Sermon

1 Corinthians 15:29-58 — The Reality of the Resurrection, Part Two

April 20, 2003

The teaching here answers three questions that focus on the basic question: What difference does the resurrection make?

What difference does the resurrection make for life in the here and now (vv. 29-34)?
What difference does the resurrection make for our physical bodies (vv. 35-49)?
What difference does the resurrection make as to how things will turn out in the end (vv. 50-58)?

(1) What difference does the resurrection make for life in the here and now (vv. 29-34)?

We saw in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Paul attack those who would deny the reality of both Christ’s literal, physical resurrection from the dead and the hope of general resurrection for all believers that springs from what happened to Jesus. The gospel is that Christ is the firstfruits and then, when he comes, we as believers will all experience the resurrection hope (v. 24).

In v. 29 Paul says: “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?” That has been a perplexing verse to interpret. What does Paul mean? Was there a practice in the early church of having people who had died being baptized by proxy? That is, someone stood in their place and was baptized for them. The Mormons, who fall well outside the boundaries of orthodox faith, do that very thing today. Is it Biblical? Here we need to let scripture interpret scripture. We know that works do not save. Eph 2:8-9: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast. Baptism as an external work does not save anyone. We can baptize a broom but that does not make it a believer!

I think what Paul may be saying here is that those who are dead in their sins and trespasses. He refers to those who come to cogent recognition of sin in their lives and who submit to baptism in the hope of being made holy in God’s sight and ultimately being glorified by God at the coming of Christ.

Cf. Romans 6:3-8:

3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
5 If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.
6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin--
7 because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

2 Corinthians 5:17:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!

If there is no resurrection, if it is just a clever Christian fiction, if it has only metaphorical or spiritual meaning and is not, instead, a brute fact of history, then our baptism in Christ is emptied of its meaning. If the proclamation of the resurrection is not true, then the Christian life, that symbolically begins in the waters of baptism is nothing but a sham and should be abandoned. If the resurrection is not true, lock the doors of the church, use your Bible as a paper-weight or door-stop, make the baptistery a bathtub, and turn the church building into a school, a community center or a pool hall.

Of course, the questions that Paul asks in v. 29 are rhetorical and sarcastic. Of course, our baptism has meaning! Look at those who have come to the burning realization that apart from Christ we are dead in our sins and transgressions (cf. Eph 2:1-2). When we proclaim “Jesus is Lord” and believe that God has raised him from the dead, we are saved (Rom 8:10)!

In v. 30 Paul begins to take a different tack. He begins to address the ways in which the gospel has impacted his own life: “And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?” For Paul this was no false bravado.

We know that at Lystra Paul was stoned, and dragged outside the city and left for dead for preaching about Jesus (Acts 14:19-20).

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he will describe his hardships in more detail. 2 Cor 11:24-29:

24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea,
26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers.
27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked.
28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches.
29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?

In Gal 6:17 Paul says, “I bear on my body the marks of Jesus,” and he did not mean that figuratively. In fact, if tradition is right Paul was ultimately beheaded for the sake of Christ in Rome.

As I mentioned in my Evangel article this week, one of the greatest proofs for the truth of the resurrection was the impact it had on the disciples. After Jesus’ cruel crucifixion and his abandonment by his disciples under threat of their own lives, what was it that could possibly have emboldened these ordinary men and women to go out and lay their lives on the line to spread the gospel? How do you explain this amazing turnaround in their lives, except that the risen Jesus really appeared to them, commissioned them, and empowered them? How does Saul, a man who despises the church, become Paul, a man who lays down his life for Christ, unless the risen Jesus really appeared to him on the Damascus Road (Acts)?

In v. 31 Paul says, “I die every day—I mean that, brothers—just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord.” More striking than the external danger that Paul is willing to undergo is the internal process that is at work in his life. I die every day. Obviously, Paul speaks in metaphor since we only taste physical death but once. Paul is saying, “Because of my commitment to Christ I am subordinating my will, my wants, and my desires to his will, his wants, and his desires. I am dying to myself every day. In Gal 2:20 Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

The evidence of the power of the resurrection to transform the lives of believers did not end in the time of the apostles. We can look through the halls of history and see those in each generation who have been compelled by the power of Christ to live beyond themselves for Christ.

I was reminded of that very powerfully this past Thursday. Our Mr. Rudolph invited me to the Albemarle Rotary lunch to hear a man, Dr. William R. Norman, Jr. of Messiah College in Grantham, Penn.. He spoke to the assembled men and women about living a life of service. Though in the Rotary context the witness to Christ was not explicit, it was most certainly implicitly woven into his story.

This Mr. Norman’s father had served a missionary physician through the IMB in Nigeria for over 30 years. So, he had grown up on the mission field with the towering example of his father. He told that one of his earliest memories was of watching a woman from the village pilfer through his family’s garbage to find a scrap of half-eaten toast he had discarded. From this family of service, he had felt a call to serve in meeting human needs and so he went to Cornel and earned an engineering degree with a specialty in hydrology. He wanted to help people in underdeveloped countries have clean water. And he told of having the opportunity to use his skills as a consultant in several nations in Africa and particularly in the Islamic world.

