I BELIEVE…THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY AND THE LIFE EVERLASTING
I Corinthians 15: 12-19
02/19/12 © Dr. Ronald W. Scates
A 4-year-old said to his mother, “Mommy, is God everywhere?”
She said, “Yes, He is!”
“Well, is He is this room?”
“Yes, dear!”
“Mommy, is He is my cup?”
She said, “Well, yeah!”
“Got Him!(placing his hands over the top of the cup)”
As we bring our sermon series on the Apostles’ Creed to a close today, we need to remind ourselves that the purpose of this
whole sermon series was not to put God in a box or in a cup, to confine Him to a Creed. Indeed, Almighty God, Maker of heaven and
earth is far too loving and gracious and mysterious and demanding and saving than any one person or institution or creed can wrap
their brains around and yet the same God reveals the very essence of who He is and what He’s done for you and me, He does so in
His Word—primarily the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ but a Jesus that you and I cannot accurately and faithfully know apart
from the Jesus that we meet in His infallible Word, the Bible.
Jesus is God, the essence of God. And in the Apostles’ Creed, that is a distillation, a distillation of what, for nearly 2 millennia
now, the worldwide church of God has believed to be the essence of biblical faith as to just who this Triune, amazingly salvific God
is and what He does.
The biblical orthodox faith, as expressed in the Creed, is a unifying faith that’s drawn the world church together now for about
1,700 years. It’s the touchstone, the Rock, the Anchor of authentic faith.
G.K. Chesterton, in his remarkable little book entitled, Orthodoxy, goes to great and winsome lengths to make the point that the
biblical orthodox faith does anything but put God in a box. In fact, it’s that faith that makes vast room for miracle and mystery.
The reality that you and I do not live in a closed, mechanistic, naturalistic universe; no, no, no, you and I live in a universe that
has an Author; an Author who’s already written the end of the play, a creator that even enters into His creation, a Designer who has
laid out all of the laws of physics and then for our ultimate best and His joy, He sometimes chooses to alter or even violate, from our
point of view, those laws for you and I. Not for just your salvation and mine but the redemption of the entirety of His creation.
The Apostles’ Creed points you and me to that God. It’s the ultimate foundation of a healthy robust faith, over and against the
faith systems of secularism and progressive liberal Christianity which, if you follow those things, it pretty ends much ends in a mancentered faith where belief in ourselves becomes the cardinal doctrine. The Apostles’ Creed will have none of that. It points you and
me to a Creator, a Judge and Redeemer as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It’s not about us; it’s about Him! It’s about His glory!
The Apostles’ Creed distills all of that, my friends. It makes room for a faith that is joyous and celebrative, a faith that embraces
mystery and miracle; this loving God who will go to any lengths to bring about the redemption and salvation of His kingdom. Your
lives and mine!
You know, 3 years ago was the 500th anniversary of the birth of John Calvin and I decided to have my own personal celebration
and thankfulness to God for that great theologian by reading a number of books, by and about that great man, John Calvin. And one
of the things I was reminded of as I read those books was that one of the chief emphasis of Calvin as pastor was to prepare his
people to die and to die well. You see, that’s the way the Apostles’ Creed ends. It does that same thing: I believe…in the resurrection
of the body and the life everlasting. The end of the Creed is all about preparing you and me to die well. That’s what the Apostle Paul
is up to in the Scripture text that we are about to read this morning as well. And so I invite you to turn in your bibles, with me, to I
Corinthians, chapter 15 and let’s take a look at the last two clauses of the Apostles’ Creed through the lens of Paul’s first letter to the
Corinthians, the 15th chapter, verses 12 through 19. And I invite you to pray with me before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it
and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
Now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word this morning, beginning to read at the 12 th verse of I
Corinthians, chapter 15:
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?
13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our
preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 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. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has
been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen
asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
I invite you to pray with me again. And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word may they be taken to heart but as my
words should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen.
Please be seated.
