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Now let us read from the First Epistle to the Corinthians and chapter fifteen. The First Epistle to the Corinthians and chapter fifteen. Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you received, wherein also you stand, by which also you are saved. I make known, I say, in what words I preached it unto you.
If you hold it fast, except you have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received. How that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles that am not meet 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 which was bestowed upon me was not found vain.
But I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Whether then it be I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? We come this morning to our last study in this small series of Paul's letter to the Corinthians. We have been noticing how that in the course of this letter, Paul is dealing with certain difficulties, troubles, and disputes that had arisen in the church at Corinth.
And we have further noticed that whatever the trouble is, Paul constantly, in the end, brings them back to the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord. That death that lies beneath as the foundation to all of our Christian salvation. We have noticed how that according to the difficulty, he has concentrated on different aspects of the death of the Savior, drawn out the principles involved therein, that they might, uh, be clearly seen as the things that must control our behavior in the church.
So we have thought together in the early chapters of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. How that he was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. And we pondered the significance of that special form of death. We moved on to think of church discipline in the context of another aspect of the death of Christ. In chapter five, we are told that Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Then subsequently, we thought of the church's fellowship and that aspect of the death and sacrifice of Christ that is expressed in the term the table of the Lord.
Last week we moved on still further to think of the symbols in the church by which we express our reverence for God and loyalty to the Lord Jesus and respect for one another. And in that connection, we were reminded of the death of the Lord Jesus as the great covenant sacrifice, an expression of his lordship, and the guarantee that under the new covenant he will write his laws on our hearts and minds, so that the symbols of the church are directly related to the question of the lordship, the kingship, if you like, of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and of his recognition, recognition as the head of the church.
Now, this morning, for the last occasion, we come to chapter fifteen. And in the light of what has happened in this past week, perhaps it is not outside the providence of God that today we should be thinking of the death of the Lord Jesus in this particular aspect, how that he died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. In other words, we are to think of the death of the Lord Jesus in relation to the human body.
The death of our Lord Jesus, of course, lies at the very foundation, not only of the behavior of the church, but of the very gospel itself. Here is the heart of matters. Our very salvation depends upon this, so that to begin with, we ought to notice surely what the gospel is. The gospel, if we would put it in a nutshell, objectively speaking, is as follows: how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.
It is not merely enough to say that Christ died for our sins. For left like that, what would it mean? He died for our sins because perhaps our wicked sins, our jealousies and spite hounded him to his death, and that was a disaster. Or he died for our sins simply as an example. It is exceedingly important, if we are to grasp the gospel, that we shall notice that he died for our sins, not in just any way you like to think of. He died for our sins according to the scripture. Not only is there in Old Testament explicit statement as to the sense in which he died for our sins.
Take, for instance, the famous Isaiah fifty three. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He made his soul an offering for sin. Our sins and iniquities were laid on him, and by his stripe we were healed. But the Old Testament abounded with illustrations in Israel's ritual of what it meant when a victim died for the people's sins. In Israel, thousands of times did they bring their sacrifices, confess their sins over the head of the animal, lay their hand and their weight on the animal's head, and then the animal would be killed, so it would be evident that the victim was dying in the stead of, in the place of the repentant sinner.
He died for our sins according to the scriptures, the first third of the great gospel. But in the next place, notice, it is an integral part of the gospel that he was buried. It is a fact that we do not always emphasize, perhaps as much as we should. What a glorious part of the gospel that Jesus Christ was buried. Which I don't quite see the relevance of that. You may do one day. It's gospel, good friend, because he was buried as literally as you may be buried one of these days.
He was buried. So that when we think of the gospel, we think that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that he might deal with the guilt of sin, the effect of sin upon the human conscience and spirit. Ah, yes. Uh, when we think of the gospel, we think also how Jesus Christ was buried, that he might deal with the effect of sin upon the human body. What a thing, what a story, the burial of the body is.
When we think how the human body came fresh from the... the hands of Almighty God, as God himself stooped and took the dust and fashioned it, with all the pride and divine skill of the divine artificer, to make something exceedingly beautiful. Ah, to think what sin has done to it. It is eventually sown in dishonor.
