Jesus’s resurrection is the basis of our belief that death does not have the final say. Because Jesus is raised to life, we will also be raised to life.
Week 1
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Week 1
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:20–28
Topic(s): Resurrection, Death, New Life
Big Idea of the Message: Jesus’s resurrection is the basis of our belief that death does not have the final say. Because Jesus is raised to life, we will also be raised to life.
Application Point: Christians believe that death is not the final word, because Jesus’s resurrection defeats death and guarantees our future resurrection.
Sermon Ideas and Talking Points:
- “The first fruits were the beginning of the Palestinian harvest (familiar from the Old Testament feast of first fruits, Pentecost—Lev 23:15–21), guaranteeing the imminent ingathering of the remainder of the harvest” (Craig Keener, The IVP Background Commentary: New Testament [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993], 486). Jesus’s resurrection is a signal to Christians that we will also enjoy the resurrection life.
- Gordon Fee provides helpful context for this section of 1 Corinthians 15: “In the preceding paragraph Paul attempted to show the irresponsibility of the Corinthian believers’ arguing that there is no resurrection of the dead by pointing out how this would play out, if they are right, in terms of their own existence. But since all of that was hypothetical, Paul now turns to demonstrate that Christ’s resurrection, which both he and they believe to have happened (vv. 1–11), has made the resurrection of the dead both necessary and inevitable” (Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2014], 827).
- Commenting on verses 24–28, Ben Witherington writes, “Paul is probably countering Roman imperial eschatology in this section, which may also explain his stress on the fatherhood of God, because in the imperial propaganda the emperor was portrayed as not only divine but also as ‘father of the fatherland.’ … Paul is trying to supplant the imperial eschatology, which was clearly extant in Corinth and which looked to the emperor as the father and benefactor providing the current blessings, with an eschatology that involves Christ and a truly divine Father. He says that all merely human rulers … are not to be worshipped. The often overlooked social implications of this passage are that Paul is indirectly arguing for some in Corinth to disengage from previous commitments to imperial eschatology” (Ben Witherington, Conflict & Community in Corinth: A Socio- Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1995], 304–5).
- The early church father Athanasius writes about the necessity of Christ’s defeat of death: “As when a great king has entered some large city and made his dwelling in one of the houses in it, such a city is certainly made worthy of high honor, and no longer does any enemy or bandit descend upon it, but it is rather reckoned worthy of all care because of the king’s having taken residence in one of its houses; so also does it happen with the King of all. Coming himself into our realm, and dwelling in a body like the others, every design of the enemy against human beings has henceforth ceased, and the corruption of death, which had prevailed formerly against them, perished. For the race of human beings would have been utterly dissolved had not the Master and Savior of all, the Son of God, come for the completion of death” (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, Popular Patristic Series 44b [Yonkers, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011], 58).
- Concluding his section about the implications of the resurrection for Christian living, N. T. Wright writes, “Of course, in our incomplete world, God’s gentle offer and demand press upon us as fearful things, almost threatening. But God’s offer and demand are neither fearful nor threatening. God in his gentle love longs to set us free from the prison we have stumbled into—the loveless prison where we refuse both the offer and the demand of forgiveness. We are like a frightened bird before him, shrinking away lest this demand crush us completely. But when we eventually yield—when he corners us, and finally takes us in his hand—we find to our astonishment that he is infinitely gentle, and that his only aim is to release us from our prison, to set us free to be the people he made us to be. But when we fly out into the sunshine, how can we not then offer the same gentle gift of freedom, of forgiveness, to those around us? That is the truth of the resurrection, turned into prayer, turned into forgiveness and remission of debts, turned into love. It is constantly surprising, constantly full of hope, constantly coming to us from God’s future to shape us into the people through whom God can carry out his work in the world” (N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope [London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2007], 302).
- Jesus is “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v. 20). This video about growing apples, from True Food TV, talks about the various stages of growth for the fruit trees. The farmers know that their season is starting when the first crop begins to come in (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWLmEh1HIBw). Christ’s resurrection is the signal to Christians that they too will be resurrected from the dead.
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