It’s said that back in the Victorian age, people were obsessed with death but they would rarely if ever talk about sex. Here we
are now in the 2nd decade of the 21st Century and it’s just about the opposite, isn’t it? The porno industry is now a multi-billion dollar
business. It’s bigger than Hollywood. Yet you and I, faced with national politics, church politics, leisure entertainment, we’re awash
with sexuality yet we say, “passed” or “went to a better place,” because we don’t want to say the blunt truth that the person died. We
take our cemeteries and we stick them outside of town, out of sight and we make them look like golf courses. We’re afraid to talk
about death. Sorry, but that’s what we’re going to do this morning because that’s exactly what the last two clauses of the Apostles’
Creed talks about and that’s what Paul has been talking about in this text that we just read.
Like I said, 3 years ago, John Calvin’s 500th birthday, I read a number of books about him and by him. As a pastor, what he
wanted to do above everything else was to prepare his people to die and to die well. And that’s exactly what the Apostles’ Creed is
up to as it comes to a close this morning.
But there have always been people, in the physical church of Jesus Christ, in its 2,000 years, there’s always been some people
who have doubted or have always been skeptical of or downright disbelieving of the resurrection of Jesus and the whole concept of
resurrection in general. And so Paul, beginning in verse 12 of our text, he begins to take those people on. Not because he’s
combative but simply because he wants them to live well and die well, along with all of those Corinthian Christians. Even then, back
in the 1st Century, there were people there in Corinth who did not believe in the resurrection of anyone. I run into those people still
alive today. They say, “When you’re dead, you’re dead.” So called Christians telling me that death is a finality, that if you’re going to
enjoy God, you better do so in this life because there is nothing on the other side, “When it’s over, it is over!”
Let’s track with Paul now as he takes their argument and runs it right out to the bitter end. He says, in verse 13, “If God really is
not in the business of raising people from the dead then Christ has not been raised. Christ is dead.” In other words, you and I are
left, not with Jesus Christ but with Jesus’ corpse, which means that what I am doing right now, here in this pulpit, is the most foolish
and utterly ridiculous, a complete waste of time. Do you know what’s worse? You all have come here to listen. Verse 14: Go believe
in yourself. Go believe in the tooth fairy. Anything would be better to believe in a dead Jesus!
At HPPC, we’re just one franchise, involved in a worldwide snake oil scam, hawking a product—resurrection that has nothing
to do with God, because God doesn’t raise people from the dead—verses 15 and 16. And all of those sins that you were hoping that
God had forgiven you of—look again, you’re still wallowing in them, marinating in the guilt, headed for judgment and condemnation.
Hell’s your destiny because Paul says that the forgiveness of sins is not just wrapped up with Christ’s death on the cross.
Our atonement, you know, sin separates you and me from God. That thing that’s eating you, inside of you, all of us, is that
desire to be at one with God. That at-one-ment, atonement, that’s not dependent just on the death of Christ on the cross, Paul is
saying, but upon the bodily resurrection of Jesus as well, verse 17.
What about those loved ones of yours and mine, those friends of ours who died in Christ? What about my daughter Anna, who
lies in a grave in Memphis? Finis! Kaput! Nothing! Over! Perished! Bottom-line, verse 19, if you and I have hitched our wagon to the
bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as the chief hope that we have in this life and for a life beyond this life, then we are the sorriest,
most pitiful people walking the planet.
Be a Narcissist. Be a Buddhist. Be a Hindu. Be a hedonist. Be a crook. Be anything but a Christian, if it is true that God is not
primarily in the business of resurrection, bodily resurrection.
Ah, but the Apostles’ Creed ends by echoing what the Apostle Paul drives home in the rest of I Corinthians, chapter 15, which I
urge you to read sometime this afternoon.
And so, because of what Paul writes, I can stand here this morning and say I stand with the Creed. I believe in the resurrection
of the body. And the Creed here is not talking about Jesus’ resurrection. We’ve already dealt with that earlier on. He’s talking now
about your resurrection and my resurrection which you and I will never quite understand until we grasp the fact that your
resurrection and mine is all wrapped also in Jesus’ bodily resurrection. That’s important to know because our deaths are eminent,
unless the Lord returns before we die. But even then, it impacts that as well.
