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Sermon Book: 1 Corinthians

Always Giving Thanks

About this sermon

Paul opens his letter to a troubled church in Corinth by thanking God always for the grace given them in Christ Jesus, who enriched them in all speech and knowledge so that they lack no spiritual gift. Gratitude rests first on God’s grace in Christ. Christ will also sustain them to the end, guiltless in the day of the Lord, so believers need not fear judgment day. Finally, “God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son,” and his faithfulness gives his people cause to give thanks always.

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Sermon transcript

Friends, please remain standing for the reading. And once again, we take a pause in our consideration of the Book of the Prophets. Consider a passage from First Corinthians, chapter one, Thanksgiving, that Paul wrote in his first epistle of his to the Corinthian church. First Corinthians one, verses four through nine. I’ll begin reading from the first verse to fill out the 1131 in your pew Bible. Dear friends, this is the word of God. Let us hear it with attentiveness, reverence and awe. Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray. Our faithful Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you, O God, for your amazing grace given to us in union with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And we thank you, Lord, that you give us spiritual food for our souls in the word. We would pray, Heavenly Father, that this morning, as we turn our attention to this passage of your inerrant, infallible, authoritative word, that your spirit, that spirit which has inspired and breathed out this word, would indeed use this word to breathe new life, renewed life, strengthen spiritual life into our souls this day. And we would ask, O Lord, that you would open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word and cause us, Lord, to delight in these truths that we receive this morning and to see their relevance and applicability to our own personal circumstances and to the life and fellowship of our church this day. Be with us now and be glorified in the proclamation of your word.

And again, guard my lips, only that which is faithful to you. In Jesus’ name we pray, and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. Title of my sermon this morning is Always Giving Thanks. And the children can be listening for these four key words, the words, thanksgiving, grace, gratitude, and faithfulness. Think about that term, gratitude. Thankfulness. Dear ones, let me ask you, what are you thankful for? If you were asked to come up with a list of, say, 10 items in your life that you are grateful for, gratitude, what items would you include on your top 10 list of things that you are grateful for? Now, questions like these can be common during this time of year, especially as we anticipate the holiday coming up this week. And of course, that can be a very good thing.

It can be a good thing for us to be encouraged to think about all of those things for which we ought to give thanks. After all, in our sin and in our fallenness, we are prone to do the opposite of showing gratitude. We are prone to do things like complain. We are prone in our fallenness to feel slighted by the less than ideal circumstances that our lives confront us with. We are even prone to feel embittered if we don’t get our way. Let’s face it, brothers and sisters, our natural direction, the natural direction of our fallen, sinful hearts is pointed toward petty grievance. And petty grievance is, of course, the opposite. Gratitude. But if we decide to spend time reflecting on the things that we are thankful for, as we ought to do, even then, our tendency when we think of things we’re thankful for is to focus on the blessings that we enjoy in this present life.

In other words, the blessings of creation and providence, the blessings that flow to us from what we call God’s common grace, His general benevolence and goodness toward all of humanity. And of course, these blessings include such things as the gifts of family, loved ones and friends, good health, food, a measure of prosperity, physical safety and security. And of course, as we have this national Thanksgiving holiday, we think of our civil liberties and freedoms and so forth. But my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, while God’s blessings of creation and providence are indeed significant blessings, blessings for which we ought frequently to give thanks. Our passage for this morning, taken from this opening Thanksgiving section of the Apostle Paul to the Corinthian Church. This passage points us as believers to the spiritual blessings of grace and salvation that we, brothers and sisters, have received in Christ.

And it points to those blessings as blessings for which we ought always to give thanks. As followers of Jesus Christ, these should be the blessings that dominate our thinking when we think that we are thankful for. Correspondence to the church, correspondence which we know today as the Epistles of First and Second Corinthians, the Apostle Paul, by the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, addresses a church that is in serious crisis. Many of you, I know many of you are faithful Bible readers and you know that the Corinthian Church was a messed up church. If you read through the Corinthian Epistles, the Church of Corinth is presented as a troubled, messed up, dysfunctional church if there ever was such a thing. The Corinthian Church was riddled with pastoral issues and problems, including such things as a divisiveness and an almost cult-like attachment to favorite preachers.

I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ and so forth. And all of that, of course, the Corinthian believers for their inexcusable spiritual immaturity. There was also, among some of the members, problems with sexual immorality. There were marriage problems. There were compromises among some of the most pagan ways. There was disorderliness in their worship practices and even in their observances of the Lord’s Supper. Some folks were even getting drunk in their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper. There was an overlooking of and a discrimination against the poor in the congregation who were not treated as they ought to have been treated. There was a tolerance for false apostles and false teachers and so forth. This was a troubled church. We might expect Paul to come out of the gates here at the beginning of this epistle with a sharp and chiding tone.

However, what’s amazing here, friends, is that in this opening section of 1 Corinthians, I want you to notice that Paul doesn’t begin this epistle with a chiding tone. He doesn’t begin it with sharp rebuke or with confrontation or correction. Instead, he begins his epistle to this troubled church, this church which probably gave him many sleepless nights and many pastoral headaches. He opens up this epistle on a note of deep thanksgiving. And this thanksgiving is grounded in the person and work of the eternal Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ. And so as we turn our attention to this opening thanksgiving, I would have you notice, first of all, what we learn here about perpetual thanksgiving for God’s grace in Christ. Perpetual thanksgiving for God’s grace in Christ. As Paul writes in verse four, I give thanks to my God when?

How often? Always, pantote in the Greek. I give thanks to my God always for you. For you, messed up though you be. Dysfunctional, spiritually immature though you be. I am thankful for you. Why? Because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Even though you’ve got areas where you need to, even though you’ve got issues and problems as a church, I’m still thankful for you. And I recognize God’s grace at work in you. This is what Paul in us to them. Now friends, if you’re familiar with the epistles, if you see the epistles carefully, when we do so, we find that Paul was a man who had a life of prayer. He was a man whose life was saturated by prayer. His life, because it was a life of prayer, was a life that pulsated with thanksgiving.

And as an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, he abounded in thanksgiving for God’s work of grace in the lives of his saints. And we see similar notes of thanksgiving in many of his other epistles. Let’s take a look at a sampling of that. Let me have you turn to Romans one, verse eight. Beginning of his Romans, he says this in verse eight. He says, first, what does he do? First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ. Notice he thanks God the Father through the mediation and merit of Christ. I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you. Why does he thank God through Jesus Christ? Because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. He rejoices to see that their faith, their gospel faith is being proclaimed. It’s spreading abroad. And others are hearing the glad tidings of great joy.

