That's the Lord's blessing on our continued time in the Word. Father, it is good and it is right that we should be exhorted. That we should be exhorted to have hearts and minds set on things above. To have our hearts and minds directed and focused in accordance with the truth that we have been raised up in Christ Jesus. Father, that is a truth that does escape our natural capacities of thought and reasoning and understanding. And we must confess to you that for all of our knowledge, for all of our understanding of spiritual truths, of biblical truths, we very much of natural minds that think in natural ways that are very much, as Paul exhorted the Colossians, we have minds that are very much set on things of this earth. Not necessarily base things, not necessarily evil things, but nonetheless things that are of this realm. Things that are of this present creation. We don't live in the light of the new reality that has come in Christ. As Jerry reminded us, His resurrection has changed everything. He has inaugurated the new creation. The realm of eternity and we now inhabit it as those who have died and our lives are hidden with Christ and God. Father, forgive us that we think in such earthly ways, that we live in such earthly ways, that our lives are so very preoccupied with that which is passing away, that which has already been condemned and passed away in Christ, evidenced in his resurrection from the dead. Father, teach us what it means to be a resurrection people. And may Christ be honored as we honor the truth of resurrection as it is true in Him. Meet us in our need. Build us up in this most holy faith. We ask for Christ's sake. Amen. We continue in 1 Corinthians 15 with our consideration of the topic of resurrection And again, we've seen that Paul introduces this topic by reminding the Corinthians of the Gospel that he preached to them. His topic is resurrection, but he begins by reminding them of the Gospel that he preached to them. The Gospel of resurrection. The Gospel that they had heard, that they had received, that they had believed, and he says, in which you have stood fast until this present time. And so Paul begins by emphasizing what is foundational, which is that the topic of resurrection, and I note I don't say THE resurrection, because we always think in terms of Jesus' resurrection, and it's not that that is not foundational to what we're speaking about, but we're talking about resurrection as such. The principle of resurrection that pertains ultimately to the whole creation, but certainly pertains to the human race. as it finds its destiny in Christ Himself. But Paul was emphasizing from the outset to the Corinthians that resurrection is not a side issue. It's not an ancillary thing off to the side. And you might say, well of course it's not, but for the most part we tend to live as if it is. Resurrection is a side issue. But for Paul it was not a side issue, it was the very essence of the Gospel. And therefore, for the Corinthians to misjudge or misappropriate or in any way stand in a wrongful relation to this truth of resurrection was for them to call into question their own faith. Certainly the ground of their faith. What it was that they had really believed about this Christ in whom they had placed their faith and their hope. And so as Paul began in that way, he now moves forward to show the implications, the critical implications of this thing called resurrection. And specifically the implications of denying resurrection as it really is. The implications of denying the truth of resurrection as it is true in Christ himself. So, I'd like to read then with you 1 Corinthians 15 beginning with the 12th verse and we'll be considering verses 12 through 19 this morning. Now again, I'm not going to read from verse 1, but keep in mind again the order of Paul's flow, his argument concerning this issue of resurrection. In view of this gospel of resurrection that he preached, that all the apostles preached, that the churches, the saints had believed, Paul says in verse 12, now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how does some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, it's empty, and your faith is also vain. Moreover, we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we witnessed against God, in that case, we witnessed against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied." Essentially, Paul introduces these implications by asking a very simple question. If resurrection is the marrow of the gospel that was preached to you Corinthians, and it was. Paul was the one who brought that gospel to them. He knows what gospel they heard and received and believed. He knows the gospel that was preached to them. And if the marrow of that gospel is this truth of resurrection and they had embraced that gospel, how is it then that there could be some among them who would say there is no resurrection from the dead? There's his simple question. And moving beyond that or drawing from that, do they understand the implications of holding that position? Do they understand what it means that they would hold such a position? You see, we can talk about the importance of bodily resurrection, the fact of bodily resurrection. Was Jesus really raised bodily? Wasn't he really raised? But we often don't think through the implications of the position that we take. That's typical with most things. We just know what's the orthodox position or what's the accepted position, but we don't know why. We don't know why it matters. We don't know why it's important. We don't know the implications that follow from it. Paul wanted the Corinthians to understand what are at least the very critical implications of the denial of resurrection. The denial of resurrection as such. And so he begins then with his first implication, but before I get to that, I want to kind of by way of review, these are all things I've mentioned to this point, but establish again by way of review some considerations just to put this back in our mind. Why would the Corinthians be doubting or questioning this issue of resurrection if Paul had preached that to them? What would possibly be a reason for that to be the case? It'd be one thing if that gospel had not been brought to them, but it had been. So, what was going on? Well, again, as I mentioned to you, there are possible historical considerations that were affecting this question of resurrection and the truth of resurrection. We know that in many of the early churches there were questions concerning the timing of the resurrection. In other words, resurrection as it pertains to the saints of God, had resurrection already occurred? Had the resurrection