You see, my friends, the story of the entire bible is all about resurrection and redemption in the wake of incarnation. Genesis
begins with God creating matter. And He says, “Matter is good.” And you know what, He’s never rescinded His opinion about that
and when matter has become denigrated and broken because of human sin, do you know God did? He incarnated, enfleshed
himself, entered into creation, into matter, in the real flesh and bone body of Jesus Christ. Jesus walked this planet a corporal begin,
real flesh and bone. I will say our human flesh was not a uniform that Jesus was not ashamed to wear. And when He died, God
raised Him incarnate, in flesh and when He ascended, it was a bodily ascension. Think about that. This is very important.
The Incarnation was eternity piercing into time and space. Jesus’ fleshly ascension is our flesh and with it, symbolically, all of
creation and all matter; the resurrected flesh now piercing from time and space into eternity all of matter and our flesh being raised
to an eternal level, an eternal redemptive level. And the bible tells us that Jesus will return visibly, personally, bodily, in the flesh.
And the Scriptures are clear; you and I will spend eternity, not as disembodied beings. The bible knows nothing of humanity that is
not embodied. We too will have resurrection bodies like Jesus.
Now there’s s difference between resurrection and resuscitation of a corpse. I’ve talked about that with you before and we need
to go over it again. The Creed’s not talking about resuscitation, it’s talking about resurrection.
What’s resuscitation? Well, let me give you an example—Lazarus, Jesus’ friend. Jesus raises him from the dead. Is that
resurrection or resuscitation? Resuscitation. Lazarus came out of tomb in the exact same body that he went into the tomb. It was a
body that was still mortal, corrupted, a body still susceptible to sin, disease and death. He died again. You know, we talk about being
born again, Lazarus, he was one of those guys that died again. Jesus comes out of the tomb, not resuscitated—resurrected—a body
that’s been transformed. There’s a continuity and discontinuity between his pre- and post-resurrection bodies. Continuity in that you
could recognize Him. If you went up to Him, He was not a spook. He was corporal, physical. He ate a piece of fish to prove that.
Spirits apparently don’t eat.
But there was a discontinuity. Apparently He was no longer bound by the laws of space-time physics as we understand them.
He could change His appearance. He could appear or disappear in rooms where the doors and windows were closed and locked.
And the Creed is affirming that our resurrection bodies will be like His. Have you ever thought, “What will I look like in my
resurrection body? What age will I be?” I don’t know but I will tell you this: The bible is clear that your resurrection body will no
longer be susceptible to sin, disease, death, no more pain, no more tears. You will have no complaints. I will have complaints about
our resurrection bodies ever. When we stand with the Creed and affirm the last two clauses, that’s what we’re saying. And I don’t
flinch to stand with the Creed and say, “I believe in life everlasting. Probably a better synonym for “everlasting,” might be “eternal.”
“Everlasting” is more of a quantitative term in a life that just never goes off, where as “eternal” is more of a qualitative term.
I know people whose lives are so bitter and disappointing and painful that the idea of everlasting life is a complete turn off to
them.
The Greek word for, “eternal” is the word, “aiónion.” It’s not just qualitative; it’s a both/and, not a neither/or. It’s a quality and a
quantity of life. And the quality of life that everlasting life is talking about is the quality that comes from presence of Christ
indwelling you and me as His disciples. When Christ, who gives us His promise, “I am with you always,” lives His life through us,
that’s where the quality comes from. Not from anything we bring to it. That ought to mean that your lives and mine look different or
noticeable in their quality in the here and now because you see, eternal life begins, not just when you and I die, it begins at the
moment you and I accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, when we bend the knee to Him as our only Lord, that is when that quality of life
begins and it’s a life that’s never-ending. It’s everlasting. So eternal life is walking with Christ, right now, here and now, and on into
eternity and there’s no break—ever! So our lives ought to look different.
You know that old saying about if you were ever put on trial for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict
you?
