InPerspective

Harry Reeder: Anybody that ever tells you that Christian doctrine developed out of wish fulfillment, why in the world would you hold to a doctrine and embrace it in order to have wish fulfillment when nobody wished it? Nobody wanted the body back. That's why they made fun of the doctrine. Which tells you something else: the early church did not frame its preaching by what the audience wanted, but by what God revealed.

Guest (Male): Putting life in biblical perspective with Dr. Harry L. Reeder. This is InPerspective, a radio and internet ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals.

The religious leaders known as the Sadducees denied the future resurrection of the body and even challenged Jesus on this point. But He exposed their lack of understanding and upheld this biblical teaching. Apparently, this doctrinal error of the Sadducees had crept into the Corinthian church, and the Apostle Paul set them straight with a powerful affirmation on the doctrine of the resurrection.

Stay with us now as Dr. Reeder continues our series on the Apostles' Creed and takes us to 1st Corinthians chapter 15 as he brings today's teaching, part one of his message, "The Resurrection of the Body."

Harry Reeder: Would you look with me in 1st Corinthians chapter 15? This is God’s word, and God’s word is true. This word that is now read in your hearing. Slip down if you would to verse 12. "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" You say that’s a rhetorical question, right? We proclaim Christ is raised from the dead, so how is it that some of you professing Corinthians can say there is no personal resurrection of the dead?

But 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 in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that 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, then your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, then we are of all people most to be pitied. The grass withers, the flower fades, the word of God abides forever. By His grace and mercy, may His word be preached for you.

So most of you know that creeds are not inventions external to the Bible; they're actually found in the Bible. They're found in various places. Titus 2:11 through 14, 1st Corinthians 3, there are various places you'll find creeds. Deuteronomy 6 in the Bible. A creed, whether it's one that's in the Bible or one that is written after the Bible has been given but is based upon the truths that are in the Bible, like the Apostles' Creed, is only so good as its faithful to God's word.

But it is good for a reason; it's good for a purpose. The creeds both in the Bible and the creeds from the Bible outside the Bible, those creeds have three purposes. One: to be used in worship because worship calls us to confess the truth. And so this distillation of truth with a creed or a confession or a catechism can be used for confession in worship.

Secondly, it is because a creed is used to protect the church from false doctrine. Thirdly, it is used to disciple Christians in the faith, particularly around what that creed is focused upon. The Apostles' Creed was an effort by—and now watch this—the disciples of the disciples of the apostles. In other words, these who knew the value of creeds began to develop a creed of the essentials of the faith—the things most surely believed among us.

And they put it in an economy of words; it's only 100 words in the Latin. It's a little bit more than that in the Greek and a little bit more than that in English. But in Latin, it was 100 words. And in this, it is Trinitarian: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is amassed together to give us these essential truths of the faith about the end of the second, maybe spilling over into the third century. So that's how we get the Apostles' Creed for its purpose and its use.

Now I'd like for you to do a little if-if stuff with me just for a moment. What if the Apostles' Creed, that is these biblical truths, these essentials, had been written in the first century by the disciples of the apostles themselves? And of course, it would have been the Apostles' Creed because it's coming from the work of the apostles led by the Spirit in terms of what is New Testament Christianity.

So what if it had been not in the second and third century, what if it had been available to us in the first century? Let me go another if. What if I was living in the first century? No, I wasn't. I just want to make that clear—I wasn't. But what if I was? And thirdly, what if I decided to do a series of sermons on the Apostles' Creed in the first century?

Now, that's exactly what I did living in the 21st century—I decided to do a series. Why did I decide to do this series? Well, I told you at the beginning, but in case you forgot, when I get to the end of the Apostles' Creed, I'm going to tell you again why I decided to do this series at this particular time. But I knew when I did that series that as soon as I got into that series, emails and text messages were to come to me.

And I knew that all of them—not all of them, the vast majority of them—would say one of three things or perhaps all three of the things. Number one, one question would be this: "What is that quick thing? I mean, what is that quick and the dead? Did they get that from the title of a movie?" No, they didn't. "Why the quick and the dead?"

A second one, getting a little bit more focused, would be, "Now, I thought we were reformed and Protestant. Why are we saying we believe in the holy Catholic church? Why do we do that?" And the third one would be, of course, "What does it mean that Jesus descended into hell or, in the original Greek, into Hades? What does that mean? Sheol or Hades, why would we say that?"

I knew those questions were going to come and gladly received them, and I've tried to walk you through the biblical answers. But I can tell you, you would not have asked me any questions about those three if we had done it in the first century because you would have known the two Greek words that are put together—the kata holos—that we get Catholic from. It means universal; it means the part that becomes the whole.

And so you would have known exactly what it meant: that it means the universal church. And then you would have known of the elect of God. And you would have known that the "descended into Hades" was actually a fulfillment of Psalm 16: that Jesus died a true death which separates body and soul, and His soul went to the intermediate state of Hades, the place of blessing in Hades called Paradise.

