The Resurrection of the Dead
12But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
Dig Deeper
Our society has become prolific in its ability to train people to make decisions without any thought to the repercussions of the choices they make or beliefs that they hold. You have for instance, millions of people claiming that there is no such thing as absolute truth without giving the slightest thought to the repercussions of that. If there is no absolute truth, then there can not rightly be any laws or standards at all because what one person believes to be good and true, others could simply say is bad and restrictive. Another example of action without thought of repercussion is the millions of teens making decisions about their sexual behavior without any thought to the fallout form their decisions.
There was a significant presence of Christians in Corinth that were denying the fact of a future resurrection in the age to come. It is unclear whether they believed that full freedom in Christian living and their spiritual awakening was the resurrection, of sorts. Or it is also possible that they were teaching that when people died they went to heaven as bodiless spirits, and that this was the resurrection. In either case (probably a little of both, with the first position being the more concerning for Paul), Paul wants the Corinthians to think this thing through and understand the repercussions of their position. If they don’t believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ and the future bodily resurrection of all believers who are in Christ, then that has some serious implications on their faith that they apparently have not thought through.
Paul begins by wondering how they can believe that there is no resurrection of the dead considering the fact that they would have heard much teaching on the fact of Christ being bodily raised from the dead and entering into the resurrection. If there is no such thing as resurrection, they had better be clear on the fact that this means that they must also believe that Christ was not resurrected. Why is this true logically? Because for Paul, what was true of the Messiah was true of His people. If His people were not going to be raised, then Christ was never raised. If Christ was resurrected, then so would His people be.
Paul then follows the logical conclusion of the belief system being espoused by some in Corinth. If Christ has been not been raised, then the preaching of the gospel is pointless. It is a useless exercise in futility. We are only able to enter into the life of Christ by dying to our own life and being raised up to His because Jesus was God. For Paul, the resurrection (combined with the things that Jesus did and taught) was the reason that we could know that He was God. Everything that makes the Christian life worth living, then, was based on the understanding that He was God in the flesh. If Jesus was not raised from the dead then all of that goes away, and there is not point in preaching about a dead, failed Messiah.
If preaching is useless in the scenario that there is no resurrection, then faith is also futile. The ultimate point of belief in Jesus is that He was God, had defeated death, and now allows those who believe in Him to enter into His life and experience the resurrection as well. This is the point of faith. If you take that away, then Christian faith is a monstrous exercise in futility.
It gets even worse, Paul wants them to know. It’s not just that their faith would be an empty powerless faith. The rejection of the resurrection would also make the apostles liars. They have been claiming, teaching, and preaching that they personally witnessed the resurrected Christ. If there is no resurrection then they are not just sadly mistaken, the men around whom the Christian community has been built are outright liars. This is, no doubt, a personal appeal of sorts on the behalf of the apostles. Are they really willing to say that those who counted their entire purpose in life as serving as the eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus Christ are nothing more than hucksters or liars?
Next for Paul comes the two largest implications of the rejection of the resurrection. The Christian belief was that in Christ’s death, He had overcome sin by taking it upon Himself. Christ had lived the perfect life and was thus able to pay the fine incurred by sin of all men who would enter into His life. In dying and raising back to the resurrection life, Christ had also defeated death. The defeat of death and sin were intertwined and available to all who would believe in this ability to enter into His life. Preaching being profitless, faith being futile, the apostles being liars, this was all child’s play compared to these final two implications. If Christ has not been raised, then there is no escape from sin and death still has dominion in the world. The Corinthians clearly had not thought this all the way through. In denying the resurrection of believers into the age to come, they have denied the very heart of the Christian faith. Paul, says that if this is true, if they are right, then Christ has not defeated sin and death and all those who have died believing that they had entered into His life and were about to experience the resurrection, were completely wrong. They have died and are lost with no hope of salvation if Christ has not been raised.
Paul brings his powerful argument to a close with one more implication. If the resurrection of Christ and the bodily resurrection of those in Him is not true, then the only thing that Christ can effect, for those who believe in Him, is the present age. What a sad reality, says Paul. If the present age is all that the believer gets, then Christians are to be pitied above anyone else. This is because, despite what many Christian groups would like to teach these days, the Christian life is not about experiencing your best life now. It is about laying your life down and picking up the life of Christ, with the knowledge that one day we will all join him in the age to come, having been resurrected just as he was. This is our hope. This is, as Paul will say later in this chapter, the reason that Christians do what they do in the present age.
Devotional Thought
If the resurrection is not true, then Christianity is reduced to being another religion along side all others, in the general marketplace of beliefs. Are there any aspects of the Christian faith that you have, in practice or belief (for instance, the absolute devotion to God’s people or the call to seek the Kingdom of God first), denied and thus, sapped Christianity of its true message and power? Have you thought through the implications of all of that?
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