already occurred? Was that possibly the reason Christians were dying when Jesus had conquered death? I mentioned to you before that in the very early days of the church, there were those who believed that Jesus' conquest of death, they understood that's what resurrection meant. It meant more than simply atonement for sin. It meant the conquest of death itself. And if Jesus had conquered death, then didn't that mean that believers would not die? Didn't Jesus say, whoever believes in me has passed out of death into life? And didn't he say, I am the resurrection and the life? Whoever, though a man were dead, if he believes, yet will he live. And whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Didn't he say that? With respect to the raising of Lazarus. Didn't Paul preach a resurrection as a present reality? So had the resurrection perhaps already occurred? And maybe that was the explanation for now why Christians were dying. They had missed it. They had missed it. There's also the question of the pertinence of the resurrection. Does it apply only to those who live until the return of Christ? Remember, in the early days of the church, the conviction among many was that the parousia, the appearing of Jesus Christ, the fullness of the coming of the kingdom was going to occur in their lives. They believed that. And so there was a view that said, well, The parousia and the resurrection associated with it only pertain to those who live until that point, until his coming. Why? Because how can a corpse be raised? The idea that Paul is speaking to here is this question, this strange idea of the raising of corpses. How can a corpse be raised? Therefore, it seems to be that those who are alive at the time of the return of Christ will be those who will partake in this resurrection. Those who die before that, they can't share in that because there cannot be this raising of a decomposed corpse. This is again what Paul is dealing with even in this epistle. And certainly you see that that was true in his address to the Thessalonians. Chapter 4, what we call the rapture passage, is really Paul addressing this question of what about those who have died in Christ. And Paul says they aren't left out of the picture when he says we don't mourn as those who have no hope over those who have died. It's not just a funeral thing. Oh, they've gone off to heaven. You don't have to be sad. Paul's talking about a mourning that those who have died in Christ before the parousia now miss out. And he says that's not the case. When Christ comes, we who live will not precede them. Those who have died will be raised first and then we will be raised after them and together we will be gathered to the Lord. Comfort one another with those words. There was also the question of immortality versus resurrection. In other words, did the Christian message of resurrection for the saints refer to the glorification of the soul? Did the question of newness of life, of life out of death for Christians, was it really about the glorification, the continuance of the soul and its liberation from the body? The body which itself is subject to corruption, everybody can see it, everybody knows it, it is subject to corruption not only in this life, but after death. So does this question of resurrection, life out of death, pertain to the inner man as opposed to the body? Those are some historical questions that were very much a part of what was going on in the early church and its thinking. There are also theological considerations that bear on Paul's instruction in this chapter. And the first I've already mentioned, or at least touched on, and that is that Paul did teach a form of present resurrection. Now whether we want to call that resurrection or not, Paul taught that there is a raising up of the inner man as the enlivening work of the Spirit. Paul taught the raising up of the inner man. We read from Romans 6. Right? Where Paul talks about buried with Christ, sharing in His death, and so also raised to walk in newness of life. In Ephesians 2, Paul says that this God who has such great mercy because of the love with which He loved us, when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ. He raised us up in Him and seated us in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Ephesians 2. We're all well familiar with Colossians 3. If then you have been raised up with Christ, and Paul's premise is you have, then keep seeking the things that are above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Why? Have your hearts and minds set on that realm, that reality that defines and determines you. You died. Your lives are hidden with Christ in God. You have been raised up in Christ Jesus. You are seated in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. Paul taught a form of present resurrection. And that, I think, may help to explain the Corinthians' denial of this idea of a future resurrection or a bodily resurrection. First of all, Paul's instruction could lead them or reinforce what was very much suited to their cultural background, their Greek philosophical cultural background, the Greek dualistic worldview. It could very much be reinforced, or that idea could reinforce, along with Paul's teaching, this notion that resurrection, life out of death, pertains to the spirit. In other words, it is spiritual, not physical. It pertains to the raising up of the inner man. And therefore, at death what happens is the enlivened soul returns to God. Didn't Paul say, I long to go and be with Christ? That's better by far. And he said to the Corinthians in 2nd Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And so from a certain perspective and taking Paul's instruction from a certain perspective and within a certain narrow purview, one could reach the conclusion that this idea of life out of death for believers pertains to their spirits and not to their bodies. The other alternative related to that is that resurrection in every sense is realized at the point of the new birth. In other words, Jesus' resurrection occurred at one time. Jesus' life out of death occurred at one time. Whatever was true of a sort of physical aspect to his resurrection and his spiritual resurrection, it all happened at the same time. It was realized in one event. And though it involved his body, his body was unique as being conceived by the Holy Spirit. And therefore, the Corinthians could perhaps argue that Jesus' resurrection occurred at one time. Therefore, that's true of ours. We're raised up in Christ at the point of our coming to faith in him. And we don't even have to try to associate what happens with our bodies with what happens with his body because his body was unique. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. He had, if you will, a kind of spiritual body. And therefore, just as there is a uniqueness in the incarnation, there is a uniqueness in the nature of his resurrection as well. So, those are just some considerations that we can postulate that at least some at Corinth were wrestling with. These are the kinds of issues that continue to be debated and discussed throughout church history and certainly they were a part of the discussion in the early church. A couple other considerations are taken from this context itself. I've mentioned this before. The first, importantly, is that the Corinthians were concerned with bodily resurrection. That's what they're dealing with. How can a corpse be raised? They're not denying life out of death in an ultimate sense, in an absolute sense. They're asking, how can a corpse be raised? And that becomes very clear when you look at verses 35 through 50 and then the way Paul concludes, leading to the end of the chapter in verse 58. Secondly, and related to that, the Corinthians did acknowledge Jesus' resurrection in some sense. Now, we don't know exactly how they understood it, But they clearly acknowledged it in some sense. How do we know? Because that was the very marrow of the gospel Paul proclaimed to them. Look again at verse 12, what Paul says. Now, if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, and that's what I preach to you, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? The gospel Paul proclaimed showed that there was an acknowledgment, an understanding of Jesus' resurrection in some sense. And it was also evident in the fact that they embraced Paul's gospel. So, the Corinthians held to Jesus' resurrection in some sense. But again, I think it's likely that they held to his resurrection as being unique. Because he himself was unique, even as the incarnate Son of God. But also, the Corinthians failed to reconcile their objection to bodily resurrection with Jesus' own resurrection. They failed to reconcile it. That's what Paul is doing. He's saying, do you understand the problem here? You embraced the truth of Jesus' resurrection, but you're now denying the truth of bodily resurrection. What you regard as the raising up of corpses. So they were likely distinguishing Jesus' resurrection from the life out of death that is enjoyed and experienced by believers. His resurrection was unique. It differs from their experience of life out of death. As opposed to denying outrightly Jesus' bodily resurrection, which is a possibility, and certainly later as you move through the first century and into the second century, you do find more and more sex, S-E-C-T, within Christianity, disagreeing with the idea of the literal, physical resurrection of Jesus. You see it in certain quasi-Christian sex, you see it within more Gnostic strains of Christian thought. Again, because of the body, spirit, flesh, matter, non-material, immaterial existence, the dualism between them. Matter is imperfect, the immaterial is perfect. So it's possible that there were some who were even questioning could Jesus even be raised bodily based on our understanding of this dualism between that which is material and that which is immaterial and the one being perfect and eternal, the other being transitory and corrupt and imperfect. But more likely they were saying the resurrection of Jesus was a unique event, it doesn't pertain to us in the same way. But we don't know for sure. Whatever was their failure to reconcile this idea of bodily resurrection with Jesus' own resurrection, Paul pulls it together and says you can't distinguish that. You can't say, well, this was one thing, this is something else. So, his primary implication is the fundamental one, which is this, the fact of Jesus' resurrection. You cannot uphold the resurrection of Christ and not hold to the raising up of corpses, if you will, or to the resurrection of the dead. You can't distinguish between the two. Why? Because there is one resurrection. Now this is reading between the lines a little bit, but this is very much at the heart of the implication Paul draws out. Why can you not have Jesus' resurrection and not have bodily resurrection for the saints? Paul says, it's because they are the same thing. If the dead are not raised, then Christ isn't raised. You see, he doesn't allow you to distinguish between the two and say, well, one was this and one was that. One was this way and one is this way. There is one resurrection and it will become more clear as we move forward beyond today, when Paul says Christ was raised as firstfruits. His resurrection, as I said before, is not unique, let alone final. It is the beginning of resurrection. It is the firstfruits. Firstfruits is the beginning. Remember the offering of the produce of the land to God was a firstfruits. And the Jews would bring the beginning of the harvest and offer it to God, not only as an act of worship, but as a statement of faith that they were trusting Him for the balance of the harvest. They gave Him the first fruits as their statement of them believing Him for the fullness of the harvest to come. And Jesus being raised is the promise of the fullness of the resurrection to come. So, denial of bodily resurrection or distinguishing the idea of Jesus' resurrection from the resurrection of the saints is a denial of Jesus' resurrection, is what Paul is saying. Here's a statement of one man that puts this very well. Our resurrection has already taken place and is already fully bound up with the resurrection of Christ. And therefore, our resurrection proceeds from His resurrection more by way of manifestation of what has already taken place in Christ than as a new effect resulting from it. You understand that? Our resurrection is just a further manifestation of resurrection as it is true and has its substance in Jesus. It's not an effect of His resurrection as if it's separate and distinct. Life is bound up in Christ and life flows from Him through the Spirit to all those who are joined to Him. There is one resurrection. There is one resurrection. And so you can't distinguish between Jesus' resurrection and our resurrection. You can't separate them. You can't make them different. So there was the first and primary implication. Now there's a whole list of secondary implications that come out of this idea of no bodily resurrection. But all of those saints, I want you to understand this, all of these subsequent secondary ones flow out of the primary one, that if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Jesus hasn't been raised. So, in other words, what he's saying is, and