SAY AGAIN - “The Resurrection of the Body” - 

I Corinthians 15: 12-28

¹²  Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say, “There is no resurrection of the dead”? ¹³  But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; ¹⁴  and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is without foundation, and so is your faith.

¹⁵  In addition, we are found to be false witnesses about God, because we have testified about God that He raised up Christ—whom He did not raise up if in fact the dead are not raised. ¹⁶  For if the dead are not raised, Christ has not been raised.

¹⁷  And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸  Therefore, those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished.

¹⁹  If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone. ²⁰  But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ²¹  For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.

²²  For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
²³  But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at His coming, those who belong to Christ. ²⁴  Then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father, when He abolishes all rule and all authority and power.

²⁵  For He must reign until He puts all His enemies under His feet. ²⁶  The last enemy to be abolished is death. ²⁷  For God has put everything under His feet. But when it says “everything” is put under Him, it is obvious that He who puts everything under Him is the exception. ²⁸  And when everything is subject to Christ, then the Son Himself will also be subject to the One who subjected everything to Him, so that God may be all in all.

I have had other pastors ask if my church recited the Apostles’ Creed and I said believe it should be said every Sunday. You would not believe how many churches think a statement of faith or a quick statement from a bible verse is just as good.

I think that “modern men and women need the mental discipline of saying the Creed every Sunday because it serves as an antidote to the prevailing secular unbelief and the rampant skepticism they face daily. There is one phrase from the creed that every Christian needs to say every Sunday: “I believe … in the resurrection of the body.”

That’s the hardest phrase to believe because it goes against everything we are taught and everything we see with our eyes. We have lots of funerals; the last resurrection happened 2,000 years ago. And if you have walked away from the grave of a loved one, you know how the harsh reality of death can erode your faith.

Death is the fundamental human problem. It is our greatest fear, the sum of all other fears. You can see it in the way we treat the dead. An entire industry has grown up to help us deal with death. When a person dies, we do our best to make them look as if they were not dead.

Funerals cost thousands of dollars to make us feel better that we did honor and respect to the departed in a public manner.

Many times I have heard someone stand by a casket and say, “She looks so natural.” Well, no, she looks like she’s dead. But death is so awesome, so final, so forbidding, so shocking to our senses, that we can’t even say the word.

We say that someone “passed on” or “departed” or “slipped away.” Somehow that softens the blow a bit. I fully understand the need to use euphemisms when a loved one has died. And I believe the funeral industry plays an important role in bringing comfort to grieving families. But even after we have done our best to mask the reality, death stands as a stark reality, the Grim Reaper that visits every home sooner or later.

And so we come face to face with a question asked by philosophers, theologians and especially by grieving families, a question Job asked thousands of years ago:

“If a man dies, shall he live again?” (Job 4:14 ESV).

Consider how Paul faces the same question in I Corinthians 15:33, “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die’” (ESV).

If … If … If … If the dead are not raised, then why not live it up? Why not go for all the gusto? Why bother going to church? Why suffer for Christ if this life is all there is? Why serve the Lord if death ends everything? Down deep in our souls, we want to know the truth. When we die, will we live again? Or does death win in the end? Mark it down, my friend. If we do not have an answer to death, then our religion is useless.

And it is precisely at this point that the Apostles’ Creed provides help. As we come to the end of the creed, we find that it ends on a very positive note of Christian hope. The penultimate phrase says, “I believe in … the resurrection of the body.” Note how specific this is. Not “the resurrection of the dead” but “the resurrection of the body.” Older versions of the creed were even more specific when they used the phrase “the resurrection of the flesh.”

Paul wrote extensively about this truth in the resurrection chapter—I Corinthians 15. In order to understand what the resurrection of the body involves, we need to know about three things—the bodies we have, the death we’ll face, and the resurrection we’ll enjoy.

First - The Bodies We Have: Most of us have a love/hate relationship with our bodies. Let me illustrate. If you had the power to change your body, would you use it? Suppose you could instantly change the way you look, would you do it? That may be the dumbest question I’ve ever asked. The question is not—would you use that power, but would it be a simple repair or a complete makeover? Would you say, “Lord, let’s just start all over again.” Would we even recognize you?

This week I ran across an article called, “51 Signs You’re Getting Older.” Years ago I wouldn’t have paid any attention to an article like that, but nowadays I find those articles fascinating. It helped that the subtitle said, “Large Print Version.”

Here are a few items that caught my attention:

You know you’re getting old when …

1. Everything hurts and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.

2. The gleam in your eyes is from the sun hitting your bifocals.

8. You look forward to a dull evening.

9. Your favorite part of the newspaper is “20 Years Ago Today.”

11. You sit in a rocking chair and can’t get it going.

12. Your knees buckle, and your belt won’t.

15. Your back goes out more than you do.

19. You sink your teeth into a steak, and they stay there.

23. You’re asleep, but others worry that you’re dead.

39. You have a dream about prunes.

47. Your ears are hairier than your head.

51. When you bend over, you look for something else to do while you’re down there.

I have a bit of news for you. Your body won’t last forever. You can eat all the low-carb ice cream you want, but your body will still fall apart in the end. Did you know your body disintegrates all the time? You’re falling apart even while you are reading this sermon.

So this is the first point: Your body is a gift from God that won’t last forever.

Second, The Death We’ll Face: Most people fear death and don’t want to talk about it. Death remains the “final frontier” that we all must cross sooner or later, and though we all know that death is coming, we prefer to live as if it will never come at all.

Suppose you issued an invitation along the following lines to your friends: “I’ve got pizza and Coke—all you can eat. Let’s get together on Friday night and talk about death.” How many people would come?

You’d end up spending a quiet Friday night all by yourself. The Greek playwright Sophocles said, “Of all the great wonders, none is greater than man. Only for death can he find no cure.” He’s right about that. The wonders of modern science help us live longer, but for death itself there is no cure.

What does the Bible say about death?

A. Death is certain. “It is appointed for man to die once” (Hebrews 9:27a ESV).

B. Death is not the end. “And after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27b ESV)

C. Christ defeated death. “Christ Jesus … abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (II Timothy 1:10 ESV).

D. Death remains the last enemy. “The last enemy to be destroyed is death” (I Corinthians 15:26).

The conundrum for Christians lies between #C and #D. If Christ has abolished death, why do we still die? How can death be both abolished and yet the “last enemy” of the people of God?

Actually the notion that death is a “natural” part of life is wrong. There is nothing “natural” about death. It’s the most “unnatural” event in the universe. According to the Bible, death came into the world because of sin (Romans 5:12).

Death exists because sin exists. When sin has been removed once and for all, death will no longer exist. That’s why there will be no death in heaven (Revelation 21 : 3).

Third, The Resurrection We’ll Enjoy: If death is the fundamental human problem (and it is), what is the Christian answer? Listen to Paul’s soaring words in I Corinthians 15: 51-55 (ESV).

Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”