A Coward, A Skeptic, and An Enemy

My name is Dave Sloop. I'm one of our pastors here, and we are so excited that you have joined us on this Easter Sunday for worship. We're going to be looking today at a chapter in the New Testament. It's actually the longest chapter by number of verses that the apostle Paul ever wrote. Anyone want to take a stab at it? Hey, Tim, you got it. It's 1 Corinthians 15. It's the longest chapter by verses. And what's interesting about it is that there is an unmistakable central theme to the entire chapter. What was so important to the apostle Paul that this church in Corinth understand that he would dedicate 58 verses to explaining it?

Let me put up on the screen verse 12, which I think captures the heart of the controversy in the Corinthian church.

How can some of you say there is no resurrection from the dead? — 1 Corinthians 15:12

The church at Corinth wanted a Christianity without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now some of you may say, what does that even mean? I mean, isn't that the entire point of Christianity? Isn't that how the whole movement started to begin with—that they saw Jesus of Nazareth risen from the grave? Isn't that what we're here to celebrate on Easter Sunday? How is it that these people could say there is no resurrection from the dead? And you would be right to ask those questions. And Paul is going to address them.

The Corinthian Context

But before we get into exactly what he said, I want to consider where these people lived, when Paul was writing to them, and what was going on at that time. The church at Corinth was about 50 miles from a little town called Athens, Greece. And from that little town, there were some people, famous philosophers that came from that place: Socrates, Aristotle, Plato. And the ideas that these guys came up with would massively impact not just Corinth, which was 50 miles away, but all of Western civilization. In fact, you may not know that to this day, Athens is referred to as the cradle of Western civilization. Many of the ideas that they came up with over two thousand years ago are what our current government is based on. It is a birthplace of democracy. We were massively influenced by Greek thought, and obviously, they were too. And much of what they taught was diametrically opposed to the gospel.

But here's the question that I want to ask: Why is it and how is it that a group of believers—and they were genuine believers, by the way—how is it that these believers who had been discipled and mentored and taught by Paul could so quickly devolve in their understanding of what the gospel was? And the answer is that they were massively influenced by the culture in which they lived. And they were allowing their culture to influence what they believed about God. And if you don't think that's a mistake that we can make today, then we're not paying close enough attention.

Do you know that there's churches all over the world today that are gathering on Easter Sunday, but they do not believe that Jesus really raised from the dead? They do not believe that this book is a record of things that actually occurred, and therefore it is authoritative for our life. They have stripped Jesus of his divinity. It happened then, and it happens today.

And so with that context and backdrop and with some measure of humility, let's take a look at how Paul responds to this group of people who want Christianity without the resurrection.

The Gospel Defined

Here's what he says in verse one.

Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you, which you received in which you stand. — 1 Corinthians 15:1

Paul says, I would like to remind you of the gospel. Now, if I were to ask or poll the audience, what does that mean? What is the gospel? Most would say, well, that word means the gospel is good news. And that is what it means. But what we might not know is the historical context of that word. See, that word conveyed a messenger—someone after a battle that was fought that people did not participate in, but they massively benefited from. On the battlefield, they would send a messenger. In fact, this is where we get the marathon, the 26-mile race. It was someone who ran to announce a victory that had been won. It was a battle won, waged on behalf of someone else—a battle they didn't have to fight, but that they benefited from. And Paul says that is what the gospel is. It is not rules for living. It is not some new philosophy to which we give intellectual assent. It is something else. It is news about something that God did.

Here's an easy way to understand it: The gospel is not advice about what you should do. It is an announcement about what God has already done for you.

And we're going to see precisely what Paul thought about that in verse three.

For I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. — 1 Corinthians 15:3-4

And that he appeared to Cephas and then to the 12. And then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

Paul says a few things here. He says, "I delivered something to you of first importance, what I also received." The first thing that Paul wants us to know about the gospel is that it is something he received. In other words, he is not a philosopher. He is a messenger. He's not bringing new ideas that he came up with, that he wants people to conform to. He is bringing to them divine revelation, which is why he uses this phrase twice. According to the scriptures, he died and was buried. And he was raised again according to the scriptures.