And then He would remain there for three days, His body in the tomb, His soul there, and then after three days, His soul would come forth, His body would come out of the tomb, and He, united soul and body, would be resurrected for a 40-day ministry and then ascend to heaven. You would have known that because you would have been taught that. So those questions would not have come up.

But you would have sent me a question. I tell you, let's do another if. Let's pretend in the first century there was email and text messages. I would have maybe gotten an email or a text message from you, particularly if you were a Christian who came from a Gentile background. And the one thing you would have asked me from the creed: "Why would we believe in the resurrection of the body?" Why would we believe that?

Isn't it interesting? Right now, you have no problem believing that. I mean, well, you may work through the issues, but the resurrection of the body, yeah, you expect it to be there. Why is it that they would have had a problem with that? Harry, how do you know they would have had a problem with it? Oh, I know it for two reasons. Let me tell you why they would have had a problem.

Number one reason is because man-made pagan religions divided in two parts over the body. Some of the man-made pagan religions worshiped the body. Salvation was the body. Now, you would have found that in places like Egypt, thus the embalming practices were developed. But the vast majority would have believed that which was influenced by the Greeks, which is: the spiritual is good, the physical is bad.

Salvation is liberation and deliverance from the body. You could see it in how they dealt with the dead. Those who made the idolatry of the body embalmed it, wanting to hang on to it and did everything they could to deny the reality of the death of the body. Those who were Platonic—the Greek view of life—was: well, the body is evil; the body is just a little container.

And that inside is the spirit; the whole point of salvation is to get liberated from the body. So they always burned the body, cremated the body, got rid of the body because of their desire to never have anything else to do with it. Salvation was to get free from it. Now, that's why you can see it at moments when the Apostle Paul—I just read a text from the Corinthians. Where was Corinth? It was a suburb just south of Athens.

It was dominated by Greek philosophy. The intellectual capital of the world was Athens. The intellectual giants were men like Plato and Aristotle and Socrates. Well, Plato is the guy that taught the Platonic view of life. And in that Platonic view of life, the upper story of deliverance is the spiritual; the lower story is the physical. And the whole point of salvation is to escape and be delivered from the physical.

That's why when the Apostle Paul went to Athens and he preached in front of the philosophers at Athens in Acts chapter 17, it says they begin to mock him and ridicule him when? When he spoke of the resurrection of the body. Now, there's two great lessons there, two greatly important lessons. The first one is this: that the resurrection of the body was despised by the pagan religions. One had the idolatry of the body; the other was to get rid of the body.

And here was Christianity saying that the body had to be resurrected and it would be resurrected new, but it would be resurrected. Anybody that ever tells you that Christian doctrine developed out of wish fulfillment, why in the world would you hold to a doctrine and embrace it in order to have wish fulfillment when nobody wished it? Nobody wanted the body back. That's why they made fun of the doctrine.

Which tells you something else: the early church did not frame its preaching by what the audience wanted, but by what God revealed. If they framed it by what the audience wanted, they would have jettisoned the resurrection of the body. That didn't get a good hearing at Athens, and it wasn't getting a good hearing at Corinth. In fact, at Corinth what they were saying was they said, "Harry, I don't know why you preaching this sermon because this resurrection of the body's not true."

Well, they didn't say it to Harry; they said it to Paul. Well, you better be careful when you tell Paul something. You better be ready to defend it because the Apostle Paul goes after this, and he goes after it with clarity. You see, in opposition is biblical religion, and it shows up not only in life but also in death. Whether it's Old or New Testament, what did they do with the bodies?

They didn't idolize them and worship them. No, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. But they always did it with reverence in laying aside the body. Why? Because what you do in life and death speaks theologically. And they laid it aside with reverence to make two statements: the body was made good; it's not evil. When God made the body, He said it is good.

It's sin that has corrupted the body, just as it corrupts the soul. And the second thing is they laid the body aside in reverence because of the sure expectation of the resurrection. Abraham believed it, Joseph believed it, Jacob believed it, the patriarchs believed it. They believed in the resurrection, although everyone around them either idolized the body or despised the body. But they stood in contrast based upon what God had revealed to them.

And so now we get to the Apostles' Creed. Let's look at this resurrection of the body in context and then just a little bit of the biblical content, and then I want to give you a takeaway to go with this. So in the context of this, what do we know about the Apostles' Creed? Well, here's what we know: the Apostles' Creed is Trinitarian. "I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."

Now, what did God the Father do? He sent His Son Jesus. Therefore, the next paragraph is on the second person of the Trinity. "I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son our Lord." That's who He is. Then it doesn't go into what He teaches, but it goes into what He did as our Savior. And it goes first to His humiliation and then to His exaltation.

