WELCOME
PRAYER
SONG
SILENCE
1st Corinthians 15 Part I
(verses 1-9)
November 25th 2018
Milk
So, after giving some pretty lengthy insight and instruction on the much needed spiritual gift of tongues in chapter 14 Paul, now in enters into a new direction.
We might consider it the third part or portion of the chapter. It is a really really important part of the whole of scripture because Paul takes the time to articulate things about the afterlife that Jesus himself doesn’t go into.
And being that Christians are almost always concerned with details about the afterlife this is a particularly instructive portion of Paul’s writings.
See, the fact of the matter is, if what Paul talks about here is correct then Christianity is true.
Prior to Christ, what Paul writes here, was not happening. All who died were separated from God, stuck in some form of sheol, and relegated to an existence of formlessless, or at least being dispossessed of having any kind of body.
Jesus brought the promise of a resurrection – without Him there was none – nor any hope of any kind of desired afterlife that could be superior to this one.
To be dispossessed of a body seems like it would present all people with a sorry state of affairs – one where they would long for the days when they were mortal and had a body, etc.
Oh, that we could go back to mortality and eat the garlic and the leeks – even if it meant being in bondage to sin, right?
But with Him and His resurrection we now have to full value of the faith – we have not only been forgiven and saved by the grace of God, we have the promise of a better life beyond – and here Paul gives us an insight into what it looks like.
What caused Paul to enter into this discussion to the church at Corinth?
In all probability, there were a couple reasons. First of all, Corinth was part of Greece and the Greeks were constantly curious about matters that eluded them.
The resurrection was in all probability a topic of great interest and perhaps word got back to Paul that this was the case.
Because of their natural penchant to divide from each other it is likely that the church was also breaking up over sectarian notions and if, perhaps, a Sadducee snuck into the fray and introduced a denial of the resurrection, there could have been a real need to nip this issue quickly before the believers were split.
The clarity of what Paul says about resurrection cannot be denied and so it seems like he found it necessary to set the record straight.
More obviously, as what I just said was conjecture, is that some HAD actually denied the reality of a resurrection as evidenced by what Paul says at verse 12, and so however it started, it was there.
From Acts 17:32, we know that among some of the Greeks, the doctrine of the resurrection was regarded as ridiculous; we know from the Gospel accounts that there were Jews (sadducees) who denied it also and then we also learn from 2nd Timothy 2:18 that some crazies were teaching that the resurrection had already come and gone.
So as a means to counteract these errors, and to put the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead on a firm foundation of irrefutable truth, and to therefore furnish the truth of this ultimate end of Christianity Paul addresses it – head on.
Now, for simplicities sake the chapter could be divided into four parts and in those four parts four questions regarding the resurrection are solved.
PART I
Whether there is any resurrection of the dead? (verses 1-34)
PART II
With what body will the dead rise? (verses 35-51)
PART III
What will become of those who shall be alive when the Lord Jesus shall come to judge and save? (verses 51-54)
And PART IV
What are the practical benefits of this doctrine? (verse 55-58)
Now, along the way, he adds some things to the mix that are really insightful and important – and these little gems wind up as valuable as the missives on resurrection itself.
So, let’s pick it up at verse one and work through this together as Paul begins by saying:
1st Corinthians 15:1 Moreover, brethren, (or in addition to all I have written to you thus far in this epistle . . . and let me break this down into ten statements)
I (Paul, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ)
declare unto you (believers at Corinth)
This word properly means, I make known, to declare, to reveal, tell, narrate, inform, put in your mind, to impress, and confirm to you.
Greek scholars suggest that what Paul is doing is reminding them of WHAT he declared to them and NOT that he was declaring to them anything new.
I declare unto you . . .
. . . the gospel . . . (the Good News, the glad announcement).
Now, most Christians will appeal to these words of Paul as the way to define the Gospel or the Good News.
They will ask? What is the Good News? And then they will turn to this very chapter and read how Paul defines it.
Paul’s focus here is on the Resurrection of the Lord and Savior and yet in the introduction to this topic he does take the time to include the other elements that contribute to the Good News being so Good.
The things that he will include in the package called the good news is
how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; ad that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures
Some add that he was seen of Peter and others to the Good News as part of the package, and while the witnesses add value to the story, Paul seems to limit the Good News to three items – and only three –
That Christ died for our sins (according to the scriptures – which are the old Testament) that
he was buried,
and that he rose again on the third day (again, according to the scriptures).
