Let's read Scripture together. We're going to read from 1 Corinthians 15, verses 12 to 34.
That he raised Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But, in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.
The firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.
But each in his own order.
Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father,
after destroying every rule and every authority and every power.
For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
For God has put all things in subjection under his feet.
But when it says all things are put in subjection,
it is plain that he is accepted who put all things in subjection under him.
When all things are subjected to him,
then the Son himself will be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him,
that God may be all in all.
Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead?
If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?
Why are we in danger every hour?
I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I die every day.
What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus?
If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
Do not be deceived.
Bad company ruins good morals.
Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning.
For some have no knowledge of God, and I say this to your shame.
This is God's holy word.
We are, for three weeks, looking at this chapter, 1 Corinthians 15.
This is week two in the run-up to Easter.
And this chapter is Paul's argument for the resurrection of Jesus.
And it's a formal argument.
So we didn't touch on this last week, but if you were paying attention there,
you might have noticed that this takes the shape of a philosophical argument.
So Paul is writing to Corinthians in what we now call Greece, and it's Greek culture.
And so they were very, very used to very formal arguments.
And Paul here is giving a very formal argument.
And so if you go back through it, you can see, you can notice a lot of if.
So if this is the case, then this must be the case.
If this is not true, then that couldn't be true.
Right?
And he goes back and forth through that very formal, very philosophical, highly intelligible.
And so the section we are in is called the refutation in formal logic.
The first section we looked at last week where he says this is what the gospel is.
It's the history of Jesus.
That's the premise.
So he's saying this is what everybody agrees on, Corinthian.
I preached this to you.
You said you believed it.
The basic premises have been laid down.
But now it's time for the refutation.
And we learn why he has to refute, why he has to give this counter argument.
And it's in verse 12.
So in verse 12 he says,
If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, why are some of you saying there is no resurrection?
So what is Paul coming to refute in this section?
He's saying that there are people in Corinth who are suggesting that even after Paul said,
I saw the physical Jesus alive, and so did 500 other people at least.
He's saying, but some of you in Corinth are saying, yeah, I believe in Christianity,
but I don't believe that Jesus Christ is actually physically alive.
So that's what he has to refute.
That's the refutation.
So he's going to give us his counter argument against that,
and then he's going to say, but then if he has been raised from the dead, this is what that means.
And so that's the very clear two sections.
Now, that means that the Corinthians, though they heard the gospel,
though they said they believed it,
some of them are still very stuck in a pagan worldview.
And a pagan worldview comes from, in this time,
Epicurean philosophy and Stoic philosophy and all sorts of worldviews cultivated by what we call cult religion of the time.
And in all these, there's different views of the afterlife.
And so in Epicureanism and Stoicism, there's an idea that maybe there is no afterlife at all.
So you die, you're dead.
Contemporary scientism might suggest something like that, right?
But for others, there is an afterlife, but it's not physical.
It's only spiritual.
So the main Greek view is that the afterlife is nothing but spiritual, nothing but ethereal.
There's no physical body, right?
And then we learn later in the chapter that some people were even saying that actually, yeah,
the resurrection is real, but it's already happened.
So we say as modern people, what, how could the resurrection already happen?
But what they meant by that was the resurrection is something that happens inside of you.
It's inner life transformation.
So when you believe in Jesus, there's a resurrection that takes place in your soul.
So they were saying the resurrection is not physical, but it has already taken place.
So as soon as you believe, you are resurrected from the inside out, right?
And the past five or six sermons, I don't know who started this, but it has been said twice already in the last two sermons,
that we're on a streak of quoting German intellectuals from the 19th to 20th century.
So I thought, far be it from me to break such a wonderful streak, so I will not break it.
Rudolf Bultmann, 20th century, New Testament scholar in Germany.
He said this about Easter.
He said, Easter is not about the rising of Jesus from the dead.
It's about the rising of faith in the inner life in the first Christians from the deadly moment of the crucifixion.
