“Consequences of No Resurrection”
(1 Corinthians 15:12-19)
Series: Chaos & Correction
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
•Take your Bibles and join me in 1 Corinthians, chapter 15 (page 775; YouVersion).
While you are finding that, I want to say a special thank you to our volunteers who pray during the morning worship services. So grateful that they are praying for us as we study the Word of God.
If you’re visiting with us, we are preaching our way through the Book of 1 Corinthians, verse-by-verse, and we are in chapter 15, having studied the first 11 verses. Paul has been writing about the Gospel, the essence of which is recorded in verses 3 and 4:
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures
And then Paul teaches the fact of the bodily resurrection of Christ. Of course, the Corinthian congregation believed in the physical and bodily resurrection of Christ. They had not denied this fact but rather denied another. They had denied that Christ’s followers would rise bodily from the dead. In other words, they believed that Christ Himself rose from the dead in physical and bodily form, but they did not believe that Christians would rise from the dead in physical and bodily form.
Little doubt the Corinthians had been influenced by a popular ancient Greek philosophy which taught that after death either a person’s soul ceased to exist entirely, or, a person’s soul continued to exist but only in an unsubstantial way, continuing indefinitely without physical substance, without physical body.
So Paul seeks to set them straight. And he does so by teaching them that the Christian’s future bodily resurrection is a truth that is inextricably bound to Christ’s bodily resurrection. In other words, if, in fact, physical bodies do not enjoy a future resurrection, then one cannot even say that Christ’s body was raised from the dead.
Put another way: Deny the bodily resurrection of believers and you must also deny the bodily resurrection of Christ. The Christian’s future bodily resurrection is inextricably bound to Christ’s bodily resurrection.
So like a jeweler examining a diamond closely from all different angles, the Apostle Paul now examines this doctrine of the resurrection from a variety of angles, concluding that if there is no future bodily resurrection of Christians, then Jesus Himself was not bodily raised. And if Jesus is not bodily raised, then Christianity is empty, futile, and useless.
•Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word.
12 Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.
14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty.
15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise.
16 For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.
17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!
18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
•Pray.
Introduction:
There are many parts of the body that are not essential to survival. When I was small it seemed everyone was getting his tonsils removed. I remember thinning it must be kind of fun because all of my friends said that one of the benefits of the procedure was that you got to eat ice cream afterwards. So it sounded good at the time: get your tonsils removed, eat lots of ice cream.
Of course you can also do without your wisdom teeth and you can live without your appendix. You can also live without a spleen and a gall bladder. And while it’s great to have two, just one kidney is essential to survival and just one lung, as well. And some parts of the body can even be removed with a sort of modification being made in their place—removal of a colon for example, or even a stomach.
But while there are many parts of the body not essential to survival, there is one organ that is absolutely indispensable to life and that is the heart. Permanently remove the heart from the body and that person will no longer live.
In this passage Paul demonstrates that the resurrection is the heart of Christianity. Take away the resurrection and you have nothing but an empty religion, a useless faith, a pointless endeavor that has no ultimate meaning. Take away the resurrection and you have removed the heart of the Gospel. You have removed the vital organ that gives life.
So Paul begins in verse 12 by making the point that if Christ’s followers are not raised in bodily form, then neither has Christ been raised. He actually makes this point more than once in verses 12, 13, and 16.
And our study, then, yields six consequences of no resurrection. So let’s just study these six consequences together. They come right out of our passage. First:
Preaching is Pointless (14)
14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty . . .
Think about that for a moment. Paul doesn’t say that there is a benefit to preaching the Bible if there is no resurrection. He says very clearly in verse 14: “If Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty,” or in vain.
Apart from the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ and His followers, our gathering together this morning would be a pointless endeavor.
It makes us wonder, doesn’t it, how some people who profess to be Christians also say that they do not believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ—as if such a form of Christianity existed. It does not. The bodily resurrection of Christ is the heart of the Gospel message.
One preacher says to remove the resurrection from the Gospel would be like a soccer coach going out to the playground and calling for about 20 boys and saying, “Come on men, let’s play soccer.” And the boys gather around and one of them says, “Where’s the ball?” And the coach says, “Oh, we’re not going to use a ball. We’re just going to play the game.”