Paul's saying, look, I'm bringing to you God's message. That's all I am. I'm not someone with something new. I'm bringing to you God's words. And it's unwise to change God's message. We receive it. In fact, he would say later, he already said in verse one, "I wanna remind you of the gospel which you received," and that is one of the two responses you can have for the gospel. You can either receive it or you can reject it, but you cannot, as the Corinthian church was trying to do, reduce it. Because the moment that you do, it loses its meaning.

The Load-Bearing Wall of Faith

See, the resurrection, it is the load bearing wall of the Christian faith. Have you ever knocked out a wall in your home trying to renovate and you discovered that it was load bearing?

Or maybe some of you had a cup of coffee this morning. I don't know if you've ever been drinking a cup of coffee. I've had this experience many times at hotels where I'm drinking it and I'm just still tired. And then I realize, I'm not drinking coffee. I am drinking decaf.

Now some of you might think those are just different versions of the same thing, but they're not. The moment that you take the caffeine out of coffee, it is no longer coffee. It is hot brown disappointment, and it has no effect to change anything.

Paul's saying, that is what the resurrection is to the gospel. You take away the resurrection, it all falls in on itself.

Paul is going to say, you can try to deny the resurrection, but the moment that you do, there's three things that are gonna happen. The first is this: you're gonna have to deny its historical evidence. Secondly, you're going to have to ignore its historical proof. You're going to have to deny its obvious transforming power in the lives of the people who received it. And third, you're going to lose its future promise.

The Historical Proof of the Resurrection

Listen to what Paul says. This is the proof of the resurrection. And, you know, this is something unique about Christianity. Paul is going to say, this whole thing hangs on an event that occurred in history. And if it didn't, let's all go home.

See, it would be much smarter if this was something that people were making up. Let's make up something that cannot be debunked or disproven. The resurrection in that sense makes Christianity vulnerable, but also roots it in history to an event that occurred.

Listen to what he says:

He appeared to Cephas and then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. — 1 Corinthians 15:5-8

Paul is saying, you wanna deny the resurrection? You're going to have to deal with some facts, namely an empty tomb, eyewitnesses, and the massively transformed lives of the people who saw, who claimed to see him in this explosive Christian movement in the first century that is inexplicable apart from the resurrection.

First of all, there was an empty tomb. This whole thing assumes that. You know, it would have been the easiest movement to debunk. All they needed to do was provide a body, and they never could. And now some of you may say, well, the disciples just could have hid the body, and that is plausible. But then you have to deal with the eyewitnesses.

Jesus was not just here for a couple days. Jesus was here, the gospel writers claim, for forty consecutive days. And he appeared to individuals and to groups. One time, right outside the tomb, right after he was raised, Mary Magdalene was outside the tomb weeping, and Jesus appears to her. Another time, there's a couple of guys walking on the road to Emmaus, and he appears to them. One time, he appears to the 10 disciples. Thomas wasn't there, but he appeared to them. And when they talked to Thomas later, he says, "I'm not going to believe until I see the holes in his wrists and his feet." And Jesus came back and appeared to them again when Thomas was there. And he saw it, and he said, "My Lord and my God."

Jesus said, "You believe because you have seen."

Greater still are those who have not seen and yet believe. He was talking about us. Paul tells us here that one time, Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time. That is not how hallucinations happen corporately. 500 people claiming to see the same thing at the same time in the same place. How do you deal with that? Paul goes on to say, many of them are still alive. He is daring you to go talk to them. Find out. See if they changed their story because I'll tell you, Paul would say, none of them have. Every single one of them would go to the grave believing that he raised from the dead. In fact, many of them would go to the grave precisely because they believed that Jesus raised from the dead.

You wanna deny the resurrection? You've gotta deal with an empty tomb, and you have got to deal with some eyewitnesses. But then thirdly, you've gotta deal with the transformed lives of the people who claimed to see him. He mentions three by name. Cephas, who was Peter, one of Jesus' best friends when he was here on the earth. Secondly, he mentions James, who was Jesus' brother. And third, he mentions himself, Paul, the apostle. I wanna talk to you briefly about each one of those guys.

