"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!" (I Corinthians 15:58)
Last night, we completed our study of what many consider to be the greatest and most important chapter in the Bible, I Corinthians 15! Remember how the apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 15:3, claimed that he was delivering to the Corinthians (and by extension to us and everybody in the world) a message "of first importance" that 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 the third day according to the Scriptures"! This is the inspired message of the gospel of Jesus Christ that he preached to the Corinthians, which (he said) they "received," in which they "stood," and by which they were "saved, if they held fast the word which he preached to them"! The gospel message of Jesus Christ about which the whole Bible was written, and is based!
Paul wrote what he did because some of the Corinthians still didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ; and while others believed in the resurrection of Christ they couldn't conceive of the resurrection of their own bodies, or that of other believers in the end day! And so he wrote I Corinthians, and particularly I Corinthians 15, to set the record straight not only about the gospel message of salvation through Christ alone, but to give explicit and irrefutable evidence that would hold up in any court hearing, and stand the test of time, about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the reality as well of the bodily resurrection of believers one day, and the consequence for everyone of us if, in fact, Christ had not been raised! "If the dead are not raised," he said, "not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ hasn't been raised your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished!" And, he added, "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied"! But he goes on to declare, with triumphant eloquence and unabashed affirmation (in verse 20), "But now Christ has been raised from the dead and become the first-fruits of those who are asleep!"
Hallelujah! Christ is risen! And because He lives we too shall live! And "because He lives (as the song goes) I can face tomorrow, because He lives all fear is gone...!"
The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our Christian faith, and the basis our firm belief and conviction that we too shall be raised one day! MacArthur notes that "the ultimate act of salvation is the raising at the last day of those who are in Christ!"
But "how are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?" the Corinthians wanted to know! And so Paul illustrated the resurrection with a lesson from nature, comparing it with a grain of seed that must first be planted into the ground and decompose (die!) before springing forth and producing a life of its own! A different form but still connected with the seed from which it came! "God gives it a body just as He wishes, and to each of the seeds a body of its own," Paul writes (in verse 38). Then goes on to describe the diversity and uniqueness of God's creation! Just as there are so many vastly different bodies and forms in God's created universe all suited for life in this world, so God can (and will!) design unique and different bodies for resurrection life!
Paul describes how the resurrection of believers is not simply a resuscitation of dead bodies but a powerful, supernatural re- creation of new glorified bodies! Constable writes that "these verses help us understand that it's not the same body that goes into the grave that is raised but an entirely new type of body, and so it doesn't matter what its condition it is at the time of death--whether lying peacefully in a coffin, buried at sea, torn in pieces as a result of a tragic accident, or cremated! The Lord will raise it up into a new glorified body" Just like the resurrected body of Christ!
And so the apostle Paul concludes that "the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving spirit"! Through the first Adam we received our natural bodies, but through the last Adam (Christ) we will receive our spiritual bodies at resurrection; and we will bear the image of His body, fit for heaven, just as we have borne the image of Adam's body fit for here on earth!
And all that set the scene for our lesson last night on the final section of I Corinthians 15, which is literally an anthem of praise in response to all the truths that Paul has already shared! A portion of Scripture which MacArthur writes should more appropriately be sung about in a celestial symphony rather than preached! Which is exactly what George Frederic Handel did so many years ago when he wrote his beautiful oratorio, "Messiah"!
"Now I say this, brethren," Paul writes in verse 50, "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable"! There first must be a great transformation of our bodies! We've got to be changed! And different in order to dwell in that domain! We'll no longer be earthly, like Adam, but heavenly, like Christ! As we have "borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly"! A new body fit for the new creation! And Paul calls it "a mystery"!
"Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will 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 imperishable, and we will be changed! For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality...!"
A parallel passage is given in I Thessalonians 4:12-18 (also written by the apostle Paul): "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 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 not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. and so we shall always be with the Lord! Therefore comfort one another with these words!" (And what a comfort it is for us to have the "blessed hope" of a believer! Knowing that this life is not the end, and that "the best is yet to come"!
