Please turn in your copy of the scriptures to the New Testament book of first Corinthians. Uh, today we’ll be looking at first Corinthians chapter 15, uh, verses 12 through 19. I believe perhaps your bulletin says through 23, but today we’ll stop at verse 19.
This entire chapter of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians chapter, uh, first Corinthians chapter 15 is concerning the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Last week, we looked at the implications of the resurrection. We looked at Paul’s encouragement for them to continue walking in the message, the hope, the reality of Christ dying according to the scriptures and rising again. Uh, and so today we want to think of the implications of what it would mean if we did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. And so let’s give our attention now to God’s word.
First Corinthians chapter 15, beginning at verse 12, Paul says, now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God 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, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. And those 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.
Let’s look to God in prayer. Our Father, we thank you for faith to hear the scriptures and believe the scriptures and to put the truths of the scriptures into practice in our lives. We pray now that by your spirit, you would help us to see and hear and believe and that you would give us the desire, the strength, the grace to live out these truths, to speak of these truths and to hold them so dearly that nothing in this life would ever cause us to deny who you are and the work that you have done on our behalf. Help us, we pray in the name of Jesus, our savior. Amen.
I have a friend, a minister friend who recently retired after nearly 25 years of ministry and that in the same church. Last fall, he asked me if I would help his church go through their transition. So we set up a pulpit committee and we talked about what to look for, what not to look for, those sorts of things. And the goal was for him to step out of the way and for the church to be able to carry on without him. Some of you were here Thursday evening when we hosted Presbytery and one of the churches calling a pastor was that particular congregation. And so that transition plan is nearly at its end.
But one of the things that he and I talked about a lot, and you’ve got to talk with one another as ministers about this, is he needed to walk away. He needed to walk away and realize that he was no longer their pastor, no longer their minister, no longer their preacher. And he needed to walk away. And at least for a good year or so, he needed not to answer his phone. He needed not to take up a funeral from someone in the church. He needed to let uh, the new pastor go.
And, you know, you have a conversation with a, with a man who’s been in a church that long and, and you can feel it coming the, but, but, but they, they, they need me or, or this is my entire life. I know nothing else. And you understand it. Maybe you’ve started a business and it’s been your baby or you’ve done something out in the world and you’ve put your life into it, your heart into it, your soul into it.
Paul will say in several places in the scriptures that ministering to the churches, the new churches of the apostolic era, was like going through birth pains. It was like giving birth to a baby church, a youthful church that would, God willing, grow up and be able to stand on its own. In fact, in Galatians chapter four, when the Galatian church has gone astray, believing that Jesus plus good works equals salvation. He tells them in chapter four, I am in agony as if in childbirth, as if in child labor until Christ is formed in you. And, you know, a pastor can go through withdrawal, maybe like a mother whose children go off to college, or maybe your, your first child gets married and they’re out of the house.
And you begin to say, what if, what if, what if, what if they need me? What if they don’t know something? What in the world will they do without me? And so my challenge, my encouragement to this friend was, is, has been let the next servant of the Lord, uh, take over, let the next, uh, servant of the Lord do what he is called and gifted to do. You’ve got to step away. That’s easy to say. It’s correct to say, but it is much harder to do.
And Paul was a church planting pastor, and he would go into a place, preach the word, stay for a little bit, but he would move on to the next church planting opportunity. So he was in their midst for a little bit, For the Corinthians, he was there for about 18 months. And so a year and a half after his ministry began there with the simple preaching of the scriptures, Uh, he was on to the next town, the next city, the next place where God would establish a church. But while he was there during those 18 months, he would raise up leaders, elders, and deacons, perhaps another apostle like Peter or Timothy, or, or some of the others would, would show up and minister, but he would often have to leave before the concrete was dry before the foundation was set. He would have to pray and entrust them to the Lord that they would carry on well in his absence. And so Paul goes on to the next place and he’s at Ephesus across the water when some of the people of the church of Corinth come to visit him and they tell him of all sorts of problems.
Now you’ll remember reading through in our study of Corinthians, there were all kinds of issues. There were divisions. There were issues of severe immorality. There were worship issues, all sorts of messes. But now he’s going to deal with the word that he has received from the report that has come from across the water, that there are some in the midst of the congregation who are denying the resurrection of Jesus. Now, if a minister moves on from his church and, you know, he hears that, Oh, maybe they changed the music or, you know, they, they, they did this or that, or, you know, something, you know, he might whine about it, but they’re denying the resurrection. I mean, that’s a five alarm fire. That is a big deal.
If you deny the resurrection, you’ve already seen Paul speak of at least six implications of what that would mean. But if you deny the resurrection of Jesus, you might as well stay home from church. You might as well take up golf on Sundays. You might as well throw yourself into the 40 weeks of NASCAR or whatever else there is to do on the Lord’s Day.