Again, Paul is characterized by thankfulness, by gratitude. Or turn with me, if you would, to Philippians one. And let me read verses three through five. Philippians chapter one, verses three through five. His opening thanksgiving in his letter to the Philippians, he writes this to the Philippian believers. He says, I thank my God in all my remembrance of you. In other words, when I think about you, when I remember you, I thank God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you, for you all, making my prayer with joy. Why? Because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. He praises God, he’s thankful to God for their partnership with him in the proclamation of the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ. Or consider Colossians one, verses three through five.

Paul writes, we always thank God, there it is again. We thank God, we always thank God. We always thank God, the father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you. Again, why? Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all of the saints because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. He is grateful for this trinity, this triad of Christian virtues, graciously wrought in their hearts by the Holy Spirit, namely faith, hope, and love. He doesn’t just say, you guys are so cool and you guys are so wonderful. No, he says, I thank God because I see the evidence of his grace at work in you, your faith in Christ Jesus, the love that you have for all the saints and the hope laid up for you in heaven.

Or turn next to 1 Thessalonians one and look at verses two and three. Paul writes in a similar vein. He says, we give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, remembering before our God and father, your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. There it is again, faith, hope, and love. It sometimes is in different orders as it is here, faith, love, and hope. But again, what are faith, hope, and love? These are graces that the Spirit works in the hearts of true believers. They are evidences of God’s grace at work in the hearts and lives of his people. And finally, not only does Paul express gratitude for God’s work among the churches under his apostolic care, he also offers thanks for God’s work in the lives of individuals like his son in the faith, Timothy, Pastor Timothy, whom Paul, not only in the faith, but in the ministry.

Second Timothy, Paul writes, I thank God whom I serve as did my ancestors with a clear conscience as I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Friends, by God’s grace, it seems that prayer was as natural to Paul as breathing. And thanksgiving, the attitude of thanksgiving was as natural to him as the beating of his heart. What was the cause for such Christian thanksgiving on Paul’s part? When Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter one, verse four, I give thanks to my God always for you. Why? Why does he give thanks always for them? Why this perpetual thanksgiving? Well, he gives thanks, first of all, for you. He’s not just focused on himself. Paul not only rejoiced when he considered the way God’s amazing grace had worked in his own life, turning his life upside down, turning it around so that he, once a persecutor of the church, was now a proclamer of the same faith that he once sought to destroy.

But he was also thankful when he considered God’s grace at work in the lives of others and when he saw evidence of that, it filled his apostolic heart with joy. In other words, his gratitude was not merely self-focused. Oh, I’m so thankful for all the blessings God has given me. There’s a place for that. But he’s also thankful for God’s grace in the work, in the hearts and lives of others. Again, why did he give thanks for the Corinthian believers? He says because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Given you in union, spiritual and saving union with the Messiah, the anointed one, the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, clearly Paul is speaking here about what we would call God’s saving grace. Saving grace is that undeserved favor of God that moved him to save undeserving sinners like me and like you, to save us from the guilt, the penalty, and the power of our sin.

This statement, by the way, where Paul says, I thank God always for you because of the grace that was given you in Christ Jesus. This statement, my friends, assumes that it is only in spiritual and saving union with the Lord Jesus Christ that we sinners can experience the saving grace of God. You cannot have or experience God’s mercy and grace outside of a personal saving relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, some might say, well, Pastor, what about common grace? Unbelievers experience the blessings of common grace and isn’t that outside of Christ? Well, even the blessings of common grace are ultimately blessings that flow out to the world indirectly from the atonement of Christ. We don’t have time to get into that matter this morning. But again, clearly in the context of this passage, Paul is not speaking of common grace.

He’s talking about the grace of God that rescues us from sin and death and hell because of the life, death, and resurrection. And my friends, again, saving grace is the grace that is in view and how does Paul know that these, all of their problems, all of their issues, all of their inadequacies as immature believers, why is it, how is it that he knows that they have received the grace of God in Christ? Well, he says in verse five, that in every way, you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. In other words, as evidence of God’s saving grace among the Corinthian congregation, Paul, the serving grace that they had been given, the gifts of the spirit, the gifts of the spirit are not present where the gift of the spirit has not been given.

And it’s interesting, Paul says, you’ve been enriched with these gifts and he mentions a couple in particular that were prominent in the Corinthian congregation, namely gifts of speech and knowledge. We’ll talk about that in a moment, but he says they have been enriched with all these spiritual gifts. Now, the word enriched here has led some commentators to suggest that the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, have the effect of supernaturally enriching, natural, for example, some take the view that what God does when he blesses us with spiritual gifts is he enhances the natural gifts that we already have. So if you have musical gifts in your natural state, the spirit enhances those gifts so that you can use those gifts for the edification of his church. And again, that is an interesting perspective to consider.

I think there is something to that, but the point is the presence of the spirit was evident in that congregation. The presence of the Holy Spirit, the spirit who is the spirit of grace, enriches God’s people with spiritual gifts. And he mentions too in verse five that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. Now that’s very interesting. Think about the first century setting here. The first century setting of the Roman Empire and among the Greek-speaking Gentiles. It seems that the Corinthian congregation was made up primarily of Gentiles converted to Christ from a pagan background. The Greeks of Paul’s time highly valued those who were skilled in public speaking, public rhetoric, and also skilled in what they regarded as wisdom. But here Paul is alluding to the ancient Greek-speaking and knowledge gifts that the Holy Spirit had blessed the Corinthians with.

Gifts of the spirit, which Paul will reference later on in this epistle in chapters 12 through 14. For example, a gift of interpretation of tongues, prophecy, knowledge, teaching, and so forth. And I will say again that we take the view that the extraordinary revelatory gifts have ceased with the energy gauge and the canonization of the Holy Scriptures. But nevertheless, that issue aside, these gifts were abundantly poured out upon the Corinthian congregation. And so not only that, not only does the presence of the spirit, the presence of the grace of God, evidence itself by the multitude of spiritual gifts that were operative in the Corinthian congregation. It also says, Paul also mentions here in verse six, even as the testimony about Christ, which could mean the testimony that Christ gave to the gospel or the apostolic testimony to Christ, that testimony, which is talking about the gospel, was confirmed among you.