He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead—what happened to His body? Buried. What happened to His soul? Descended to Hades. He told the criminal, "Today you will be with Me in Paradise." That's that part of blessing in Hades of the intermediate state for three days. Then what? On the third day, He rose again.

The "again" refers to life. He came from death and its power, which could not hold Him—He came to life. Then what does it say? It says that He then ascended into heaven and He sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there He shall come to judge the living and the dead. Now, what happens between His ascension and His coming? He sends Holy Spirit. "I believe in the Holy Spirit."

Now, may I say this reverently? Then the Apostles' Creed gives you a twofold look at the work product of the Holy Spirit until Jesus comes back. A twofold view of the work product of the Holy Spirit before Jesus comes back. "I believe in the Holy Spirit." The first part of the work product—now, here's what I'm saying: Jesus has finished His work product. His finished work is done.

He has redeemed His people from their sins. He has accomplished our redemption in His death, burial, and resurrection and ascension. So He has finished His work of redemption. He now sends Holy Spirit to do His work on gathering and perfecting the redeemed to bring them to glory. Now, when the Holy Spirit does His work sent from the finished work of Christ, what is His work product?

First of all, Jesus said when He finished His work, "Father, all whom You've given Me, I lose not one, but raise them up on the last day." In other words, all of the elect have been secured through Christ. Who will bring a charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. In Christ, Christ had redeemed. "Father, I lose not one of them." Therefore, the Holy Spirit is doing His work and is bringing to glory the holy Catholic church.

That is the one, perfect, universal church of the elect from all of the nations. It is perfect; it is not mixed. It is triumphant whenever that church is gathered in the heavens, it is gathered from its work on the earth and it now enters into its rest. The holy Catholic church, that is the universal church of the elect of God from every tribe and nation, is assured through the finished work of Christ and the present work of the Holy Spirit.

But there's not only the church triumphant, there's also the church militant. So he goes to the second thing, and that's this: the Holy Spirit in His work is assuring the holy Catholic church for all eternity—pure and perfect and gathered and not one lost. But there is also His work in the church militant on earth, the communion of the saints. Together we have a mission, we have a message, we have a ministry.

We are the church militant on mission, on message, and in ministry until Christ comes and gathers up all of the church triumphant through the ministry of the church militant in this world. Then he moves to a second dimension of the work product of the Holy Spirit: from the corporate—the church triumphant of the elect, pure and perfect, the church militant, imperfect, on mission, on message, in ministry as the communion of the saints—he then goes to the individuals that He's working on.

And he gives three gospel blessings secured in Christ: forgiveness of sins, resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Now, listen to me please carefully. Those three are inseparable. To have life everlasting with a resurrected body, you have to have the forgiveness of sins. If you have the forgiveness of sins now, you will have a resurrected body then for the purpose of everlasting life with Him and eternal joys.

The three are inseparable. You can't pick and choose on this. You must believe and repent of your sins and come to Christ for forgiveness in order to gain Christ. And as you've gained Christ, then what you have is not only forgiveness, He has assured you of an everlasting body like His for an everlasting life to be with Him. Now, listen carefully. Everyone's going to get a resurrected body. Everybody.

But not for the same destinations. Some will have a resurrected body to eternal condemnation if they have not come to Christ as Lord and Savior. It is appointed unto men once to die and then the judgment. The earth, the land, the sea will give up its dead, and we must all appear before the judgment. The believer does not appear for the issue of salvation, but for the issue of stewardship.

The unbeliever appears and will hear the verdict of condemnation. So I know you're going to get a resurrected body. The question is, where are you headed? And that comes back to the first blessing. Have you come to Christ for the remission of sins, forgiveness of sins? I love the three R's: redemption, ransom, and remission. In fact, could I ask you to maybe do something that most people when I ask them this they won't do it, but just write the word "remission" out?

The Bible says that in Christ we have remission of our sins. Just write the word "remission" out. What word do you see as a root of the word "remission"? What's the root of the word "remission"? This is not hard. Even East Carolina, even I can get this one. Mission. What is a mission? It is a task you are sent to do. Mission is a task you are sent to do.

So what is remission of sins? It is the sending away of your sins from you. Your sins have been sent away. They have been sent away how? By Christ, the sent one who was sent to save you from your sins. And when He saves you, He sends your sins with their guilt, with their shame, away from you.

Guest (Male): Because Jesus Christ rose from the dead, we who are united to him by faith will also rise from the dead. You are listening to InPerspective, featuring the teaching of Dr. Harry L. Reeder. Our current sermon series, "I Believe: The Apostles' Creed" in biblical perspective. Visit inperspective.org for additional Bible teaching by Dr. Reeder.

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And again, if you would like to receive this month's free gift offer, Dr. Reeder's series "Is the Bible Reliable?", call us at 1-800-488-1888. Join us again next time as Dr. Reeder examines what God's word teaches about the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the future bodily resurrection of believers. That's next time as we turn back to the Scriptures to put life in biblical perspective.