Let us understand it fully, as presently we shall see. It is not appropriate to say over the human body as it is lowered into the grave, this is victory, this is far from victory. This is grievous defeat. And a body designed by God as a something glorious and beautiful to express the human personality should come to this, oh, the dishonor of it. You just imagine standing with Martha at the graveside when our Lord commanded the stone be rolled away.
Oh no, Lord, don't do that, she says. By this time, he stinks. It is sown in dishonor. All the fearful, fearful result that sin has caused on the human body. It is only weakness. It is not given to all of us to be giants in strength.
But if you think of the beauty of the female form brought to such hideous dishonor. Then think of the strength of the male form, be it an Olympic giant brought by sin and consequence disease to pitiful, helpless weakness. Ah, we were never meant to be such weak things that scarce can any longer lift a hand and in the end are dead.
It is sown in weakness. And the gospel is that God isn't going to accept defeat, not even at that level. He designed the human body as something glorious. God is concerned not merely to forgive our sins and to cleanse our conscience. He will not allow sin or death to have its final victory, even over the human body. It shall be raised in glory. It shall be raised in power.
So in a natural body, it shall be raised a spiritual body. Therefore it is an integral and exceedingly important part of the gospel that Jesus Christ was buried. Because the third part is going to say how that on the third day he rose again from the dead, according to the scripture. All the gospels take special care to tell you he was buried and how he was buried. And Mark perhaps is the most pointed of them all, when he uses a word that no other evangelist nor anybody else I know of in scripture uses of the body of Jesus Christ, our Lord.
He calls it a corpse. Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate, and he begged the body of Jesus. And Pilate took precautions, so we are told, surprised if he were already dead, and consulting with the centurion, discovered that he was already dead, and, says Mark, he gave commandment that they should give the corpse to Jesus. It is at first sight shocking, isn't it, to think of the body of Jesus Christ as a corpse.
But you'll see, if there were to be a resurrection, there must be first a death of the body. You can't have a resurrection without the death of the body. So was he buried. And the third day he rose again from the dead, according to the scripture, with the declared implication that now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. The guarantee that he, the first fruits, will be eventually followed by the great harvest of the dead and of those millions that have been redeemed through his blood.
That then is the particular aspect of the death of Christ that is before us here in chapter fifteen. And Why it is before us is, once more, because of difficulty in the church. And this time the difficulty was a doctrinal difficulty. Some were saying in the church at Corinth, apparently, that there was no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. Not realizing, presumably, the fearful implications of what they were saying. It is the fact, you know, that you can get folks, dear Christians, sound believers in that sense.
You can occasionally get them temporarily imbibing doctrines that would be destructive of the very foundation of the gospel, and they have imbibed them without realizing how serious these wrong doctrines are. And doctrines matter. It won't do to become sentimental and to say, ah, well, so long as we love each other, it doesn't matter what we believe. It matters tremendously what we believe. Paul is not prepared to see some of the Corinthians imbibe notions, which, without their knowing it at the moment, would be destructive of the very basis of the gospel.
How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? It is the fact that all down the Christian ages, and perhaps never more so than at the present time, there are people who profess themselves willing to believe the gospel that Jesus died for our sins, willing to believe that there is a life to come, a heaven, if you please, but cannot bring themselves to believe the literal resurrection of the body. It seems to them to be too good to be true. Seems to them to be a little mythology that ought to be demythologized into simply meaning that, uh, there is a future beyond.
And we must beware of it, because it is not, though many plead it is, another way of interpreting the Christian gospel. Why bother, says a learned theologian, whether the grave in which Jesus' body was buried was found empty or not? It makes no difference whether the body was there or wasn't there. What utter nonsense. The Christian gospel is not that Jesus died and was buried and survived, and that his immortal soul survived on into eternity. That is not the gospel. The gospel is that he died, was buried, and the third day that body came out of the sepulcher and was raised.
Nothing short of the resurrection of the body will do. Paul spends time, and we mustn't, on pointing out to the Corinthians that if they surrender faith in the bodily b- in the resurrection of the body, then it completely destroys the Christian gospel. For if there is no resurrection of the body at all, then the body of Jesus Christ is not raised. And if Jesus Christ is not raised, then you are still in your sins. If you are still in your sins, well, then all is lost, isn't it?
