Jesus shared our nature as a member of our race. He was tempted as we are, knew weariness and suffering and he died. But God raised him from the dead. He came for a short time under the dominion of death, but Paul says, “death hath now no more dominion over him.” The women went to the tomb on the third day to anoint the body of Jesus; his resurrection was not expected, and therefore all suggestions that the story of his resurrection was due to some hallucination of the disciples are foolish. The tomb was empty: and angels invited the women to see the place where the Lord lay. “He is not here, he is risen.” But the empty tomb provides only negative proof: the positive proof came when the disciples met Jesus. They handled him, talked with him, ate with him for forty days, when he ascended bodily into heaven. They had every possible evidence that Jesus was alive again. His body had been restored to life and then made incorruptible so that he is alive to die no more. In another Bible phrase, he is now made after the power of an endless life.
In view of the resurrection of Jesus. it is evident that resurrection is God’s way for the overcoming of death. Death is not sidestepped by a soul continuing to live without the body. That is the old pagan view. Death is real, but God who made man at the beginning can re-make whomsoever He will and raise them up. Jesus is not the exception: he is the pattern to which others will conform. He is called the first fruits of them that sleep; and first fruits implies a harvest—but the harvest corresponds to the first fruits.
The reference to first fruits occurs in a chapter which discusses the subject at length (1 Cor. 15). There were some in Corinth who for some reason denied the resurrection of Jesus. Paul puts the resurrection of Christ in a central position in the Christian gospel. He had preached to them the gospel by which they were saved if they kept in memory what Paul had declared to them. Among the first things was that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. It was a fulfilment of What God had revealed in the Old Testament.
Paul then reviews those who had seen Jesus after his resurrection: Peter, the twelve, five hundred brethren, James, then all the apostles. He faces frankly what the position would be if Jesus had not been raised. First if Christ was raised then their denial of resurrection was contrary to the fact. For if there be no Resurrection Christ is not raised; and if he is not raised then Christian faith is vain; there is no forgiveness of sins and no reconciliation with God, because there has been no Saviour through whom these things might come. All who had fallen asleep in the Christian hope were perished. We might well mark that; if there is no resurrection then the dead are perished: there is no other way to gain a future life apart from it.
But the Christian faith is indicated by the figure of sleep. As there is an awakening from sleep, so for the true follower of Christ there is an awakening from death. Christ is risen and become the first fruits of them that sleep. And Paul says, the harvest is in two stages. “Afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming:” and then the last in order, at the end of Christ’s reign on earth when those who have died during that reign are raised, and the millennial Kingdom is given over to God, for the purpose will be complete. (1. Cor; 15:23, 24). Death then will have been destroyed for all who live will be deathless and incorruptible.
In whatever part of the New Testament writing we turn, this doctrine of resurrection is set forth. In the first message given by the apostles in fulfilment of Christ’s command to go into all the world and preach the gospel, Peter declared that God hath raised up Jesus, and he proved it to be a fact by reminding his hearers that the tomb where Jesus was buried was no longer his sepulchre (Acts 2:24-32). This was an assertion which could have been tested there and then. Only seven weeks before had Jesus been crucified, and in the very place where he was put to death, and buried, Peter declares the tomb no longer held him.
Had Peter’s assertion been disproved by someone producing the body, the Christian gospel would have died stillborn. “You killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised up, Whereof we are witnesses,” Peter told the Jews in his second address. (Acts 3). The assertion was repeated before the authorities who forbade the apostles to preach the resurrection of Jesus. But such a message with its tremendous implications for others could not be suppressed. The facts were too well known to the apostles and they were willing to lay down their lives rather than deny their faith.
The Apostle Paul was a persecutor of the Christians, but was changed into an ardent preacher of the faith he had sought to destroy. The change was the result of an appearance of Jesus as Paul was on a mission of persecution. It was no apparition. Paul was blinded; he heard Jesus speak to him: and hence forward he testified to the fact that Jesus was raised. “God raised him from the dead.” (Acts 13:30). “God hath appointed a day in which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.” (Acts 17:31).
The preaching of the gospel brought Paul into conflict with the authorities: and he told them that central to his message was the doctrine of the resurrection: “of the hope and resurrection of the dead am I called in question” (Acts 23:6).
In Romans 6 Paul draws out some important lessons from the Christian rite of baptism. This in its true form is a burial in water— a complete immersion. The burial was into the death of Jesus, to share in the total surrender to God’s will that he then made. But as the going down into the water is in the likeness of his death, so the coming up out of the water is a likeness of his resurrection. It is a rising to a new life. The whole idea is thus rooted in the death and resurrection of Jesus: if he had not been raised there would have been no faith to obey, no living Lord to acknowledge. Jesus rose to a new life: the believer dies to his old past and rises to a new life in Christ. But the present union with Christ will be completed by a literal resurrection and a transformation of body into the likeness of Christ’s glorified body. “If the spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Rom. 8: 11). In this way only is there escape from the bondage of corruption: “the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8: 21).
This transformation of body is compared to being clothed upon with a house from heaven. The present life is like a tent, without permanence. The house from heaven, the divine life given the faithful at Christ’s return, has enduring qualities. It does not come by divesting ourselves of our bodies but by being “clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life” (2. Cor. 5: 3). In verse 10 Paul speaks of this taking place after the Judgement: “For we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ: that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”
Christ’s return brings life to his people: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:4), and then “he will change our vile body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Phil. 3: 21).
The Christian hope concerns the whole individual, which is a living bodily organism. If that ceases to be, the individual ceases to be. Resurrection is thus seen to be a necessity: and the true gospel shows that necessity will be met in the purpose of God. For Christ who declared when on earth that those in the graves “would hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation” (John 5: 28-9) also declared after he was raised from the dead: “I am he that liveth and was dead; and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen: and have the keys of hell and of death” (Rev. 1: 18).
His claim to be the resurrection and the life is established by his own resurrection, and the resurrection of those who have faith in him is assured.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One