So Bultmann said, like the Corinthians, some of the Corinthians said that the resurrection is not about physical,
a physical resurrection from the dead, not about that.
It's about this inner life transformation that occurs within you.
And these apostles and these disciples had seen the crucifixion.
It was horrific.
Their master murdered, but they experienced resurrection because they all of a sudden said,
even though he's dead, I can still believe in him.
Bultmann says that's resurrection.
And some of the Corinthians are saying that.
So Paul says, does the resurrection transform your inner life?
Yes, absolutely.
But in 1 Corinthians 15, he says, that's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about something physical, something real life history.
That's the core to the gospel.
Now, Tom Wright, a retired professor from St. Andrews,
he wrote a 700-page book about this chapter.
All right?
And I say that just to say, we're not going to cover everything.
Okay?
And at the beginning of Tom Wright's book on this chapter, he says,
I wish I had enough pages to cover everything in this chapter.
Okay?
So we can only get the biggest ideas across today and leave it.
Every single clause has so much in this argument.
But let me just give you the two big ideas.
And the two big ideas are just this, that Paul says, first, the deadly consequences of denying the physical resurrection of Jesus.
What does it cost if you deny the resurrection of Jesus physically?
And then he turns and says, but he was raised.
And so here is the transformative reality of the fact that he actually is alive.
So those two things.
The problem if you deny it, but the beauty when you see it's true.
The power.
All right?
So first, the problem if you deny it.
Now, if you look at verse 13, he says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
So that is what we call an argument from the universal to the particular.
So he says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is dead.
He's not raised.
Right?
So what is he doing?
He's saying, if you believe Corinthian or a 21st century person, if there is no such thing as resurrection,
then that means Christ was never raised.
Right?
The universal to the particular.
Yeah?
And so one of the things that that verse does for us today is it shows us that we've got to be aware of a very untrue,
a false view that we have as 21st century people of first century people,
of people from the pre-modern world.
And that's the idea that people in the first century were so gullible that they believed people could rise from the dead.
And Paul says here in verse 13 that people in Corinth in the first century are saying,
Jesus obviously is not alive because there is no such thing as resurrection from the dead.
Right?
So in the 21st century, sometimes as modern people, we look back and think these pre-modern people,
the only reason they believe this is because they were gullible.
And they haven't yet come to the claims of modern science.
But as modern people, we know that the science is very clear.
The science is very clear.
People die and they don't come back.
Right?
Decay does not reverse in that way.
And what this helps us to see is we have to avoid any sense of chronological snobbery.
Because the science was pretty clear in the first century as well.
Right?
One out of one people that died did not come back from the dead.
And so we didn't, you know, modern science has helped us see this so much.
No.
We've always known, everybody knows that nobody comes back from the dead.
And we see here that that's exactly what Corinthians were saying.
And we know that even Jewish believers were saying the same thing.
The Sadducees in the Gospels did not believe in resurrection.
They said resurrection is impossible.
The only afterlife there is is a spiritual afterlife.
And you see what Paul is saying?
Yes.
The science is clear.
One out of one people never come back from the dead.
Which is why this will convert you in your seats.
That's the point.
Because this is so consistent, it happened.
Therefore, this will change you in your seat.
It will convert you on the spot.
And you think about what Paul is saying if you back up to verse 8 and following when he says,
Think about my life.
Paul did not believe in Jesus.
He did not follow Jesus.
He did not believe in the resurrection.
Not at all.
And in fact, if you think about his life a little bit deeper,
you realize that his whole well-being was wrapped up in denying the resurrection.
So, he made his money by denying the resurrection.
His identity was to hate the Christian world and to ultimately seek the death of anybody who believed in it.
Right?
His whole identity.
His well-being.
You know, Paul had a life plan like we all like to talk about today.
And he had mapped it out really well.
And as a young man, he was very successful.
And his whole success depended on killing Christians.
He's saying, People don't come back from the dead, but I saw him.
And it changed my life.
It converted me on the spot.
I gave my life away to him.
That's exactly the point.