The presence of the spirit’s gifts in the Corinthian church was confirming evidence that the gospel message had been truly received, truly implanted within their souls, within their fellowship. And what was the result? Verse seven, so that you are not lacking in any gift. Again, Paul is not glossing over their problems, he’s gonna get to that, but he recognizes what God is doing in their midst. And he is confident that you work in their midst, which is why he writes them with such boldness. You are not lacking in any gift. Again, Paul mentions many of these extraordinary spiritual gifts in chapters 12 to 14. And then he goes on to say, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is one of the evidences that their faith in Christ, as immature as it might be, as undeveloped as it might be, their faith in Jesus Christ was genuine because they eagerly await the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the return of Christ, described here by Paul as the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The term revealing is the Greek term apocalypse, from which we derive the word apocalypse. And that, in this context, is clearly referring to the second advent of Christ. One of the things that’s very clear, brothers and sisters, as we read through the New Testament is that the early Christians were animated by the hope of Christ’s return. They eagerly awaited the return of Christ. And yes, Christ has tarried these 2,000 plus years, but he is coming again and he could come again at any time. Do we eagerly await his coming? That in itself is an evidence of God’s grace given to them in Christ Jesus. And it goes on to say, our Lord Jesus Christ, the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Note, the full name and title of Christ is given, not just once, not just here in verse seven, but also in verse eight and verse nine.

So that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then notice the next verse, who will sustain you to the end, in the day of whom? Our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of whom? His son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. And all of this, Paul is so Christ-centered, so Christocentric. All of this reinforces what Paul is saying here, namely, God’s grace that we receive and experience is rooted in and flows out of the person and work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. So what does Paul give thanks for? He gives thanks, as he says in verse four, for the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. Brothers and sisters, give thanks to God for given to us and given to our brothers and sisters in Christ in the family of God, that grace that is experienced in spiritual union and communion with Jesus Christ, our Lord.

But let us also, as we, consider gratitude for the Lord’s sustaining grace, gratitude for the Lord’s sustaining grace. It says in verse eight, of the Lord Jesus Christ, Paul says of the Lord, sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. He will sustain you to the end. Well, there is so much comfort here. Here is a promise of divine preservation, as well as a verse that supports the biblically reformed doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints, the P and the tulip acrostic, total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, and then there’s the perseverance of the saints. And God enables his people to continue to believe in Jesus, to continue to trust in and follow the Lord Jesus, even to the end of their lives, not because of their strength of their own free will, but all by his grace.

You see, the saints persevere in the faith because God in Christ preserves them. This is true even of believers who are messed up, who are immature believers like the Corinthian Christians. And that is so comforting, brothers and sisters, because so often I think the tendency is to imagine that our ability to keep on keeping on in the faith depends on our resolve, our own personal willpower, our own works, our own worthiness, making sure that we’re on that religious treadmill. But that’s not what this verse says. It says that our Lord Jesus Christ sustains you and me to the end. And he will sustain us, brothers and sisters, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now that’s not a permission slip to be loose and careless in our discipleship. That’s not a permission slip to give ourselves over to sin.

Of course not. We do have a responsibility to diligently use the means of grace and to persevere in the faith and to continue in scripture reading, prayer, and the fellowship of the church and all of that. But that’s not why you can be assured that you will persevere to the end. Don’t be like Peter. Peter said, oh Lord, all the others may abandon you, but I’m special. I’m gonna stick with you Lord. I will die with you if I have to. And then that very night he denies Christ three times. Peter had way too much confidence in himself, not enough confidence in the Lord’s preserving power. We don’t persevere because of our own strength or worthiness, but because God sustains us to the end. And he will sustain us guiltless until the day of Christ.

I like how our Westminster Confession of Faith describes this sustaining grace in chapter 17, sections one and two. Let me just read that to you. It’s on page 929 in your back of your Trinity Psalter hymnal. This is the chapter of the perseverance of the saints. Section one reads, they whom God hath accepted in his beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace, but shall certainly persevere therein to the end and be eternally saved. Praise God. And then to clarify even further, section two says, this perseverance of the saints depends not upon their own free will, but upon the immutability, the unchangeableness, in other words, of the decree of election, flowing from the free and unchangeable love of God the Father upon the efficacy and the merit and intercession of Jesus Christ, the abiding of the spirit and of the seed of God within them and the nature of the covenant of grace from all which arises also the certainty and infallibility thereof.

It’s because of that that Paul can say to this messed up congregation, he will sustain you to the end. This is a promise we can be grateful for because it is a divine promise that cannot be broken. And our faithful covenant God who made this promise is faithful to keep his promises as Paul will go on to say in verse nine, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. This is agrees with what Paul for example, Philippians chapter one, verse six, Paul writes in a similar vein as he addresses the Philippians, he says this to them in verse six, he says, and I am sure of this that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

That’s when Christ returns in glory at his second advent. God has begun a good work in you brother, sister in Christ. He has saved you, he has forgiven you, he has brought you into the fellowship of his son, his eternal son for you and eternal redemption. And therefore he doesn’t leave unfinished projects that he begins, we are projects of his grace. He works in us and if he has begun to graciously work in us, he will continue even to the end. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion, not might not maybe bring it to completion as long as you cooperate, no. He will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. And then also, again, I know this is familiar, but we need sometimes to hear these truths over and over again.

Romans chapter eight, 31 to 34. What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? Who indeed? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn. Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us, hallelujah. He is the one who brings us into a relationship of grace and he is the one who sustains us, who blames even until the end. Dear listener, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if the Lord Jesus Christ is your savior, then God is on your side.

The all-powerful, infinite God is on your side and you can be absolutely assured that he will sustain and preserve you guiltless until that final day. The pastor, I’m so weak and I struggle with this sin or that sin and I get so discouraged and I don’t know sometimes how I’m gonna make it. He who began a good work in you will carry it through to completion. Christian, you don’t need to worry about judgment day for Jesus Christ, your savior, he has you covered. The grace of God in Christ that saved you to begin with will sustain you to the end. Are you grateful for your Lord’s sustaining grace? I mean, what a cause, what a reason for gratitude. Graces also, but again, how can we be confident that we will be preserved blameless? And the answer is, not because you and I are faithful, we are often faithless, but because God is faithful and that leads me to my final brief point from verse nine.