We will get deeper into this short list and the beauty of it in a minute but in this truncated version of the Good News, we have Mark open his Gospel up with the following:
“The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. . .” and from there delivers 16 chapters the tell the story of the Good News.
We can be dogmatic and limit our definition of the Good News to Paul’s short list or we can be broad and rambling and suggest like Mark that the whole tale of Jesus birth, life, miracles, death and resurrection define the Good News for us, but in the end, while EVERYTHING – EVERYTHING Jesus experienced, said, did and didn’t do are part of the Good new, the reality of it all culminates in the finished product of the resurrection.
Paul will say something to this effect later on in this chapter.
I (Paul, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ) declare unto you the Good News . . .
“which I preached unto you” (when I was in Corinth)
According to Acts 18:1 Paul founded the church at Cornith and so it was proper that he would remind them of what he had taught them at the beginning – especially if they had wandered off into realms of error and division.
It seems reasonable that if the founder who had preached truths to them wrote to correct them that they would listen – and hence the epistle.
Paul adds
“which also ye have received”
Which you received and embraced and admitted at that time to be true. To me, Paul is saying, that they were converted to the Good News that he preached to them. And they not only receive or were converted to them but he adds:
“and wherein you stand”
The doctrines and story of the Good News – long version or short – is what you all stand upon as Christians, Paul seems to say. Without them, you would be standing on another foundation – that of Judaism or Philosophy or paganism – and again, we will soon read where Paul hinges the value of the Christian Good News on the reality of the Resurrection and goes so far as to say that if all Jesus offers was applicable to this life His followers would be “most miserable.”
In other words, what value would the Good News be if all it included was the fact that a man was put to death, and buried – or what value would all of the stories we read about in Mark be to followers of the king if everything he said and did remained only here, on terra-firma?
Not much. But it is this good News – long version or short – upon which believers stand in faith – both here and in the great beyond.
At this point we get the remainder of his comments on the subject, saying at verse 2
2 By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
“By which also ye are saved,”
Okay. I have to step out here and make something clear that I see in the Apostolic Record and that if it is not repeated, will be lost on our tendency to apply everything to ourselves.
The Nation of Israel was promised a Messiah. They expected a material Messiah that would rule and reign over the nation and emancipate it from any and all bondage (like to the Romans) saving them, as it were.
This view was garnered over the course of their history as they were inclined to read scripture without spiritual eyes and were blinded by its more lofty meanings.
400 years of silence ensued after Malachi, and we enter into a scene where there is a wild man raised in the desert eating locusts and wild honey, never cutting his hair or beard and dressed in camels hair, and a leather girdle.
His first recorded words are found in Matthew 3:7 where we read:
But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he said unto them, “O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?”
The implication of these very words are:
There is a WRATH THAT IS COMING that this people needs to be saved from.
I am preparing the way for the promised Messiah who will save this people FROM THE WRATH TO COME.
Three verses later John the Baptist adds:
And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire: Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Again, folks, again, Jesus the Messiah came to SAVE them from this coming, prophesied, onslaught.
When we read other passages, like
“And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”
We tend to think of this saving as being – for them – from God and His wrath upon them, and therefore from an afterlife place called hell and/or the Lake of Fire.
There is an application of this meaning going on here, and it would occur for them BY looking to their Messiah in faith and receiving the Good News.
But the primary saving – or should I say, the first saving that John the Baptist and Jesus and the Apostles were talking about was from the coming destruction or wrath.
This is what Jesus came to save those people from them – actually, materially, literally. They were a material nation, under material laws, and were being saved by the material life, death and resurrection of their Material savior, Jesus Christ.
When Jesus asks the Pharisees in Matthew 23:33 “Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
Christians today interpret His comments as applied to his ability to save them from an eternal fiery pit called hell, when in context and reality, Jesus was asking them how they expected to escape an actual burning place called Gehenna (which the King James translators translated to hell) where many Jews’ bodies were tossed into with the war with Rome.
So remember, saved firstly, in the apostolic record, refers to being saved from the coming wrath.
The aftermath salvation is a byproduct, in the Record, of the initial salvation being offered. So even when Paul writes in that if we
“Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth you will be saved,” the PRIMARY application of that in that day was for them to be saved
From the coming wrath
To God’s heavenly Kingdom
And therefore, from painful afterlife correction in hell and or the Lake of Fire.
