“Whoa, Keith, look like you skipped
quite a bit of 1 Corinthians there! Yesterday we were in chapter 6, and today
we’re in chapter 15!” Well, as I told you before, this is a devotional, not a
commentary. I’m pretty firmly committed to finishing up this by the end of the
year. Also, most of the stuff between chapters 7-14 is material which I don’t
want to cover in this forum, or which I’ve covered before. But today’s reading
is something I can’t skip over.
We dealt with this passage back when
we discussed evidence
for the Resurrection, but this is so pivotal that we need to take a second look
at it. First, we need a little background on this. One of the most pernicious
heresies of the early church was what we now call Gnosticism, which came out
full-bore in the 3rd century but which had its beginnings in the 1st.
Based on a bastardized form of Plato’s philosophy, it could be basically summarized
as “Spirit good, physical bad.” The spiritual plane was something from which
everything came, and the further you got from that—meaning the more rooted in
the physical world something was—the worse something was. So in other words the
ideal was to become a spirit floating around.
As you might've caught on, this is
contrary to what the Bible teaches. Yes, this physical world is fallen, and we
have to fight the “world” in
one sense of the word, but the problem is not physicality; it’s sin.
The physical world was created as "very good" in the beginning,
and it’s only when sin entered it that we have any problems at all.
And this way of thinking completely
contradicted the whole idea of the Incarnation, which is why a lot of folks who
bought into this heresy ended up denying this central truth; in fact that’s
probably one of the main errors which John was trying to refute in both his Gospel
and in his first letter.
The idea that God (who is Spirit) would willingly join himself with dirty
filthy human flesh would be repugnant to them, and so they rejected it.
That brings us to today’s passage,
really the entire chapter. This philosophy/heresy, or at least parts of it, had
infiltrated the church in Corinth. With all their problems—church factions,
sexual immorality, abusing Spiritual gifts—they also had to deal with this false
teaching. Basically they were denying the general resurrection of believers at
the return of Christ.
Please keep this in mind as we read
the rest of the chapter: There’s no
indication that the heretics were denying the resurrection of Christ. No
doubt they would if they could, since their belief system would flatly deny
that God-in-the-flesh (shudder) would die and then willingly go back to a
physical body after his death. Death was looked upon as being loosed from the
chains of a crude physical body.
But for now they were just questioning
the general resurrection of believers at the end of human history. And that’s
what Paul is fighting in this chapter. Before he starts refuting their error,
however, he needs to establish just how important the resurrection of Christ
really is.
He starts out by reminding them of
the “Gospel”—the message of good news--which he presented to them at the
beginning. This is the message by which they believed and had been saved. Not
only had they believed in this message, but they had taken their stand on this.
They were risking life and limb on the truth of this message.
I need to make a quick note about a
curious phrase: they were saved “if [they] hold firmly to the word [he]
preached to [them].” What does this mean? Is it possible to believe in Christ and
then lose your salvation later down the road? No. As we’ve discussed before, once you believe in Christ, there’s nothing you can do
later to lose your salvation. However, the same Bible that teaches that we can’t
lose our salvation also tells us that if you really are saved, you’re going to demonstrate
it in how you live. And if you publically question—much less deny—an essential
teaching of the Good News, then Paul, along with John and James, question that you were saved
in the first place.
How central is this? Friends, this
is not a disagreement about Pre-Millennialism vs. Post-Millennialism. Paul says
this is “of first importance.” When I said essential
in the last paragraph, I didn’t mean it in the sense of “really really
important.” I meant it quite literally,
that it is part of the essence of the Good News. Take it out, and you don’t
have the Good News anymore. It’s like water without any oxygen molecules.
What is “of first importance,” the
essence of the Good News? That Christ died for our sins (according what God had
promised), that he was buried, and that he rose on the third day (also
according to what God had promised). If you know and believe this, you know the
essence of what you need to know in order to be saved. Now, does this mean that
nothing else is important? Please
keep in mind that magical word: Context. John said that we also need
to believe that Jesus came
in the flesh, that he’s the Christ,
and that he’s the Son
of God. These are the nonnegotiables.
And notice that along with the
essential elements of the Message, he also lists the fact that the disciples
had been witnesses of the Resurrection as well. He’d appeared to the “Twelve,”
to over 500 people at once, to his nonbelieving half-brother James, and finally
Paul (who was on his way to a town to persecute more Christians). This
is listed as an essential part of our faith. Christ didn’t rise again
and then go straight back up to Heaven. No, he appeared to multiple witnesses
repeatedly over a 40-day period, and then had one last special appearance to
Paul.
I’m going to end today’s posting by
asking the same question I asked when I recently taught on Luke 24: I
supposedly believe in the Resurrection of Christ, but do I live like he’s
alive? Do I treat him as a living, breathing person I can talk and listen
to right now, who’s actively involved in my life, or do I treat him as a person
who’s only a historical figure I read about, like Abe Lincoln or Harry Truman?
Well?
Lord Jesus, you are the living Savior,
and I need to live like it. By your grace, I want the fact that I worship a living
Savior to work itself out in how I think, talk, and act. Please.
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