Peter: A Coward Transformed

What do we know about Peter before the crucifixion? He was a coward. He denied Jesus three times on the night of Jesus' death. He said, I don't even know the man. What about after Jesus died? He was hiding in a room with ten of his best friends. Why? Because they were convinced we are next. They killed Jesus, they're gonna kill me. He was hiding. He was a coward.

And then something happened. This guy, Peter, would go on to be the fearless, bold spokesperson of the early church movement. In fact, one of my favorite verses in the entire Bible is Acts 4:13.

When they saw the courage of Peter and John, they were astonished. And they took note that these men had been with Jesus. — Acts 4:13

Where did Peter's courage and boldness come from? He had seen the risen Christ. Peter would be arrested. He would be tortured and beaten. They put him in jail. They said, stop talking about this. And he would not. On the night before Jesus died or the night that Jesus did die, he was terrified. He wouldn't even claim to know him. And then after this event that he claimed Jesus raised from the dead, Peter went to his death because he wouldn't shut up.

In fact, legend has it that Peter came to the moment of his death, which would have been crucifixion, and he said to his accusers, I am not worthy to die as my lord. And so he was crucified upside down. How do you explain that? People don't go to their death believing in a lie. At some point, they break. Not Peter.

James: A Skeptic Transformed

What about James? James was Jesus' actual biological brother. They had different dads. They had the same mom. James was a skeptic. In Mark chapter 3, James and the other brothers are quoted saying, he's out of his mind. They didn't believe in the words that Jesus was preaching. In John chapter 7, we see that same evidence that his brothers were skeptical. They were goading him. They just didn't believe that what he was saying was true.

And then something happened. James would go on to be the leader of the church in Jerusalem, an incredibly important church in the first century. We have a book in our Bible that bears James' name. You know what the first verse says?

James, servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. — James 1:1

Can you imagine saying that about your sibling, your brother? James would go to his death because he would not stop talking about his brother who raised back to life. How do you explain that?

Paul: An Enemy Transformed

And then finally, let's consider the apostle Paul whose name used to be Saul, and he was public enemy number one of the early church movement. He was zealous about shutting this thing down. And it came from pure motives. He believed that this was a blight on faithful Judaism. How could you say that a man was God? The book of Acts tells us that he was standing in approval when Stephen, the first Christian martyr, died.

And then something happened. The apostle Paul would go on to be the most effective person to ever live for the cause of Christ. How do you explain that?

Can I prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that Jesus raised from the dead? I cannot. But if you wanna deny that it happened, you have some facts that you need to deal with if you're going to be intellectually honest. Remember, Paul was writing sixteen to eighteen years after Jesus died. He's saying, go talk to the witnesses. It happened. Look at the people who staked their life on this message.

Do you think they were doing that to advance some mission because of a lie? There are some facts that you got to deal with if you want to say that the resurrection of Jesus Christ did not happen. That is the proof of the resurrection.

The Power of the Resurrection

But secondly, let's take a look at the power of the resurrection. In verse 17, Paul says this:

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.

That word means profitless. It means like, what's the point? And he says, "and you are still in your sins."

Now the implication here—and Paul's gonna say this three times. You're gonna go back on your own in this chapter and see where Paul says, "if Christ hasn't been raised," and then three times he says that. And if you wanna go through, what you would do is you would take the claim that would be true if Jesus had not raised, and you'd flip it on its head and say, okay. Well, Paul is saying that Jesus did raise from the dead, and so the opposite is true. And so if we do that here, what he's saying is this: If Christ has not been raised—in other words, Christ has been raised—and therefore your faith is not profitless, it is profitable. It is of great value. And secondly, you are no longer in your sins.

I wanna talk about that phrase for a minute. What does that mean that you are no longer in your sins?