Friends, gratitude for God’s faithfulness. Let us consider gratitude for God’s faithfulness. As Paul writes in verse nine, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now some might say, wait a minute, everyone who hears the gospel, the gospel called to repent and believe in Christ, everyone who is called, not everyone who hears that call ends up responding with true faith and repentance. There are many who hear the call of the gospel who reject Christ. So how can Paul say that through this call, we will be sustained till the end? Well, it’s important to understand here that Paul in this context, when he speaks of the call, he’s referring to what the theologian sexual or saving call that actually brings elect sinners to faith in Jesus Christ.

He’s not merely referring to the external gospel call that goes out to all who hear the gospel. That gospel call is often resisted and refused, but by the spirit and through the call of the gospel, the elect are enabled to embrace Christ, to trust in the Lord and Savior. Again, Paul, this effectual call in other places, for example, in that familiar passage, 28 and 30, 28 to 30, it says, and we know, for those who love God, all things work together for the good, for those who are called according to his purpose, that’s the saving call, that’s the call that flows out of election, God’s gracious choice. For those whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers, and those whom he predestined, he also called.

Not everyone who hears the external call has been predestined, but in this case, those who receive the effectual call, the saving call, it says, though they have been predestined, those whom he predestined, he also called, and those whom he called, he also justified, and those whom he justified, he also glorified. It’s so certain that even future glorification is spoken of as if it’s already a fact, already a reality. And what have we, brothers and sisters, been effectually called into? We have been called into the fellowship of our eternal son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. The term fellowship, and this refers to the saving fellowship of God’s son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Charles Hodge, in commenting on the name, or the statement, God’s son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, writes the following. He says, the person with whom believers are thus intimately united is the Son of God.

Of the same nature, being the same in substance and equal nature, he is also Jesus, a man. Consequently, he is both God and man, in two distinct natures and one person. This incarnate God, the Savior, is the Christ of whom the Old Testament says and promises so much. He is also our Lord. We belong to him. He is our possessor, our sovereign, our protector. How can they apostatize and perish who stand in this relation to the eternal Son of God? Dear ones, in closing, consider that this fellowship that we believers have with the eternal Son of God, it involves a personal as well as a communal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, so that we who are, we who are believers in Christ can say honestly, I know him, I know him. Now, we need to be careful with that language.

We certainly do not know him now, as we will know him in glory when we see him face to face and oh, we look forward to that day. And though in this present age, we must walk by faith and not by sight, nevertheless, even in this present evil age, we have been blessed, brothers and sisters, with the firstfruits of the Spirit, that Spirit of adoption by which we cry, Abba, Father. By the Spirit of adoption who dwells in and among us, we have a sweet foretaste of the age to come as we commune with our Savior in the Word of God, sacraments, prayer, and praise. And that’s ultimately why we come to church. We don’t just come to church to check off an item on our to-do list. Oh, I fulfilled this duty, this responsibility.

Worship is a duty, a responsibility. Yes, we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves together. Worship is also an opportunity to commune with our Savior in a way and to an extent that we don’t experience in our own personal devotions, as important as personal devotions are, when we are gathered together in a special way. And that fellowship that we have individually with the Son of God is brought to corporate expression. And my friends, since by God’s grace, we have been brought into the fellowship of His eternal Son. I can think of no greater reason to join ranks with the Apostle Paul in being among those who are always giving thanks. Have you been brought into the fellowship of God’s Son? If you’re not sure, Christ calls you through His word. Repent of your sin, trust in Him, for He was crucified for the forgiveness of sins and raised from the dead so that whoever believes in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.

And then God by His grace will flood your life with gratitude, gratitude indeed. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, our sovereign and eternal God, we thank you and praise you for all of the spiritual riches and blessings that we have received in Christ. We thank you, Lord, that you have blessed us with every spiritual place in Christ Jesus. And we would ask, O Lord, that during this Thanksgiving season, may we not merely reflect upon these wonderful temporal gifts that you shower upon us. We are thankful for those gifts, those gifts of creation and providence, but once again, we are especially grateful for the gift of your Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and for the glorious gifts of salvation full and free that we have received in fellowship with Him. So Lord, help us to live lives of gratitude, even as we strive to be faithful disciples of Jesus.

We pray these things in His name, as God’s people said, amen. As we close our time of worship, I’d invite you to rise as we sing together 553, sing to the Lord of harvest, 553.

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November 23, 2025
Going Beyond the Garden, Part 2

About this sermon

Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day, according to the Scriptures. Adam became a living being from the dust, and Christ, the last Adam, became a life-giving Spirit and the Lord from heaven. His resurrection opened a new life in the Spirit that goes beyond all Adam ever knew. Believers already share that resurrection life through faith, and the Spirit of the risen Christ in them makes the Christian life possible.

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Sermon transcript

Amen, please be seated. If you would, please take your scriptures and let us turn this morning, if I was to ask you to turn to the definitive chapter on the doctrine of the resurrection, perhaps hopefully you would know what that is, that is 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This will be our reading and part of our preaching this morning, we’ll also have various passages but this will be a partial reading this morning, 1 Corinthians 15 verses 1 through 4 and then verses 20 through 22 and then we’ll jump to the end of verses 45 through 49 for our preaching this morning. But once again, before we come to the reading and preaching of God’s word, we seek the Lord’s that he would make his word that means of grace, that overflowing life from the spirit as he uses the word of God to ignite the fire of passion in our lives.

That we would again be creatures of God, that we would be images of God, be in his likeness and that we would be walking, talking revelations of our God in whose image we are made. So let us go to our Lord seeking his help that we may open up our ears and our minds and our hearts to the living word of our God. Let us pray. O gracious and heavenly Father, we do thank you for your word, we do thank you that you have given it to as a light to our path, that you reveal our own hearts to us in this word but you show us that gleaming image that we are to be following and that is the image of your son Jesus Christ who is your walking, talking revelation of who you are as our triune God and so would you conform us into his image this day by your word as it is preached and proclaimed.

