The Resurrection
A confession before we go further: this is, by a wide margin, the longest review I have ever inflicted on a single chapter—and I know it, and I am not sorry. You do not give the Resurrection a quick handshake and move on. It is the beam the entire house hangs on; the cross, the Kingdom, the Body, and the final triumph of Christ all rest on it. Pull it, and everything comes down in the yard. A chapter that holds up the whole faith has earned more than a passing glance—and if any page in this whole collection is allowed to run long, it is the one where death loses.
The Centrality of the Resurrection (15:1-58)
At long last, Paul begins to bring this book to summation. He has been, in a painstaking fashion, seeking to bring the church back into unity by refocusing them on Christ and His cross and the gospel. In the majority of the book, he has been doing so by answering questions that have arisen in the fellowship.
He begins his conclusion by explaining the gospel and its implications.
The disbelief among some of the Corinthians that there was no future resurrection is obvious in this passage (12). The Corinthians were not mere doubters. They were living in a virtually newly rebuilt city; it was flush with prosperity, and it was pulsating with sensuality. Some among the Corinthians were asserting that the present was the complete fulfillment of God’s Kingdom and His promised material blessing. They were also asserting sexual immorality was of no lasting consequence (6:9).
The Gospel (1-11)
The Gospel You Stand On (1-2)
The Witness of Allegiance, not Assent
Paul opens the chapter by planting the gospel as the ground a life stands on—and the words he reaches for are not words of the mind but of the whole person’s stance. You received it, you stand (histēmi) in it, and you are being saved by it if you hold fast (katechō)—and katechō is a grip word: to cling, to keep your hold, to refuse to let go. This is the language of allegiance, not of mental assent. The gospel is not a set of claims Paul asks them to agree with; it is a King they are summoned to keep holding onto. So even his warning—“unless you believed in vain”—is not “unless you failed to think it hard enough.” It is, “unless your allegiance never truly took root, unless the hold let go.” Faith that was never fidelity was faith in vain. The gospel is an unchanging word with the power to keep on saving those who stand on it and cling to it as the very foundation of their lives—and the stone that foundation rests on, in Paul’s mind, is the Resurrection (1-2).
The Gospel of First Importance (3-4)
The Witnesses: Death, Burial, Resurrection
Paul then briefly outlines the essential themes of the gospel.
To illustrate the huge difference the gospel had with the fanciful stories of myths common to the time, Paul gives a list of appearances of the resurrected Christ. Jesus was not like other leaders who claimed to come back to life in some spirit form. Jesus returned in a resurrected body.
These appearances would have been certain proof that the gospel was not mere legend but factual truth and documented history.
The gospel of first importance hinged on two essential truths:
Jesus Christ died for our sins, which would have destroyed everyone eternally if not for His sacrifice.
Jesus Christ was actually dead and buried but then resurrected to life on the third day, just as Scripture had prophesied centuries before (3-4).
The Gospel Confirmed by Witnesses (5-11)
The Witness of Those Who Saw Him
Then comes the confirmation of those two truths: the appearances.
Peter, the first of His disciples, then the 12 disciples, next 500 of Jesus’ followers at one time.
Some scholars believe Jesus’ appearance to the 500 was at the time when He gave the Great Commission recorded in Matthew 28 or during the ascension of Acts 1:3-8; this, of course, assumes they were separate events. Paul then reminds the Corinthians that some who had seen the resurrected Jesus were still living:
James, the brother of Jesus (5-7).
Paul then includes himself as the last of all the apostles of the Lord Jesus to have seen Him resurrected.
Paul was like a man born at the wrong time, meaning he was not birthed as one of the 12 apostles who followed Him and were trained by Him on Earth but was born abnormally later. He reminds the Corinthians that he did not deserve to be called an apostle for his persecution of the Church and for having been responsible for the execution of some of its saints (8-9). He declared himself a man on whom God had poured out special favor, and His grace somehow got results through Paul’s life work.
God’s grace enabled him to work harder than the other apostles, although, in Paul’s mind, there was no competition involved. Paul’s critical point was that it was the message, not the messenger, that was important. Paul knew it was God’s grace that had done a beyond-believable work in his life (10-11).
Arguments Concerning the Resurrection (12-29)
The Gospel Argument (12-19)
Paul then went to the heart of the gospel—the Resurrection—and explained why it is so important.
First, Paul confronts the strange thing happening right inside the fellowship: “How can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?” These were not outsiders. They were church members who still received the preaching that Christ had been raised—yet were denying that believers would be raised in the end. Paul refuses to let them keep the one while discarding the other, and he argues it straight from gospel logic: the two stand or fall together. If the dead are not raised, then not even Christ was raised—and if Christ was not raised, the whole thing collapses at once. The preaching is empty, their faith is empty, the apostles are exposed as liars about God, they are still in their sins, and every believer who has already died is simply lost. Deny the resurrection of the saints, and you have, whether you see it or not, denied the Resurrection of the King who guarantees it.
