EPISODE 125 1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 15 "Round table discussion"

So I'm here today with a few of my friends that I've known for, you can't believe this, close to 60 years in some cases, but all of them at least 50 years. We grew up in the same church youth group, and we all committed our lives to following and serving Christ however He would lead us. And we went to Christian college together and then went our own different ways into different kinds of ministry. So I have here with me tonight my friend Wes Johnson, who's been a pastor in western Pennsylvania for almost three decades now. I have my friend Jeffrey Arthurs, who you've heard from before on Share the Word, who's a seminary professor up in Boston, Massachusetts. I have my friend Philip Gerard, who I think you've heard from before, friend of Gospel of John, and he is a pastor in South Carolina.

And then I have my friend Bob Sattler, who has also been on the podcast at least once before, who's been a pastor in western Pennsylvania, has worked in other Christian ministries and missionary organizations, and so on. So all of us have been trying to understand God's Word and apply it and explain it and teach it to people for years and years. We happen to be on a little reunion this weekend, and so our next chapter to look at is 1 Corinthians 15. I asked them if they would help me, and I asked them simply to read and think about this chapter. Most of them have preached on it before, and to kind of zero in on something they thought was one of the biggest ideas here and talk about it for a few minutes. And we may talk back and forth and ask each other some questions, because this is not rehearsed.

So here we go. My first victim, I guess you could say, is my buddy Jeff Arthurs. He's going to speak to us from the first verses of the chapter. Thanks, Paul. This is great to participate in this way and keep up the great work with Share the Word. So 1 Corinthians 15, verse 3, right at the beginning of the chapter: I delivered unto you first of all.

That which I also received, how Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and that he rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. So that is how Paul headlines the chapter, and then it's a long chapter, and the rest of the chapter flows out of this fundamental truth that Jesus rose from the dead. So let me just call attention to the argument that he makes to indicate this really happened. This happened in space and time. This is a historical fact. It's not just wish fulfillment.

When he says that Jesus rose, it's not like when we say, you know, Walt Disney arose in the Disney empire, like he lives on. No, a dead man came back alive, and so much flows from that with our faith. So here's the argument. After Jesus rose from the dead, he was seen by Peter. That's verse five, eyewitness. And then verse six, and then he was seen by the twelve, the disciples, and that's verse five.

And then verse six, he was seen by more than 500 people at one time. And Paul says the greater part of them are still alive. You know, he wrote this decades after Jesus rose, but most of them are still alive. Go talk to them. And then he was seen by me, verse seven. By you, Jeff.

The apostle Paul. Excuse me, he was seen by James, and then verse eight, he was seen by me, the apostle Paul. So all of that to say, a lot of evidence, a lot of conversations, firsthand experience. Jesus said, Touch me. I'm not a ghost. And it really happened in space and time.

So from that flows all sorts of implications that our other buddies here are going to talk about. Which James do you think he's referring to when he says he was seen by James? I think the options are James the apostle, one of the twelve. But highly unlikely because he's already listed twelve as a group. Yeah, possibly. You know, he also listed Peter separately, so it might have been separate.

But I think he did mention that he did come face to face with Peter. Right. But then he mentioned that he saw the twelve in the upper room. Yeah. So the James— Yeah, so the other option is actually the half brother of Jesus, the son of Mary. And what would be significant about it if that's who it is?

Because that's who I think it is. That's who I think it is as well. Yeah, they grew up together, and yet James was not convinced; he was not a believer until this resurrection appearance. Right. So he appeared both to believers as well as unbelievers. And Paul says, ‘And last of all he appeared to me.’

So Paul was certainly an unbeliever when Christ appeared to him. So that's part of his evidence, that not only did he appear to people who he loved and was close to, and some people would argue, ‘Well, those people wanted this to be true and they imagined it.’ Wish fulfillment. Right. But he also appeared to people who never expected it and people who would have said, ‘That's crazy.’ In the book of John, famous doubting Thomas was one of the twelve, but he was not a believer.

And you may remember he's the one that said, ‘I don't—I don't believe what you guys are talking about unless I put my finger in the print of the nails in his hands, then I'll believe.’ And then Jesus appeared to him, ‘My Lord and my God.’ And I think it's very significant before we move on that Paul is laying this foundation of eyewitnesses. to the resurrection, because most things can be established with two or three witnesses. If people see the same thing and were willing to testify, hey, I saw it. I saw it at a different time than this person or from a different angle than this person, but I saw the same thing. In this case, we're talking about hundreds of people who saw the same thing, which is extremely difficult to explain away, right?

Right on. And also, I could kick about this forever because it's so important. But hey, Christianity would have never started if there was not a factual basis for it. It never, it would have died on the vine. Yep. Okay, let's move on, because we're going to talk next, I think, let's see who's next.

There's Bob coming up next. Okay, this is my friend Bob Stout, who's going to talk about verse 32 and following. Verse 32 says, If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me if the dead rise not? Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. I think we all realize we live in a culture—we all heard of YOLO, you only live once—and a lot of people, that's their philosophy. You only live once in this world, so let's just live for the world.

