The Fact of the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:1-11)

 

Herodotus records Xerxes weeping: ‘I was thinking and it came into my mind how pitifully short human life is – for of all these thousands of men not one will be alive in a hundred years’ time.’ That is the human condition. For the immediate problem, see 15:12.

  1. The resurrection of Christ is foundational.
    • 15:1-4. John Bacon was a sculptor and a Christian. On his epitaph, he had these words inscribed: ‘What I was as an artist seemed to me of some importance while I lived; but what I really was as a believer in Jesus Christ is the only thing of importance to me now.’
    • Rom.6:9.
  2. The resurrection of Christ is factual.
    • 15:3-8. Bertrand Russell said that the Christian faith was ‘built on the ground that fairy-tales are pleasant’. Hardly!
      1. the resurrection of Christ is ‘according to the Scriptures’. See Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. Also Ps.16:10; Mark 8:31.
      2. the resurrection of Christ is a well-attested fact. Over 500 witnesses! It is not a wild assertion; it is verifiable.
    • Acts 26:22-23, 26; note Deut.19:15. You ask me how I know He lives./He lives within my heart. That is not Paul’s approach.
      1. Paul’s own transformed life – 15:9-10.
  3. The resurrection of Christ saves.
    • 15:1-2, 10-11; Acts 10:39-43. In 1937 Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote: ‘the fact that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, will be raised on the day of judgment.’
    • ‘There are times when it becomes so obvious that it is a case of Jesus rose from the dead or there is nothing.’