Passage: 1 Corinthians 15:4-23

The Big Idea

Jesus’ death is fairly easy to understand. The resurrection can be harder. It isn’t just God’s receipt that our sins are paid for, or even just Jesus beating death. It’s Jesus transferring His living, holy, supernatural resurrection life into us. The resurrection is the best-attested event of the ancient world, and because Christ is risen, we share His life now and will share His resurrection later.

More Than a Receipt

Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3-4).

I think the death of Jesus is pretty easy to understand. But the resurrection was hard for me to grasp until God helped me.

At first, I was taught that the resurrection was God’s receipt, proof that our sins had been paid for. Very transactional. But that didn’t help me much. I already believed my sins were paid for, so I still didn’t understand the point of the resurrection.

Then I read something Andrew Murray wrote. He said that in Christ’s death we see Him in complete helplessness, trusting God to do everything and give Him life, and God worked the wonderful transformation. And it’s the same with us: only as we give ourselves over to that death too, as we completely stop relying on self and its works, and lie as if in the grave, waiting for God to do everything, can the God of resurrection life work in us all His good pleasure.

The resurrection isn’t just about Jesus paying for our sins, or even beating death. It’s about Jesus actually transferring His living, holy, pure, supernatural resurrection life into us.

It’s a new source for living!
It’s not just a historical fact, though it’s one of the best-verified events in ancient history.
It’s a real exchange of life: my old life for His life.
The resurrection makes His life transferable to us in a very real way.

The share we have in His death is the same share we have in His new life. We’re one with Him on the cross, so we’re one with Him in His new life.

According to the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4)

Which Scriptures? God hid these in plain sight.

Why hidden? Because if the enemy had understood God’s plan, he never would have stirred people up to crucify Jesus (1 Corinthians 2:8). But God tucked hints into the Old Testament that we can see clearly now that it’s done, showing He planned it all along:

After two days He will revive us; on the third day He will raise us up, so we may live before Him (Hosea 6:2).
God would not abandon His Holy One to the grave or let Him see decay (Psalm 16:10; Acts 2:27-31).

The Old Testament doesn’t give us the full story. It’s all foreshadowing of the real thing, Jesus, and it only becomes clear through Him.

Paul told Timothy that God’s grace has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel (2 Timothy 1:10).

Immortality: forgiveness and eternal life.
Life: the new shared life with God. Union!
The gospel abolished death. Resurrection life replaces death.

That’s the basic rule for us in Christ:

Sin has been destroyed, so death has been destroyed too.
We never have to fear death again.
In a sense, we never really die, because He already died our death on the cross. And now He lives our lives as we surrender to Him in faith.

The Witnesses (1 Corinthians 15:5-8)

Now Paul gives concrete evidence for the resurrection.

Peter

He appeared to Cephas, that is, Peter.

Why does that matter? Peter had just denied Jesus three times. He wasn’t a hero; he was a zero. Yet Jesus loved him. Peter became the picture of redemption and restoration for every one of us who walked away from Jesus when we should have stood firm (John 21:15-19).

Jesus isn’t coming to bury you. He lives to pick you up, dust you off and set you back on the path of life.

The Twelve

Then He appeared to the Twelve.

You might think only Peter failed, but all of them ran away in fear (Mark 14:50). And Jesus went to each one.

His resurrection life is shareable with every one of His messed-up kids. Grace is sufficient.

More than five hundred

Then He appeared to more than five hundred believers at once, most of whom were still alive when Paul wrote, though some had died.

Wow! All anyone would have needed to discredit the whole thing was for even one of those witnesses to stand up and say, “That’s a lie.” But Paul is basically saying, “Go ask them.”

Jesus wasn’t hiding in the woods. He was meeting with people, eating with them and spending time with them, just as you’d expect if He really rose from the dead.

Over the centuries, people have proposed alternatives. Some say Jesus didn’t really die, but just fainted on the cross and revived in the tomb. Others say His body was stolen. Still others say His desperate followers hallucinated. But a plain look at the evidence (an execution by professionals, an empty tomb, appearances to individuals and large groups, and transformed skeptics) shows that these theories take far more faith than the biblical account.

James

Then He appeared to James, His own brother, who hadn’t believed in Him during His ministry (John 7:5), and who became a leader in the Jerusalem church.

All the apostles

Then to all the apostles. Jesus spent forty days with His chosen followers, preparing them to take this gospel of grace to the world (Acts 1:3).

Paul

Last of all He appeared to Paul, “as to one born out of due time.”

Paul was an apostle, but he hadn’t walked with Jesus for those three years.
He was a Pharisee who was zealous to destroy Christians soon after Jesus’ death.
But Jesus saved even Paul. There’s no limit to whom Jesus will go after.
Remember Stephen, who as he was being stoned prayed that God wouldn’t hold the sin against those killing him (Acts 7:58-60). Saul was standing right there. And God saved him.

By the Grace of God (1 Corinthians 15:9-10)

Paul calls himself the least of the apostles, not even worthy to be called an apostle, because he persecuted God’s church. But by the grace of God he is what he is, and God’s grace toward him wasn’t wasted. He worked harder than all of them, yet not he, but the grace of God that was with him.

Paul had humility. Why does that matter? Because humility always receives grace (James 4:6). They always go together.