if Jesus has not been raised from the dead in the way that we preached Him, Not any kind of life out of death, but the life out of death that we proclaim in our gospel. If he has not been raised in that way, then all these other things follow upon that. Okay? And these are all very simple on the face of them, but they're very important. And I want to kind of draw out some of the significances of them as we close today, but on their face they're very simple. And the first is this, that if Christ was not raised, Paul says, then we are shown, all of us who have testified of Christ, we are shown to be false witnesses. Why? Because Paul proclaimed the gospel of resurrection as an eyewitness of it. as did all of the apostles, as did all of the other disciples who had seen Him. They proclaimed Jesus' resurrection. Therefore, if Jesus isn't raised, they are false witnesses. And Paul says we are, most importantly, false witnesses against God. Because we proclaim that God raised Him from the dead. And if the dead aren't raised, then Jesus wasn't raised, and then God didn't raise Him, and so we're lying about God Himself. We're not just lying about a historical event, saying that this miraculous thing of a guy coming out of the grave happened when it didn't really happen. We're lying against God. Not just specifically concerning the resurrection, but concerning the truth of God that is bound up in and in a sense fully contained with and dependent upon the resurrection of Christ. The veracity of God himself from what he even created this creation for, what he has said about it, what he has done, what he's prepared for, all of God's truthfulness in himself and with respect to his creation is bound up in Jesus' resurrection. And so we become false witnesses against God himself. He said, secondly, that we become those who hold to a spurious or a false or an empty faith. We are spurious witnesses, but we also hold a spurious faith. All who have embraced this gospel hold a spurious faith. Why? Faith is not directed, saints, towards the gospel message. It is directed to the Christ who is proclaimed in the gospel. We don't believe this message. Our faith isn't directed towards a message as such. It's directed towards the One who is proclaimed in the message. We don't just believe information. We believe the One who is proclaimed. But that One who is proclaimed is proclaimed as the resurrected Christ. And so, if there is no resurrection from the dead, there is no resurrected Christ. And therefore, a faith in the resurrected Christ, who isn't resurrected, is empty. It's a delusion. Faith in that Christ is a fiction. It is empty and it is delusional. Now, you see, behind this, Paul is implying that Faith in Christ is faith in the Christ who is proclaimed to be resurrected in the way that the Scripture reveals Him. In the way that the Apostolic Gospel spoke of that. Not just belief in a man named Jesus, whatever we think he may happen to be. But it is the conviction concerning this individual who is this one who was raised in this way. And if that is not true of Him, then even if we believe in the Jesus that we think is in the Bible somehow, or a Jesus of history or whatever, it doesn't change the fact that we still hold to a spurious faith. But Paul's premise is that even if your faith is directed as it ought to be towards this Christ that we proclaim, if He wasn't raised, then the whole thing collapses. Your faith is a sham. And because that becomes a spurious faith, it also leaves us with a spurious hope. Because Jesus is the firstfruits from the dead, the gospel is a proclamation of hope. Because he's the firstfruits from the dead, we don't just direct our faith towards a guy who was crucified to pay for our sins. The fact of Jesus' resurrection and the establishing of a whole new paradigm that we are now sharers in, but that is yet to be fully consummately realized by the created order, we live in hope. The Gospel sets in front of us a hope. Go back and read Romans 8 again. The creation is groaning in hope. It has been redeemed in Christ, it has been reconciled to God in Christ, but it is still groaning, awaiting its own experience of the redemption that belongs to it in Christ. It's waiting for the manifesting of the sons of God. And so also, Paul says, we groan within ourselves. That eschatological angst idea. We groan within ourselves, waiting for the day, longing for the resurrection of the body. And so we live in hope. We live in hope. Paul said to the Corinthians, we don't long to be unclothed, we long to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling. Recall again the way we ended last week, Philippians 3 and the chapter 4. The hope. This God who, by raising Christ, the power of God that enables him to bring everything into subjection to himself will transform our lowly bodies to be like his glorious body. And therefore, we are to hold fast to the Lord, to that hope. Our citizenship is in heaven. Certainly, that's what you see in 1 Thessalonians 4. What does Peter say? Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has begotten us to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. And unto an inheritance imperishable, undefiled, and which cannot fade away. Kept in heaven for us, right? The gospel is a message of hope. When we understand it, if resurrection is the centerpiece, the very marrow of the gospel, then the gospel is a message of hope. But if there's no resurrection, there is no authentic hope. I'm not saying there can't be any kind of hope in any way, but this hope becomes only a kind of wishful, hopeful speculation that's entirely bound to the order of things that we see and experience day to day. It is a hope that is defined by, determined by, and confined to the realm of existence that has already been judged and condemned in Christ and has passed away by virtue of the work of God. That's 1 John 2. Loving the world doesn't mean being immoral and evil in our behavior. It means living according to the former pattern of things that has now been condemned and done away with in Christ. That world is passing away. If you try to hold on to it, it's going to slip through your fingers. So, any sort of natural hope is confined to the present life in the present world if there is no resurrection. And that sort of natural hope denies the gospel of hope because it denies the truth of Jesus Christ. Why? Because Christ Himself, His resurrection and His gospel proclaimed the truth of new creation. The old has been judged and condemned. The new has come. Jesus' resurrection changed everything. And there's no going back. So if Christians only hope is for a better old creation, and