>> Jen: Good morning, faithful listeners, and welcome to the Bible Explained podcast. Today I want to jump right into First uh, Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 19. And this is where Paul is going to discuss the resurrection of Jesus. Why did Jesus have to raise from the dead? What was the point of that? Couldn't he have just died for our sins without rising from the dead? What was the point of Jesus's resurrection? So we'll talk about all that today, as well as cultural
Christianity. Those will be our two subjects for today. So I'm going to be reading this out of the web as I, uh, usually do. This is first uh, 1 Corinthians 15, 1:19. Grab your cup of coffee and read along with me. Now I declare to you, brothers, the good news which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold firmly the word which I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. For I deliver to you first of
all that which I also received. That Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried. That he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, that he appeared to Cephas and then the 12. Then he appeared to over 500 brothers at once, but some have also fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to the child born at the wrong time, he appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles who is not worthy to be
called an apostle. Because I persecuted the assembly of God, uh. But by the grace of God, uh, I am what I am. His grace, which was given to me, was not futile, but I worked more than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God, uh, which was with me. Whether then it is I or they. So we preach, and so you believed. Now, if Christ is preached, then he has been raised from the dead. How do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the
dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain. And your faith also is in vain. Yes, we are also found false witnesses of God, uh, because we testified about God, uh, that he raised up Christ, whom he didn't raise up. If it is so that the dead are not raised. For if the dead aren't raised, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain. You are still
in your sins. Then they also, who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. But if we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men Most pitiable. In verse one, Paul says, I declare to you brothers, the good news which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you stand, by which you are saved if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you. Unless you believed in vain.
It's kind of a mouthful. And some people might take this verse to say that some people can lose their salvation because Paul is saying that somebody can believe in God, uh, but then if they don't hold fast to those truths, then that means they lost their salvation and they are no longer saved. First, I don't think that that is what Paul is saying. And secondly, I don't believe you can lose your salvation because there's many verses to back up. Once you become
saved, you are always saved. The one I can think of right off the top of my head is the one in Hebrews that says that nobody can pluck you out of God's hand. In other words, if you have a belief in God, uh and God, uh is holding you in his hand, nothing can ever come and take away your salvation. When you become saved, you have that salvation for eternity. There's a big difference between head knowledge of Christ and a heart
knowledge of Christ. And I've actually taught this to the girls at my youth group before about true salvation. Some people can have a head knowledge of Christ, meaning they, they read the Bible, they understand it, they even claim to be a Christian. They go to church every single Sunday. But that's a head knowledge of Christ. If they don't have a heart knowledge of Christ, then they're not
really saved. You have to have a heart transformation toward Christ in order to truly be saved, not just a head knowledge of him. Even Jesus himself said, oh, you know, you say you believe in God, uh the Father. Well, okay, prove it. Because even Satan and the demons know about God, uh the Father. So it has to be something deeper than a head knowledge. It has to be a heart knowledge of Christ. And when somebody has that heart knowledge of Christ, that is when they are truly saved.
And if you read this verse, Paul is not saying that somebody can lose their salvation. He's saying that if the uh, Corinthians listen to the Gospel, but they only believe it superficially and they don't hold fast to it and they just abandon it later on. They were just believing in vain. But those who believe on it firmly and hold fast to it firmly, Paul says, those are the people who are truly saved. So Paul says, hold fast to the good news,
just like you did at the very beginning. Hold fast to it, he says, for I delivered to you first of all, that which I also received. So Paul's like, I didn't make any of this up. I also received the Gospel message myself. Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures. And the other apostles didn't make it up either. They also received the Gospel message. And then Paul gives this list of all of the evidence that he has that proves the death and resurrection of Jesus.
He says, Christ died according to the Scriptures. So all of the prophets of the Old Testament that were around hundreds of years before Jesus was even alive predicted that Jesus would die and be buried and rise again. So Scripture prophesied about it, and it happened. Christ was buried. So if Jesus was buried, that means that he definitely died, because people don't just get buried if they don't die. So Jesus definitely died because he was buried. He was raised on the third day according to the
Scriptures. Once again, the prophets prophesied that Jesus was going to rise again on the third day. And it actually happened. And Jesus himself told his audience that he would rise again on the third day as well. And then Jesus appeared to Cephas, who was Peter, after he was risen from the dead. He appeared to people, and they knew he had died. Then he appeared to the other 12 apostles. Then he appeared to 500 brothers and sisters, most of whom were still alive when Paul was
writing this letter. And then Jesus appeared to James, his brother, then to the rest of the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to Paul. So that is all the evidence that Paul has that Jesus died on a cross, was buried, and then rose again three days later. Now, there are some people who have a problem with the fact that Scripture always says that Jesus rose three days later because he technically rose two and a half days
later. Because he rose. He died Friday in the early afternoon, and then he arose Sunday in the early morning. So some people get really mad about that, and they say, well, Jesus wasn't really in the tomb for three days. But you have to remember the way that Jewish people ordered their days. Their days always started at sundown and then ended at the next sundown. So the Jewish people ordered their
days a little bit different than we do nowadays. We think of it as, like, midnight, um, to midnight, but theirs was sundown, to sundown. And secondly, they also talked different than you and I do nowadays. Any part of a day would be considered a day to them. Even if it was the evening of one night, a whole day, and then the morning of the next day, that would be considered three days to somebody from ancient Israel.