For the words of Jesus Christ, uh, peace be unto you, and so forth, may in fact comfort you for a few brief hours in this temporary life on earth, but his words, peace be unto you, will not forgive your sins. Only his death can do that. If his death is not followed by a resurrection, his death has no validity. And worse still, if Jesus Christ be still in the grave, you have followed men who have deliberately deceived you, because the apostles have deliberately and knowingly witnessed that he did rise bodily the third day. And understanding perfectly what they said, that they meant a literal resurrection of the body, they said it.
And if Jesus Christ is not risen, then the apostles are found to be deliberate liars. I wouldn't put much faith in a message that had been brought me by a pack of deliberate liars. Now it is an integral part of the gospel, the bodily resurrection of Christ, bodily resurrection of all who trust. I suspect one of the major difficulties that people face when they think about the resurrection of the body is the question, but how shall it happen?
It would be fascinating, wouldn't it, to know all the mechanics of it and all those intricate questions that rise. If what I am in this life depends so directly upon my memory, such that if my memory goes in this life, my character personality is grievously altered. What happens if in death my memory is destroyed? And that is only one of the many, many questions that center around this question of resurrection of the body.
We are not asked to solve all those questions, but God himself does descend to providing us with analogies to support our faith. How shall it all be done? Well, take an analogy. I don't suppose it's meant to be more than an analogy. Take it from the realm of farming. A farmer sows a bare grain of wheat or barley. The grain itself goes to mush and disappears. But you get up something. And that something is both like and unlike what was put in the ground.
It is of the same kind, but it is more glorious. The bare grain is naked indeed. What you get up is not one grain, but many grains in an ear, and in a beautiful, green, lovely ear of corn that at its appropriate time comes on flower and blossoms. A lovely thing full of the sap of life and beautiful with its little flower in its day, with vastly more potential than that one little grain of wheat ever had. So shall it be in the resurrection.
What is more, while what comes out is like and yet so much more glorious than what went in, you will observe that farmers throughout the centuries have discovered that you don't get anything out unless you put something in. Take, if you will, the realm of animals and fish. For if you say to me, but my human body, when it comes out of the grave at the coming of Christ, is g- going to be much changed into a different kind of human body, shall I still be human? Yes.
Because you'll see human flesh can exist in different modes. Who take the substance flesh that we find in our world, you will find this curious and interesting matter that flesh exists, but under different modes. There is fish flesh and chicken flesh and oxen flesh and human flesh, and it's all flesh. But as our good surgeons will tell us, it's very rarely that you can mix the different types of flesh, for one flesh will reject the other type of flesh, but it's flesh still. So flesh can exist even before our eyes in different modes.
What difficulty would there be thinking that my human flesh, the type of flesh I have now, existing in this mode, could in the resurrection still be flesh, but a different kind of flesh. And one star differeth from another in glory. So there shall be a difference between our body now and our body then. Because, you see, we are in the presence now not of some tiny little detail, some little decoration, superfluous but pretty, upon the cake of our redemption.
We are now at the heart of the whole process of redemption. It is that God made man, Adam, a living soul. That was one type of human being. He sinned, with all the terrible consequences. God is not, uh, attempting simply to undo the result of sin and produce once more Adam restored. God's way is to start over again with a different type of man, human still, but fundamentally different in this respect that the first man was made a living soul, the second man a life-giving spirit.
There is now in God's great universe, and has ever been since the birth of Jesus Christ our Lord onto our planet, a different race of human being. Just as we received our physical life from Adam and bore his image, so we who trust Christ shall bear the image of a different kind of human being. Second man is a life-giving spirit. And here we may pause just a second to notice with delight what Paul has been telling us in this epistle.
Let us forget all the problems. Let us allow ourselves a moment's enjoyment. We started in the early chapters thinking of the cross of Christ, which tells us, if it tells us anything, the end of all flesh before God. The crossing out of man. That bitter but fundamental lesson we must learn, who come in repentance to the cross of Christ for forgiveness. Not the patching up of man, the end of man. We learned at that cross not to put our trust in man. Ah, but as our epistle has gone along, see what glorious anthropology it has taught us.