“I worked harder.”

Grace doesn’t just forgive you. It transforms you completely, so you want to do God’s will. You’ll give your whole life to share His gospel, because you know how good it is.
That’s what resurrection life looks like in us. Its fruit is serving God through love.
Grace isn’t freedom to sin more. It’s the power to live a life that matters, honors God and makes a difference in the world (Titus 2:11-12).
Grace makes us hate sin, because we died to sin with Jesus and live to God through Him. Resurrection life!

“Yet not I, but the grace of God.”

It’s never our own effort that truly serves God.
We can’t serve God by trying hard, or because it’s the right thing to do.
Only through grace: God’s resurrection life, doing the work through us, in us and as us.

What We Preach (1 Corinthians 15:11-12)

Whether it was Paul or the others, this is what they preached and what the Corinthians believed. So how could some of them say there’s no resurrection of the dead?

Christ is preached. The only thing we focus on is Jesus. Never us, our abilities or our good deeds. We focus completely on Him, and He draws people to Himself (John 12:32). That’s the only strategy for ministry.

The Corinthians didn’t deny Jesus’ resurrection; they denied ours. They may have been influenced by Greek philosophy, which saw a bodiless “pure spirit” as superior and found bodily resurrection undesirable, or by Sadducee-style skepticism about the afterlife. Bottom line: they believed we’d live forever in some sense, but not in resurrected bodies.

And resurrection isn’t just life after death. It’s life after death in a glorified body, our present body in a glorified state.

But the deeper problem was that they didn’t see resurrection life as something transferred to us. They weren’t living resurrection lives by grace. They were trying to live the Christian life by their own effort, instead of by faith in Jesus and His grace.

I did this too. Almost every believer does at some point: trying harder to be good.

If Christ Is Not Risen (1 Corinthians 15:13-19)

Follow Paul’s logic step by step:

If there’s no such thing as resurrection, then Jesus didn’t rise.
If Jesus didn’t rise, then death had power over Him and defeated Him.
If death defeated Him, He isn’t God.
If He isn’t God, He couldn’t offer a complete sacrifice for sins.
If His sacrifice wasn’t complete, our sins aren’t fully paid for.
If our sins aren’t fully paid for, we’re still in our sins.
So if Jesus isn’t risen, He can’t save.
And you’d have to live your life alone. He couldn’t live His resurrection life through you.

Paul says if Christ isn’t risen, our preaching is empty, our faith is empty, the apostles are false witnesses, believers who have died are lost, and if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we’re the most pitiable people of all.

Spurgeon summed it up: if Jesus rose, then the gospel is exactly what it claims to be; if He didn’t rise, it’s all deceit and delusion.

But Christ Is Risen! (1 Corinthians 15:20)

But Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died.

Firstfruits were the first part of the harvest, offered to God as a pledge that the rest of the harvest was coming. Jesus’ resurrection is the guarantee of ours.

Paul explains it in Romans 6:5-11:

If we’ve been united with Him in a death like His, we’ll certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His.
Our old self was crucified with Him, so the body ruled by sin would be done away with and we’d no longer be slaves to sin.
Whoever has died has been set free from sin.
If we died with Christ, we believe we’ll also live with Him.
Christ, raised from the dead, will never die again. Death has no more power over Him.
The death He died, He died to sin once for all. But the life He lives, He lives to God.
So consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

What happened to Jesus happened to you.

We live a life that serves God through the resurrection power He shares with us.
It’s always a free gift of grace. You never have to earn it.
He is the firstfruits. We’re the rest of the harvest. And what fruit does His life produce in us? Love.

In Adam, In Christ (1 Corinthians 15:21-23)

Since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in order: Christ the firstfruits, then, at His coming, those who belong to Him.

Adam sinned, and all humanity died in him.
His sin disease was passed on to every human ever born (Romans 5:12).
But Jesus became a man too, so He could save humans.
He saves us by transferring His resurrection life into us through faith in His gospel.
If you believe the gospel, you have this resurrection life now.

We were buried with Him in baptism and raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. When we were dead in our sins, God made us alive together with Him, having forgiven all our trespasses (Colossians 2:12-13).

We share in Jesus’ death through faith.
We share in His life by the same faith.
Our sin was placed on His body on the cross to be killed and done away with forever.
And His new life was placed inside us.
What a trade!

Paul prays that the eyes of our hearts would be opened to know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in His people, and the surpassing greatness of His power toward us who believe, the same mighty power He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places (Ephesians 1:18-20).

The power at work in you is the exact same power God used to raise Jesus from the grave and lift Him to heaven.
Paul prays that we’ll understand it. It’s your inheritance. It was purchased for you. And it’s incredibly powerful.
How much power does it take to bring something dead back to life? Only God can do it. And He did. And He promises to do the same in our lives now, bringing life to what has been dead.
The power to change a life isn’t found anywhere but in Jesus. And we access it by believing, trusting His gospel moment by moment.

Grace Takeaway

The resurrection isn’t just a receipt. It’s a transfusion. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead now lives in you, giving you His life for today and guaranteeing your resurrection tomorrow. Stop trying to live by your own strength, and trust the risen Christ to live His life through you.

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Have You Heard the Good News? Part 2: The Life