For if there is no resurrection, there is no Christianity. And there is no God to worship because he has sought you and bought you and saved you by the precious life and blood and death and resurrection of his son, the Lord Jesus. Well, in verse 12, Paul is going to set the stage for his argument that he will make to the Corinthian church. And he says, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, and he’s stating that knowing that they know that that is a true statement. So if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, they know that he preached that message consistently for those 18 months and that many others who have followed after him have preached that same message, proclaimed it. So if Christ is proclaimed from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead? This is the whole of the Christian faith. This is the whole of why we believe what we believe and so stake our lives, our future upon it. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the without which there is no Christian religion. And so how can you say that what is true? How can you say that what we proclaim to you is true? How can you say that what you came to faith and believed in, how can you now say that that is not true? Paul is going to give them six implications, six.
If no resurrection, then these realities. The first is that if there is no resurrection from the dead, verse 14, then our preaching is in vain. Remember last week we considered the first 11 verses of 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul says several times, I proclaim to you that Christ died according to the scriptures, that Christ was raised from the dead according to the scriptures. If you go back to the book of Acts and you read through Peter’s preaching and Stephen’s preaching and the messages of all the apostles, they will always refer to the death, but also the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And they always say, this is what we were told would come to pass. These things were written in the Old Testament scriptures, the Bible up to that point in time. And so Paul is making it very clear.
If you want to deny the resurrection, Our preaching is in vain. Now remember preaching is uniquely Christian. Other world religions do not gather people into a room and have a 30 minute sermon every week. They might have some kind of teaching, some kind of hall, some kind of study place or lecture hall. There might be something and it’s to teach them something. But preaching is uniquely Christian. In fact, the New Testament uses specific preaching words. There’s the tell the good news of the gospel verb. But then there’s also the heralding verb, and that’s the one that Paul uses here.
If Jesus hasn’t been raised from the dead, I should be put out of business. I should be put out of work. There is no need for preachers because there is nothing to preach. If the resurrection is not true, our preaching would be in vain. The second implication of not believing in the resurrection would be found in verses 14 and 17. And in those two verses, Paul says, If Christ is not raised from the dead, if the resurrection is not true, your faith is in vain. What you believe is really an idol. What you believe is made up in your imagination. What you believe is in a corpse.
Over the last, I don’t know, couple weeks, maybe a few weeks back, The, I don’t know what you call them, the former, now dead Ayatollah of Iran. You know, they finally brought his body out in public and in the streets of Iran. They really glorified his dead body and worshipped him in a sense. They mourned his loss. And then they shipped him over to other places. I believe he got taken over to Iraq. where they could look at his dead body and in a sense, reverence it, worship it, but also mourn over it. That’s the picture that Paul is giving to the Corinthian church.
If Christ is not raised from the dead, if there is no resurrection from the dead, your faith is in vain and you worship an idol. You worship something that is made up, something that is not true. You know, you watch these TV commercials for a drug, for a pharmaceutical, and they, you know, have these happy-looking people that are taking this pharmaceutical, and their life is all of a sudden better.
And you think, boy, I think I’ll sign up for that. I got what they got. They don’t got it anymore, so I’m going to take that, and that’s going to work. Well, then their legal counsel reads all the side effects and all the mays and the may-nots and the whatevers. and you realize you could probably get more things from taking it than better from, you know, whatever. But then they talk about clinical trials. And some people in a clinical trial take a placebo. It’s a it’s a pill that has nothing of value in it.
And they want to see don’t they if it’s all in the mind. And a lot of people think Christianity is a placebo. In fact, one A world thinker in the past says Christianity is the opiate of the masses. He equates Christianity with an opioid. It just comes into our mind and our heart and it makes us think all as well when it’s really not.
And if that’s the case, our faith is in vain and we’re going to wake up one day. And according to them, there’d be no Jesus. We would just be dead. That would be the end of it all. And so the implications so far of no resurrection. Preaching is in vain. Faith is in vain. The third thing, you find it in verse 15. Paul says, we would be, he’s speaking of the apostles, the ones sent to proclaim the message of Christ. We would be misrepresenting God. We would be liars. Now, you know, the word we very often use for sharing our faith, it’s the word witnessing. It’s where we get, it’s from that word we often refer to as a martyr. A martyr is a witness. Now a martyr is a witness who dies for their witnessing.
And Paul is saying our witnessing would be in vain. We would be lying to you about God. Now there’s another implication to this. He’s really saying we would be false witnesses. We would be telling you something that is not true. If the resurrection is not true, if it’s not a historical fact, if it’s not possible for you as a believer in Jesus to be raised from the dead, we would be misrepresenting God. And on judgment day, we would be held accountable because you see, they think his Jewish audience there, his Roman or Greek audience, they think in legal terms, a bit more than we do. And so he is saying to them, if the resurrection is not true, we are liars. We are false witnesses.