That's the point.
And so, we can't come and say something very silly like,
Well, first century people were gullible.
Paul's saying, I wasn't gullible.
I didn't believe it for a second.
But then I saw him.
And 500 people I know about saw him as well.
And even more than that saw him.
This will change you in your seats.
It's not an issue of faith versus science.
The science has always been clear enough.
Everybody's always understood the science.
What is this?
This is an issue of worldview.
So, what is Paul saying?
He's saying, You need a new worldview.
You need to be willing to say,
If God exists and he actually made the world,
then I can believe that he has the power to act into the world by raising somebody from the dead.
It's not an issue of faith versus science.
It's just, Do you believe in God?
If you believe in God, then of course God has the power to raise people from the dead.
He's God.
He made us.
He can do it.
Now, the rest of Paul's argument in this first section
is actually talking to people in Corinth and to us today through God's word,
to anybody who says,
I'm a Christian on the one hand,
but denies the physical resurrection of Jesus on the other hand.
That's really what the rest of the section's about.
So, that's directly the people that he's thinking about here.
And so, what does he say?
Look, he says,
First century Corinthian,
If you say,
I'm a Christian,
but I don't believe that Jesus rose from the dead physically,
he says,
Your faith is empty.
It's futile.
It's vain.
It's vacuous.
My preaching is absolutely pointless.
He says in verse 15,
We, we and the apostles,
we all preach that God raised Jesus from the dead.
And what you've done by denying that is you're saying,
God himself is a liar.
We've misrepresented him.
He's talking there about something broader.
He's saying in the whole Old Testament,
it was all about the moment of the resurrection,
the crucifixion and the resurrection.
And we've been going around teaching the Old Testament saying,
Look, the Old Testament shows that this was always the point.
But if it's not, if it hasn't happened,
then we've made God's entire word to be empty.
You see what he's saying there?
He's saying,
If Jesus is not raised from the dead,
you need to go find a different God.
Martin Luther said,
If Jesus Christ is still dead,
if you can find his bones in Israel,
God is not God.
It's that big.
It's that serious.
The consequences are that big.
And so he wants to say,
Look, the forgiveness of sins
and the power of the gospel
is so wrapped up in this reality
that if you take away the resurrection,
you don't have the forgiveness of sins.
And all the people that have professed faith in Christ
and have died in Corinth,
they are dead in their sins.
They've gone to deal with the Lord.
No, God is not God if this has not happened.
What do we learn here?
We learn this and we'll move on.
The gospel is not good news
if Jesus Christ is still dead.
He's saying that the resurrection has such basicality,
if I could use that word,
basicality to the Christian message.
You can't get underneath it.
It's rock bottom.
And so he's saying that progressive Christianity,
as we call it today,
has always been around.
It was around in the first century.
It's still around with us today.
And he's saying progressive Christianity
is misnamed.
Progressive Christianity,
the idea that you can be a Christian
but deny the physical resurrection of Jesus
is not Christianity at all.
Progressive Christianity is sub-Christian.
It lacks the basicality of the gospel message.
Without the physical resurrection of Jesus,
there is no good news.
We're still dead in our sins and our trespasses.
And as one commentator puts it,
if progressive Christianity saws off the tree branch
that it sits upon, right?
If Jesus was not raised from the dead,
then all you have is mere religion.
This is just mere religion.
And religion is a lame hobby.
Yeah.
Yaroslav Pelikan,
the Yale historian from the 20th century,
he says about this chapter,
he says what Paul is saying
is that if Christ was not raised,
nothing else matters.
But, secondly,
he was raised from the dead.
That's what Paul says here
in the second half from verse 20.
In fact, Christ has been raised from the dead.
And so here he gives you,
let me give you three realities,
three things this means for you
if you believe this,
if you know that this is real life history.
This will change you today.
This will bring,
if you're not a Christian,
this,
what I'm about to say,
this has the power
to bring conversion into your life.
It can change you right here,
right today.