It seems ludicrous, doesn’t it?! Yet there are churches all over our country that merely “play the game” of Christianity without the ball. Where they have denied the bodily resurrection of Christ they have removed the very heart and soul of the Gospel. Recall verses 3-4:
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures
So the first consequence of no resurrection is that preaching is pointless. Secondly, if there is no resurrection:
Faith is Useless (14, 17)
Paul goes on in verse 14, right after saying, “And if Christ is not risen then our preaching is empty, and he adds:
14 . . . and your faith is also empty.
That is, your faith is useless. And while using a different word in verse 17, it’s the same idea again, verse 17:
17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile . . .
Apart from the resurrection, the Christian faith is useless.
The Christian faith is primarily an objective faith. It is a faith that rests on the objective truth, the object of the death and resurrection of Christ. It is not primarily a subjective faith, faith in the sense of “hoping against all odds” or, “crossing our fingers,” hoping there is more to life than what we see.
Some people speak of “faith” in this way. You ask them about their faith and they define it only in subjective terms, a feeling, a hope that things will get better, a blind sort of trust that nothing bad lasts forever, and so forth. This is not faith in the sense of “Christian faith.”
The Christian faith is an objective faith, a faith based upon historical facts. Christianity stands or falls on an empty tomb. Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection.
This is one of the reasons I never cared much for “Pascal’s Wager,” named for Blaise Pascal. As many of you know Blaise Pascal was the brilliant 17th Century French mathematician and philosopher. And he was known among his Christian acquaintances for his famous “wager.” The wager suggested that a person should become a Christian just in case the Bible is right. If it turns out that the Bible is wrong, then what have you lost? You’ve still had a far better life than the average person.
Well, I never cared for that way of thinking because, first of all, the Bible is true. It records God’s truth and God’s truth records the fact of the resurrection. This is Paul’s primary point here. No resurrection, then even our faith is vain, empty, futile, and useless.
As he says later down in verse 32: “If the dead do not rise, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!’”
Six consequences of no resurrection: preaching is pointless, faith is useless, thirdly:
Preachers are False Witnesses (15)
15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise.
This is straightforward, isn’t it?! Paul is like, “Look, if there is no bodily resurrection, then clearly we have been lying to you about Christ’s resurrection. This message back in verse 4, ‘and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,’ well that is nothing short of a bald-faced lie.”
This is the inevitable conclusion if there is no resurrection. All preachers of the Gospel are breaking the 9th Commandment, bearing false witness. We have stood at the cemetery and lied when we said, “This corruptible body will put on incorruption and this mortal body will put on immortality.” Lies.
Consequences of no resurrection: preaching is pointless, faith is useless, preachers are false witnesses, number 4:
Christians are Still in Their Sins (17)
Last part of verse 17:
17 . . . you are still in your sins!
The bodily resurrection of Christ is proof positive that our sins have been forgiven. The resurrection is proof that God has accepted the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ in our place.
1 Corinthians 15:3, “…Christ died for our sins.”
Why did Jesus have to rise in bodily form? Paul writes in Romans 4:25 that Christ “was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification.” The NIV puts it even more clearly: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.”
That is, Jesus died as our substitute for sins. He took our punishment. He died in our place. But that was not all. Paul says Christ was also “raised to life for our justification.” If Christ is not risen, we are not justified, we have not been declared righteous.
If Christ is not risen, then we remain under the wrath of God. But God raised Christ from the dead for our justification. The resurrection of Christ is proof that Christ made sufficient payment for our sins. God’s forgiveness of our sins is validated by the bodily resurrection of Christ.
Back in chapter 6 Paul had reminded these Corinthians of their lives before Christ, how they had lived in sin. Remember that? He had said, “You guys remember who you were, the unrighteous, who do not inherit the kingdom of God? You were fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, and extortioners. Remember?” He says, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).”
