The Bible Study Hour

Guest (Male): The early church had many questions about the resurrection and its significance, and in response to those questions, Paul provides an answer concerning what is the most significant event in Christian history.

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. Paul finds that he is unable to provide that answer about the resurrection without first talking about death, or rather the conquest over death that the resurrection provides the believer. Stay with us now as Dr. Boice discusses the victory guaranteed by the resurrection of our Lord and Savior.

Dr. James Boice: 1 Corinthians 15, verses 54 to 58. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

Now I don't think I need to say a great deal about the importance of this chapter as concerning the resurrection. What I've discovered to be quite interesting, however, is that it deals with what we would consider a depressing subject as much or perhaps even more so than it deals with this glorious theme of the resurrection. I'm talking about death, of course, and the two are connected because it's only as we understand the significance and the horror of death that we understand the importance and glory of the resurrection. But the joy that's in this passage is that death is conquered. O death, where is thy victory? That's the question of the passage, and the affirmation is thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now let me begin with the first of the affirmations that we must make, and that is that death is an enemy. That's said here earlier in the chapter in very clear language. You find it in verse 26: the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Now it's important to say that because we have, unfortunately, in Christianity often a kind of false optimism that denies the reality of the great evils that we know in this world: sin, suffering, and death.

We see it, for instance, when we come into contact with a person who's dying. I was reading some time ago the story of a person who was in the last stages of cancer, a Christian, and who described for the benefit of her Christian friends what happened. She said the people will come into my room and I can see them as they come because there's a mirror in the hall and they're reflected there as they come by. And I can see that they try to put on a pleasant expression and they come into the room and they talk about what's going to be taking place at church next week or the week after and the time when I'm going to be better and be with them again.

And this person says they know that's not true. They know I'm dying. I know I'm dying, but they don't want to talk about it. And so they put on a pleasant face and they pretend the evil isn't there. Now in the case of this person whose testimony I was reading, there was in addition to an awareness of the evil a triumphant faith in Jesus, who rose from the dead and who has promised, indeed given, eternal life to all who believe in him. So the death in that room was transformed, but that's not always so. And so what we have sometimes in Christianity is a denial of the fact that death is an enemy.

I don't know why that is. Do we deny that because we think that somehow it's more spiritual to pretend that this isn't so? I don't know. Try doing that with sin. Pretending that sin isn't sin and see if that's more spiritual. Try to pretend that the pornographic films that are infesting our culture are all right. You do that and you lose the cutting edge of Christian social concern and reformation.

You see, you can't do it in that area, and you can't do it in the area of death either because while in one sense it might satisfy us if we're not facing death, it hardly satisfies anybody who is face to face with this reality. And so a false optimism doesn't do any good. Moreover, if we want to be corrected in that, we have the example of the Lord Jesus Christ who, you know, at the tomb of Lazarus wept.

And you say, "Well, why did he weep?" Some have reacted against the thought that Jesus could weep in the face of death. They said, "After all, he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. Why would he weep? He must have been weeping about the unbelief that was roundabout him." Well, maybe that too, but there was certainly unbelief around him at other times also and he didn't weep then. Here he was identifying with the tragedy of the situation. He was identifying with Mary and with Martha in her grief, and he recognized, I believe, that death was a great enemy, even as Paul confesses here in this 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians. And so is suffering, so is misery, so is sin. We were not made for this. But rather we brought it upon ourselves by our sin, having, however, been warned of God about it in advance. And so we begin, you see, by facing that.

Can I say something else? Death, if you understand it spiritually, is not only an enemy, it's also the ultimate enemy, the greatest enemy there is. I think we sense this in our fear of death, and we are afraid of death, even though death is transformed for Christians and fear is changed in some sense. Because, you see, death means separation, and if we're talking about spiritual death, this means a spiritual separation, separation from God.

Even our words indicate this. We talk about departure. That's separation. We talk about expiring. That means the exit of the spirit from the body. And just as in physical death, the soul and the spirit are separated from the body, so in spiritual death are the soul and the spirit separated from God. And in the unsaved man or woman, there is, I believe, the awareness that this is so.

If death were just the end, if it was simply a matter of lying down and expiring, the death of a man or a woman would be no more tragic than the death of an animal that simply dies and goes. But men and women sense that there's more than that, you see. They sense that there's a life beyond death. They sense that there's a God to be reckoned with, and they know deep in their hearts that they've offended against this God. They've sinned against him. They've rebelled against him. They've not come to terms with him.

And so it's the anticipation of that reckoning that makes death such a terror for the unsaved. And Christians, unfortunately, are not always so sure of their relationship with their Lord to be beyond death's fear either. Well, Paul talks about that, and he talks about it in realistic terms.

But then we have to say, and it's at this point that we begin to experience the Christian's joy, that while Paul speaks of death as the ultimate enemy, he at the same time speaks of an ultimate victory. And the ultimate victory is the victory that's provided for us by the Lord Jesus Christ. And Paul comes out with the expression of praise when he says, "Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ."