May your people hear your words, not merely this vessel that is here that you are speaking through but they would hear as it is in truth the very word of our God. Speak to us now Lord in power we pray in Christ’s holy name, amen. I would ask brothers and sisters that you once again stand for the reading of God’s holy word that comes to us from the first epistle to the Church of Corinth chapter 15. I do remind you, grace, orthodox, presbyterian church, these are the words of the living God. Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preach to you which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved if you hold fast that word which I preach to you unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. And then moving down to verse 20, but now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. And then finally down to verse 45, and so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being, the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first but the natural and afterward the spiritual. The first man was of the earth made of dust, the second man is the Lord from heaven.

As was the man of dust so also are those who are made of dust, and as is the heavenly man and so also are those who are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God, it stands forever. Please be seated. We all have those in our own lives who to one degree or another have a lasting impact upon us. They are important figures that impress upon us the way we think, the way we live, and so that they influence in such a way that we are never the same again. Well, the Apostle Paul puts forth two primary men that have the most influence and lasting impact upon every single one of us, in fact, upon the whole human race.

And that is Adam and the Lord Jesus Christ. We’ve already considered this reality from Romans chapter five, last Lord’s day, but we see that Paul picks up this same point in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the church of Corinth. If we were to consider the most powerful men among the human race, those who have had everlasting influence and impact upon our lives, it would boil down to two. When you cut through everything, it comes down to only two. There are only two primary individuals, two primary men, the first man, Adam, and the second man, Jesus Christ. As Paul sets this forth for us in 1 Corinthians 15, there is no others besides them. There are no others. There’s just these two. There is the order of Adam, the first man, and there are none before him.

Then there is the order of Christ, the second man, and there is none between Adam and Christ, but also the order of Christ is the final, is the last, because he is the last Adam. And so there are none after Christ. And so you and I are united to one of these two men. There is no escaping their influence and impact upon our lives. They are the progenitors of all those over whom they represent and are intricately united to. Last time, we considered the first man’s failure. Adam sinned at the beginning in the garden, and the result was that the first sin brought about death and condemnation upon all. But the second man, the second Adam, or the new Adam, Jesus Christ, came to bring the free gift of God’s grace in his going above and beyond in taking our place and bearing our sin and being a willing, substitutional sacrifice for us and thus bringing in eternal salvation for his people, all those who are united to him in faith.

Romans 5 focuses upon Jesus’ excelling work of suffering and dying in our place upon the cross. But now we turn in 1 Corinthians 15 to consider the victory of Jesus over sin and death in his glorious achievement of resurrection from the dead. And in so doing, the apostle once again brings a comparative contrast between these two primary figures, Adam and Christ. And so this brings us to our purpose statement for our message for today, which is once again, Jesus excels way beyond all expectations in his resurrection from the dead. And we’ll consider this truth also under three points this morning. And our first point is going beyond death, going beyond death. Again, if we go all the way back to the garden, we are reminded of the threat that God presented to Adam. For in the day that you eat of the forbidden fruit, you will surely die.

And having sinned and eaten the fruit, God pronounces the curse upon Adam. You shall return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return. And then we read that God drove out the man from the garden, barring him from the tree of life. And so the apostle not only focuses upon Adam’s offense and sin in Romans 5, but points out that Adam died and that death spread to all those, all his progeny, all of his children, all those that proceed forth from Adam. That death spread to all men because of Adam’s transgression. And so Paul makes the same point here in 1 Corinthians 15, in verses 21 and 22. By man came death. By man came death, for as in Adam all die. In Adam all die.

That is the great enemy of mankind is death, is it not? And it seems to be the end of us. Death is the end of us, it would appear. But as we turn our gaze to Christ, even though Jesus, as we pointed out last time, was absolutely sinless in righteousness, he too died. Jesus too died. Paul emphasized Jesus’ sacrificial death in Romans 5, in due time Christ died. But he did not die because of the guilt of his own sin, did he? He doesn’t die because of his own sin, no. He again died for the ungodly, the apostle tells us. Christ died for the ungodly, Christ died for us, for sinners he died. This is the free gift of God’s grace in Christ to save us from our sin. So this is where the apostle begins in his presentation of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.

He said, for I delivered to you first of all that which I also received. Again it’s not comes from him, it was something he received from the Lord and then gives to us. And what’s the first thing he said? That Christ died. That’s the first point of the gospel, Christ died. But he died for our sins. There’s the purpose. Why he died, the reason for our sins according to the scriptures. And then he goes on to say, and that he was buried, which confirms and seals again Christ’s death to us. But the glorious reality that we come to every single Lord’s Day is that Jesus is no longer on the cross, is he? Yes, he bore the cross once and for all, but he’s no longer on the cross. He’s no longer in the grave.

Hallelujah. Praise the Lord. But Jesus goes beyond death, doesn’t he? He goes beyond death and in so doing, he defeats death once and for all. So that when he was buried, when he was again put in that grave, in that tomb, it was as if he wrestled death and buried it down in the ground again. For the hope of the gospel does not stop at Jesus’ death and burial, but that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures, according to the word of God. This is the good news, is it not? This is the greatest news, is that now Christ is risen from the dead. And so Jesus is the second man, the new man, who continues to surprise. He surprised everyone in his own day, even his own disciples, although he told them that he would rise from the dead.

They were still surprised, were they not, by his resurrection? He surprised, excelling way beyond all expectations, going beyond death, as Paul puts it in verse 21 of our passage, for since by man came death. Now get this, get the emphasis, also by man also came the resurrection of the dead. So this is where the apostle begins in comparing and contrasting the first man and the last man, but of course he goes much further, which brings us to our second point. Not only does Christ go beyond death, but he goes beyond life. Going beyond life, and what we mean here is merely what we understand as life in this world. We are here speaking of a quality or a particular type of life. When the apostle compares and contrasts Adam and Christ, he does so this way.

Verse 47, the first man was of the earth, made of dust. Paul calls Adam the man of dust in verse 48. Adam is the man of dust, which corresponds to Genesis chapter 2, verse 7, describing his creation by God. He creates him from the dust of the earth. But the apostle also calls Adam natural in verse 46. He calls Adam natural. And by these, Paul contrasts Adam’s original condition before the fall, verse 45. So it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. He became a living being, again from Genesis 2, verse 7. But in contrast to Adam’s pre-fall life, which is natural, of the earth, from the dust, Jesus Christ, the second man, Adam goes on to describe, or Paul goes on to describe, is actually the Lord from heaven. He is the Lord from heaven.