That forgiveness that the Corinthians experienced was made possible by the resurrection. They knew they were no longer in their sins. Oh they knew they weren’t perfect, but they knew that they had experienced a measure of victory over sin. They were like, “Yes, Paul. I know I used to be that way. I am ‘being saved’ from the power of sin each day of my growing Christian life. I thank God for that!” And this it he point that Paul is making: Apart from the bodily resurrection of Christ, there would be none of that growing Christian life because there would be no life, at all. Everyone would remain in his sins. No one would be able to sing the great hymn:
Living He loved me,
Dying He saved me,
Buried He carried my sins far away.
Rising He justified, freely forever.
One day He’s coming, O glorious day!
The resurrection is God’s “stamp of approval” upon the life and work of Jesus Christ. The resurrection is God’s way of saying again, “This is My Beloved Son. Hear Him!”
Six consequences of no resurrection: preaching is pointless, faith is useless, preachers are false witnesses, Christians are still in their sins, number 5:
Dead Christians are Not with God (18)
18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
We noted last time that this terminology, “fallen asleep” is a kind euphemism to describe death. Paul teaches that if there is no bodily resurrection, then your Christian friends who have died have “perished.” That is, they are no more. They cease to exist and you’ll never see them again.
Adrian Rogers, “Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ I wouldn’t give you half a hallelujah for your hope of heaven!”
But of course, believers who have died are indeed in heaven.
2 Corinthians 5:8, “We are confident, yes, well pleased rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.”
Upon death the Christian’s soul goes immediately to be with the Lord. And when Christ returns, He will return with the souls of Christians. And when these Christians return, the Bible says that Christ will raise their bodies up from the grave in whatever state of corruption they have and He will change their bodies in an instant, changing them into glorified bodies like His own body.
Until Christ returns, the Christian’s soul—whatever that looks like—is with our Lord in heaven. Those who have “fallen asleep,” verse 18, those who have “died” in Christ have not perished, but are alive in heaven; alive and awaiting the final state when each receives a glorified body.
But apart from the resurrection—consequences of no resurrection?—preaching is pointless, faith is useless, preachers are false witnesses, Christians are still in their sins, and dead Christians are not with God. Finally, no resurrection means, number 6:
We are the Most Pitied of People (19)
19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
The NLT has, “And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”
Indeed. No resurrection, no eternal life.
So the resurrection is not like an “add-on” an “option” that you can take or leave as part of the Christian faith.
The resurrection is not like a caboose on a train. You don’t need the caboose for the train to move down the track. The train will move with our without the caboose. The resurrection is not like the caboose. The resurrection is the engine. The resurrection makes possible any movement at all. The resurrection is the engine that drives the train of Christianity.
Some of you know that the United States Congress once issued a special edition of the so-called “Thomas Jefferson Bible.” It was a simple copy of our Bible with all references to the supernatural removed. Jefferson cut out all of the supernatural teachings in the Bible, leaving only the moral teachings of Christ, teachings like the Sermon on the Mount, and so on. So in Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, the closing words about Jesus place Him in a tomb. And the final words about Jesus are these: “There laid they Jesus and rolled a great stone at the mouth of the tomb and departed.”
And that’s how Jefferson’s Bible ends. But that is not how the Bible ends. Paul goes on to say in Verse 20:
20 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Preaching is not pointless. Faith is not useless. Preachers are not false witnesses. We are not still in our sins. Our Christian loved ones have not perished. We are not to be pitied!
Living He loved me,
Dying He saved me,
Buried He carried my sins far away.
Rising He justified, freely forever.
One day He’s coming, O glorious day!
*Stand for prayer.
Conclusion / Invitation:
In his book, World Aflame, evangelist Billy Graham:
When I was in Russia, I heard a story about a Russian village. After the Bolshevik revolution, the local Communist leader had been sent to tell the people the virtues of communism and to take their minds away from religion, which Karl Marx called “the opium of the people.” After the communist had harangued them for a long time, he said to the local Christian pastor rather contemptuously: “I will give you five minutes to reply.” The pastor replied: “I do not need five minutes, only five seconds.” He rose to the platform and [he said to the crowd]: “The Lord is risen!” As one man the villagers thundered back: “He is risen indeed!”—Chapter 13, “The Day Death Died,” page 137.
•Pray.
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