We have put our hand on the Bible and said we would tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help me, God. And now, indeed, we are liars. Paul would probably also have in mind here the Old Testament warning that God’s prophets, God’s mouthpieces, God’s message givers, needed to take care that they were not lying prophets, that they were not prophets who spoke of false spirits, who had in them a lying spirit and therefore were false prophets and gave false messages. So if the resurrection. is untrue. Our faith is in vain. Our preaching is in vain. Paul is misrepresenting God.
The fourth thing, and this is really the critical one, you find it in verse 17. If Jesus, in fact, is not raised from the dead, then you, that’s all of us, are still in our sins. That is the weightiest of them all. Romans chapter four verse 25 simply says this. Jesus was delivered up, that’s delivered up on the cross, hung on the tree, nailed to the cross. He was delivered up for our trespasses, our sins. Why did Jesus go to the cross? To bear the penalty and the curse and the punishment for our sins.
So Romans 4.25 says, he was delivered up for our trespasses but he was raised up for our justification.
And so if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then Romans 4.25 is telling a big fib. If there is no resurrection, then Jesus was not raised up for your justification.
You are still in your sins. If you are still in your sins, Jesus sees you as a sinner. He sees you as a sinner and he cannot have you in his heavenly home. Jesus sees you as if you always disobeyed him. And so if there is no resurrection, you are still in your sins.
That, I think, is the weightiest of all these implications. Well, then there’s a fifth implication you find in verse 18. Those who died, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If there is no resurrection, if no one is raised from the dead, when all of our loved ones, when they died, they are no more. We will never see them again if there is no resurrection.
And you begin to see, don’t you, the absurdity of some in the Corinthian church believing this. And then last of all, the sixth implication he gives in verse 19, we of all people are most to be pitied. You know, when people make fun of Christians, I think they make fun of us and what we believe because deep down they’re afraid of us and what we believe. But if they really, if they really cared for us, they would say, you believe in a false God.
You believe in a false hope. And you’re in danger of everlasting destruction. You’re in danger of an everlasting life in the wrong place. But they simply make fun, they simply poke fun, they simply ridicule believers. But if it is true, there is no resurrection.
We are, of all people, the most to be pitied. For some reason, what came to my mind is in the state of California last year when they had all those wildfires and the fire department shows up and they take out their fire hoses and they take out their wrenches and they put their hoses on those fire hydrants and they turn the spout. And guess what? Nothing comes out. The Californians were of all people, most to be pitied. They had fire hydrants. They looked good. They were red. They were silver. They were shiny, but they didn’t work. They were of all people, the most to be pitied.
And what if the cross, what if the resurrection is false, then we would be the most to be pitied. So you might be saying in your mind, how is the Corinthian problem of the resurrection or the lack thereof in some of their minds? How is that related to us in 2026? Surely we don’t have people in the church saying there is no resurrection. No, we don’t.
But in Paul’s day, there was a heavy Greek influence in their culture. And as the gospel came into that culture, preaching that body and soul would both one day be raised, that bumped into what we call Greek dualism. They believed in the body and they believed in the spirit of the soul, but they believed that at death, the body would just go away and the soul would last forever. Some people thought perhaps it would become deity. Some people thought perhaps it would just go on forever in some everlasting, eternal state of bliss, but the body, being bad would go away.
We have people in the Christian church, we have people in our present society that you could say deny the resurrection of the body. Get behind a car on Church Street, sit at a red light behind a car and perhaps it will sadly have Maybe the birth and the death dates of someone, usually it’s pretty young, and that person’s name will be wearing angel wings. And you immediately know, you immediately understand that person believes that when a young person dies, they become an angel. right? You see that it’s on the back of cars all the time. You hear it in people’s talk and you say, well, that’s cute. That’s sweet. That gives them comfort. But do we not want to be comforted by what is true? Angels are wonderful beings.
In fact, in Psalm eight, what does David say? You have made us a little lesser than the heavenly beings. In fact, Hebrew says that Jesus for a time when he left heaven became lesser than the angels. He who ruled the angels in heaven became a man lesser than the angels.
And so we say, okay, people in our day and age in the church, they don’t deny the resurrection. Well, there are people in the church who believe in what’s called soul sleep. When we die, our souls sleep for a long period of time until Jesus returns. Uh, there are people in the church who believe in what’s called annihilationism. The body is destroyed never to be seen again. And of course, there’s some that believe that when a person doesn’t go to heaven, uh, there is no real hell. And so their bodies, their souls are simply annihilated. There are all kinds of wacky beliefs.