I would argue that for many Christians that's the case. And it certainly is for all other religions. You say, well that's not true, other religions have a heavenly hope. Yeah, a heavenly hope that is very much devised and conceived in terms of natural thinking. It's just a better world than we know right now, but it's this world just better. So if our only hope is for a better form of the old creation that we know, While at the same time we pretend that our hope is bound up in new creation in Christ, Paul says, we are the most pitiable of all men. If only in reality, for this life, concerning this life, in the realm of this life, if only in that way have we hoped in Christ, then we are most to be pitied of all men. Richard Hayes says this, if Christ has not been raised, we Christians mock ourselves with falsehood. We preach a message that turns out to be an illusion. We offer for the world's ills a pious lie that veils from ourselves the terrifying truth that we are actually powerless and alone. Second, as Barrett observes, Christians, in Paul's view, are called to a life of embracing death. By embracing death, he means that we lay hold of the newness of life in Christ that is who we are, which means that we daily live in death with respect to the old way. It's what Paul says, put off the old man and put on the new man who has been created in the likeness of God, in righteousness and holiness of the truth. Christians are those who embrace death in the sense that as we have to live in two worlds, we exist in the heavenly realms and yet we dwell in our day-to-day temporal existence in this world that has been condemned and is passing away. And that life in this world is the life of death. Always bearing about in our bodies the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus would also be manifest and brought to fruition in our mortal bodies. So he says, in Paul's view, Christians are called to a life of embracing death, which involves suffering through giving themselves in the service of the kingdom, the service of God, the service of others, not seeking their own advantage, interests, or earthly natural inclinations or desires. He says, but if there is no resurrection, this self-denying style of life makes no sense. Those who follow the example of Jesus and Paul are chumps missing out on their fair share of life's rewards. A spurious hope. And lastly, and I say this one for last, it could have been first, a spurious atonement. If Jesus is not raised, then our conviction of his atonement becomes spurious. So, faith in a resurrection-less gospel is empty and profitless, it is worthless, number one, because of what the gospel promises, but also because of what the gospel affirms concerning Christ himself. And that is that the gospel of resurrection affirms Jesus' satisfaction, his full satisfaction of all divine and all human obligations. If you will, all divine and all human righteousness. With respect to God's obligation of righteousness, and God has an obligation of righteousness, an obligation to conform to what is right and what is true. God's righteous obligation is first and foremost with respect to this person and work of Christ. God's righteous obligation to fulfill his design for man. He created man for a certain destiny, a certain life, a certain existence and God is bound righteously to see that through and to see it realized. The righteousness of God throughout the Old Testament, I'm not saying it never has any sort of implication for his moral perfections, I'm not saying that. But the thrust of the promise of God, the thrust of God's self-affirmation of His own righteousness, is that He will do what He has said. He will accomplish His purposes. He is truthful. He keeps His word. He is righteous. He is faithful. And His primary obligation is to fulfill His design for man. The promise of a seed. The promise that man will become image, son, and truth. And so, following out of that is God's righteous obligation to condemn and to destroy pseudo-man. What man has become. To condemn and to destroy pseudo-man, as well as death and the curse that have come upon the whole created order, bound up in the fact of pseudo-man. The falseness of man has brought death and the curse upon the whole created order and upon himself as well. And so God has a righteous obligation if his design is to see man be man indeed, he must condemn and destroy pseudo-man and all that follows in the train of man's falseness. And so also man's obligation of righteousness is absolutely synonymous with God's, or it accords with God. There is no disparity between man's righteousness and God's righteousness. And again, I'm not talking about morality. I'm talking about this purpose of God, the rightness of what God has purposed and what He accomplishes. So, man's obligation of righteousness is, again, that he would embrace God's condemnation and destruction of pseudo-man. That man would agree with God against himself. I am false. I am not what you created me to be. I am not truly man. I agree with you, God, because that's the truth. I agree and embrace your condemnation and your destruction of man as pseudo-man. And also, on the positive side of that, man's obligation therefore to live out the truth of man as God intended him and designed him, man as truly imaged son. And the point of that is to say that Jesus fulfilled, he satisfied all of those dimensions of righteousness and that was attested in his resurrection. When we reduce this down to simply the resurrection shows that Jesus kept all of God's law and He didn't break any rules. And so when He came out of the grave, it showed that He was perfect. And now when I believe in Him, His moral perfection gets put into my account. We miss all of this. Immorality is a symptom of human falseness. It's not the issue. God deals with the falseness of man, not the fact that he broke a law here, a law there, a law the other thing. God says, don't steal, you stole. Jesus fulfilled all of the dimensions of righteousness on behalf of God, on behalf of man, and ultimately, therefore, on behalf of the whole creation, which itself existed under the curse of alienation and estrangement. His resurrection was the proof of God's righteous vindication in God's full condemnation and destruction of pseudo-men. In Jesus' death, He put to death man as false. He died as false man. He bore in Himself the truth and the consequences of human falseness. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? The alienation, the estrangement, the enmity, the fury of God against the falseness of man was what he sustained in himself and he put it to death. And in the resurrection you see the attestation of that but also importantly the full realization of God's creative will that man should be truly image son participating in the divine life and love. If there is no resurrection, God was not vindicated. Not just in punishing immorality, but in dealing with the problem of a broken creation. And because the resurrection showed that God was fully vindicated, it also shows that man himself was fully vindicated. The resurrection showed that pseudo-man had been condemned. Man as the creature created in God's image and likeness has now been delivered from his own falseness, his Adamic nature, his Adamic fallenness, so that now in Christ he's attained to the true nature and role and relationship which the Triune God purposed for him. And so in Jesus' resurrection from the dead, God and man were fully attested as true. So that God could once again say of man, very good. My creation is very good. Torrance says this in his work on the atonement. In the resurrection we see that the saving act of God in the expiation of sin and guilt, in the vanquishing of death, And all that destroys the creation is actually joined to God's act of creation. Redemption and creation come together in the resurrection. Indeed, God's no to all evil and it's privation of being. Privation of being means it's robbing of the truth of what the creation is. God's no to all evil in its privation of being falls together with His yes in the final affirming of the creation as that which God has made and declared to be good. For that declaration of God about what He had made is now made good through Jesus Christ. Atonement is unveiled to be the positive reaffirmation and recreation of man. Apart from the resurrection, the no of God against our sins and the whole world of evil in which we have become entangled, even His rejection of our guilt, apart from the resurrection, that no of God would be in vain. That is why Paul argues so insistently that if Christ is not risen, we are still in our sins. But it is also true that apart from that no, the resurrection is no real yes. For apart from God's know in judgment and crucifixion, the resurrection would be only an empty show of wonderful power. It would not have any saving content to it. It would contain no forgiveness. By itself, the expiatory death of Christ would mean only judgment, not life. Only the rejection of guilt. And yet even that could not be carried through apart from the resurrection. But now in the resurrection that act of atonement is seen to be God's great positive work of new creation. Thus the no and the yes imply one another and each is empty without the other. Now that's in the notes so you don't have to memorize it. You may have. But it's profoundly true. This is more than just Jesus kept all the Ten Commandments, and now I didn't, and he died, and now somehow this magical transaction takes place where this commodity called moral rectitude is put into my account. This is much, much, much more profound than that. And it tells us that we don't just live as people who've been forgiven of our sins going to heaven someday. We live as those who are sharers in the new paradigm, the creation as God created it to be. We share in that now. So, I want to conclude then, just by pulling some of these things together. Here's Paul's assessment. In the absence of Jesus' resurrection, all men remain in their sin, including Christians. If Christ is not raised, we are still in our sins. And that means that believers who are yet alive have an empty, futile faith that is devoid of authentic hope. And those who have died in Christ have perished. They are gone. So, whether for the living or for the dead, that sort of hope in Christ, a resurrectionless hope in Christ, has no substance beyond this life. The resurrection of Jesus is not just about satisfaction for sin. It's about the bringing in of the truth of life as God intended it from the beginning. It's a whole new reality. And there is no substance for the Christian life beyond this life if Jesus is not raised. And it leaves us therefore with no hope to offer to the world. He says, if the goal, the telos, the goal of our life together in Christ is merely a mirage on an ever-receding horizon of time, then we are living an unhealthy, and I would argue an unholy, self-deception. Just as Christianity's critics, both ancient and modern, have always charged. There is no authentic Christian faith without fervent eschatological hope. And there is no authentic eschatological hope without the resurrection of the dead. So I ask us saints, in view of all these things, in view of Paul's burden, in view of the things that we've heard even from Hays, is the truth of resurrection central to our faith and hope? And don't answer quickly and say, oh yeah, of course, I know Jesus was raised and I know that, so there's where my hope is. Is really the truth of resurrection as Paul is unfolding it for us, as it is true in Christ himself, is that truth central to our faith and hope? How do we know? That's always my second question to myself. If someone says, is this true? I say, well, how would I know? How do I determine? It's one thing to say, is this central to my faith and hope? I have to then ask, how would I know? How would I assess it? And I would argue, first of all, how do we live? I'm not talking about immorality. I'm not talking about, you know, all the things that, well, I don't smoke or drink or chew or go with girls who do. How do we live? What is our general frame of reference? As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. What is our general way of thinking? How do we relate to ourselves? How do we relate to this life? How do we think about who we are? Is our hope, our faith, is our expectation directed towards the present order of things? And I don't mean just that we're chasing the stuff of this world, but do we view our lives according to the natural paradigm of human existence? And the truth is all of us do, to some extent. In some ways, at some times. That's the natural way. And the marble always wants to roll back to the center of the dish. We always have the tendency to view life according to the natural paradigm of human existence. That has us at the center of it, where we are the point of reference, the point of ultimate concern. We think and act and judge out from ourselves in relation to ourselves. So that now we think of life as Christians as merely that paradigm, the old creation, the old realm. The old way of being. We think of it still that way, but just now cleaned up and purged of the sorts of things that become impediments to us or inhibit us. So that we clean up all the stuff and move things