The Cross’ Promise of Resurrection Optional Bible Prep
1 Corinthians 15
Summary:
Paul provides us with a logical argument that demonstrates the resurrection of Jesus is a historical reality. He offers an evidential case and a historical case that modern scholarship–– even atheist and agnostic scholars––holds as the most plausible explanation for the sudden rise and spread of Christianity. Namely, Jesus was actually resurrected from the dead. While this evidence is massively important it is not the only case Paul argues, for Paul wants the Corinthians to see why the resurrection matters to their personal lives. Throughout this letter the topics of the Greco-Roman culture, sex, the human body, money, worship, spiritual gifts and growth––within all of these Paul has the resurrection in view because it informs the significance of each of them. As such Paul closes his evidential and historical argument with the existential significance of the fact that Jesus was raised from the dead––what it means for us and why it matters today.
Key Passages:
1) The logic and evidence of Jesus’ resurrection
vv. 3–9 evidential case for Jesus’ resurrection
a) v. 4 tomb was empty
b) v. 6 hundreds of eye-witnesses
c) v. 9 the changed lives of people who saw Jesus resurrected
All of the people who still live in Judaea and who saw Jesus alive after his crucifixion with their own eyes, you can still go talk to them. Paul could not claim this unless all of the people, throughout the remainder of their lives, testified to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. Scholarly support: Pannenberg (atheist to Christian convert based on historical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection), Wright (Christian), Pinchas Lapide (atheist). All of these academic historians affirm that the best explanation for the events around Jesus’ death and the rapid spread of Christianity immediately afterwards is that Jesus was actually raised from the dead (even the atheist).
2) The Historicity of Jesus’ resurrection
a) Alternate explanations fail
b) Paul writes this letter within appx. 16yrs of Jesus’ death, but the creed he cites (“For I delivered to you what I received”) originates as early as 3-months after Jesus’ crucifixion, and no later than 5-years. All of the evidence is early, far too early for ‘fables’ to be invented about Jesus.
c) Paul before Agrippa (“these did not happen in a corner”), i.e., publicly available facts. Illustration of Antony Flew, atheist philosopher who at the end of his life affirmed that God exists and that Jesus’ resurrection was the best evidence for that fact.
All of the evidence for Jesus’ resurrection were publicly known facts. Anyone at the time could investigate their truth or falsity by several means. This historical evidence is so compelling that an Oxford philosopher who spent his entire career arguing against the existence of God eventually concluded that Jesus’ resurrection was real, and subsequently wrote the book, “There is a God” (2008).
3) The meaning of Jesus’ resurrection
vv. 13–4, 17–9, 32–4
a) We have a Savior that is not the product of wish-fulfillment, and yet fulfills our deepest desires for life.
b) The message of the cross entails that Jesus’ resurrection is the promise of our future resurrection to eternal life.
Key Idea:
The resurrection of Jesus is not something that one has to take on mere faith, a belief you talk yourself into in order to become Christian. It is a historical fact that can be weighed, tested, and judged, and all of the available evidence indicates that it was a real event in the actual world. It was not the death of Jesus that transformed His disciples; it was not His miracles that transformed them; it was not His teaching that transformed them. It was Jesus’ resurrection that took orthodox Jews, the most unlikely people to believe that a human could be a divine Son of God, and transformed them into radically new people who were willing and able to endure everything that came against them for testifying to Jesus’ resurrection. Most importantly, Jesus’ resurrection is God’s way of giving us a receipt that reads, “Paid in full across all history.”