Christ is Risen

Life After Pentecost (XV)

 

1 Corinthians 15

 

I know this Sunday is not Easter.  I am not confused with months and dates.  However, let me tell you my Christian principle.  For Christians, every day should be Christmas and Easter.  We should celebrate Christ’s birth, incarnation, death and resurrection every day.  The reason I chose this topic has a simple explanation.  We reached chapter 15 of 1st Corinthians.  After writing a long letter to the Corinthians, Paul comes to the great finale:  the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ.

 

Do you remember in chapter 2 when he stressed the following point to this church?

“When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.  I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling.  My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.” (1-5)

 

Paul wrote about many important topics that we I presented to you in last 15 weeks:  Unity in diversity, Demonstrating God’s Spirit, Servant-Steward, Face the Sin in the Church, Married-single, We are temple of God, To eat or not to Eat? Running with God, Lead us not to temptation, Spiritual Gifts and God’s Love.  These topics were extremely important.  Now he arrives to a great ending:  the crucified Jesus is resurrected.

 

Once in a Sunday school a boy called Philip who had Down’s syndrome illustrated resurrection.  The teacher gave to each child an empty plastic egg.  The class went outside to the garden, and was asked to put something in the eggs, which represent Easter.  Everyone did have something, and all were sharing that with the teacher.  When Philip’s turn arrived, he opened his egg.  It was empty.  Everyone laughed.  Philip just said to the teacher, “The tomb was empty.”

 

Crucifixion is a terrible thing.  King Darius crucified 3000 Babylonians 519 B.C.  In 66 AD, Romans crucified 3600 Jews for their revolt. We talk about these as historical events.  Only one event changed the history of the world.  Only Jesus Christ who was crucified and was resurrected after three days.  For Paul, this is it.  The resurrection of Jesus formed the basis of Paul’s argument for our bodily resurrection from the death.  The two resurrections, Christ’s and ours, stand together.

 

Obviously, in the church some believed in the resurrection of Jesus but not in human resurrection.  Paul is saying you missed the point.

 

Now listen carefully.  Some religions believe that life after death means that souls will lie asleep.  Others like Materialists believe that life after death is nothing, extinction, annihilation.  Some other religions believe in reincarnation.  We will be born all over again and again.  Only in Christianity, we find that because Jesus was resurrected, God will give us new bodies and our new bodies will be resurrected.

 

In Corinth, there were Gnostics, who had trouble believing in this concept.  They believed in dualism:  body and soul.  Soul is good and can live forever, and body is material which means bad and should be finished.  They could not believe that bodies could be resurrected.  In Acts 17 when Paul was talking about resurrection of the body, they mocked him.  You know, even today many will mock us, and maybe some of you do not believe in this.

 

Now listen carefully, the Christian believes that Christ rose from death and whoever believes in him would also be raised from death.

 

We will continue in English.