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sermon: Themes of I Corinthians (Part 8)Resurrection
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Back toward the end of February, I started a short series on the themes of I Corinthians, which I intend to finish today. I know that it has been several months since the last installment; therefore, as I did in the first sermon, I am going to trace the footsteps of the apostle Paul in the time period immediately preceding his arrival at Corinth. In this way, I can come full circle with the entire series and also give an introduction for our final theme today.
As Acts 17 opens, Paul was preaching in Thessalonica. He enjoyed some success there for about three weeks' duration, but then the Jews began to figure out what he was doing and rioted out of envy, because he was taking people away from their synagogue. They accused Paul and his companions of spreading sedition against Caesar; they did not bring a religious argument (although it had a religious base in that they were to worship someone other than Caesar). This was tantamount to sedition.
The converts in Thessalonica hurriedly hustled them out of the city and sent them to Berea, where they again had success. However, the Jews followed them from Thessalonica to Berea, and the converts there had to help him, again, get out of town quickly. From Berea, Paul finally landed in Athens.
Athens, as we know, was the center of Greek culture and philosophy, and it had been for a couple hundred years by this time. We need to see Athens from Paul's perspective, though. He had grown up in Tarsus, a city of Cilicia in Asia Minor. Tarsus was a Greek city. It was Roman, of course, but its philosophy—its way of doing things—was Greek. There were many famous Greek philosophers from his part of the country—Asia Minor—not just the main homeland of Greece. Paul grew up in this environment of Greek thought. Of course, he was a Jew and had learned Jewish philosophy and the Jewish pharisaical understanding of the Scriptures. Later, he had been sent to Jerusalem to study under Gamaliel. As a result, he had an understanding and learning of both Greek things and Jewish things.
According to the history of Greek philosophy, Athens was the center of the learned world at that time. As a learned man himself, as an orator and a citizen of the Greek city of Tarsus, Paul probably thought that if he could convince the Athenians of the gospel message, he could convince anyone. Remember that he was the one who said that it was his job—the apostle's job—to persuade men. For him to persuade Athenians would be a high-water mark in his ministry.
He must have gone into Athens not only running away from the Thessalonians but also with the thought in his mind that it would be a challenge to his skills in logic, persuasion, and rhetoric beyond the skills God gave him through His Spirit. He would have to be at the top of his game in order to persuade the Athenians, because they were so sharp. It is kind of like the song entitled "New York, New York," by Frank Sinatra. For Paul, this was "Athens, Athens." One line is, "If I can make it there, I can make it anywhere." This was a kind of Super Bowl or Daytona 500 for the apostle Paul to preach in Athens.
Maybe I am building this up too much, but I want to give you an idea of the way that the city of Athens was thought of during that day and time. It was the center of learning, and Paul was going into a type of philosophical lion's den regarding his message. He was confident of the message, but it was still going to be a challenge. He was going to face these people who were very good at debate.
This next verse will give us a feeling for the city:
Acts 17:16-21 Now while Paul waited for them at Athens, his spirit was provoked within him when he saw that the city was given over to idols. Therefore he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and with the Gentile worshipers, and in the marketplace daily with those who happened to be there. Then certain Epicurean and Stoic philosophers encountered him. And some said, "What does this babbler want to say?" Others said, "He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign gods," because he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection. And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, "May we know what this new doctrine is of which you speak? For you are bringing some strange things to our ears. Therefore we want to know what these things mean." For all the Athenians and the foreigners who were there spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.
Athens seemed to exist as only a place of discussion and debate. Everyone was involved in it, either telling tales and making speeches or listening to them. It seemed to be wholly given over to rhetoric and philosophy, and the citizenry looked down on newcomers and upstarts calling them derogatory names. They used the original Greek term seed-picker on Paul, implying he was like someone who made his living by picking up scraps, like a vagabond or bum. They looked down their noses at these people, thinking intellectually that these people were bums compared to them.
Yet, these philosophers, the real ones like the Epicureans and Stoics, must have heard something in Paul's rhetoric that made them wonder if maybe he did have something new and interesting to tell. Paul was not just an ordinary "seed-picker"; he had something more than they had. Thus, they brought him to the Areopagus, which is like the Mt. Everest of Greek philosophy, where all the great philosophers of the day spoke. They were actually giving him quite an honor by bringing him up to Mars' Hill.