Whereas Paul says, What advantage is it to me if the dead don't rise? It's no advantage at all. I guess you come to a place where, before you're a Christian, I remember the day that I said, Man, this stuff is really, really real. It's not just nice. It's not just—it's real, real. And there really is going to be a resurrection.

There really is a heaven. There really is a reunion with lost loved ones. And this chapter is saying it's worth it. I think of what Paul said in chapter 3 of Colossians. He said, If you're risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is sitting on the right hand of God. Set your affection on those things, not on the things of the earth.

When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, you also will appear with Him in glory. All these promises are really going to be fulfilled. And therefore, that's why he's saying in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrection really is a real thing. You can be encouraged by it. Yeah, and in this passage, as well as others, Paul makes the point about his own life and how he was willing to—the things he did were so extreme. And he refers here to his life being on the line at different times.

We've talked before when we went through the book of Acts, the amount of traveling and the amount of rust that Paul went through, the years of imprisonment that Paul went through, the beatings that Paul took. And yet he's saying, Hey, I expect it to all pay off. I expect it because the resurrection is real, and God's promised me that I'm going to be resurrected if I have faith in Christ. And that's what made it to him. It was worth the effort. He believed that it would all pay off.

So it pays off because all of those trials, fighting with wild beasts and getting beaten and all of that, will be compensated, will be rewarded. But it also pays off because all of our so-called accomplishments here on earth—you know, fame and wealth and all of that—it really is meaningless if you only go around once. Right. Yeah, that won't pay off. Phil, you want to carry this forward? So I think it's important to get the connection between the resurrection of Jesus and the rest of the chapter, and that connection comes in verse 12.

Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how does some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? Apparently there was a group in— In Corinth, that was claiming that believers were not raised from the dead. And the rest of this chapter flows to make significant arguments for why, if Jesus was raised from the dead, then we ought to believe that we will be raised from the dead in the likeness of Jesus. That ties in directly with what Bob just talked about. We have the same hope of being resurrected in a glorified body, just like Jesus was raised. That's part of the payoff.

Paul talks quite a bit more about it in one of my favorite parts of this chapter, which begins in verse 35, where Paul says, But someone will say, 'How are the dead raised up?' Apparently, one of the arguments against believers being raised from the dead is they said, 'Well, what kind of body are they raised in?' Well, Paul answers that question right here. He lists seven contrasts between the body that we have right now and the glorified body that we will have when we're raised by the dead when Jesus Christ returns to rapture the church. Right now, I don't have time to go through every one of those contrasts. The one that has always intrigued me most is found in verse 44.

It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. The body that we're in right now, when Paul says it will be sown a natural body, he's talking about the body that we put in a grave. And when he uses the word sown, he's talking about burying the body that we're in right now. And he calls this body a natural body, or another translation of that word, a more literal translation, is a soulish body. It's a body that is adapted to our soul.

The soul is the unseen part of our bodies that interacts, the unseen part of our persons that interacts with the world around us, that interacts on the vertical level, that knows other people and appreciates other people. But then he goes on to say, we'll be raised in a spiritual body. Now, that doesn't mean that we'll be raised in a body that's made out of spirit, that's like a ghost. The word there has the idea of a body that's adapted to interacting on the spiritual plane, that's adapted to interacting with God. The example that always comes to mind with me when I think about this, if you're a Christian and you pray regularly, oftentimes after only a few minutes of prayer, five minutes, ten minutes, we find that it's difficult to keep focus.

It's difficult to keep our mind and our hearts on interacting with God because these bodies that we're in right now, they're not adapted for that. But once we're resurrected, once we have a body like Jesus Christ, we will find it very easy, natural, to interact with God, to know Him. That's what we're actually created for. And so I really look forward to that day. This is an encouragement to me. The big thing about heaven is going to be knowing God, and we're going to have bodies that are adapted to knowing God and enjoying God and delighting in God that we don't really understand even right now.

I look forward to that glorified body. Anybody else want to comment on those verses? Yeah, so with your example of the difficulty of prayer, which I resonate with, so for example, my mind wanders because human brains, you know, we pay attention to that which is most pressing, meaning that which we feel that we care about the most. Well, when we get a glorified body, we will care most about other things, and our brains will be more attuned and harnessed. So I like that example. I look forward to that.

Yeah, I think about, I mean, on the drive back tonight. We saw a rainbow in the sky, and we were all immediately intrigued by it. It drew us. It drew our attention. It captivated us. I believe in that glorified body, that's the kind of relationship we're going to have with God.

We're going to delight in Him. We're going to be captivated by—it's not going to be an effort. It's going to be completely natural to be completely engaged with God in that glorified body. So you think our worship times will improve? Yeah. Oh my word.

I think also, you know, the knowledge will go beyond just with God too. I think with others, we'll understand others much better than we do here. Our relationships will be at a much deeper level than they are here. What did you say earlier from 1 Corinthians 13? We will know. Yeah, we'll know, even as we are known.