And what a victory that is. What a victory to know that death for the Christian is not a separation of the soul and the spirit from God, but rather it's an entrance of the soul and the spirit into the presence of God to be followed in God's own time by a resurrection that causes our body to be united with him as well. You see, death involves every part of our being. When God said to Adam in the garden, "You shall not eat of the tree, the fruit of the tree that's here in the center of the garden because the day in which you eat of it you'll surely die," and the man ate of it and died, he died in every part of his being.

He had a spirit, a soul, and a body, and he died in each one. He died in spirit and he showed it by hiding from God. He died in soul because all of the corruptions of anger and lust and hate and jealousy, pride, all the sins that we know so well, these began to enter the race. And then finally, he died in body also.

And when the Lord Jesus Christ transforms this, he saves us in spirit and soul so that we have a new spirit and a new soul, and these at death are taken into the presence of himself. And then at our resurrection, he saves us in body also. So it becomes, you see, not just a spiritual salvation, not just a soul salvation, but a whole salvation because God who made us spirit, soul, and body intends for us to be spirit, soul, and body, and so he redeems us in the whole man.

There's a description of that final victory much better in 1 Thessalonians, where Paul is also writing and once again answering the kind of questions that arose about these things in the Gentile churches to which he'd carried the gospel. The Gentiles didn't have much of a background in this area. Their understanding of the afterlife was based upon Platonic philosophy in which only the soul and the spirit were of value. The body was linked to earth. It was that which drags us down. Therefore, salvation according to Platonism was to be free of the body.

And this was their background, and they hardly understood these things. And so when Paul came preaching from an entirely different perspective, their questions lingered and they asked them again and again even after he was gone. They wrote to him to ask questions. They did that in the case of the church at Corinth, and they did it also in the case of the church at Thessalonica.

Now at Thessalonica, it concerned also the doctrine of the Lord's return. And so when Paul writes to answer their questions there, he speaks about the return of Jesus Christ. And as he writes about the return of the Lord, he explains how this affects us. He says, "First of all, you have to understand that those of us who have died—and some of their number had died, they mourned their loss—those are in their soul and their spirit with God. They're with Jesus."

And so when Jesus Christ returns, these are not going to be left behind in heaven. Rather, they're going to be brought with him. In other words, when Jesus descends to this earth, they're going to descend as well. Then I want you to notice, and I'm going to read this passage in a minute, that that's not the only direction that we have in the passage. There's the downward direction, the descent of the soul and the spirit of those who are with the Lord Jesus Christ, but at the same time, there's an ascension, a raising of the bodies of those who have died and therefore, obviously, a reuniting of the two in Christ's presence.

Look how Paul says it. He says, first of all, that he doesn't want them to be ignorant and mourn as those who have no hope because if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also who sleep in Jesus, that is who have died believing in Christ, will God bring with him. That is, they're with him now and when Jesus returns, they'll come with him. "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them who are asleep, for the Lord himself shall descend"—there's the direction—"from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trump of God and the dead in Christ," that is their body, "shall rise first."

And then he goes on to explain it in terms of those who are alive at Christ's coming, saying, "Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so shall we be ever with the Lord." You see, that's a great victory. That's a great consummation. And it is most certainly this to which Paul looks at the ending of this chapter.

But then thirdly, I want you to see something else. I want you to see not only that death is an enemy and not only that there's an ultimate victory over death for us, not just for Jesus Christ, for us as well, but I want you to see that there's a present victory now. Because the resurrection of the Lord has transformed even the kind of death that we know now in our own time and in our own existence and experience.

You see, I believe that before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, those who died believing went to what the Lord himself described in speaking to the thief on the cross as paradise and which he explained in some degree in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as being a place of bliss, but nevertheless not in his own presence or the presence of God. In the Old Testament, the abode of the dead both of the dying in faith and those who died in unbelief was called Sheol or Hades, and this place of the dead had two parts. It had the part known as Abraham's bosom or paradise where those who died in faith went awaiting the resurrection, and it had a place of torment where the rich man in Christ's parable dwelt. But neither one of these was in the presence of God himself.

When the Lord promised the thief on the cross that he'd be with him that day, the day that they both died, he did not say, "Today you'll be with me in the presence of my Father in heaven." He said, "Today you'll be with me in paradise." And when the Lord died, he went to paradise, and there he proclaimed the benefits of his death and resurrection to those who had died in anticipation of it. And when he arose, he carried these, I believe, into heaven for the first time, leading captivity captive and giving gifts to men, as it says in Hebrews. This was the time at which, as we read the Gospels carefully, you find that the tombs were opened and some of the dead who had died in faith went into the city of Jerusalem and revealed themselves to those who were there believing on that occasion.

But you see, the point I'm making is that death is transformed. Before, there was only at best the kind of vague hope in the afterlife that you find in Old Testament times. It's there, it's real. David and Job and the others expected God to be faithful to them even though worms should destroy their bodies, but it wasn't a very articulate faith and it wasn't the full-blown hope of the Christian.