Acts 17:22-34 Then Paul stood in the midst of the Areopagus and said, "Men of Athens, I perceive that in all things you are very religious; for as I was passing through and considering the objects of your worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: 'TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.' Therefore, the One whom you worship without knowing, Him I proclaim to you—God, who made the world and everything in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, and does not dwell in temples made with hands. Nor is He worshiped with men's hands, as though He needed anything, since He gives to all life, breath, and all things. And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings, so that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and move and have our being, as also some of your own poets have said, `For we are also His offspring.' Therefore, since we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Divine Nature is like gold or silver or stone, something shaped by art and man's devising. Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead." And when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked, while others said, "We will hear you again on this matter." So Paul departed from among them. However, some men joined him and believed, among them Dionysius the Areopagite, a woman named Damaris, and others with them.
If you know anything about Greek philosophy (and most of us do not, since we normally do not have a classical education in this country, you would understand that he directs this speech primarily toward the Stoics, because they were, of all the Greeks, probably philosophically closest to the truth. They believed in deity, at least, though pantheistic; they did believe that there is a god. They believed in discipline and self-control, and they believed in reason. This is different from the Epicureans, who were existentialists. They were materialists and atheists. They thought that enjoying life through pleasurable experiences was the whole of life.
The things that he says here are the things with which the Stoics would agree, for the most part. He includes quotations from the Greek poets. He quotes Epimenides of Crete in verse 28, "In him we move, and have our being." He also quotes Aratus and Cleanthus. It is interesting that he quotes Aratus, who is from the province of Cilicia: He was a poet from Paul's home province whom he knew or knew about.
Quoting the Greek poets gave him a boost in the minds of these people, and they seemed to have been hanging on every word he was saying—until he mentioned the resurrection from the dead. It is at this point that the crowd probably began to jeer him, and the audience broke up. Some did want to hear more, but they were very few. There are only two people named here who believed, Dionysius and Damaris. There were others, but they are not named. It was a very small number of people that were actually converted at Athens. After the string of successes up through Thessalonica, Berea, and elsewhere, it was surely a disappointment when he came to Athens.
The doctrine of the resurrection from the dead was the cause of it; that is what had stopped everything. The book of I Corinthians contains what is commonly known as the "Resurrection Chapter." It is a long, reasoned explanation of this doctrine central to the faith. Today, we will take a survey only of his argument found in I Corinthians 15 so that we can better understand the doctrine and his reasons for including it in the epistle to the Corinthians. In other words, why is it in I Corinthians and not someplace else?
In the meantime, what was Greek thought on the matter of the resurrection? We must understand this because this was the milieu in which Paul was working, and the people in Corinth had these same Greek ideas. William Barclay gives a good summary of the Greek ideas of the afterlife, on page 140 of his commentary, Letters to the Corinthians.
When we turn to the Greek world, we must grasp one thing, which is at the back of the whole chapter [meaning I Corinthians 15]: The Greeks had an instinctive fear of death. Euripides wrote, "Yet mortals, burdened with countless ills, still love life. They long for each coming day, glad to hear the things they know, rather than face death—the unknown."
But on the whole, the Greeks and that part of the world influenced by Greek thought did believe in the immortality of the soul. But for them, the immortality of the soul involved a complete dissolution of the body. They had a proverb,
"The body is a tomb." One of them said, "I'm a poor soul shackled to a corpse." "It pleased me," says Seneca, "to inquire into the eternity of the soul—nay, to believe in it. I surrendered myself to that great hope." But he also says, "When the day shall come when which I shall part this mixture of divine and human, here where I found it, I will leave my body. My self I will give back to the gods."Epicticus writes, "When God does not supply what is necessary, He is sounding the signal for retreat. He has opened the door and says to you, 'Come!' But whither? To nothing terrible, but from whence you came, to the things which are dear and kin to you—to the elements. What in you is fire, shall go to fire; earth to earth; water to water."
