Sermons 2025

Video

Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20
Theme; If/Then

Outline
1.    If Christ has not been raised you are in your sins
2.    Thanks be to God that Christ was raised, so too will you, and you are no longer in your sins.

Sermon:

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our meditation today is the First letter of Saint Paul sent to the church in Corinth chapter fifteen verses one through twenty.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you ever heard a solo? A solo is someone singing or playing an instrument alone. When I think of an solo, I immediate think of “Rhapsody in Blue,” by George Gershwin. It starts out with this haunting clarinet solo. Then the piano comes in, and then the whole orchestra, and the theme you hear first in the clarinet gets picked up by other instruments and expanded and explored. The solo comes first, but it is part of the whole which is still coming. That is similar to what Saint Paul is talking about in our text today. What did Jesus do for you? He died and rose from the dead right! He currently is the solo. His resurrected body is part of the New Creation even now, ahead of time. We await the full orchestra when everyone will be raised from the dead. What a joyous day that will be to hear. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, we look forward to our own resurrections, how does that impact our lives today? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.

1.    If Christ has not been raised you are in your sins

When you think of your resurrection. When you ponder what exactly happens after you die, what springs to mind? Probably quite a bit but nothing related to a physical body or a physical resurrection. We might picture merely our souls at rest. Perhaps merely floating somewhere like the life force of Obi-Wan Kenobi or Yoda after they die, a kind of glowing version of our physical selves. Remember how neither Obi-Wan nor Yoda left an embarrassing corpse behind when they died? Neither did Master Oogway, from Kung-Fu Panda, for that matter. In fact, in entertainment for young and old, we Americans seem to be content with the soul living on without a body (if it is a family movie), or souls living on in dead bodies (if it is a zombie movie), but we do not imagine something as vulgar as a corpse has much of a future. 

Offer an American ghost a body and they would probably turn you down too. We do not need a resurrection of physical bodies in our culture. This kind of narrow hope for a vague kind of life-after-death-without-your-body has affected the Church as well. I have often heard life long members say that it does not matter what happens to their body when they die. It is merely a shell for their soul. That they can treat their body however they want and it will be alright.

Nothing could be farther from the truth! Your body is not a mere shell for your soul. How you treat it matters because it reflects upon your Creator. It is intimately connected to who you are as the creature that God the Father has created you to be. In fact, without a physical, bodily, without a physical resurrection, we have no hope at all

Paul makes this point clear in our text for today. If there is no bodily resurrection. If Christ is not raised. Not only are you still stuck in your guilt, shame, and sins. You stand condemned under the wrath of God for all time. There is no forgiveness. There is no hope. There’s just nothing but complete and utter despair, eternal wrath and separation from God since there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves.

To drive home his point, Paul uses a combination of logic and imagery. He starts with an almost computer lingo Boolean string of if/then statements:

{IF physical corpses are not raised, THEN Christ is not raised.}
{IF Christ is not raised, THEN your faith is worthless.}
{IF faith is worthless, THEN you are stuck with your sins, and the dead people you love are just dead.}
{IF you are stuck with your sins, and the dead people you love are just dead, THEN this religion is a lie, we have no hope, and followers of Jesus are pitiful, disillusioned suckers.}

2.    Thanks be to God that Christ was raised, so too will you, and you are no longer in your sins.

Thanks be to God that we are not pitiful, disillusioned suckers! We are not suckers because of what God has done for us. While we might say that without the, “It is finished!” of Good Friday you would be stuck in your sins, Paul pushes the foundation of our faith forward a couple of days. Without the, “He is risen, just as He said!” of Easter, our faith is empty, and our sins remain. Thanks be to God that He has raised Jesus from the dead. He no longer lies in the coldness of the tomb but Jesus is risen forever, exalted to the right hand of the Father. 

Jesus has been raised as the first fruits. Jesus  is the first and the evidence of what is to come. The same as there is always a nice red, ripe apple while al the rest are still green and unripe, heralding the tasty goodness to come when all is ripe. So too here. Jesus is the first installment, the opening solo of the New Creation. His resurrected body is part of the New Creation even now, ahead of time.

And if you want to know what the New Creation is like, then look to Jesus and His living body which eats, and walks, and talks, and loves, and shares with those He loves. The New Creation looks, feels, smells, and tastes like Jesus. Jesus is the firstfruits offering, set aside as holy to God even as we, God’s people, depend on God for the rest of the harvest still to come.

Thus, the resurrection still impacts our lives today. Not only does it prove that our sins are forgiven, God’s wrath appeased by the shedding of Jesus’ blood. It impacts our daily lives, as we live the holy lives that God has given us to live. Through the power of the Holy Spirit living within us, we live in Christ’s holiness upon this earth. Not that we are already holy, we are simultaneously sinner and saint, but we live sanctified lives as we do the good works that God prepared beforehand for us to do, empowered by His Holy Spirit to do them. We do good works while we look forward to the great harvest to come, when we will be resurrected the same as our Lord Jesus Christ, purified and holy forever with Him in the new heavens and new earth forever.

Get used to your body. You will have it forever.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.