If you are a Christian,
it has,
what Paul tells us here,
has the power to transform you
right now in the 21st century,
2025.
And he tells us three things.
I can only treat them
in the most cursory way
because of time.
But the first thing he says
is that when you realize
the resurrection is real life history,
what it offers to you
is hope when you are facing death.
That's the first big thing
I think Paul wants to tell us.
Now,
all,
every single one of us today,
we are facing death right now.
So facing death is not something
that we will do when we're older.
Facing death is today.
Facing death is right now.
All of us are standing
in the face of death
at any moment,
right?
And Paul says here in verse 22,
in Adam,
all of us have died.
All of us do die because of Adam.
So also in Christ,
all shall be made alive.
Now there he's doing this thing
where he's connecting you,
every single one of us,
to the first man,
Adam.
He's saying there is a deep connection
between you and the first man.
That the first human
that ever came into this world
was a representative
for all of humanity.
As modern Western individualist
as we are,
we struggle very much with this.
We do not want to be willing to say
what this man did matters for me
so many years later.
But most societies in world history
never had a problem with this.
Most societies have had
a communitarian mindset
and have understood
that people represent others.
And we know this to be true
in so many ways, right?
If a president,
if a prime minister declares war,
you go to war, right?
If the prime minister says,
if the parliament says,
we are going to war tomorrow,
then our nation,
our society has gone to war.
They represent us.
And in the same way,
before God,
Adam represented us all.
We are deeply connected to him
so that when he chose
death instead of life,
he's saying there's a deep connection there.
We all die.
But when the second Adam,
but when the second Adam
faced death that we deserved
and disrupted that death
by coming back to life,
he also represented us.
And so he's saying
that there's this deep connection.
We call it Adam Christology.
This deep connection
between us and Adam
and us and Christ
as Christians.
I've used this illustration here
before.
I'll come back to it.
I think it's helpful.
If you're married,
you probably have
a joint credit card
with your spouse.
It's good to have that.
You build your credit a bit, right?
You have a joint credit card.
And if your spouse goes
and spends so much money
on Amazon,
so much money
on shopping on Princess Street
and right out here
on the Royal Mile,
and the debt collector
comes to your door
and knocks on your door
and says you owe
thousands upon thousands
and it's time to pay,
you say,
I didn't spend
any of that money.
And what does
the debt collector say?
It does not matter.
Your name is on the account.
Legally,
you spent every penny.
So you might have not
made a single transaction,
but it's your debt.
You see,
we know that there's
such a thing as legal
connection
that leads
to a representative,
you know,
even
think about it like this.
The debt collector
comes to your door
and says,
you owe so much money.
You say,
there's no way
I could owe that money.
And he says,
oh, you do.
You're legally connected.
But then what do you do?
You say,
look,
I didn't spend
any of that money myself,
but I will pay
every penny of it
because I love them.
And you pay it.
And you know what?
They didn't pay a dime.
They didn't pay,
they spent it all,
but they didn't pay
any of it back.
You paid every penny,
but guess what?
They're debt free.
And in the same way,
he's saying,
in Adam,
his debt became your debt
and boy,
have we accrued
some debt in our lives.
But in Christ,
though he didn't
earn the debt,
he paid every penny of it
and now you're free too.
And so he's saying,
when Jesus rose from the dead,
you were made alive.
Now here's the takeaway,
here's the application.
If you are a believer today,
if you say today,
I know Jesus Christ lives
and I follow him,
don't miss that
what Paul's saying here
and what Paul says
in other parts of the gospel,
of his letters,
is you today are alive.
You today have been made
a new creation.
Don't miss the reality
of your sainthood.
You are alive.
You have been made new.
You are a new creation.
It doesn't just start
at the end of history
when your physical body
is raised from the dead.
You, the second fruit.
He, the first fruit.
No, but right now,
the resurrection does matter
because you are spiritually
made alive
from this very moment,
from the very moment
of his resurrection.
It's true of you.
You're a saint.
You're beloved.
You're adopted.
You're part of his family.