Paul’s logic was simple and straightforward. If Christ was raised, then so would the Corinthian followers be raised. If Christ was raised, then God raised Him. If there was no Resurrection, then Christ had not been raised; He would have been some kind of apparition, a truth the apostles clearly refuted. He was no ghost; as the witnesses who saw Him testified—He was material and spiritual at the same time.
Rip the Resurrection out of the gospel and you have not trimmed it—you have gutted it, torn out the very goal the whole thing was driving toward. And you have done worse: you have made the apostles liars about God, men testifying that He raised a Christ He never raised. Feel the weight of that. These were not men defending a comfortable idea. They were bleeding and dying for a specific, scandalous claim—and here is the thing the Greek world could have easily swallowed: a spirit, a ghost, a soul that escaped to Heaven. That was the respectable hope, the dignified dream of every philosopher. No one dies for that. What the apostles staked their blood on was the offensive thing—a body raised, while the flesh was ripped off through death—because that, and only that, is the gospel’s actual claim (12-16).
For Paul, the Resurrection was never merely the proof that the gospel is true; it was the gospel’s very substance—the old, dying creation dragged through the grave into the new. Resurrection is God’s verdict; sin is fully dealt with, and the whole person—body included—is being restored to the design He first intended. To gut the Resurrection is to gut God’s entire destiny for creation, leaving the world in a bodiless half-existence the pagans believed in (17-18).
Which is why Paul lands where he does: if our hope in Christ is for this life only, we are the most pitiable people alive (19). Not because this life is worthless, but because the Christian spends this body, now, sowing seed for a world that is bodily, coming, and real. Take away the raised body at the end, and every seed we plant rots in the ground for nothing.
The Future Hope Argument (20-28)
Paul then explained in detail how Jesus was the first of the material world to experience the new creation. He was the first new Creation, the first to be resurrected, and the seed form of what was to come: Heaven and Earth united in Christ, looking forward to a spirit/material world to which God was giving birth.
Paul’s logic was that if Jesus was first, then those who had totally given themselves to Him would become like Jesus: resurrected with a new creation body (20).
Paul then lays out his logic using Adam, who died and spread his death disease to all people. Just as death spread to all, so the Resurrection of Jesus was a similar event. The Resurrection of Jesus would bring the whole world into a resurrection new creation life (21).
All who belonged to Adam died; in the same logic, all who belonged, through allegiance (faith), to Christ would be given new life (22).
Paul saw Jesus as having been sown like a seed that would grow and produce a resurrection people with resurrected bodies and a new creation world.
There was an order to the whole thing: the first to be raised was Christ, then those who belong to Him at His coming (23).
After those who belong to Jesus are raised into their resurrected bodies, the old material world as the Corinthians knew it would come to a moment of rebirth. Jesus would destroy all opposing powers to the Father and bring every adversary under His rule and reign, then return the Kingdom to God (24).
Paul tried to explain it all clearly. Jesus is King, not in some usurping, power-grasping way. God made Jesus King and put everything created in subjection to Him. Everything in the created universe was put under Jesus’ rule, and in doing so, God was saying everything Jesus is and does has His wholehearted approval and authorization.
Then Paul, in essence, personified death and declared that death too is part of the material world under Jesus’ direct authority. Death, being under Jesus, will be destroyed as the last and most powerful enemy. Death will be destroyed because Jesus is on a mission to destroy everything contrary and adverse to eternal new creation life (25-26).
Jesus takes everything that has been placed under His authority and makes everything happen so the world can return to its ultimate purpose: God being the all in all of the new creation spirit/material world He created (27-28).
Yahweh's Faithful Favor
Psalm 106 is a “Thanksgiving Psalm” and the last one of Book IV. The writer is anonymous and the occasion unknown. Likely, this Psalm was written in connection with 105 by David for bringing the Ark back to Jerusalem. In Psalm 105, the great deeds of God are remembered; in Psalm 106, the Psalmist reminds the people how quickly God's great deeds can be forgotten.
This Psalm was written with an opening and closing praise and three confessions in the middle:
Praise for Yahweh's faithful favor (1-5)
Confession of Israel's faithlessness in Egypt (6-12)
Confession of Israel's faithlessness in the wilderness (13-33)
Confession of Israel's faithlessness in Canaan (34-46)
Praise for Yahweh's faithful salvation (47)
(vs. 48 ... the closing benediction of Book IV)
Purpose: To show us how to pray in times of renewal and refreshing so we not only remember the faithfulness of God (Psalms 105) but also our capacity to be faithless.