We shall all be changed! "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!" One-sixth of a nanosecond! That's pretty quick! It's not a process! "At the last trumpet!" (Trumpets are used for many things in the Bible; to announce a great triumph in battle; assemble people for festivities; to summon people to hear from God! Exodus 19 tells how with the sound of a trumpet God came down on Mount Sinai to confer with Moses and to give the ten commandments! In I Corinthians 15 (MacArthur notes) "to herald the end of the church age and the rapture of believers"!
"Caught up together with them (the "dead" who will be raised first) in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air! Wow! What a reunion!
"Then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is your victory? Where is your sting?" Paul quoting from Isaiah 25:8 where the prophet Isaiah prophesied, "He (speaking of Christ) will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of HIs people from all the earth"! The prophet Hoses wrote (in Hosea 13:14), "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?"
"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law," Paul continues! (Phillips says, "It is sin which gives death its sting, and it is the Law which gives sin its strength!")
Death is still the enemy, and it "stings"! Grief is the normal, natural reaction when a loved one dies! Paul cried out in Romans 7:24, "O wretched man that I am! Who will free me from this body of death?" Even Jesus was "troubled in spirit and wept" (John 11 says) when he saw the pain associated with the death of HIs friend Lazarus, even though He had the power to raise him, which He did after crying out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" In that same passage Jesus proclaimed, in verses 25-26, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die!"
And though the sting of death is still real in this life, we "don't have to grieve as others who have no hope" (as Paul wrote), because Jesus took the sting for us!
And so the apostle Paul "exudes" (as Kirk noted) with gratitude as he writes, in verse 57, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" He also wrote, in Romans 7:24, after anguishing about death (and questioning about how he could be delivered), "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" And John wrote, in I John 5:4, "And this is the victory that overcomes the wordl--even our faith!" (I want to sing, "Faith is the victory, all glorious victory that overcomes the world...!")
Paul closes out this great chapter of I Corinthians with yet another great "therefore"--a verse to always remember, to live out! I Corinthians 15:58, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding (to the extreme, Kirk noted!) in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord!" What more could we say?
Thank you, Lord, for I Corinthians 15!
May God be with you all!
Lowell
Last night, we completed our study of what many consider to be the greatest and most important chapter in the Bible, I Corinthians 15! Remember how the apostle Paul, in I Corinthians 15:3, claimed that he was delivering to the Corinthians (and by extension to us and everybody in the world) a message "of first importance" that 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 the third day according to the Scriptures"! This is the inspired message of the gospel of Jesus Christ that he preached to the Corinthians, which (he said) they "received," in which they "stood," and by which they were "saved, if they held fast the word which he preached to them"! The gospel message of Jesus Christ about which the whole Bible was written, and is based!
Paul wrote what he did because some of the Corinthians still didn't believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ; and while others believed in the resurrection of Christ they couldn't conceive of the resurrection of their own bodies, or that of other believers in the end day! And so he wrote I Corinthians, and particularly I Corinthians 15, to set the record straight not only about the gospel message of salvation through Christ alone, but to give explicit and irrefutable evidence that would hold up in any court hearing, and stand the test of time, about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, the reality as well of the bodily resurrection of believers one day, and the consequence for everyone of us if, in fact, Christ had not been raised! "If the dead are not raised," he said, "not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ hasn't been raised your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished!" And, he added, "If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied"! But he goes on to declare, with triumphant eloquence and unabashed affirmation (in verse 20), "But now Christ has been raised from the dead and become the first-fruits of those who are asleep!"
Hallelujah! Christ is risen! And because He lives we too shall live! And "because He lives (as the song goes) I can face tomorrow, because He lives all fear is gone...!"
The resurrection of Christ is the foundation of our Christian faith, and the basis our firm belief and conviction that we too shall be raised one day! MacArthur notes that "the ultimate act of salvation is the raising at the last day of those who are in Christ!"
But "how are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?" the Corinthians wanted to know! And so Paul illustrated the resurrection with a lesson from nature, comparing it with a grain of seed that must first be planted into the ground and decompose (die!) before springing forth and producing a life of its own! A different form but still connected with the seed from which it came! "God gives it a body just as He wishes, and to each of the seeds a body of its own," Paul writes (in verse 38). Then goes on to describe the diversity and uniqueness of God's creation! Just as there are so many vastly different bodies and forms in God's created universe all suited for life in this world, so God can (and will!) design unique and different bodies for resurrection life!