It has changed.
Life is different.
You are not who you used to be,
but by the grace of God,
you can say,
today I am what I am.
Things have changed
really and truly.
Sainthood is actually real.
The first Adam was given
wonderful life by God
and he traded it for death.
The second Adam,
the very author of life,
he traded his life
for the death we deserved
so that we could have his life.
We're deeply connected
and that means that
because Jesus Christ
was physically raised
from the dead,
you shall be too.
Everything that's true of him
is now true of you.
The second thing
Paul says to us,
Christian friend,
transformative power here,
the second thing he says
is in the face of death now
because of that,
you can say,
God shall be all in all.
So in verse 28,
that's how he ends
this refutation,
this argument.
He says,
when all things
are subjected to God,
the Son himself
subjected to God the Father,
then God shall be all in all.
Now,
what is he saying
when he says
God shall be all in all?
Another way to translate it,
that is,
one day,
when this all wraps up,
God shall be everything
to everyone.
God shall be all in all.
That means he will be
everything to everyone,
meaning all that God is
and all that God has done
throughout world history
will be visible to everyone.
He's saying,
so he has raised Christ
in the middle of history,
but right now,
verses 24 to 28
are saying,
right now,
it doesn't feel that way
because he's writing
to a Corinthian church
who's underneath
the power of the empire.
And in the first century,
the empire,
the emperor
called himself
the pater patriae,
meaning,
I am the father,
the holy father
of the fatherland.
So,
in other words,
the emperor in that time
saw himself
as the divine father
over the people.
And he's saying,
but you've got to understand
when you look at the weakness
of Christ at the cross
and the power of God
in the resurrection,
God is going to subject
every single power
underneath the kingship
of Jesus.
And I know that right now
it doesn't feel that way
exactly.
You don't feel like
every single power
over you in your life
is underneath
the kingship of Jesus.
You look at
political leaders
like they were doing
in the first century
and saying they see themselves
as divine.
And he's saying,
no,
look,
you've got to be patient.
We know that we have
the first fruits of the spirit.
We wait for the resurrection
of the body with patience.
One day,
every power
will be subjected
visibly
and Christ,
God,
will be everything
to everyone.
Everybody will see it.
What was made true
at the middle of history
will come true
at the end of history
and every power,
every demon,
Satan himself,
and then he says,
and even the last enemy,
death,
will be subjected
to his reign.
It will die
and he will be king.
Now that is,
that is why
in verse 29
he says something
that sounds to us
very strange
as Protestant readers.
He says,
is that not why
Paul says
some of you
are being baptized
on behalf of the dead?
What does he mean by that?
It sounds as if
he's saying something like
a person
who's alive today
can seek baptism
and help a person
who's already died
achieve something
in the next life.
So some way
that the sacrament
of baptism
becomes powerful
to somebody
who might
have already died.
But the overwhelming
majority view today
in scholarship
of this
is something
very different
and it requires
us to change
the translation
just a little bit
and it says
this is why
some of you
have been baptized
for the sake
of the dead
or because
of what happened
with the dead.
That's a way
to translate it
and so let me
give you a quote.
This is Anthony Thistleton
one really
important contemporary
commentator
quoting from a woman
named Maria Rader
who wrote a whole book
about this sentence
in 1955.
Okay and I'm
pretty convinced
about what she
thought about it.
This is what she says
what Paul is saying
here is part
of his argument
for why the resurrection
is so powerful
for us when we face death.
And this is what she says
the death of Christians
in Corinth
in the first century
led to the conversion
of many people
that saw them die.
Okay he says
in the first instance
when it says
for the sake of the dead
on behalf of the dead
people in the first century
saw Christians dying
especially Christian relatives
and a sweet mother
would hold the hand
of her son
at her deathbed
and say
I believed in Christ
I will see Christ
today
come with me
turn to Jesus
believe in the truth
of the resurrection
and we will be together.