What if somebody shadowed you and me for 24 hours and we didn’t know and they were looking at us, how we act, what we
say, how we treat other people? Would they go, “Wow, look at the quality of that person’s life!” Would they be drawn to Christ
through your life? If not, something’s wrong!
Bottom-line, when you and I stand with the Creed and say, “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting,”
we’re talking about how we live and die well.
Michael Faraday, the great scientist, on his deathbed, his friends came to him and asked him about his speculation about life
after death. Listen to Faraday’s words: “Speculation—I know nothing about speculation. I’m resting on certainty. I know that my
Redeemer lives and because He lives, I shall live also.”
The all-wise Socrates, when he was dying, his friends came to him and said, “Shall we live again?” Do you know what his
response was? “I hope so!”
Contrast that with Sir Walter Raleigh, a man who believed the Apostles’ Creed. What Raleigh said on his death bed, “From the
earth, the grave, the dust, my God shall raise me up!”
You know, if you and I stand with the Creed and embrace the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, you and I might
just wind up about that lady I told you about a few years ago who told her husband, “When I die, place a fork in my hand.” There at
the viewing, people were walking by and there she was, laying in the casket with a fork in her hand. People were going, “What in the
world?” The next day at the funeral, her husband addressed the congregation. He said, “I noticed some of you are curious, some are
even upset by the fact that I’ve buried my wife with a fork in her hand. That was her request—to be witness to faith in Christ and
everlasting life because you see, my friends, she grew up in a home where every night, as her mother came in to clear the dinner
table, she would look at each person around the table and say, ‘Keep your fork! The best is yet to come.’ And she would bring out
some scrumptious dessert. My friends, that’s how the Apostles’ Creed is ending. The best is yet to come!
The Ars Moriendi was a devotional series of writings back in the 15 th Century. It was a discipling tool. Christians were urged to
read them, particularly to prepare to die. Part of the Ars Moriendi is a conversation between Satan and a dying saint. Listen to the
conversation: “You’re frightened, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I’m frightened but I’m trusting my Savior who calms my fears.”
“Oh, really! You think you are going to be rewarded by this Jesus, don’t you? You who have no righteousness.”
“Christ is my righteousness.”
“Oh, Christ is your righteousness. You think Christ will welcome you to the company of Peter and Paul and the apostles? You
who have sinned over and over again?”
“No, I’m not going in to the company of Peter and Paul. I’m going in to the company of the thief on the cross who heard the
promise, ‘Today, you will be with me in paradise.’”
“Why are you so confident? You who have done nothing good!”
“I have God’s forgiveness and mercy!”
“Legions of demons are salivating, waiting for your soul.”
“I would be hopeless and fearful before that if the Lord had not already crushed your tyranny.”
“Your God is unjust. What kind of God would bring someone like you into a kingdom of righteousness?”
“God keeps promises. That is what justice is and I will call on His mercy.”
The great Reformed theologian Lorraine Bettner really sums up the last two clauses in the Apostles’ Creed well by painting a
picture of a sailing ship. I often read this at gravesides but it’s time I brought it here into this sanctuary on a Sunday morning.
Here’s what Bettner writes: “I’m standing on a seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning’s breeze and
starts for the ocean blue. She’s an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs, like a speck of
white cloud, just where the sea and sky come down to meet each other. Then someone at my side says, ‘There, she’s gone.’ Gone
where? Gone from my sight, that’s all. She’s just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and just as
able to bear her load of living weights to its place of destination. Her diminished size is in me, not in her. Just at the moment when
someone says, ‘There, she’s gone.’ On that distant shore, there are other eyes watching for her coming; other voices ready to take
up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes.’ And such for the Christians is dying.”
My friends, such for the Christian is eternal everlasting life. Why leave here this morning without the full assurance of Christ’s
promise to you? You will spend eternity with Him and you will do so in a resurrection body just like His.
You know, I always give an invitation every Sunday and today will be no different but I’d like you to think between now and
then. Be prepared, as I invite you late in the service, to commit or recommit your life to this Jesus Christ, to the biblical apostolic
faith, summed up in the Apostles’ Creed because it is true, my friends—The Best is Yet to Come!
In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!