Notice Paul does not use the term made when he speaks of Jesus here. And yet, he’s still a man, fully man, truly man. He is the last Adam, the last man. Although he is the Lord of heaven, he is also the second man. And again, he’s revealing this whole idea of the two natures in one person of Christ of the incarnation. And again, we were reminded of Jesus’ favorite title of himself during his earthly ministry was the Son of Man. So the apostle is comparing Christ to Adam with regards to his humanity. And yet, Jesus goes beyond the natural earthly life of Adam, for in contrast to the man of dust, Paul describes Christ as the heavenly man, the heavenly man. But Paul’s point is that although the second man is the Lord from heaven, which speaks of his deity, yet he is also the heavenly man, the heavenly man.

And the question is, how and when does Jesus become the heavenly man? Well, again, what is 1 Corinthians 15 all about? It’s about resurrection. So he becomes the heavenly man in his resurrection. Let’s consider this truth further. The point that the apostle is driving home is not, now get this, is not that Jesus returns to Adam’s pre-fall state. His point, his mission is to come down and take us all the way back so that we’re in the same position, that he’s in the same position as Adam before the fall. Jesus doesn’t merely correct the fall and take us back to the beginning before the fall occurs, but rather he transcends that original life, that old creation life, and brings us to, and here’s this big theological word, eschatological life, eschatological life. There’s one of those big theological words that theologians like to bandy about.

But that word is right from the Greek of this text. It comes from the title of Christ himself that the apostle uses, the last Adam, which in the Greek is ho eschatas adam, the last Adam, the eschatological Adam, the consummation, the one who is all that Adam was meant to be. And that brings us to new creation life in him. It brings about new creation life. Jesus’ body was not only a renewed physical body in his resurrection, but it has become a transformed, heavenly body, imperishable, incorruptible, a gloriously exalted body. It is qualitatively different. The apostle Paul will go on to talk about the difference between terrestrial bodies and celestial bodies and all these things. But Christ’s body is now no longer subject to this old, cursed, death-ridden world. That’s the point that he’s making in the glory of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus goes beyond the natural life in his resurrection. He becomes what the apostle calls spiritual, as opposed to natural. He becomes spiritual, which according to 1 Corinthians 2 means someone who lives in, out of, and according to the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit of God. Our culture likes to use the word spiritual. They bandy it about. But here the apostle defines specifically and truthfully what spiritual really means. It means to live in, out of, and according to the indwelling presence and power of the Spirit of God. Christ, in his resurrected, exalted, heavenly state, has entered into the new age to come, which is the age of the Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that gives this risen, ascended, heavenly life, life from above, everlasting eternal life that we read about, that God declares to us.

It was the Spirit that raised Christ from the dead, Paul tells us in Romans 8 verse 11. It is the Holy Spirit again that animates and energizes this resurrection life. It is as if the Spirit is the very breath that is breathed. If man was a fish, now don’t get me wrong, don’t confuse, I’m not saying man is a fish or man came from a fish or anything like that, it’s just an analogy. Think about this for a minute. If man was a fish, the Spirit would be the water in which he lives. Think about the water. A fish cannot live out of water, right? It surrounds him, it resides in him, it flows through him, in and out from him. The Spirit is the very environment, the very existence of the man’s being. That’s what it means to be in the Spirit.

That’s what it means for Christ to be in this resurrection state. This is spiritual life. Fullness of life in and of the Spirit of God is that which goes beyond life in and of and from this old world, this old creation. And it so transcends sin and curse and corruption and death itself that the apostle himself at the end of this all breaks out into praise and doxology saying death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your sting? Oh Hades, where is your victory? Where is your impact? Where is your influence? It’s gone because of the resurrection, the victory that we have, that Christ ascended. He has risen, he has exalted, he has exalted, he has transcended. So clearly in the truth that Christ became man, in his resurrection he has lifted up our humanity so that we proclaim and we hear proclaimed and declared in Psalm 8, what is man that you are mindful of him, that you have exalted him over the rest.

And we’re told that Christ is the fulfillment of those very words. Humanity is exalted far above and gone beyond the natural state of the dust of the earth to the heavens in which the spirit resides and we reside in and of and from the spirit. This is the result. This is the reality made through the resurrection of Jesus Christ our savior. He fulfills all that was meant to be in Daniel chapter 7 when we see the son of man ascending through the heaven of heavens and is seated on a throne and given dominion that will never be taken away. Do you understand what this reality means brothers and sisters that right now even today there is a man on the throne of God. But there’s still more. There’s still more because Jesus excels way beyond all expectations in his resurrection from the dead so that his apostle goes even further which brings us to our third and final point.

Jesus becomes the giver of spiritual life. Jesus becomes the giver of spiritual life. Jesus the man becomes the giver of spiritual life. Not only does Jesus not die for himself so neither does Jesus merely conquer death and rise from the dead for himself but he does so for you and for me. Paul begins in verse 20 of our passage saying that Jesus has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep the first fruits of the resurrection. Now here the apostle has in view the still future resurrection harvest of the body. Jesus is the first to rise from the dead. Now how can Paul make that statement when we read in scripture chronologically there are other people that rise from the dead. Well here’s the difference. Jesus is the first to rise from the dead qualitatively to the point of never succumbing to death again brothers and sisters those that rose from the dead before that they died again Jairus’ daughter died again Lazarus died again but Jesus’ resurrection is qualitatively again it’s the power out of which they rise from the dead but they eventually die again because their bodies are still connected to this old creation but when Christ rises he transforms he transcends this old life to never succumb to this old death dying world again.

He was not merely the first to rise from the dead but he’s the one now through whom all others are resurrected as well. Why do you think he’s judge of the living in the dead because even those that are risen on the last day whether the just or the unjust they are able to rise from the dead because of his resurrection. He becomes the source of all resurrection here. Again listen to what Paul says in verses 21 and 22. He says since by man came death by man this man Jesus also came the resurrection from the dead for as an Adam all die even so now in Christ all shall be made alive. And so this is why Jesus can respond to Martha the way he does as she comes crying out about this reality and Jesus says Martha do you not believe that your brother will live again and she she’s a good Jewish covenantal believer yes I know that he’ll rise on the last day and how does he respond to her.