Seneca talks about things as death being resolved into their ancient elements. For Plato, the body is the antithesis of the soul, as the source of all weaknesses, as opposed to what alone is capable of independence and goodness. We can see this best in the Stoic beliefs. To the Stoic, God was fiery spirit, purer than anything on earth. What gave men life was that a spark of this divine fire came and dwelt in a man's body. When a man dies, his body simply dissolved into the elements of which it was made, but the divine spark returned to God and was absorbed in the divinity of which it was a part. For the Greek, immortality lay precisely in getting rid of the body. For him, the resurrection of the body was unthinkable. Personal immortality really did not exist because that which gave them life was absorbed again into God, the source of all life.
Let us start putting things together. We talked before about how cosmopolitan Corinth was. Many people were coming into Corinth from every part of the Empire, because it was an important commercial city. While going there for trading, many of them decided to stay there. Thus, there were people there from all over the Empire.
However, despite being cosmopolitan, Corinth was a thoroughly Greek city. In fact, it was on the Greek mainland; it was a capital of Greece. It was steeped in Hellenism, which was the Greek way and thought that was exported to the rest of the world.
Corinth and Athens are separated by less than fifty miles. Corinth is almost directly west of Athens, and, philosophically, Corinth was dominated by Athenian thinking. It was just a short walk for the Athenian philosophers to come to Corinth. Also remember that everyone in Greece who was anybody gathered in Corinth for the Isthmian Games every few years. Corinth was thoroughly Greek.
It is not a stretch of the imagination to believe that if the idea of the resurrection from the dead caused jeers and mockings in Athens, it would face the same resistance in Corinth. Thus, the Corinthian church needed to be taught and deeply grounded in this doctrine of the resurrection from the dead, lest the ideas from the society around them cause them to doubt and slip back into Greek thought on the matter.
We have to add another thing to this: There were Jews in the city, but the Jews were also divided on this matter of the resurrection from the dead. Being well versed in the Scriptures, the Pharisees accepted the resurrection from the dead. There are many places in the Old Testament that speak of it. However, the Sadducees had been heavily Hellenized in the preceding two hundred years. Over time, they began to agree with Greek thought on the matter until they did not accept the resurrection from the dead or that there was any such thing as the spirit, believe it or not.
Paul later used this difference in belief between the Pharisees and the Sadducees as a defense before the Sanhedrin. Remember when he was arrested in Jerusalem and they hauled him before the Sanhedrin, he said, in Acts 23:6-10, "It is because of the resurrection from the dead that I have been brought before you." That started a big brawl in which the Romans were compelled to protect Paul and get him out of there. Eventually, he was taken to Caesarea where he could appeal through Felix and Festus to Caesar in Rome. All of that was about the resurrection from the dead. Paul used it as a defense to get what he wanted: to finally be free, and he did that before Caesar in Rome.
Thus, there is some possibility that even the Jewish members of the church of God in Corinth needed clarification on the resurrection from the dead, depending on from which side of the Jewish beliefs they came. More than likely, they were Pharisees and believed in the resurrection from the dead, because most of the Jews tended to follow the Pharisees.
One caveat: Since the resurrection from the dead is a huge subject, we are not going to be able to cover every aspect of this chapter. Therefore, if I skip something, it is for a good reason. If I were to go into it, it would be a large digression that I do not have the time to finish. However, I will explain the gist of Paul's argument in I Corinthians in its major sections found there. We will see that he was using all of the skills he had learned in his education to get this point across to the people in a way that would be convincing to the Jews and also to the Greeks—especially to the Greeks in Corinth.
Chapter 15 of I Corinthians is one of the longest chapters in the New Testament. I have split this chapter into seven major sections. Many of you have paragraphs in your translation of the Bible, and my sections will pretty much follow those paragraphs, except for the first couple. I split the first paragraph into two parts.
Central to the Gospel
I Corinthians 15:1-4 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: 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.
As Paul introduces the subject of the resurrection from the dead, he recalls to them the basic facts of the gospel message that he had taught them while he was with them before. When he says, "I declare to you," he was really saying, in a sense, "I am reminding you. I am trying to re-impress upon you the gospel that I preached to you."
