In My Flesh I Will See God

Series on I Corinthians

VII Manner of the Resurrection

B Expectation of the Resurrection, Text: 15:12-34

Title: In My Flesh I Will See God

Introduction

As we have seen, the concern of this chapter is our bodily resurrection as believers. In Corinth they misunderstood the nature and significance of Christ’s resurrection. Paul began by reminding them of the resurrection of Christ, because our resurrection is inseparable from His. I dare say that there are many people in churches today who are still blinded by that old false Greek view that the body is disposable, and the only thing worth saving is the soul or spirit of man. But the Bible teaches that our bodies are part of our personalities, and that God is saving the whole man, body and spirit, and that the eternal state is a concrete and physical condition. The false philosophy that troubled the church in Corinth is still with us in the naive thinking of many people, but the Bible will rid us of such misconceptions. An elect lady in Lansdale, PA, once said to me concerning what we call an untimely death, “Now they are an angel.” The child might have been with the angels, but he was not an angel. Angels do not have bodies. The Child was waiting for his body. We are talking here about our bodily resurrection and not the mere survival of the soul, or spirit, and Paul is focusing in this section on the fact that our resurrection is essential to our faith. He argues, if there is no bodily resurrection, then, there is no conviction in life. If there is no bodily resurrection there is no connection with life. And if there is no bodily resurrection there is no commitment for life.

I No Conviction in Life

Paul says in verses 12-19 that if there is no bodily resurrection then Christ himself could not have been raised, But 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? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More 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. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. If resurrection of the body is categorically impossible, Christ’s resurrection must also be rejected. The result is a total disintegration of faith. The consequences are fearful. If bodily resurrection is not possible then not only is the apostolic preaching worthless, and Paul is wasting his time, but worse than that it is a lie. And the implications for the Corinthians are the same. Their faith is useless, forgiveness is non-existent, and worse than that all the believers that have died are lost forever. Paul concludes by saying, If in this life only we have hope in Christ we are to be pitied above all men. Please note that there is an unspoken premise here. Paul is maintaining that a mere survival of the soul after death is not hope. Although, as you well know, the vast majority of people who believe in survival after death cling only to the belief that the soul or spirit will survive. For Paul, to separate these essential elements of our personality is unacceptable. If there is to be any real hope, then the salvation we have in Christ must save the whole man. If only the spirit survives then we are still most miserable because that is not us. Joni Ereckson Tada, paralyzed in a wheel chair for more than 30 years, has a song about the world to come and as she pictures meeting Jesus, her Savior, she imagines Him saying first to her, “Shall we dance?” As Sydney Carter wrote of Jesus, “I danced on a Friday when the sky turned black; It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back. They buried my body and they thought I’d gone; But I am the dance and I still go on: Dance, then, wherever you may be; I am the Lord of the Dance, said he, And I’ll lead you all, wherever you may be And I’ll lead you all in the dance, said he.” This brings us to Paul’s further explanation of our salvation.

II No Connection with Life

If there is no bodily resurrection there is no connection with life according to verses 20-28, But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. The Bible says we are born spiritually dead in sin, and moreover, we are going to physically die, and if we do not repent and believe in Christ we will partake of the second death, which is permanent. We are surrounded by death. The way out is in Jesus Christ who is the way the truth and the life. If we are in Christ then every aspect of death is removed. We are no longer dead in sin, but alive in Christ. Our bodies at death only sleep in Christ, and the second death has no power over us. A minister in Darby, Pennsylvania, tells how the young son of an undertaker misunderstood. He was puzzled one Easter morning when he heard about the Resurrection. “Do you mean,” he asked, “that Jesus really rose up from the dead?” “Oh, yes,” the teacher said. The boy shook his head. “I know my daddy didn’t take care of Him after He died,” the boy said. “He’d never get up again!” But the Bible says death could not hold Him though it tried. The work of Christ is to destroy death in every way. The Son of God became man in order to deliver us from all death, as Paul says in verse 27. As a man risen from the dead Jesus is the prototype of man’s destiny. It may seem strange to some that we are talking about the resurrection in the advent season, however, the reason Jesus became man, incarnate in the flesh is precisely so that he could save our bodies as well as our spirits. The celebration of Christmas is a celebration of the Son of God taking human nature so that he could raise it again. Now the whole discussion of Jesus handing over the kingdom to the Father has no bearing on the essential relationship between the Father and Son who are equal in power and glory. It has everything to do with the fact that the Son of God became one of us, and we have a brother in heaven. It is as a man, the last Adam, that everything is put beneath his feet. This is very clear from the fact that Paul quotes Psalm 8. This is why at the end he hands the kingdom over to the Father, but not until he has destroyed all death for his people. I love that hymn where Jesus is called the “death of death and hell’s destruction.” It is in his bodily resurrection that Christ essentially triumphed over death. He says in Revelation, i am he that was dead and behold i am alive forever more and i hold the keys of death and hell. So to be connected to Christ is to be so connected with life that every aspect of death flees away and in our flesh we will see God. The victory of Christ is the triumph of human nature, body as well as spirit.

III No Commitment for Life

And so Paul concludes in verses 29-34 with a reminder that apart from the resurrection of the body there is no commitment for life, Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? I die every day-I mean that, brothers-just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God-I say this to your shame. Why says Paul do we hazard our physical lives in the service of Christ if we are not going to live again. Why lose this body unless I’m getting a new one? Of course Muslims do this all the time, but I remind you that in spite of all their false teaching, they do believe in the resurrection. The real difference is summarized in the words of a boastful Muslim who said to a missionary when we go to Mecca we see the coffin of our prophet but you have nothing in Jerusalem but an empty tomb. You see, though they believe in the resurrection, they have no proof of it. That’s the easy part of our final text. The difficult part is the reference to being baptized for the dead. There are so many suggested interpretations of this that even a commentary cannot handle them all, let alone a sermon. so let me suggest, it was a practice, it is not condemned, and it is not encouraged. The whole point is how stupid the practice is if there is no bodily resurrection. Now if this was some peculiar practice, why doesn’t Paul give any indication of its validity. I prefer the interpretation that this refers to martyrdom. Jesus referred to his own death as a baptism in Luke 12:50, I have a baptism to be baptized with, and he also referred to his disciples deaths as baptism in Mark 10:38, Can you drink the cup that i drink or be baptized with the baptism with which i am baptized? Martyrs, like Jesus and his disciples, would be undergoing a baptism of blood. They would do this for the dead, that is, not for the living as we are baptized in entering the church militant, but for the dead as they enter the church triumphant. The advantage to this interpretation is it eliminates a reference to a questionable practice, and it says the same thing as Paul is saying about himself. Christians are giving their lives, and Paul is giving his life because of the resurrection.

Conclusion

Christians were willing to give their physical lives and lose their bodies, because they believed in the resurrection of the body. This is what Jesus saved by becoming man, human nature in its fullness, and this is our only hope. The first question of the Heidelberg catechism is, ‘What is my only comfort in life and in death? That I with body and soul both in life and death am not my own but belong to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.” Friends my comfort in life is that my soul belongs to him, but my comfort in death is that my body belongs to him. Anything less than this is simply not a viable hope. We naively sense this when we lose our loved ones. We know their spirits are departed but we also know that what remains is part of them and we should never be satisfied with any final deliverance that leaves the body behind as if it were some useless husk. It is a part of us and a part that Jesus redeemed. Therefore, trust in Christ who is our only hope and who says in John 5:24, I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. I tell you the truth, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.