around, but basically we still think the same way. We still very much, as Paul said, have our hearts and minds governed by this world. Even it's morality, it's piety, it's goodness, it's perspective. Do we have our expectation directed towards the present order of things? And even if we say no, my expectation, my perspective is towards heaven to come. Is our perspective, our expectation directed towards a future that is merely the perfecting of the present? In other words, you hear me say all the time, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, to us, heaven is just the best of all possible worlds, as I would understand and define the best of all possible worlds. So effectively, if we played that out, we could have six and a half billion different heavens. And your heaven might be my hell and vice versa. Because all that heaven is, is the best of all possible worlds, based on whose criterion? Mine. So heaven's going to be like what I think it's going to be like. And whether it's my fishing hole or skiing every day or, you know, not having my wife nag me or whatever it happens to be, it's going to be the best of all possible worlds. We think even our expectation for the future is life according to this natural paradigm, but just transported into the future. So that the way we think about life now is what it's going to be then. Only cleaned up. And no disturbances. And everyone will see the sign on my door that says, please do not disturb. No salesmen. Or, do we live in the reality of resurrection life? Why do you think the apostles kept saying Think on these things. Think on these things. Think on these things. I know you know them. It's important for me to remind you. I'm going to keep on reminding you. It's not a burden for me. It's profitable for you. Why do you think they said that? Why is the pastoral work a work of reminder? Because we need to be reminded. Because the marble keeps rolling back to the center of the dish. We don't live day-to-day without a conscious purposefulness and the training of our minds. Set your hearts and your minds on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. You are raised up in Him. You've died. Your lives are hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, you will appear with Him in glory. Over and over and over again, Paul says, keep seeking, keep seeking, keep seeking. You've got to think on these things. Do we live in the reality of resurrection life? Recognizing that eternal life, as Jerry said, is not an endless sequence of moments. Life as we know it now, just going on forever, but without the problems, without the difficulties, without the loss, without the grief, without the hardship. My perfect life going on forever. Eternal life is the life of eternity. It's the life of the Godhead itself. It is the life that God has apart from time and space. The life of mutual relationship, mutual love, mutual flourishing. Do we live the life of eternity, eternal life, the life Jesus is living in us? Do we live that in our present existence and with a settled confidence of the fullness that will be realized when our bodies themselves participate in that life? Jesus' resurrection came all at once, body and spirit. We haven't already, but not yet. Yes, we are fully sharers in Christ's resurrection life, and yet these bodies are corrupt and are falling away. And Paul says, they too will be swallowed up with life. As we have borne the likeness and the corruption of the earthy man, Adam, so we will bear the incorruption of the spiritual man, the man of the Spirit, the last Adam, who is Christ. We're going to get there in chapter 15. So, we're not those then who are waiting to go to heaven, but we are living the reality of heaven now. What does that look like? It means that, first of all, we live as members of Christ. We understand what it means to be joined to Christ. To not simply be forgiven so we can get on with our own life and then go to heaven when we die. But to actually have no life except as Christ is living his life in us. And therefore, that means that we have no life except as we have life within this community that's called the body of Christ. Because as Christ lives his life in me, he lives his life in all of his saints, and therefore we are members of one another. To live heaven now is to live out the truth of the resurrection. That's to live out the truth that we are members of one another. And saints, we don't do it. I'm not saying we don't do it exhaustively, but we really, it's a mixed bag. It's a mixed bag. Our carelessness, our flippancy, our lack of concern, our lack of oneness in heart. We may not be fighting, or at odds, or dividing over all the kinds of stuff, but our hearts are very much set on us, and our lives, and our interests, and people are an afterthought. The saints are an afterthought. We're busy with our lives, our needs, our issues, our jobs, our this, our that, our families, whatever it happens to be. Saints, it's evident in the fact that ten of us are here at ten o'clock. And I'm not going to keep banging on that same thing. But we've got to do honest business with this. Do we live the life of resurrection? Do we live as members of one another? Do we recognize that we have no independent existence? The life I live is Jesus living His life in me. Do you believe that? Do you believe that? I don't think we do. Most Christians I've known never even thought about that. It's just about getting forgiven and going on with their life and going to heaven when they die. We live as members of Christ and therefore as members of His body in truth. in our attitudes, in our orientation, in our words, in our deeds. How do we live? Is resurrection central to our faith and hope? Well, I ask, how do we live? And then flowing out of that, what is our gospel to men? Can men charge us, as Hayes said, can they charge us as living according to an unhealthy self-deception? can then charge us with self-deception and hypocrisy. What is our gospel to the world? What is it that people take from our gospel? Is it that life in Christ means the conformity of our present life to our expectations? That life in Christ means God, as Jesus came, that you would have life and have it abundantly. Oh great! And then we go off and we define abundant life based on our expectations, our interests, our needs, our lack. And now somehow what we're promising to men or what we're setting in front of them is the hope that their life is going to look the way they want it to look. Your best life now. We live with our expectations fixed on this present order and then we wonder why people think that it's about the cleaning up and the perfecting and