthur writes! Jesus rose from the dead; He is alive; and we also shall live because one day He will raise us up to be with Him eternally! What greater incentive; what greater motive could we have for coming to Him, serving Him, and for living for Him!"
He is risen!
"And because He lives, I can face tomorrow, because He lives my fears are gone; for I know, I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living, because He lives...!"
Happy Easter, fellow MOBsters!
Lowell
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