Finally he shared that while serving in Mauritania and helping that nation to use its water resources, in the days after the September 11, 2001 terrorists a deranged Muslim extremist one day approached him and his family and he watched as the man shot his daughter at point blank range in the chest. His daughter, thankfully survived the wound, and has undergone a series of surgeries. But what was most amazing was that after she got out of the hospital she asked to go and see the man who shot her. So, they made arrangements and they met the man in the prison where he was held and his daughter said to him: I forgive you. And he broke down and wept. Cr. Norman also shared how in a letter smuggled out of the prison the man had expressed remorse and had shared that his life and been like a dark tunnel but now he saw there was light.

You see, I want to submit to you, that you only get stories like that and lives like that if the resurrection is real. These sort of things do not happen if the story of Jesus ends at the grave with him a martyr and the resurrection is just wish fulfillment on the part of defeated disciples.

In v. 32 Paul asks: “If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained?” We don’t know exactly what Paul is referring to here. Maybe he fought with real beasts in the arena at Ephesus. Or maybe he refers to a spiritual struggle or hardship he underwent there. His point is that if I make sacrifices and choose suffering for human reasons (to please myself or to please men) then what have I gained. Again, the only reason he does this is because of the risen Jesus.

In the second half of v. 32 Paul says, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” If the resurrection is a lie then we should live the way the world does. That is we should live by the mantra, “You only go around once in life, so you’d better go for the gusto.” Paul quotes an ancient version of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll” and “Life’s a ___ and then you die”: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” That is you ought to go out and satisfy your physical appetite while you can. Life is short, you better live it to the fullest by trying to satisfy your every craving while you can.

Of course, Paul says this sarcastically because he knows that the resurrection is not a fiction but a hard reality. This life is not all there is. One day all will stand before the judgement seat of Christ (cf. Rev 20:11-15), and we will give an account of our lives.

You see the Corinthians were listening to some who told them that the resurrection was not all that important. That is didn’t really make any big difference if you believed in it or not. But hear Paul in v. 33: “Do not be misled: ‘Bad company corrupts good character.’” Who is having the biggest influence on your life? Are you spending your time around folk who feed you the world’s lies, who deny the resurrection, or are you seeking to be around those who can affirm and strengthen you in the faith? this is why we come together as the church? To remind each other whose we are? If we stay away too long, we begin to forget that.

Listen to Paul’s plea in v. 34: “Come back to your senses and you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.” I have the feeling that might be God’s immediate word to someone who is here today. In the story of the Lost (Prodigal) Son in Luke 15 the turning point is in v. 17: “When he came to his senses ….” Paul’s call is for there to be real evidence of repentance. “Stop sinning,” he says. The Puritan John Own wrote in his book on overcoming sin: “Let not that man think he makes any progress in holiness who walks not over the bellies of his lust” (Mortification of Sin, II).

(2) What difference does the resurrection make for our physical bodies (vv. 35-49)?

Briefly, we should note that the Biblical view is not that God saves just our souls but the teaching of the resurrection is that God transforms our bodies as well.

In this life we struggle with sin and limitation and temptation and sickness and hunger and thirst, but there is coming a day when we as believers will be given resurrection bodies (vv. 42-44).

(3) What difference does the resurrection make as to how things will turn out in the end (vv. 50-58)?

These last verses are among my favorites to read at the funeral services of believers. They proclaim the Easter hope for those of us who trust in Christ. That, “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed” (v. 51). Death will be overcome and swallowed up in the victory of Christ (vv. 55-56).

Many of you probably heard of the death during the recent war of NBC journalist David Bloom at just age 39. He left a wife and three yougn daughters. Bloom died not from combat but from a pulmonary embolism that came from a blood clot in his leg brought on by hours of riding in the tight confines of a refurbished tank that he had christened “the Bloommobile.” What you might not have heard about Bloom was that he was devout Catholic Christian who was a committed member of a weekly Bible study group in downtown Manhattan.

The Washington Post (4/17) reported on Bloom’s funeral service that was held on April 16 at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York before a host of dignitaries including New York’s governor George Pataki, former Mayor Guiliani, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer and newsmen Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings.

The most poignant moment was when the last email was read that Bloom had written to his wife Melanie on April 4th just a few hours before his death. He wrote:

“Here I am at the peak of professional success, and I could frankly care less. Yes, I’m proud of the good job we’ve all been doing, but in the scheme of things it matters little compared to my relationship with you, the girls and Jesus.”

I want to suggest to you today that the resurrection makes a differences in the way we live our lives in the here and now as Christ transforms us. It will make a difference in our bodies on the day that Christ renews them. And it will make a difference on the last day, when the trumpet sounds, and he tramples over death to give us life.

Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain (v. 58).

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Reproduction Permission: Permission is granted to copy this material — in its complete text only — for not-for-profit use (sharing with a friend, church, school, Bible study, etc.). Other uses require written permission. This material may not be sold or included in publications intended for sale. Feedback is welcomed at jeffparkchurch@juno.com.