As Phil was saying, our horizons are going to be wide open now to spiritual things, things that we've been battling with all our human lives, and the old battle of the flesh versus the spirit. And even as Christians, and we have victory over that, we still have to battle it. But as Phil said, there's coming a day when all that goes away, and our new body says, Go. Spiritual things. So then Paul says this: I'm going to tell you a mystery. This is something that God has revealed to him.

We're not going to all die. We're all going to be changed, though, in a flash, in a twinkling of an eye. And when the last trumpet sounds, and the dead will be raised imperishable. This is when the resurrection is going to happen, and he's referring to when Jesus comes back. It's going to happen instantaneously. We're going to be changed instantaneously into the spiritual body that we're talking about.

And then he wraps up this chapter, which is one of the most important doctrinal chapters in the New Testament, with some very practical and challenging advice for the Corinthian church, which needed a lot of advice. Yeah, it's interesting as we read this chapter, and these guys have so excellently brought out their points about the new body. You may be saying, I'm a Christian. I already believe in the resurrection, so I'm not going to bother reading this chapter because I believe that Christ rose from the dead, which as a Christian you should accept that by faith. But as always, God never gives us information without giving us the application of that to our lives. What does that mean to me now?

You believe in the resurrection. That's good. If you don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, this is a good opportunity to get into this chapter, and as you read the evidence that these guys so aptly pointed out, that if you give it some positive thought and actually put an effort in to understand it, you're going to see that, as Paul said, this isn't one or two people that witnessed this. This is hundreds of people. So what does it mean to us? You already believe in the resurrection, and I think it's summed up for us very well in verses 57 and 58, the last two verses of the chapter, which says, But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now the victory is the victory over death, the victory over sin. It's the end of the battle that we as Christians have been fighting all our lives. And it's interesting that as Christians, we've sort of become accustomed to this battle. It's sort of like, I've got to fight this, I have to fight that, and I'm a little discouraged about this and discouraged about that. But God's going to give us the victory, even as He promises victory today through the Spirit. We're going to have total and complete victory because of the resurrection of Christ.

And He tells us that death has lost its sting, where the majority of the world today is afraid of death. They don't even want to talk about it. And we are looking at death not as a defeat, but as a doorway into eternity. It's the realization of everything that we've looked forward to and hoped for. And He makes final application in the last verse when He tells us, Therefore, my brethren—and you know the old saying, when you see the word therefore, you should always look and see what it's there for. And the idea is, He says—you never heard that, Paul.

I'm kidding you. Go ahead. Okay. He says, Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable. That means standing our ground. Don't waver because death might be near or you're having some doubts.

Don't be wavering about that. Always abounding in the work of the Lord. Why? Knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. So we're toiling now. Every Christian, I think, would admit that our lives are a toil.

We have to fight this. But Paul says, Look at the resurrection of Christ. What it means to us is that we're going to be raised, and at that point, all of the toiling that we did is going to be rewarded. It's going to be worth it all, as the hymn says, when we see Jesus. It will be worth it all when we see Jesus. I was thinking of that exactly when you said that.

It came to my mind as well. So, the question, I guess, is coming away from this chapter for us, do we believe that Jesus really came out of the tomb? That's the big question, first of all. Secondly, do we believe his promises that if we put our faith and trust in him, that we will come out of the tomb, or out of the grave, or out of the—what do you call the thing you put the ashes in? The urn. Yeah.

Yeah. And that we're going to, when Jesus comes back, be changed into new bodies that are made for eternity and for fellowship with God, as well as with everybody else in heaven that we're going to enjoy seeing there. So, stay fast in your faith. The world is going to try to pressure you to not believe these things, to give up on these things. But those of us who stay fast and immovable, as Paul says, the victory is coming. Thanks for listening to us today on Share the Word, and thanks to my friends here for participating.

I was thinking on my long drive home from western Pennsylvania what a blessing it is to have such friends for more than five decades now. We try to get together somewhere every couple years, and when we do, it's a constant stream of funny memories that fill our conversations. Of course, we also like to hear about each other's lives now and families and work and so on. This time, I noticed I heard a lot more discussion about our physical health than usual. One of my buddies there nearly died from COVID a couple years ago. He was in a hospital on a respirator for weeks.

Another is dealing with Parkinson's disease right now. Another has had several heart problems. I've had a few years of cancer treatments. Who knows how many more times we're going to be able to travel and meet up before this lifetime is over? I asked one of them, half jokingly. Where do you want to live in heaven?

his answer was, Next to you guys, of course. But joking aside, we all realize how quickly our lives are passing here. We were kids climbing through caves and trying to kill each other in tackle football just a short while ago, it seems. I asked him to join me for 1 Corinthians 15 because I wanted you to hear their faith expressed. I hope you did. I hope you heard how we're looking forward to the future because we really believe what Paul writes here, that because Jesus died and rose again, all who are in Christ will be resurrected too and will be given, he says, immortal bodies that are fitted for heaven and for eternity.

As we were leaving that morning, heading back to our homes, the words exchanged were, I love you, Wes and Jeff, or, I'm praying for you, Bob and Phil, and the challenge went back between us, Finish strong, brothers. Finish strong to us means finish the marathon of this life well, because it will be worth it all when we see Jesus.