the realizing of the goals and interests and desires of the present order. That's what they see. That's what they understand. And just as we tend to view what comes after death as just the perfecting of this life now, my best of all possible worlds when I die, That's what we end up communicating to men. That heaven is that. Yeah, you're suffering now, but it'll be great then. Won't it be wonderful when there's no more tears, no more sorrow, no more suffering? Well, yes, but is that really the issue? When my body works right, when I don't have to deal with this boss, when I don't have to worry about paying the bills, when I get to fish every day, Heaven is the best of all possible worlds based on our interests and sensibilities. I guarantee you, saints, that is what every human being out there thinks of when they think of the afterlife. Now, they might define it based on their own culture, you know, as 77 virgins or whatever, you know, but it is the best of all possible natural worlds. Is that what we communicate to people by the way that our heavenly hope is directed? Or, is the gospel that we give to men, the gospel that they see in us and hear from us, again, Jesus' resurrection life as the definition of our existence and the destiny of authentic human existence. Do we preach the resurrection, not just in our words, but in our lives, and not just as a way to get our sins forgiven and get God off of our back, but the resurrection life of Jesus as the truth of what it means to be human, as the answer to what ails you. It's a broken world filled with people who are seeking meaning, who are seeking significance in the sense of what is this all about? Who am I? Why am I here? Why do I struggle? Why is the world broken? Are we communicating to people the truth of why they are what they are? Why they struggle as they do? What this is about? That it's not just putting a shine on the penny, but it is the truth of attaining to what God created us for in Christ Jesus. Life out of death. A gospel that calls people to find not just abundant life as they define it, but to find life in truth by being found in Him. Saints, we don't get it. It's evident in the fact that we use the expression, you need Jesus in your life. People don't need Jesus in their life. They have no life. They need Jesus to have life. Jesus said, unless you have life in me, you have no life. Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life in you. Even the way we speak betrays the way we think. You need Jesus in your life to fix things up and polish things a little bit and get rid of these things that bother you and that are bad and, you know, set you on your feet and turn you loose. We need to be testifying to the gospel of resurrection in the way that Paul is laying it out, in the way the Scriptures lay it out. And saints, we need to do it by our lives as well as our words. All of us. Because as much as we talk to people, for the most part, our gospel is what people see in us. It's what they see in us. And our lives should testify to newness of life in Christ. The fragrance of Christ. Him living His life in us and through us. People should not see that this is about the reforming of our old life. It should not be seen to be about reformation through religious conviction and religious conformity. If that's what they see in us, then we are preaching a false gospel. And so I give you this exercise and it'll be a painful one for all of us. But if we really want to know, if we really want to know whether the truth of resurrection is central to our faith and our hope as it ought to be, we need to ask those who know us and who watch us and who listen to us. And it probably won't be what we want to hear in some respects. The only way we can really know what gospel we are preaching by our lives and not just by our words is to ask people, what do you believe this is all about based on what you see in me and you hear from me? What do you think this is all about? You see, saints, we can hold to the resurrection of the body and completely miss the point. We can affirm as a point of orthodox doctrine in the history of the Church the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ, and even the bodily resurrection at the end of the age of the saints, and still miss the whole ball of wax. If we don't understand what it's really about, and what it means, and what it implies, and what it embodies in the way we live, and the way we think, and where our hope resides, Father, as always, I pray that you would tear us down in order to build us up. That you would, as it were, as the prophet said, strike us in order to heal us. Father, if these are the words of life, if we have embraced Christ in truth, if our true earnest, sincere desire is to grow up in all things into Him, to be conformed to Him, If the sincere desire of our lives is the heartbeat of Paul in Philippians 3, to know Him, to be found in Him, to grow up in Him, to share in the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, attaining to the resurrection of the dead, if that is really the burden of our life, Father, then don't let us deceive ourselves. Don't let us delude ourselves. Don't let us be content with religiosity. Don't let us be content with a careless cavalier cultural Christian faith that finds us going to church and giving some money and reading our Bible once in a while. Father, may we be those who are living the life of resurrection, who are bearing in ourselves, in our bodies, the dying of Christ and also bearing his fragrance in every place. Yes, it is a stench of death to some, but it is the fragrance of life unto life for others. May we be testifiers in truth, not false witnesses. Those who have an authentic faith. Those who have an authentic hope. Those who understand what Christ accomplished by his cross and we have entered into it and we manifest it to the world. May we be those who live and hold forth the gospel of resurrection. That the world would know. That it would understand the meaning. of Christ's emergence from the grave, of His triumph over death, of the summing up of everything in the created order in Him, of the proclamation of the Father with His resurrection. It is very good. My creation is very good. Lead us, O Spirit, into all truth. Tear us down That the old man would be put off and that we would walk in the newness of life that is ours. That we would walk, not as fools, but as wise. As those whose lives are hidden with Christ in you. And may we exhort and encourage one another in that way. If we love one another, may we spur one another on in that way. Help us, Father. Build us up. for Christ's sake, for his gospel's sake. Amen.