He brings that which is in the future into the present again and he says Martha I am the resurrection and the life. I am the resurrection life. So again we understand and we believe correctly at Jesus second coming. We are told the dead in Christ will rise and those who still live on the earth when Christ returns will be changed will be transformed given resurrected bodies spiritual heavenly bodies new creation bodies and we are told by John we will see him because we will be like him. But again Jesus doesn’t merely give bodily resurrection life that’s true as glorious that is and that is again part of our blessed hope but he gives spiritual resurrection life now and that’s the point that Paul’s trying to beat into the heads of the body of Christ understand brothers and sisters that when you’re united to Jesus Christ in faith and you have the spirit of Christ in you the spirit Holy Spirit in you you have the same spirit in you that raised Christ from the dead.

You have resurrection life in you now for if we are united right now with the resurrected Christ then we too are raised to life in the inner man. Yes the old man is wearing down we all have daily experience with that we all recognize this old tent is wearing away but in the inner man is being built up. So listen carefully and consider what the apostle says in verse 45 listen to these words. So it is written the first man Adam became a living being the last at get this the last Adam became life giving spirit. Now to be honest this is a controversial passage. What does the apostle Paul mean when he says these words. There’s much debate concerning it but I am persuaded that in the context in the way that Paul uses such language elsewhere spirit here should be capitalized.

This isn’t lower case spirit some other spirit it is the Holy Spirit of God who gives life the scriptures Romans 8 11 2nd Corinthians 3 6 John 6 63 1st Peter 3 18 we confess as much in our Nicene Creed and I believe in the Holy Spirit the Lord and giver of life. There is no life apart from the spirit and if Jesus gives life then Jesus again has transcended and that the apostle Paul states unequivocally the last Adam became life giving spirit and know well he became this is not referring to his deity as the God the son from all eternity but to his humanity to his humanity as the last Adam as the second man and when again did Jesus become life giving spirit. Again from the context it was at his resurrection it was at his resurrection.

One scholar says it this way at his resurrection the personal mode of Jesus existence as the last Adam was decisively transformed by the Holy Spirit the spirit who raised Jesus up as firstfruits and dwells him so completely and in such a fashion that in their functioning he is the spirit who will be instrumental in the resurrection of the full harvest and again Paul’s point is that by virtue of resurrection or his glorification Christ as the last Adam has come into such complete and permanent possession of the Holy Spirit as he himself has been so thoroughly and climatically transformed by the spirit that consequently the two are equated in their working. They are to be seen as one as they have been made one specifically in the activity of giving life that is eschatological life that is resurrection life the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead now Jesus himself joins in this work of raising us from the dead and more than just the resurrection of the body in the last day at his return Christ is presently bestowing granting giving eschatological life to you as people because of who he now is and has become life-giving spirit.

Another way to see Paul’s point here is that first Corinthians 1545 is in effect his one sentence commentary on Pentecost with Christ’s death but especially his resurrection ascension as Peter indicates in Acts chapter 2 verses 32 and 33 Jesus was exalted to the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit Christ pours out this which you now see and hear life-giving spirit. So in Jesus as the last Adam as the life-giving spirit as he baptizes you his people into the spirit he’s baptizing you into himself as he gives us the Holy Spirit he gives us the gift of the spirit is the gift of Christ himself the resurrected glorified Christ if we are in Christ then we are in the spirit if we are in the spirit then we are in Christ and this is why Paul has no problem of referring to the Holy Spirit as the spirit of Christ.

This is also why Paul can say in 2nd Corinthians 317 now the Lord is the spirit and where the spirit of the Lord is there is liberty liberty from sin liberty again from the ravages of sin of this world of the curse of death of all these things Paul says in another place the spirit of the life of Jesus Christ has set me free the exaltation experienced by Christ results in a working relationship between him in the Holy Spirit of a new and unprecedented intimacy and oneness with God and brothers and sisters the good news is that Christ has come to bring us into this same relationship we hear of his high priestly prayer in John 17 that they may be one as I am one with you father that doesn’t mean again what’s Peter mean when he says that we partake of the divine nature and we’re not becoming God but we are intimately connected with our God through the spirit the spirit of Christ because of what Christ has done he now pours out his spirit into us that we might have this oneness that we might have this intimacy with our Lord with our Savior with our God and when again Paul speaking of all these things of the spirit that’s a not lowercase spirit brothers and sisters it is capital it is the Holy Spirit the giver of life it is the life of the resurrected risen Christ who is the Spirit so this is a means to celebrate this is a means to take joy in the reality of what has happened in the Jesus Christ the full work of Christ in his life in his suffering in his death in his burial but in his resurrection from the dead in his exaltation so let us all celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and consider in this deeper and fuller way how he excels way beyond all expectations in his resurrection from the dead he does not merely return to Adams pre fall condition but rather goes way beyond it but also enables you and I also to go way beyond it as well as we are raised up by him and in him this is the new resurrection life again as we focus upon Christ think about Christ in heaven that’s where we are seated in him so we don’t have to succumb to these temptations of sin and of this world it’s as we’re battling with the flesh but we must to give the credence to the spirit that’s alive within us it is the spirit of resurrection it’s a spirit of the age to come that we are being given this guarantee this seal of our everlasting life brothers and sisters it’s a life in the spirit that Christ has opened up in his victory not only is Jesus the man become one with the spirit of life but he has become and is the life-giving spirit as we see he has given himself in giving you the spirit of life resurrection life now today this then is how you are called and enabled to live the Christian life now if you’re trying to do this by your own physical strength your own fleshly means you can’t do it you will not do it you need the spirit of Christ you need the resurrected Christ in you that’s why Paul says for me to live is Christ it is Christ in me the hope of glory this then is how you are called and enabled to Chris live the Christian life today how you can and do live victorious resurrection life he is risen brothers and sisters and because he is risen from the dead so are you through faith in him so believe and live to his everlasting glory amen amen let us pray a gracious and heavenly father we thank you for the excellence of your beloved son that he has gone way above and beyond all that we could imagine or think in the work of salvation that he has so loved us loved you and wanted to please you that you have given him a people and you’ve called us in him we don’t deserve it father but we give you praise and thanks and we’ll bask in the reality of it for all eternity so receive now our praises and our thanks and that we may lay down our lives as living sacrifices for what he has done for us and that we might go forth living in the power of his resurrection and by way of his spirit your spirit father that you pour out through him we pray it in Jesus precious name amen

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August 3, 2025
No Divisions!