Paul describes how the resurrection of believers is not simply a resuscitation of dead bodies but a powerful, supernatural re- creation of new glorified bodies! Constable writes that "these verses help us understand that it's not the same body that goes into the grave that is raised but an entirely new type of body, and so it doesn't matter what its condition it is at the time of death--whether lying peacefully in a coffin, buried at sea, torn in pieces as a result of a tragic accident, or cremated! The Lord will raise it up into a new glorified body" Just like the resurrected body of Christ!
And so the apostle Paul concludes that "the first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam (Christ) became a life-giving spirit"! Through the first Adam we received our natural bodies, but through the last Adam (Christ) we will receive our spiritual bodies at resurrection; and we will bear the image of His body, fit for heaven, just as we have borne the image of Adam's body fit for here on earth!
And all that set the scene for our lesson last night on the final section of I Corinthians 15, which is literally an anthem of praise in response to all the truths that Paul has already shared! A portion of Scripture which MacArthur writes should more appropriately be sung about in a celestial symphony rather than preached! Which is exactly what George Frederic Handel did so many years ago when he wrote his beautiful oratorio, "Messiah"!
"Now I say this, brethren," Paul writes in verse 50, "that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable"! There first must be a great transformation of our bodies! We've got to be changed! And different in order to dwell in that domain! We'll no longer be earthly, like Adam, but heavenly, like Christ! As we have "borne the image of the earthly, we will also bear the image of the heavenly"! A new body fit for the new creation! And Paul calls it "a mystery"!
"Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will 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 imperishable, and we will be changed! For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality...!"
A parallel passage is given in I Thessalonians 4:12-18 (also written by the apostle Paul): "But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. 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 not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. and so we shall always be with the Lord! Therefore comfort one another with these words!" (And what a comfort it is for us to have the "blessed hope" of a believer! Knowing that this life is not the end, and that "the best is yet to come"!
We shall all be changed! "In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye!" One-sixth of a nanosecond! That's pretty quick! It's not a process! "At the last trumpet!" (Trumpets are used for many things in the Bible; to announce a great triumph in battle; assemble people for festivities; to summon people to hear from God! Exodus 19 tells how with the sound of a trumpet God came down on Mount Sinai to confer with Moses and to give the ten commandments! In I Corinthians 15 (MacArthur notes) "to herald the end of the church age and the rapture of believers"!
"Caught up together with them (the "dead" who will be raised first) in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air! Wow! What a reunion!
"Then will come about the saying that is written, "Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is your victory? Where is your sting?" Paul quoting from Isaiah 25:8 where the prophet Isaiah prophesied, "He (speaking of Christ) will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord will wipe tears away from all faces, and He will remove the reproach of HIs people from all the earth"! The prophet Hoses wrote (in Hosea 13:14), "Shall I ransom them from the power of Sheol? Shall I redeem them from death? O death, where are your thorns? O Sheol, where is your sting?"
"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the Law," Paul continues! (Phillips says, "It is sin which gives death its sting, and it is the Law which gives sin its strength!")
Death is still the enemy, and it "stings"! Grief is the normal, natural reaction when a loved one dies! Paul cried out in Romans 7:24, "O wretched man that I am! Who will free me from this body of death?" Even Jesus was "troubled in spirit and wept" (John 11 says) when he saw the pain associated with the death of HIs friend Lazarus, even though He had the power to raise him, which He did after crying out in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come forth!" In that same passage Jesus proclaimed, in verses 25-26, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die!"
And though the sting of death is still real in this life, we "don't have to grieve as others who have no hope" (as Paul wrote), because Jesus took the sting for us!
And so the apostle Paul "exudes" (as Kirk noted) with gratitude as he writes, in verse 57, "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" He also wrote, in Romans 7:24, after anguishing about death (and questioning about how he could be delivered), "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" And John wrote, in I John 5:4, "And this is the victory that overcomes the wordl--even our faith!" (I want to sing, "Faith is the victory, all glorious victory that overcomes the world...!")
Paul closes out this great chapter of I Corinthians with yet another great "therefore"--a verse to always remember, to live out! I Corinthians 15:58, "Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding (to the extreme, Kirk noted!) in the work of the Lord, knowing that our labor is not in vain in the Lord!" What more could we say?
Thank you, Lord, for I Corinthians 15!
May God be with you all!
Lowell
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