One thing you have to remember is that these highlights by Paul are not the whole gospel that he preached to them. They are highlights. He did not come in and just preach only that Christ died for our sins and that He was buried and rose from the dead.
What Paul says here is that, "I delivered to you first of all..." He mentions this portion of the gospel. It was the crux of the matter that Christ died for our sins, as was prophesied in the Old Testament; that He was buried; and that He was raised to eternal life after three days, as was also prophesied. He is very clear on this point. He did not just tell them this small portion only, though. He had gone through the scriptures earlier and showed where in the Old Testament it had been prophesied by the various prophets that this would happen.
We could get the impression here that he just told them only this small portion, but he systematically laid everything down about the gospel from the Old Testament: what it was and how it had been fulfilled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By reminding them of this portion, he is showing them that the resurrection from the dead is a vital element in the saving knowledge of God. It has to be there. It is a central, early, foundational part of the gospel message; and if they disbelieved the resurrection, they might just as well not believe any of the gospel, because taking the resurrection out causes the whole thing to crumble.
We should note, as we are passing through here, that he stresses that salvation is an ongoing process. Verse 2, where he says, "By which also you are saved," is not translated in the right tense. It should read, "are being saved." It was not a fait accompli that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again, and that if we believe that, we have salvation. That is not quite how it works. That is foundational. That part is done, but there is so much more to it. The tense that he uses here suggests that thing very strongly.
Part of our salvation has already been done: the justification part, the forgiveness of our sins part. However, another part is now: we are being saved. That salvation will be completed in the future, at the resurrection from the dead.
Thus, he reminds them that currently, as he said in verse 1, they are standing in the belief in the gospel message and that they must hold fast or endure. This is the future part. They are standing now, and they must continue. They must hold fast or endure as time progresses, so that they will be ultimately resurrected from the dead. As he is starting this, he is throwing in encouragement and exhortation. We have to do more than profess belief to be saved; we have to continue in the process.
Eyewitness Testimony
I Corinthians 15:4-11 ...and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time [as an abortion—he thought nothing of himself], for I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I, or they, so we preach and so you believed.
In any court of law or in any deliberative body, evidence and eyewitness testimony are primary vehicles to establishing the truth of the matter. Since there can be no physical proof for a spiritual resurrection, then you are left with eyewitness testimony. Paul introduces, then, the eyewitness testimony of all these people as his first argument.
Old Testament law said that a matter is established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Paul gives us more than five hundred. He goes above and beyond. These people, most of whom were still alive at the time, could be talked to, if these Corinthians had opportunity; and they would tell what they saw with their own eyes. Such overwhelming proof should satisfy even the most skeptical judge.
If you had an accident on the road and there were five hundred people out there who watched it happen and you could bring all five hundred in to testify that it was not your fault, it would be likely that you would win your case. Paul had over five hundred eyewitnesses that all saw Jesus Christ after He died, after His resurrection.
This next passage is about His first appearance to the apostles:
John 20:19-20 Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, "Peace be with you." When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
I bet they were!
He appeared to them in a closed and locked room. He spoke to them and let them see Him. I would not be surprised if He allowed them to touch Him, too, to see that He was indeed real. He was not just a spirit.
This next one is Luke's testimony found in the Acts:
Acts 1:1-3 The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
The evidence for Jesus' resurrection cannot be doubted. Too many people saw Him, heard Him, touched Him, ate with Him, walked with Him, and probably many other things that are not mentioned in the Scriptures. All of this happened after His death. Not only that, but also these people had this opportunity (many of them several times) for forty days! This argues conclusively against mass delusion! In that time, Jesus presented many infallible proofs. You cannot break them. The proofs were real; they are true; and these infallible proofs gave evidence that He was the same Jesus who died on the tree, was buried, and rose again.
He appeared also to the Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus, and the fact that Paul had seen him was perhaps the best eyewitness account for the Corinthians, because it was a first-person account. They knew Paul. They had spoken with him during the time he was in Corinth. They knew his character. They had seen him at work.