And so it says
this is why many of you
in Corinth
have been baptized
for the sake of the dead
or because you saw
the dead
you saw the people
facing death
even some of them
murdered for their faith
you saw them say
I will hold fast
to the claim
that Jesus Christ
is alive not dead
and I know
that my Redeemer lives
I'll see him
will you not
come and see him
with me?
And so many of you
have turned
and said
I want to be baptized
because you saw
the strength
of people's faith
when they face death.
Now
that gives us
the application
doesn't it?
He's saying
when you see somebody
have you seen
somebody face death
with the hope of Christ?
And he's saying
when you see somebody
face death
with the hope of Christ
and they say
I don't want to die
I hate death
death is the last enemy
but today I know
my Redeemer lives
and I want
I want you
to know that too.
He's saying
that's a powerful witness
and you can say
if you believe that
you can look at death
and say
you are the last enemy
you are evil
I hate you
there's no celebration
in this
there's nothing
to celebrate in death
no not at all
and yet
at the same time
death where is thy sting?
You can say
in the face of death
I hate you
and the lower
you lay me
the higher he'll raise me
and he's saying
that's what it means
people are being baptized
because they saw
people die
in the faith
and they wanted
the same thing
they wanted the hope
of that type of transformation
and so finally
this leads us
to the third thing
final thing
and I'll close with this
Paul says
at the end of this passage
from verse 31
he says
look this
this has to change you today
that's what he says
you can't
friend
look
you can't walk away today
without asking yourself
did Jesus Christ
rise from the dead
or not
physically
if he did
it has to
it means everything
and if he didn't
it means everything
right
and that's what Paul
concludes with
he says from verse 31
why would I die
every single day
if this were not true
so he's writing
here from Ephesus
and in verse 31
he says
why would I go
to the beasts
in Ephesus
every day
if this were not real
if I were lying
and he's probably
not talking there
about going to
literal gladiatorial games
where he confronts
lions and stuff
he's saying that
I'm in Ephesus
right now
preaching this message
and people are trying
to kill me
and every day
I wake up
and I think
what is the point
of dying to my
pleasures and desires
every day
and going
to face my death
at the hands
of these Ephesians
leaders
if this were not real
in other words
he's saying
what is the point
Christian
of doing religion
and dying to yourself
every day
every Sunday
by waking up earlier
than you want to
and coming here
if Christ has not
been raised from the dead
what's the point
that's the question
he's asking
and this time
it was very common
that gladiators
on the night before
they were going to
have to go into
the gladiatorial arena
in the Colosseum
in Rome for instance
it was very common
they believed
in only a spiritual
afterlife
no physical afterlife
and so the norm
was if you're a gladiator
and you're fighting
the tigers tomorrow
on the night before
you enjoy the pleasures
of the physical life
to their maximal degree
because you think
my physical life
is over
and that's what
he's referencing here
he quotes Menander
a Greek poet
and says
what does Menander say
eat, live, be merry
tomorrow you're going to die
if there is no
physical resurrection
then you might as well
stop doing religion
and maximize the pleasures
of this life
and he says
but if Christ
has been raised
from the dead
there is a reason
to die to yourself
every single day
and say
I exist to live for him
we could put it this way
in the first half
of the argument
Paul said
if Christ
has not been raised
if Christ is dead
nothing else matters
and in the second half
of the argument
he says
if Christ has been raised
nothing else matters
let us pray
Father
would you take this message
and transform us
in our seats
would you bring
somebody today
who doesn't yet know
the power of the resurrection
to see
the wonder
of
the son of God
raised from the dead
in the middle of history
for the forgiveness
of all sins
and I pray
for many many
Christians here today
that we
Lord
would give our lives away
that we would say
this is why
I die to self
Lord
help us to die to self
and live for Christ
Lord
we say today
because you were raised
nothing else matters
let that be
the confession
of our hearts
because you live
we can face tomorrow
because you live
all fear is gone
because you live
we know you hold the future
and life is worth the living
because you live
so that's our prayer
that's our song
right now
we pray it
in Jesus name
Amen