September 9 Click on verses for Full Scripture

previous - - - - - - - - - - next

Today's Pathway: I Corinthians 15:12-16 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:

In this passage Paul begins to defend the doctrine of the resurrection. He has already shown that the bodily resurrection of Jesus is an integral part of the Gospel message and must be believed in order for someone to be saved. Now Paul begins to show what the logical consequences are if someone denies that there will someday be a bodily resurrection for believers as well. Apparently there were some in the church that held to this false doctrine. Jack Arnold explains how this might have occurred:

"The Corinthians had succumbed to the fact there would be no resurrection of Christians at the Second Coming because this is what the unbelieving Greek philosophers taught. They held that the spirit part of man survives after death in some eternal oblivion, but the body goes to the grave and turns to dust, never to be raised. These philosophers taught that the body was essentially evil and that it was a prison for the spirit. When death came, the spirit was freed and liberated from the sinful body which was dead and forgotten. The idea of a literal resurrection of the body was offensive to the natural Greek mind. These Corinthian Christians had bought the reasoning that there was no bodily resurrection. They were not denying life after death but were denying bodily resurrection."

Paul opens his argument for believing in a bodily resurrection in verse 12 with a question: if you believe that Jesus rose from the dead, how can you then say that there is no resurrection from the dead? In other words, if someone believes that there can not be a resurrection for believers, then he is bound to also say that Jesus did not rise either. There is no middle ground: either there is a bodily resurrection or there is not. So in verse 13 he makes this point: if there is a resurrection, then all will be resurrected at some point. If there isn't, then Jesus Himself did not rise did not rise.

Moving on from there, Paul lists several consequences that must occur if Jesus did not rise from the dead. In verse 14 he writes that his preaching, and the preaching of the other apostles, is vain if Christ didn't rise. It becomes an empty, hollow message that serves no purpose and can save no one's soul. And subsequently, those who have placed their faith in that message have nothing as well. John MacArthur wrote,

"Apart from the resurrection Jesus could not have conquered sin or death or Hell, and those three great evils would forever be man’s conquerors....If there were no resurrection, the hall of the faithful in Hebrews 11 would instead be the hall of the foolish. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Rahab, David, the prophets, and all the others would have been faithful for nothing. They would have been mocked, scourged, imprisoned, stoned, afflicted, ill-treated, and put to death completely in vain. All believers of all ages would have believed for nothing, lived for nothing, and died for nothing."

In verse 15 Paul states that if Christ did not rise from the dead, then he and other preachers are liars, because they have given testimony that God raised Jesus up. If there is no future resurrection for believers, then Jesus isn't risen either (verse 16), and those who say that they have seen Him are lying. These "liars" would include all those that he listed in verses 5-7: Peter, the twelve disciples, James, the other apostles, the five hundred brethren, and Paul himself. If they are lying about the resurrection, then they are lying about the Gospel, which means they are lying about salvation, and they are lying about God, and thus nothing that they say can or should be trusted.