First of all, it means that you're no longer under its penalty. Jesus Christ claimed to die for sins, for sinners. That's what you and I are. He claimed to die for sinners. One of the last things that he said on the cross:

It is finished. Tetelestai.

It was a banking term, and what it meant literally was paid in full. That's what Jesus claimed about his death. I paid for sin. The question is, was the payment accepted? How do we know? If Jesus remained in the tomb, you and I would wonder forever. Was God pleased? Did he accept it?

I don't know if you've ever had this moment of panic, but have you ever—let's just say you're at the airport and you get there, you've paid for your flight. It's already stressful enough. And then the person at the gate says, "Hey. We don't have a record of you having bought a ticket for this flight." Now maybe you're like my friend Daniel who prints everything. And maybe you show up there and you say, "Uh-uh. I have the receipt. I'm getting on this flight. I have proof of payment." And they say, "My mistake."

The empty tomb is our receipt. If your past failures and sins ever condemn you, and they will—by the way, they will whisper to you, "You're not worthy. It didn't work." If you ever doubt it, you need two things. First of all, you need to have Jesus' perspective on your sin. It is finished. And you need the receipt for that payment, which is the empty tomb. You look back at that empty tomb, and you say, God has forgiven me—past, present, and future. It is paid for.

That is the power of the resurrection.

Here's the second thing. It's not just that we are freed from the penalty of sin. Listen to what Paul says in verse 10:

By the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain or without effect. There was something effective about his grace to me. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was within me.

Paul is saying here, look, I didn't just get new information. I didn't just get data. I got power. You wanna know what transformed me? It wasn't just some experience. It was the Spirit of God in me.

Paul would put it later in Galatians 2 like this:

I've been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.

I have a new power for life. Jesus, at the end of his life, said to his disciples, "It's better for you that I go because if I go, I send my Spirit." And when Jesus sends his Spirit to those who receive him by faith, he moves in. He takes up residence in your heart.

You get a new heart—a heart of flesh instead of a heart of stone. You get new affections. You get new passions and desires. Do you still struggle? Of course, you do. You still sin, but you don't enjoy it like you used to. The things you used to love, you now hate. Even when you do them, you hate that you do. You're grieved. Why? Not because you read some book, but because his Spirit lives within you. And his Spirit will not let us enjoy a life of sin anymore. Not for too long anyway. Not if we really belong to him.

We didn't just get new information. We got new power.

The Promise of the Resurrection

But finally, Paul says, wanna deny the resurrection, you are going to lose its promise. You're gonna lose the promise of the resurrection.

The proof of the resurrection—it's pointing to Jesus' past, which by the way is our past. I'll explain that later. You deny the resurrection, you are—the proof points to his past. The power points to my present, that I have a new power to live today because of the resurrection. But the promise points to my future. It is a hope that we can stay firmly rooted in.

So what is the promise of the resurrection?

Look at verse eighteen and nineteen. He says:

If Christ has not been raised, then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. — 1 Corinthians 15:18

You know what he's saying here? If Christ didn't raise from the dead, all of the ones that we love who claim to hope in Christ, we will never see them again if Christ didn't raise from the dead. But he goes on. And he says:

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. — 1 Corinthians 15:19

But again, the inverse of this is true. Since Christ raised from the dead, we will have a great reunion with those that we love who have fallen asleep, who have passed away hoping and trusting in Christ. And secondly, we are not most to be pitied. It's the opposite of that. We are to be most envied. That's the reality that Paul lived under. And when you understand the life that Paul lives, this becomes even more shocking because his life was a hard life.

He expands on it in verse 30. He says:

Why are we in danger every hour? I die every day. If the dead are not raised, let us eat, drink, for tomorrow we die. — 1 Corinthians 15:30-32

Paul says, my life makes zero sense apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. If he did not raise from the dead, what am I even doing here? My life is a joke. I am the laughing stock of humanity if Christ did not raise from the dead. So let's just eat, drink, and be merry. For tomorrow we die. Let's get as much money and as much pleasure as we can because this is all there is.