But moving forward, Paul talks about all these different witnesses that saw Jesus alive after he was dead and buried. First he talks about Cephas or Peter, one of the apostles. Then he talks about the other 12 apostles, which you guys might be like, well, there wasn't 12 apostles because Judas had died and he was the one that betrayed Jesus. Well, when Paul says the 12, he's not specifically saying that there were 12 of them.
It's kind of more of a title that they had. The 12 that followed Jesus, they were the 12, if that makes sense. Then he also appeared to over 500 people after that. So many people saw Jesus after he was risen from the dead. And most of them were alive during the days of Paul. But after Jesus appeared to these other 500 people, this cracks me up. Then Jesus appeared to James, and James was actually Jesus's brother, earthly
brother. So it really cracks me up that, uh, James was one of the last to see Jesus. And it's not shocking to me, though, because James never really believed in Jesus until after Jesus ascended up into heaven. James didn't believe in Jesus at all. In fact, there are stories about James and Jesus, other brothers actually kind of insulting him. So James and Jesus, other brothers, like Jude, did not believe in Jesus until after he had risen from the dead.
So James was one of the last people to actually see Jesus then the rest of the apostles. Because the one thing I can understand about apostles is in order to become an apostle, you had to have seen Jesus. And that is why Paul is also considered an apostle, because he did see Jesus. Even though Paul may not have seen Jesus after he had risen from the dead, while he was still, like, walking on earth, Paul did see Jesus appear to him on the road to Damascus.
So he is considered one of the apostles. But Paul calls himself the least of all of the apostles. And he's not even worthy to be called an apostle because he persecuted the assembly of God, uh. And of course, we know Paul's story. For many years as a Pharisee, he hated the followers of Jesus and persecuted them and even sent some of them to prison and possibly even to their deaths. In meetings with the Sanhedrin, the lawyers at the time, he would
vote against the Christians. So Paul feels some shame over that. He says, I'm not even worthy to be called an apostle, but yet, by the grace of God, uh, I am an apostle. He says, by the grace of God, uh, I am what I am. And his grace was given to me and has not been futile. But I worked more than all of them. And that's very true. And Paul's not patting himself on the back here. He's attributing it all to God's grace. But Paul really was the most active apostle out of all of
them. He traveled the most. He did the most missionary journeys, he did the most church plants. And God, uh really gave him the energy to do that job. So Paul says, I have worked harder than the other apostles because of God's grace that has been with me. Whether then it is I or they, we all preach. And so
you believed. So Paul ends by saying, I'm not better than any of the other apostles just because I've been working hard through God's grace, giving me the energy and the ability to work the way I can. I'm not better because the other apostles are also preaching the gospel message. And because we preach the gospel message, people are being saved. There is not one apostle better than the others. And once again, Paul did call himself the worst of the least of all the apostles, rather.
Now in verses 12 through 19, Paul goes into some issues once again that he's seeing in the Corinthian church, which is basically the entire book of uh, Corinthians. Is Paul correcting issues that he sees going on in the Corinthian church? And here's another one. Apparently there were some Christian uh, Corinthians that didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead, meaning that once you die, they thought you just go to the grave and that's the end of
everything. And maybe they only believed in the message of the Gospel or went to church because it's just a good way to live, being kind and generous to other people. Nowadays we would call that cultural Christians. People who kind of take the message of Christianity, like the morals of Christianity, and live out the morals without really believing the message of Christianity. That's what a cultural Christian is. And apparently there were a lot of cultural Christians, it seems
like, at the Corinthian Church. So Paul now addresses this problem and he says, if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? And that's the point of why Jesus had to rise from the dead. Because some people think that, you know, if Jesus had just died and paid for all of our sins, what's the point of him being resurrected from the dead? Well, there is a point. In fact, there's many points.
