April 10, 2000
Lessons for April 16
FAMILY BIBLE SERIES:
Without the Resurrection,
hope ceases to exist
___1 Corinthians 15:1-58
___By Stacy Conner
___First Baptist Church, Muleshoe
___How can something be true if no one has seen it, experienced it, tested it or written about it? In our empirically tested and trial-proven world, that is the question of the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. How can it be possible that Jesus has been raised from the dead? Everyone knows that once a person is dead he is dead. Dead people do not come back to life.
___That was the supposition of the Corinthians as they struggled to understand the gospel.
___Christians were being confronted by non-believers who were arguing on philosophical grounds that the Resurrection was impossible. Dead people do not rise from the dead.
___And if the dead people do not rise, then it is only logical Jesus was not raised from the dead either. If dead people do not rise and Christ did not rise from the dead, then the entire hope of the gospel collapses.
___And if that is the case, as Christians we have bought into a lie.
___The resurrection of Christ was so pivotal for Paul that he confessed that if it were not true the moral bearings of the Christian life and the risk of being an apostle were foolish (vs. 31-32). The Corinthians had bought into a series of philosophical arguments which they could not refute on the basis of their own logic. They could not argue with the fact that they had not seen the resurrected Lord. They could not argue that they had ever seen a resurrected person of any kind. Without argument, dead was dead.
___Jurgen Moltmann, a great German theologian, says, "Christianity stands or falls with the reality of the raising of Jesus from the dead by God."
___The entire Christian message hinges upon the fact of the Resurrection. If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then all of the promises of God are reliable. Jesus' resurrection is the down payment of God's promise of salvation. The resurrection is a fact of hope in Jesus Christ.
___Briefly, Paul recounted the history of Christ's resurrection experience, the eyewitnesses and the Scriptural references. He confronted the logic of the philosophers and the absurdity of the gospel if the Resurrection is false. He reflected upon the changed nature of the resurrected body.
___But he concludes the chapter with a declaration of hope in the resurrection of Christ.
___As a young seminary student, I asked the pastor who conducted my maternal grandfather's funeral to read 1 Corinthians 15:50-57 during the funeral service. The reading of this Scripture during that service filled me with a hope. At that time, he was the first close relative I had lost to death. I left that sanctuary that afternoon obsessed with the hope of the gospel. Because of my experience, I read that same passage of Scripture at the graveside service of every believer whose funeral I conduct.
___The hope of the gospel is that we trust a God who keeps his promises, and he has done so in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
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