1 Corinthians: Day 50
SCRIPTURE
12Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ -- whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:12-19, NRSV)
WHAT
I have known many people in the Church who say they do not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. They do believe that the spirits of the first disciples were revived in hope (by what, I’m not sure) after his crucifixion and they went on to proclaim a good news and to minister in his name. People who hold this view, as N. T. Wright points out, think “raised from the dead” was simply a fancy first-century way of saying “God’s cause continues!” or “I still regard Jesus as my leader and teacher”. But because everyone knows – people ancient and modern – dead things do not come back to life, the term “resurrection” for these folks is really just a metaphor for a revival of the human spirit to do amazing things it would not otherwise do.
Really? Would that understanding of resurrection be enough to convince thousands of Greek and Roman pagans to abandon their families and their way of life -- earning themselves ostracism, economic strangulation, and eventually even death – to embrace Christian faith? It wouldn’t convince me if I had lived then.
I once had a discussion with a New Testament professor when I was a first year student in seminary. She had previously been a chemist and she knew, she said, that molecules of dead things – especially people – do not rearrange themselves to restore life. So she understood resurrection in the metaphorical terms I described above.
As a trained chemical engineer, I knew almost as much chemistry as my professor did. And she was right, molecules of dead things do not – at least in my experience – rearrange themselves so as to restore life. (Though researchers at Yale University – her alma mater -- announced in 2022 that they have been able to restore blood circulation and other cellular functions in pigs a full hour after the animals’ deaths. The researchers used a system they developed called OrganEx which enables oxygen to be recirculated throughout a dead pig’s body, preserving cells and some organs after a cardiac arrest. Maybe the molecules can rearrange! If scientists can do it, what can God do! But I digress.)
I was shocked when I first heard this view expressed by my professor – of New Testament of all things! She was an example, but not the only church person I have encountered who believed that way. What shocks me is NOT that someone finds it impossible to believe in the bodily resurrection. It is a hard thing to believe in. Hope for it? Sure, that’s easy. But believe in it? That’s hard. No, what shocks me is that someone can believe the bodily resurrection is simply a metaphor and still find faith. Faith in what? That Jesus was a good moral teacher? What would move my professor to give up a lucrative career in chemistry and seek to do the hard work of becoming a seminary professor if she didn’t believe in the bodily resurrection? That’s what puzzles me. To not believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus seems to me to be cutting off the branch while we’re standing on it.
I see Paul making that same point here to those Corinthians who did not believe Jesus really rose bodily from the dead. Again, I get it. Pagans didn’t find it any easier to believe dead things can live again than we do. But how could they be followers of Christ if they did not believe in the resurrection? I mean, if they did not believe Jesus rose bodily from the dead, what would attract them away from paganism in the first place, a religion that was by far the dominant one in their culture, even having official government backing and support?
After pointing out in the last passage how the scriptures (of the Old Testament) witnessed to Christ and his resurrection, and pointing to all the people – over five hundred at one time, not to mention Cephas and James! – who could bear witness to the resurrection of Christ, including himself, Paul says:
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? (1 Corinthians 15:12, NRSV)
“How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead – and still want to be part of this church?” Because after all:
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:13-14, NRSV)
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus is still dead. If Jesus is still dead, then what are we doing here? You might be having a pleasant time associating with these people in church. You might enjoy the messages, the music and hymns, the serving opportunities, and especially the covered dish suppers. But your faith has been in vain if there is no bodily resurrection. Nothing has really changed. This would all be organized around a dead man if there is no resurrection. So again, what are we doing here?
Even worse, for Paul at least, if Jesus is still dead, then he and all the other apostles have been misrepresenting God. They are liars, for they had proclaimed Jesus alive:
If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of 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 Christ has not been raised. (1 Corinthians 15:13-16, NRSV)
Not only that, but if Jesus is still dead, then you are still stuck in your sins, says Paul.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. (1 Corinthians 15:17, NRSV)
The Old Testament clearly links sin and death going all the way back to the garden of Eden. Death is the consequence of sin. They are joined at the hip. When Adam and Eve rebelled against God, thinking they knew how to be God better than God, when they ate the fruit God told them not to eat, they unleashed the Kraken called Death.
If Jesus has been raised from the dead, then the power of death has been broken, and final victory over it is assured (he’ll say that in verse 26). “Death,” says Bishop Wright, “as always in biblical thought, is the result of sin, as humans turn away from the life-giving God and vainly attempt to find life elsewhere (see Romans 5:1-4). So if death has been defeated it must mean that sin has been defeated as well.” (Emphasis mine)
He goes on to lay out Paul’s logic like this:
1. “If Jesus has been raised, that proves he really was the Messiah, since God has clearly reversed the verdict of the court, which found him guilty of being a messianic pretender, and wrote that as the charge above his head. But if he really was the Messiah, and has now been raised from the dead, his death itself turns out not to have been simply a tragic and ghastly end but God’s strange means of dealing with the sin of the world.”
2. “However, if he wasn’t raised from the dead, he wasn’t and isn’t the Messiah, and his cross had no such effect. Sin has not been dealt with; the world is still as it was.”
Furthermore, if Jesus is still dead, so are all those who now lie dead themselves who had hoped in him by faith, and the faith in which they died now mocks them:
Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Corinthians 15:18-19, NRSV)
When some in Corinth denied the resurrection, Bishop Wright points out, they were declaring, in effect, that the ancient pagan view of life after death (a shadowy half-existence in the world of Hades) was the best they could hope for.
But there’s a problem, too, with many in the Church who DO believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus. The problem is that they view Jesus’ resurrection simply as the ticket that will lead to their own personal life after death. That is, the significance of Jesus’ resurrection was only about opening the door so that they could live forever with him and their loved ones in heaven. Is that really what Jesus’ bodily resurrection was meant to accomplish?
Listen to some of things I’ve actually heard people say trying to comfort someone who has just lost a loved one. While their intentions are good, their comments reveal just how messed up our theology on this subject is:
· God took her because he needed another angel in heaven.
· He has gone to a better place.
· Now she watches over us. You have a new guardian angel.
· God has a plan.
· Now he has his angel wings.
I could go on, but I think you get my point. Can Paul help us untangle this mess?
Untangling this tangled theology of resurrection is exactly what Paul will help us do in the next passage.
APPLY
If Christ has not been raised bodily from the dead, then my proclamation all these years has been in vain and my faith has been in vain. I believe he has been raised bodily from the dead. But that belief has consequences that go far beyond its impact on my personal eternal life (as we’ll see in the next passage).
PRAYER
Lord Jesus, I do believe God raised you bodily from the dead. (Otherwise, who would I be talking to?) I just don’t get how those who do not believe that can still find faith. I get it that to believe in resurrection is hard, really hard based only on our experience. But isn’t it cutting off the branch on which we are standing not to believe in resurrection? Anyway, I look forward to wrestling with the implications of believing in your resurrection as Paul continues. In Christ. Amen.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Do you believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus? Why or why not? If not, if you understand resurrection in more metaphorical terms, as Bob’s professor did, how does that produce faith for you?
2. Paul says, “…if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.” Explain his logic. Do you agree with that logic?
3. If there is no resurrection, then Jesus is still dead, reasons Paul. If that is the case, then we are still stuck in our sins. What is his basis for this claim?
4. “But there’s a problem, too,” says Bob, “with many in the Church who DO believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.” What is that problem as Bob sees it? Is that really what Jesus’ bodily resurrection was meant to accomplish? (Paul will address this more fully in the next passage.)
How can you apply these insights in your life?