For this reason salvation is entirely conditional in the Record, and is predicated on enduring to the end.
Which is why Paul follows up the line of them being saved with the next line
“if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you unless ye have believed in vain.”
This message is central to every single story, illustration, parable and prophecy given to the people in that age – look to Him in faith and live – but cling to Him in faith or your safety here is not assured.
When we read Jesus teachings of the Sower, when we read Paul’s warnings, Peter’s, John’s and Jesus words to the Seven Churches – hang on, perceiver in the Gospel, don’t be misguided by the traditions of Man and you will be fine.
But if you don’t . . . look out.
There were the rules of the Game then, folks, and to mix these rules all up with our age and its parameters is to misappropriate the text and fail to see the utter victory Jesus has had in His life, death and resurrection over all things once and for all.
Let me put it to you this way (and I am borrowing from some principles we discussed last week in Meat so forgive the redundancies:
Jesus was wrapping up that age (with its approaching final day of wrath) by and through His life, death and resurrection.
In that day, all were dead in sin because of Adam and his transgression.
From Adam to Jesus all who died were “dead in sin” and they went to sheol (or the covered place) separated from God, needing reconciliation through blood that was not from bulls and goats but was from the blood of God’s only human Son – the promised Messiah.
He came and His death, burial and resurrection were the worlds DEATH, BURIAL, and RESURRECTION.
Not just each individual who believed on Him but His death, burial and resurrection was the WORLDS.
(ON BOARD)
THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH
WHO DIED? Jesus died for the World both a Spiritual and a Physical Death
________________________________________________________________________________
JESUS DEATH AND BURIAL
Substitutionary for our sin
For BELIEVERS? No, for the World.
Who died (through Him) when he died for the sins of the world.
Do you know what this equates to? ( STAMP “GODS GRACE” ON THE WORLD)
All sin paid for once and for all by the shed blood of Christ Jesus. Where all of us have experienced both SPIRITUAL and physical DEATH through Adam BEFORE CHRIST, SINCE Christ all have experienced death (for those sins) through Christ!
So, we are all born dead NOT in sin, which would amount to fear and dread and alienation from God, but ALL are born DEAD with Christ who died for all as the final victor over sin and death for all.
In other words, we have all been totally reconciled to God by Christ – and no sin remains that can separate any of us as the world has experienced the wages of sin (death) THROUGH the death of His Son.
Now just listen to 2nd Corinthians 5:14 where Paul says:
“that because one died for all, then are all dead.”
So that speaks to the universal condition of the world in the light of Jesus final finished world – when He died for all then all are dead (in him). Got that?
This was all done by God’s grace – the worlds sin was imputed to His Son and with His death (which was punishment for our sin) we died too, paying the price (through Him, so to speak) for the sins we have committed.
That is how good God is. Through His Son’s singular death, the whole world died with Christ – as our substitute.
But then Paul adds, speaking to another phase believers all experience because of Christ:
“And since He died for all, they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them AND ROSE AGAIN.”
See, to the believer, Jesus death was only part of the contribution to their lives. In verse 14 Paul speaks of “Christ dying for ALL, and therefore ALL being dead,” but in verse 15 he speaks of a more limited number – referring to them as “they” (not all but they) and says
“And since He died for all, THEY WHICH LIVE . . .?? . . . should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them AND ROSE AGAIN.”
In this verse Paul applies not the death and resurrection of Christ to all but His resurrection only to those (the they) which live.
See there is a resurrection of damnation (which Jesus described) but there is also a resurrection to eternal life – and this is what Paul is speaking about . . . “that since he died for all they which LIVE should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him which died for them AND AND AND AND rose again!
In other words, while we know all will be resurrected, only those who rise up out of that universal grave with Him in His resurrection, rise up to new life! The rest will experience a resurrection of damnation – whatever that means.
Because the World was buried with Christ who died for all, there is no more fiery hellish separated death for all – he has had the victory over that and at the end of that age it was cast away.
We might think of the world and our place in it before Christ as a marked up white board and if we died before He did His work we went to hell – because nothing could white the slate clean.
So Jesus dies and the world dies with him, making the payment vicariously through his substitutionary atonement and therefore . . .
