Vanity? Or Resurrection?
I Corinthians 15:11-20

April 13, 2003
by C.W. Powell

One of the implications of this passage of Scripture is that you must examine the implications of what you say. It is true that ideas have consequences; not only for thought, but for the way you live your life. Humanism is a funny thing, and it is a slippery thing. On the one hand, the humanist will say that words have no meaning, or that you mean anything you want them to mean. Then, they will turn right around and insist that the meaning that they assign to the words is almost magical-that imagining a certain reality to your words will cause that reality to come to pass. Words cannot be used to express an existing concrete and created reality, but they do possess the power to give substance to your dreams and imaginations.

This way of using words even permeates many modern churches. On the one hand they denounce creeds as being deadening. Then they turn around and tell us to "Name it and claim it," that if we can express our hopes and dreams in words, the very naming of it will bring it to pass. Because the approach is emotional, people are not even able, or care to, see the basic contradiction.

But there is a world of history and creation. We cannot change reality by trying to impose our dreams upon it. The disasters that destroyed Job’s wealth and his children did not go away because he denied that they had happened. Our Lord does not commend Job for his positive thinking, but for his patience. Job knew that his business was with God, and Job did not yield to his despair or his sorrow, but pressed on. His patience did not consist of "Oh well, there is no reason for things," but "Oh that one would hear me: behold, my desire is, that the Almighty would answer me, and that mine adversary had written a book." (Job 31:15)

So you see, we have it better than Job did. God has written a book. The reason for the book is to explain to us the meaning of the things that He does and the things that He made. These are some of the presuppositions behind Paul’s reasoning in I Corinthians 15. The world and its events have meaning, and ideas have consequences. Beware how you interpret the world, and beware of the consequences of your thoughts. But let us look at the words themselves in I Corinthians 15.

Vs. 11. "Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed." The message of the apostles, Paul included, was the message of the resurrection of Christ. As I said last week,

The Gospel is the good news. This is the message of the Christian church. The Gospel is not primarily a code of ethics, a worldview, or a system of philosophy. The Gospel concerns certain historical acts of God. The Gospel, therefore, involves a philosophy of history, but the history comes from the Gospel, and not the other way around. The historical events took place because of the will and purpose of God from eternity. The history didn’t just happen, and then God in his wisdom finds a way to use that history in His perfect plan. Eternity controls time, not the other way around. Therefore the events of the Gospel are not brute facts which we must interpret for ourselves. No, they are interpreted by God-He tells us what the meaning of the facts are:

Vs. 12. "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" That which contradicts the preaching of the apostles cannot be the truth. If the apostles preached that Christ had risen from the dead, then it is not contrary to reality for the dead to rise. The apostles did not preach their own dreams and imaginations but the objective truth: Christ had risen from the dead. You can dream your dreams and spin your philosophies and theologies, but if after you have done all your fantasizing you say something that contradicts the announcement of the apostles that Christ has risen from the dead, then you are a liar-you not only lie against the preaching of the apostles, but you also lie about the facts in the case. Christ did rise from the dead, and that’s a fact.

This kind of thinking is not strange to the evolutionist. When backed into a corner, he will appeal to fact. "Evolution is a fact," he will say. We may not be able to explain everything about it, but it is a fact, and the trouble with you Christians is that you are not able to deal with the facts of the case. There is no dogmatism anywhere like the dogmatism of evolution and modern science. There is also a single mindedness and commitment to it, for they will reward those who confess the dogma, and they will punish those who deny it. The rewards are fellowships and appointments, government contracts, subsidies, academic position. Those who are loyal get their books published and purchases by public libraries and by universities and colleges. They are rewarded by being given titles and awarded degrees and positions, and labeled as great scholars.

Vs. 13. "But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:" How can you say that there is no resurrection from the dead: Christ is risen. The apostles spoke with one voice on this subject. You might try to deny the resurrection of Christ, but you cannot deny that the apostles gave witness that Christ rose from the dead.

Vs. 14. "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" The structure is emphatic: Vain is our preaching; vain is your faith. The word "vain" or empty is not as to the results of the preaching or the faith, but the content of the preaching and the content of the faith.