But this is not all there is. As James would say, your life is a vapor. We stake it all on these years that we live on this planet. And it's not to say that these years aren't important. They're just really small compared to eternity. But how we live in this window will determine eternity.

Let me turn to a verse in second Corinthians four that highlights how the resurrection promise can give us strength today. Paul says:

So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. — 2 Corinthians 4:16

Pause. Paul was beaten, tortured. He lost all of his status. He's a very respected individual. He lost his career. He lost his wealth. He lost his home. He lost respect, dignity, honor. He lost it all. And he said it was worth it. He said it was worth everything that I lost. He would say:

What is more, nothing compares to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. — Philippians 3:8

The only reason that Paul was willing to endure such suffering in this life is because of this:

This light and momentary affliction is preparing for us a weight of glory beyond all comparison. — 2 Corinthians 4:17

See, Paul, because of what he believed and because of the power that was in him and because of the promise that it pointed to, he could take everything in life as it came. The good stuff, he didn't love it too much because he knew Christ was better. And the hard things, he says, that's just preparing me for the place that I will spend eternity. It's making me stronger. And if you snuff out my life, I'll just get there quicker. You cannot lose. And so Paul moved through life with tremendous confidence.

What is it that secures this promise? How does the resurrection secure it? Look at verse 20. We'll start to wrap up here. In verse 20, it says:

But if in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. — 1 Corinthians 15:20

Do you know what first fruit is? It is when the harvest came, they would ties that to God, acknowledging, first of all, these crops came from you God, and we're gonna give you the first and best because we recognize that the first fruits is just a sign that there is more to come. And the rest that comes behind this first fruit is gonna be just like this.

I've heard Tim describe it this way. When you go to the ice cream place and they give you a little sample on a spoon, and you taste it to decide whether or not you wanna have more, that's a first fruit bite. It's saying the full scoop is gonna be just like the sample.

Another way to say it is everything that happened to Christ, I get credit for. He died to sin. I died to sin. He raised in newness to life. I will raise. He has a resurrected body. I will have a resurrected body.

This is why Paul in Colossians three can speak about these things as if they've already happened. He says:

You died with Christ, and you have raised with him. — Colossians 3:1

Present tense. Seated with him. Why can he say that? Because Christ is the first fruit. What is true of him will be true of me. It hasn't happened yet, but I talk about it in the present tense because it's as if it has already occurred. That is the promise of the resurrection.

What about you? I don't know where you stand today, but my suspicion is that there are some people here that need to be reminded of the gospel, that Jesus did actually die and raise from the dead.

And because of that, there are implications for our life. Christianity is not just some philosophy that you can choose to live by. The claim that it makes about itself is that it's true. It actually happened historically. And if it didn't, none of us should be wasting our time here.

Some of us need to be reminded. And then my suspicion is there's probably some of us here today that have never gotten to the place where we could say, yeah, I believe that this is true. I've accepted this. And here's what I would say to you: Notice the three people that Jesus appeared to. A coward, a skeptic, and an enemy. You know what that means? There is room for you. This happened. And if it did, you owe it to yourself to discover whether or not the claims that Christianity makes about itself are true or not.

It is intellectually dishonest to be indifferent about this. I want to put up for you a quote from C.S. Lewis. He said:

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, is of infinite importance. The only thing that it cannot be is moderately important.

If you're here today and you said, "I'm not really sure. I think it's probably true, but it doesn't really affect my life." That is intellectually inconsistent. Because if what Jesus has done actually happened, it's the only thing that matters. You owe it to yourself to discover whether or not this actually happened.

He is alive, and you can know him because of that. He is still changing lives to this day. There's a lot of people here that can give testimony to that. Our hope and prayer is that you might become one. He's alive. He is here.

In fact, I would like to talk to him now if you would join me. Father, we thank you for your resurrected son. We thank you for the proof of the resurrection, for the power of the resurrection to transform me, and for the promise of a future that we can cling to. If you're here today and you sense God stirring in your heart, there are people in the back that would love to pray with you so that you could discover this reality in your life today. Father, we love you. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.