In our present world, it’s not just the Greeks of Paul’s day. And that’s why it’s so important for us as believers to both believe and proclaim the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the great privileges I have as a minister is to do funerals, not only of those who are part of the church I serve, but very often you’ll be asked perhaps by a funeral home or a family unattached to the church. Would you please do so-and-so’s funeral? And I don’t think I’ve ever said no. I always take that opportunity because a funeral at its husk, a funeral at its core, at its base understanding is a witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. We go to funerals today and people say, oh, I don’t want to use the funeral word.
This is a celebration of life. And so we hear how Uncle Billy was a really swell guy. Right. And now two days ago, Uncle Billy was not a swell guy. You know, he was, well, we just won’t say, but Cynthia Ward, one of our members who’s gone on to glorious glory would always say people become in death what they could never achieve in life. And that is very true. A lot of times funerals are just glorying in the person.
But I’ve taken the opportunity to really use it to bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus. And I think the best place to do that is at the grave side. At the grave side, when the casket is there, soon to be lowered in the ground, and the family are really saying their last goodbyes.
The shorter catechism, question 37, asks, what benefits do believers receive at their death? And the answer is this, the souls of believers are at their death, made perfect in holiness. And they do immediately pass into glory and their bodies, and there’s that casket, and their bodies being still united to Jesus, rest in the grave until the resurrection. Our souls, when we die, go immediately into the presence of God. Our souls, when we die in faith in Jesus, go immediately into the presence of Jesus. Our bodies, yes, dead, yes, buried, they rest in the grave.
And when Jesus returns to call all the living, or as we say in our creed, the quick and the dead, the living and the dead, the living will go first into heaven and then the dead will rise and body and soul be united in a full and final and everlasting resurrection. How can believers say there is no resurrection?
We think of the story of Lazarus. We think of Jesus being a distance away teaching and word comes to him that his friend Lazarus is sick and Jesus knows what’s going on. And so he waits and he waits and he waits. And by the time he gets to Lazarus, Lazarus is no longer sick, but Lazarus is dead. And he’s been in the grave four days. He’s been in the ground. He’s been in the earth. He’s been in Sheol. He’s been wrapped up in the arms of death.
But what does Jesus say to his disciples when they’re gonna make the trek from the place where he’s been teaching to the place where Lazarus has been buried? He says, our friend Lazarus has gone to sleep. But he says to the disciples, I will go I will awaken him.
Now, when they get to the edge of town, Martha’s out there and she’s upset with Jesus. Jesus, you should have been here. Jesus, if you had been here sooner, he would have gotten better. And what does Jesus say to Martha? Very simply, he says, Martha, I am the resurrection.
I am the life. I don’t know that that really comforts her at that moment. She is extremely distraught, but he takes she takes Jesus into town where Mary, her sister is, and they are weeping over Lazarus. They are mourning over Lazarus. And he says, take me to the tomb, take me to the grave, roll away the stone.
And our two favorite Bible verses are in this passage, John chapter 11. If you’re wanting to memorize a passage of scripture and feel good about yourself, John 1135, you know it. Jesus whipped. Okay. You’ve got one scripture under your belt. Good for you. That one will sanctify you. But then there’s our favorite other passage. No Lord, when he asked for the stone to be rolled away for he stinketh. Yeah.
Lazarus has been in the grave for some time. Why does Jesus wait so long? Well, the Jews had a view that if a man was in the grave for a day, day and a half, two, three days, perhaps He could come back to life, but by day four, he was good and dead. And so Jesus waited till the Jewish view of Lazarus was that he was good and dead. And that was so that he could show his power and so that he could show his glory. And so Jesus walks up to that grave and calls in Lazarus come forth. And Lazarus comes out in his grave clothes. They unfold him, they unwrap him, and he lives on. Now, of course, Lazarus dies again, a natural death, as we all will face. But Christ, brothers and sisters, was indeed raised from the dead, and therefore we are not in our sins, but are justified by our faith in him.
Preachers have a real job with a real need. In fact, what does Paul say in Romans 10? How beautiful are the feet of him who brings good news? How will people hear if there is no one sent or no one to preach? Christ has been raised from the dead and that gives us every hope.
That gives us everything we need to tell others, everything we need to believe, everything to comfort us, that we are forgiven from our sins. and it also especially gives us comfort with our loved ones. And so may the truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but the truth of our future resurrection, both body and soul, bring us great comfort and may we never ever deny it or doubt it, but may it be our living hope. Let’s pray to God. Lord, help us to always believe Help us in our unbelief by firming up now in our minds and in our hearts that indeed you have been raised from the dead and you are the first fruits of the resurrection. One day when our bodies, sown perishable into the earth from which they came, they will be raised imperishable from heaven, where our God, our Savior, and our joy will everlasting be. Help us to believe these things and may they comfort us in Christ’s mighty name. We pray. Amen.