For had we had time to, to read together chapter twelve, we should have discovered that while man qua man is finished, God has begun a new kind of thing in his universe. It is called the body of Christ, and into that body every believer has been baptized, and each believer has become a member in that great and glorious body. Glorious thing, the like of which was never before. An entity so marvelous that the angels themselves are interested in this new thing.
A body in which each member is a human personality. And yet, a body in which all these many human personalities work in perfect harmony, the one with the other, because they are controlled by the head. A body that is suprapersonal and not subpersonal. On its glories, one could speak a long while. We mustn't now. This is God's idea of redemption, already now in existence, waiting to come to the perfect stature of the head, which is Christ, the body of Christ.
Ah, but now we think not only of all those personalities, each personality forming one member in the body of Christ, personality still, individuals still, with free will still, but all of them part of a greater thing than this their own personality. Now we think of the bodies that each of those members are going to have. Bodies to express their personalities. Oh, so far more glorious than the bodies we have now. How they do crib, cabin, and confine us, do they not? When I would tell you what I want to tell you, then I said, I don't know how to put it.
Oh, my poor tongue. Well, really, let me not blame that. My poor brain, I ought to say. And I meant to say this, but I say something else. And I meant to do this, and I do something grievously short. And I feel all sorts of ideas within me that could, uh, find fulfillment, but I lack the means to do it. I am so limited in this body. Ah, but one day shall have not the body that is now, but a glorious body, a spiritual body, bearing the very pattern of the second man himself, the Lord from heaven. When shall it be?
Then. When this mortal puts on immortality, when this corruptible puts on incorruption, then shall be fulfilled the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Then, not now. I say again, it's a cruel thing to point to a decomposing body in the grave and say that is victory. That's defeat. When shall the victory come?
Then it shall come. When the Savior comes, and the dead shall rise, and the corruption shall put on incorruption, and mortal put on immortality. For the moment, we must face reality and acknowledge defeat. And you have no need to be ashamed of your tears, nor try to keep them back. When the Savior confronted what death had done to his friend Lazarus, Jesus wept.
An enemy has done this. Oh, I know you'll tell me that you find peace and comfort in the fact that God is behind the scenes and he allowed it. I know that's a lovely comfort. And that ultimately your loved one was put to sleep in Jesus. Ah, that's a lovely comfort. You take your leave of them with the certain hope that they shall rise when the Savior comes, that their bodies will rise. You take your comfort in this, that the redeemed themselves are with the Lord and consciously enjoying his presence, and that is glorious. But I talk of the body. And as far as the believer's body is concerned, this for the moment is defeat.
An enemy has done it. Or think of the ugliness of disease and death, worms and corruption. An enemy has done this. And rightly we weep, but with a certainty in our hearts, that one day there will come the victory. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. And already you may begin to taste that victory, for pray consider what the war is about.
You'll see the sting of death is sin. The really painful thing is not the death of the body, and that can be very painful. It's what comes after, therein lies the sting. After death, the judgment. What will be done because of my sin? That's the sting, isn't it? To bury an unconverted man or woman.
Death is a disaster. Oh, but what lies beyond? Oh, for the sting in the tail of death. And for the believer, that sting has been forever removed. For Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, was buried, and he rose again. And for the believer, there is no judgment. He shall never come into judgment. He has passed from death unto life.
The sorrow is there, but the sting forever gone. One day the victory. What then? Say, go home and dry up your tears. Yes, do that. That would be an inadequate response, wouldn't it? What shall I do in face of the fact that there is coming a resurrection? This is what I must do. I must be always abounding in the work of the Lord. That's what I must do. For everything that I do for Christ shall last eternally.
Let me abound in his work now, therefore. Because he's coming soon. And I haven't much time. And even before he comes, I too might pass through death. Oh, therefore, let me grab every opportunity I have now and fill all the remaining moments with loving labor for the Lord. For as much as he is risen, our labor is not in vain.