And now you see, it's a different thing. And Paul can write as he does in his letter to the Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. And he can say in writing to the Philippians that though he has a desire to remain with them for their good, nevertheless, death is far better than that because it means entrance into the presence of God forevermore. That's what death is for us, you see. Transformed. In one sense, almost annihilated by the experience and the power of the resurrection of Jesus. And oh, we rejoice in that, and indeed we should.

Now finally, I want you to see one more thing from this passage, and it's this: that the assurance of these things is ours because of Christ's resurrection. Apart from that, well, it would be philosophy. It would be perhaps mysticism. It might even be a parable, but it couldn't have the cutting edge, the force of conviction and assurance that it does have for Christian people. We believe these things, you see, not just because Paul says them, though he certainly spoke them under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and therefore spoke them infallibly. But we believe these things because Jesus Christ demonstrated the truth of them by his own death and resurrection.

And you see, it was a real death. Unless it was a real death, we're not talking about a real resurrection. Jesus really died. If anything is a fact of history, it's that, the death of Jesus Christ under Pontius Pilate. But at the same time, you see, it's not just a literal death. It's also a literal resurrection. A real resurrection with a real body and a real person standing there that they could handle and touch, and furthermore, the kind of person who could eat boiled fish to demonstrate the reality. It was no ghost.

I've noticed, I wonder if you noticed this too, that when Hollywood tries to portray these things in movies, it inevitably spiritualizes the resurrection. It just has no guts the way Hollywood does it. I saw one of these on television, The Greatest Story Ever Told. If you saw it, you know that the death was real enough. When the Roman soldier took the hammer and drove the nail through the hands, the thunk was something you could hear in our living room. The death was real.

But then the resurrection came and all you could hear was the music. You couldn't even see the Lord. People rushed about in the joy of the resurrection, but where was he? I looked for him, and finally, the only view you had of him was a great ethereal Christ floating up in the clouds, drifting off into nowhere. That was no resurrection. If that was the kind of resurrection there was, I can guarantee that Thomas at least wouldn't have believed in it, and I don't think Peter and John would have either. But it wasn't that, you see. It was a real flesh and blood resurrection. A real resurrection. And these men knew that, and they touched that body. And therefore, they were willing to go from that obscure corner of the Roman Empire throughout the world of their day proclaiming death and resurrection and standing upon it to the point that they were willing to be crucified themselves rather than deny their Lord. That's how real it was.

You know, I don't usually read poetry, but there's a great poem by John Updike that says this in contemporary language in such a good way. I want to read it to you. Updike really has some insight in this poem. It's called Seven Stanzas at Easter. "Make no mistake: if he rose at all it was as his body; if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall. It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as his spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as his flesh: ours. The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that—pierced—died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of his Father’s might new strength to enclose. Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the fake credulity of earlier ages. Let us walk through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day. And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Maquillage, quantum, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom. Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance."

That's a great poem. And furthermore, it's one that sees what Paul is talking about as he writes this great chapter. You see, a mythical resurrection does not give birth to this kind of conviction, but a real resurrection does. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?

Now Paul himself gives the conclusion. You find it in verse 58. He tells us to be steadfast, unmovable, and to abound in the Lord's work. You see, he doesn't say that we're going to be successful in the Lord's work, though we hope we may. He doesn't say that we're going to be accepted in the Lord's work, though we hope there'll be a degree of acceptance also. But he does say that we're to abound in it and to be steadfast in it and that we can do that and that we will do that if we believe in the resurrection. So do we believe it? And will we do it? Will this be true of us? There is work to be done. And if you say, "In the midst of a world such as this, threatened by suffering, death, hostility, sin, all these things, how can I be steadfast?" The answer is you can be steadfast if you stand upon the Lord.

We sing it in one of our hymns: "His oath, his covenant, his blood support me in the whelming flood; when all around my soul gives way, he then is all my hope and stay. On Christ, the solid rock, I stand; all other ground is sinking sand."

Guest (Male): You’re listening to the Bible Study Hour featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. For believers, knowing the end of the story gets us through the hard times. We can endure the trials of this life because our bodies will one day be redeemed. Learn more in our free CD offer entitled The Redemption of Our Bodies. It’s another message by Dr. Boice. This free offer is our way of saying thanks for listening today. To receive this offer, call 1-800-488-1888. We’ll be happy to send you a copy of The Redemption of Our Bodies. That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

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Mark Daniels: The Bible Study Hour is a broadcast ministry of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, proclaiming biblical doctrine to foster a reformed awakening in today’s church. Connect with our online publishing, broadcast, and event platforms at thebiblestudyhour.org. I’m Mark Daniels. Thanks for joining me today. We sometimes remember defeats more than victories. Remember the Alamo? Remember Pearl Harbor? But the Apostle Paul admonishes us to remember the greatest victory in history, a victory plucked from defeat. Join Dr. James Boice as he takes another look at Paul’s words on the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s next time on the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.