The first point being Jesus had to rise from the dead because he was showing people that there is life after death. And the entire message of Christianity is that there is life after death. There is hope not just for this world, but for something later to come. And so Jesus had to rise from the dead in order to prove that death is not the end and that there is life after death. And I mean, what did Jesus do after he rose from the dead? He ascended alive up into heaven. He was alive when he
ascended to heaven. So that helps us understand that there is life after death. That's the first reason. The second reason Jesus had to rise from the dead was to prove his divinity and also prove the validity of the Old Testament scriptures that prophesied that the Messiah would come and rise from the dead to defeat sin and also death. That's the second reason. And lastly, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, the movement of Christianity probably would have died
with Jesus. It was because Jesus rose from the dead that the message of Christianity, the Gospels, spread. Who can conquer death other than God Himself? So that was the reason for Jesus rising from the dead, not just dying for our sins, but also showing that he had power over death and over life as well. But some of the uh, Corinthians didn't really believe this. Verse 13. If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ hasn't been
raised, then our preaching is in vain. And your faith also is in vain. Yes, we are also found false witnesses of God, uh because we testified about God, uh, that he raised up Christ, whom he didn't raise up, if it is so that the dead are not raised. So Paul's like, look, me and Peter and the other 12 disciples and the other apostles and the 500 witnesses that Jesus appeared to, and James, the brother of Jesus, apparently, uh, you all think that we're lying if you don't believe
that Jesus rose from the dead. Because if he didn't rise from the dead, his body should still be in the tomb. We've become all false witnesses if Jesus did not rise from the dead. He also says, if the dead aren't raised, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ had not been raised, your faith is in vain. You are still in your sins. So Paul argues even further that the entire message of the Gospel hinges on the fact that Jesus rose from the dead.
Because if he had just gone to the grave and not risen from the dead, that would have proved that he didn't have power over death and thus didn't have power to save us from our sins and an eventual eternal death. So Paul says the entire message of the Gospel hinges on the fact that Jesus rose from the Dead. That's the core basic understanding of Christianity. And so if you don't believe that, then you are still living in sin. You have to believe the entire
Gospel message in verse 19. This is the funniest verse in the entire Bible. If we have only hoped in Christ, in this life, we are of all men, most pitiable. Uh, this verse cracks me up. Because if we only had Christianity for this life, it was only for this life. We die, we go into the grave, there is nothing afterward. Why would anybody live the Christian life? What is the point of it? It is a pitiable existence.
Why would anybody die over Christianity and get martyred and be ostracized from people and be shunned by their friends and family members? If Christianity is only for this life, that would be a, uh, miserable and pitiable existence. So Paul says that's the other reason why you should believe in the resurrection of the dead, so that you can actually believe that there is something other than just this
life. Don't just be a cultural Christian, taking the principles of Christianity and applying them to your life without the knowledge that there is life after death. Don't do that, because that's actually a very pitiable existence. Instead, you have to go deeper with Christianity and not just take the core principles of it, but really believe that Jesus saved you from your sins and didn't just save you from your sins,
but he also rose from the dead. And because he rose from the dead, he's able to do that for you. That death is not the end. There is something better after this life here on earth. So don't be a cultural Christian. Be a true Christian with a heart knowledge of who Christ really is. M It's so interesting that there is something in Scripture for pretty much every cultural problem that
we face. Even though these words were written 2,000 years ago and beyond that, they really are so modern and apply to pretty much every point in life. Even when we're talking about the kings in the Old Testament, you know, people think that they're so far removed from the kings, but it's amazing how similar, um, the struggles of the Old Testament kings are to what we struggle with nowadays.
So the Bible is very relevant. It's not just some dusty old book that doesn't really mean anything or isn't for us nowadays. It is a fantastic book filled with just so many lessons and the keys to attaining salvation. And that is why I love talking about the Bible and reading it for you guys. Anyway, I hope that you all enjoyed this episode today. If you did make sure to write a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening from and tell people why you enjoy the Bible Explained
podcast. Every time I get a new review that helps the podcast get pushed to more people. So take a moment or two to write a nice review and rate the podcast five stars or whatever you think of it really. Anyway, faithful listeners, have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your day. Once again there will not be a normal episode tomorrow for everybody because the Friday podcast is for the members over on Ko
Fi. Right now we are going through the Book of Psalms and I hope that you become a member and join us over on the Psalms. The information on how to do that is linked in the description of this episode. Anyway, faithful listeners, have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your afternoon. I will see you guys on Monday and I hope you have a great weekend. Happy listening and God, uh bless.