Vs. 15, 16: "Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:" The apostles become non-apostles. This was the very thing of which the apostles were called to be witnesses: that Christ had risen from the dead. What! is Christianity based upon a lie? Is this what the meaning of the world is? Was the tyranny of pagan humanism swept away by a lie? How can you defend the good that comes from Christianity, if it is based upon a lie? You see, if you reject the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then to defend Christianity you have to reduce it to humanism, to the manipulation of words, the very things that we said at the beginning of this message: that good comes from making reality the result of your thoughts-that this is the only reality.

Vs. 17. "And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." This is a different word for "vain." This has to do with the fruit of faith. The word in verse 14 has to do with content; this word has to do with the fruit. If Christ is not risen, not only is the gospel a lie with respect to content, not only are the apostles liars for preaching things that are not true, but there can be no good result from this preaching. This shows that the good that comes from the gospel comes because the Gospel is true. You cannot defend the good results of the Gospel if the Gospel is not true.

Vs. 18. "Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." If Christ is not risen, then Christians died in terms of a false dream and false idea. They perished for a lie just like those who flew their plane into the Pentagon and the Twin Towers. They died just like Pilate died; their death is no different that that of Hitler or Julius Caesar. Abraham perished just as Nero did. The well-being of the soul after death is based upon the triumph of Jesus Christ over death. They "sleep" not in annihilation or non-existence, but a sleep of rest in the bosom of Jesus Christ. Why? Because Christ rose from the dead. If the man Christ Jesus, the mediator, could triumph over death, then death is not the end--death is not a tyrant over the souls of believers, and Paul could say at the end of this chapter, "Death where is thy sting; grave where is thy victory."

Beloved. Is death to be overcome by a lie? Is the grave defeated by deceit? Is that what it comes to after all, that the gospel makes people feel good while they march to the grave? The resurrection of Jesus Christ made hope possible in a miserable and enslaved world. Life has meaning; the grave is not the goal; death is not the end; disease and death and decay-these are not how we end up.

Vs. 19. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." This life is not what it is all about. Our hope is not confined to earthly expectations. How bitter is the life that has hope only in this life. If this life is all there is, would not it be better to eat and drink and engage in the pleasures of youth and vigor and enjoy this life than to struggle for virtue and godliness against the spirit of the world, the flesh, and the devil? Why not immerse ourselves in drugs and booze to mask the pain and enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season? Was Moses a fool for this?

This also shows, against the Gnostics and humanists, that the eternal well-being and happiness of the soul is closely connected to its union with the body. Paul does not endorse the Greek and pagan idea that the true happiness of the soul is in separation from the prison of the body, but that the fulfillment of the promises of eternal life is in the resurrection of the body—which implies that sin is not in the physical or the material elements of our person, but sin lies in the heart, in the religious center of man, and that man is to be saved in totality, in body and soul.

Vs. 20. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." This is a good place to stop today, for it not only puts a period to what Paul has said to this point, but also transitions to the next section. Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection. What He is today, resurrected in body and soul and in the presence of God, is what you and I have to anticipate for ourselves. Thus, is the promise of Christ fulfilled:

¹ Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. ² In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. ³ And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. ⁴ And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. (John 14.)

This then is the conclusion:

The Gospel is not vanity, either in content or in results. It is the truth, and the center of that truth is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The implications of this truth will be developed as Paul continues, and we will consider some of these next week.

This passage destroys pragmatism, for the Gospel is not true because it works, it works because it is true. It destroys materialism, because there is more to man than the physical; the soul rests with the Lord in conscious joy after death, but the true happiness of man is in the resurrection of the body and the restoration of the spiritual. It destroys Gnosticism in all its forms, for God has not abandoned the body or the material, but has embraced it forever in the resurrection of Christ.

This passage also implies the spiritual nature of sin, that it is rooted in the soul and spiritual nature of man, and not in externals only. Sin lies in the soul and the body, in the whole man, especially in rebellion to God in the core of man’s being, but when sin is destroyed, the whole person, body and soul, is set free to praise and glorify God forever.

Amen and Amen.