(THAT’S RIGHT . . . WIPING THE SLATE CLEAN – THE WORLD SLATE)
So after Christ, all who die physically are no longer facing an angry God – how could they? The slate for them – even the whole world – has been wiped clean.
But notice something? It is a BLANK SLATE.
There is nothing living upon it.
So where forgiveness of sin has been had, the life that hangs in the balance has been fruitless. Why? Because people did not rise back UP WITH CHRIST and live.
They remained dead with Christ (NOT dead in sin, but dead with Christ, all the while ignoring that there was much much more offered them.
In this vein every believer rises with Christ (as a blank slate) but then, knowing that they should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto Him which died for them AND AND AND AND rose again!
The next verses Paul shares in 2nd Corinthians are very telling as he says:
Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
And as this new creature, we begin to mark up our blank slate with orders from the Lord
(WRITE OUT ON BOARD)
I forgave.
I went the extra mile.
I lived unto the Spirit.
I loved as commanded . . . etc., etc.
It is by these things that the souls WHO live (not only those who have died because Christ died) but the souls who love will receive a resurrected body like what Paul is about to describe.
Those who remain a blank slate, due to the substitutionary death of Him but fail to live through Him and His resurrection are facing a very different fate.
So, Paul here, to these believers at Corinth has said he preached to them the Gospel and added
2 By which also ye are saved (and we talked about what this meant to them, and then he adds), if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.
The better Greek here is “if ye hold fast to what I preached to you…”
Where the King James adds, unless you believed in vain, could be said, “unless your faith was worthless, not sustainable, like the faith growing on rocky or thorny ground, or idle.”
In other words, while most of the other translations seem to suggest that Paul is saying that they will be saved IF they remember what Paul preached to them UNLESS their faith was false.
I reject this. The Greek word is IKAY, and it best means idle, so I suggest that Paul is saying what James was saying – that
They will be saved if they remember what he taught them – unless the faith they professed was without merit, was idle, was only a said faith.
And since that faith is inert, Paul appears to be saying that even if they recalled what he had taught them, if their faith was IKAY, they were in trouble.
At this point Paul recites to them what he
Has labeled the Gospel, saying
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received,
Paul here refers to the fact that he had received these doctrines from the Lord Jesus by inspiration.
He tells us so in 1st Corinthians 11:23 and in Galatians 1:12. He is sure to tells them that he was not teaching them his own doctrine but that which he himself has received. And then he gives us the short stack Gospel, saying
How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
And that he was buried, and
that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:
Now, isn’t it remarkable that Paul himself does NOT include ANYTHING that men and women include today for the Good News to have the power to save?
He says NOTHING about the Virgin birth.
Nothing about the pre-existence of Jesus as God.
Nothing about the Trinity.
Nothing about the Second coming.
Nothing about baptism.
Nothing about being a member of the Body.
Nothing about repentance.
Nothing.
If we are to assume that the short-stack Gospel description is viable, which many do, and that this isn’t just a technical loophole, then we have a whole lotta loosening up to do, don’t we?
Let’s wrap today up and address these three points that make up the Good news:
How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;
Now, Paul could be speaking of the types in scripture, like the Passover lamb practice or to specific passages, including some of the main ones like:
Psalm 22:15 My strength is dried up like a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
Isaiah 53:4-6
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Daniel 9:26 And after threescore and two weeks shall Messiah be cut off, but not for himself:
Zechariah 13:7 Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.
In the end this passage clearly shows that Jesus death was not merely a religious martyr but that his actual blood was to be shed for sin.
4 And that he was buried
Again, does this refer to the scripture, and if so, the types and pictures of burial we see in Joseph being thrown in a ditch and other such things or actual passages like
Isaiah 53:9 And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.
and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.
And again, we don’t know if we are talking about the types and pictures of resurrection in the Old Testament, like Abraham and Isaac and Abrahams apparent trust that God would bring His Son back from the dead, or, as some believe, Paul was citing Hosea 6:2 which says
“After two days will he revive us: in the third day he will raise us up, and we shall live in his sight.”
Or that if it was an idea supported by Psalm 16:10, where we read:
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
We can’t be sure.
What we can say, definitively, is that Paul states plainly that the Gospel can be defined in these three points –
That Jesus the Messiah died for the sins of the world, that he was buried, that he rose again on the third day, and that these things were supported by the prophetic words contained in the Tanakh or Old Testament.
We will pick it up there next week.
Questions/Comments
Prayer
Gracies family