Paul's eyewitness account is better, in a way, than these others, not only because it was first person, but also because it happened a few years after resurrection and after the occasions with Jesus that the other apostles had. It occurred to a man who was at the time the church's worst bitter enemy. Paul's experience was a different kind of appearance, and the experience so changed him from enemy to almost fanatical adherent that he dedicated his life to working tirelessly for the One whom he had hated and persecuted. Thus, he said that he had done more work than anyone else, because he was so appreciative of what God had done for him in calling him; taking him out of what he was, which was a bitter, hateful murderer; and giving him the opportunity for salvation and eternal life. The Corinthians, knowing how hard he worked and how fervently he believed and how zealously he preached that Christ was a living Savior, knew that it must be true.
A Dead Savior is No Savior
I Corinthians 15:12-19 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? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty [vain] and your faith is also empty [vain]. 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. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.
He begins to argue logically, as Greeks might argue. We are getting a flavor of a Greek logical, rhetorical style here. His first logical argument is that resurrection must be applied universally; it cannot be for one and not for another. We cannot say that the resurrection happened only to Jesus and not to anyone else. If we say that, if we deny the resurrection for men, then Jesus as a man did not rise from the dead—and we have no Savior. It is as simple as that.
He goes on: "If this is so, then the apostles' preaching is useless, and they are liars. They should all be stoned." If this is the case, if there is no raising from the dead, then the people's faith is absolutely empty. There is nothing there. You have faith in a dead Savior. It is gone. There would be no basis for it. If it were true that the dead are not raised, it means that the whole enterprise of Christianity is a sham, hoax, scam, and a lie. (This is not the case, because there is a resurrection from the dead.)
Finally, without the resurrection, Christians who have already died have no hope. If they have died, they are dead and will stay dead if there is no resurrection from the dead. If we have no hope in a life to come, no hope of an afterlife, then we are pitifully deluded people. We might as well go get white jackets and check ourselves in. We, then, would be certifiable. Are you mad? Are you crazy? Do you believe in a sham? No, because there is a resurrection from the dead. Christ did rise; and if Christ rose, then we can rise also.
I Thessalonians 4:13-14 But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep, lest you sorrow as others who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus.
Paul says the same thing much more simply. (Maybe I should have come here first.) How simple! If Jesus died and rose from the dead, then God is going to bring those who died in Christ with Him. It is the same reasoning as I Corinthians 15, just in a simpler form. We have a sure, living hope because we know that Jesus died and rose again to life. If it worked that way with Him, if we believe and follow His teachings, then we will experience the same kind of resurrection to life at His return. It is so very simple.
The Place or Position of the Resurrection in God's Plan
I Corinthians 15:20-28 But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For, "He has put all things under His feet." But when He says, "all things are put under Him," it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
In this section, Paul briefly sketches the plan of God. It is not complete, but it is sketched with highlights. What he is doing here is showing how integral resurrection is to this whole outworking of God's will. That is Paul's whole point here. He wants to show where resurrection fits into the plan of God so we can see that if we pull resurrection out, nothing would work. It is necessary and vital to the whole process.
Therefore, he says, "Jesus, in His resurrection, and in every other way, is a Forerunner—a Pioneer, Trailblazer—for a much larger party of people to follow. This much larger party will be made up of beings similar to Him (meaning human), but given God's Spirit and the truth, following the same path that He forged, so that they will arrive at the same destination point." Christ is the Firstfruits, and those who follow, just like firstfruits of a plant, will be just like the firstfruits.
God, being a God of order, does everything in its proper time. First comes Christ; then come His saints; and then will come those who will rise in the end. When all of this is complete, when all the people have been brought into oneness and unity with God, when they have been resurrected from the dead, then death will be destroyed.
This is an argument by Paul to give perspective and to show purpose. The perspective is very long-range. Paul is not being narrow here in his application of resurrection; he is being universal and eternal.
Resurrection became necessary, he says, at the foundation of the world when Adam sinned. Because all men since then have sinned just like Adam, resurrection will remain necessary until every human being has had his or her opportunity for salvation. Sin requires an atonement, and it is given to all men once to die, and after this, the judgment—after they die, they are raised in judgment, either to eternal life or eternal death. All people will go through this process.
Once this is accomplished—that is, everyone has been given an opportunity for salvation and has been raised to eternal life or eternal death—then resurrection will be unnecessary because no one else has died. The only p
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