About this sermon

In a sermon preparing for the Lord’s Supper, Paul greets the church in Corinth as those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be saints, together with all who call on his name. Every true believer is a saint now. Paul thanks God for the grace given them and assures them that God will sustain them to the end. Then he appeals for unity: no divisions, but one mind and one judgment. They are not to rally behind Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, for Christ is not divided, and they received baptism into him alone.

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Sermon transcript

Congregation, please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. We’re going to take a little break from our consideration of the book of the prophet Isaiah to consider a passage from 1 Corinthians chapter 1, the opening passage, 1 Corinthians 1, verses 1 through 17, and you’ll find that on page 1131 in your Pew Bibles. When we consider this passage, especially as we anticipate celebrating the Lord’s Supper this evening, our OPC directory for public worship advises that it is a good thing periodically to preach suitable preparatory sermons on the Lord’s Supper, and so that is the intention of my preaching from this passage this morning. So let us hear God’s holy word, 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verses 1 through 17. Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sostanese, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, or I follow Apollos, or I follow Cephas, or I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. I did baptize also the household of Stephanus. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else. For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. Dear ones, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever.

Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of His Word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we stand in awe of Your Word, for it is like a two-edged sword dividing even between a soul and spirit, bone and marrow. We would pray that this Word that we consider this morning, that Your Spirit would take this portion of Your Word and apply it powerfully to our hearts. We pray, Lord, that Your Word would find a lodging place in our souls and bear much spiritual fruit in our hearts and lives. Help us to be attentive. Help us to see the relevance of this portion of Scripture, and use this portion of Scripture to build us up in our most holy faith and, most important of all, to build us up in faithfulness to You and in our unity, one with another, as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people’s said. Amen. You may be seated. A simple title of my sermon this morning is No Divisions, and there are quite a number of key words that you can listen for. I’d encourage the young people to listen for the following words in my sermon today, the words, unity, sanctified, holy, hope, blameless, division, and factions. Well, we are considering a portion of Scripture from the pen of the Apostle Paul, and my dear Christian friends, fellow disciples of our Lord Jesus Christ, the letters or epistles of St. Paul the Apostle are deep and rich and weighty writings, and they had a profound effect upon the development and the spread of Christianity in the context of the first century Roman Empire, especially as Paul was called as an apostle to the Gentiles.

Through God’s sovereign hand of providence, Paul was raised up to be a theological genius, and from a very early date the apostolic church recognized Paul’s writings as bearing the marks of being specially inspired, breathed out by the Holy Spirit, and thus they have taken their place rightly as part of the canon of Holy Scripture, and are rightly recognized as being part of the written Word of God. Now, if you are familiar with the writings of Paul in the New Testament, you will realize that most of Paul’s letters are what scholars would call occasional letters, which is to say that Paul wrote his letters to address particular occasions or particular circumstances or problems in the life of the early churches to which he wrote. Paul’s epistles to the Corinthian church, known as 1st and 2nd Corinthians in our Bibles, are just such occasional letters.

In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul is writing in response to various issues and problems and questions that face the members of the church at Corinth. And while the Corinthian church was blessed with many spiritual gifts, many gifts of the Holy Spirit, it was also a church that was plagued with many problems and indeed plagued with many sins. These problems and sins included such things as divisions in the church, pride, litigation amongst its members, sexual immorality, idolatry, abuses of the Lord’s Supper, I mean there were some who were actually getting drunk at their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper, and of course abuses of the spiritual gifts and so forth. Of these many serious problems confronting this first century church, it would seem that one of the biggest problems, the problem that Paul addresses right out of the gate here in 1 Corinthians was the problem of division and factionalism amongst the members of the church.

Throughout this epistle of 1 Corinthians, Paul makes it clear to the Corinthians and thus the Holy Spirit makes it clear to us that no divisions are acceptable in the church of our Lord Jesus Christ. At least not the kinds of divisions that the Corinthians were experiencing and were guilty of. And certainly if division occurs because heretics cut themselves off from the church or apostates leave the church, that’s one thing the New Testament tells us to expect, those kinds of divisions. But divisions amongst those who hold to the same gospel and confess the same Lord, that’s another question, that’s another thing. Among the churches, no such divisions over the gospel are acceptable. Now Paul wrote 1 Corinthians while he was in the city of Ephesus. He probably wrote this letter probably sometime in the spring of either 53, 54, or 55 AD.

The scholars debate which of those years he wrote this letter in which he wrote this letter. And one commentator writes that Paul’s goal in writing this epistle is that he, quote, wants them, he wants the Corinthians to drop their divisive one-upmanship, build up the faith of those who are weak and witness effectively to unbelievers. Well dear ones, in light of the fact that we are scheduled to celebrate the Lord’s Supper during our evening service coming up tonight, it is most appropriate that we consider the importance of the church’s unity. What does the Lord’s Supper have to do with the unity of the church you may say? Well one of the spiritual realities that is signified and symbolized by the Lord’s Supper is our union and communion with one another as members of the body of Christ.

Not only does the Lord’s Supper highlight and signify and seal our union and communion with our resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus Christ, it also symbolizes our union as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ for we all share in common in the Lord’s Supper. As our OPC form of government acknowledges in chapter four, section four, the chapter on the unity of the church, it says, the visible unity of the body of Christ, though not altogether destroyed, is greatly obscured by the division of the Christian church into different groups or denominations. Now you may wonder, okay pastor, what’s your real agenda in preaching from this passage? Let me just assure you that by preaching from this passage, I’m not at all meaning to suggest that Grace OPC faces the same kinds of challenges and issues that were faced by the first century church of Corinth.

We have our own issues, every church this side of glory has its issues and its problems and its struggles, but at the same time brothers and sisters, this epistle offers a great deal of wisdom and guidance for Christ’s church in all ages of church history, including the church today in the 21st century. And I believe brothers and sisters that we would do well to heed the divine instructions that are contained in this marvelous divinely inspired epistle. So let’s dive in and let me draw your attention to the opening three verses of this passage. And we learn from these verses, from this opening section, that our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as sanctified ones. That is to say, as those who have been called to be holy, called to be saints. This is the first point in your sermon outline.

Our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as sanctified ones, as those who have been called to be holy, called to be saints. Now Paul follows the typical practice of letter writing in the first century, which is kind of different from the way that letter writing goes today. I know nowadays actually writing a physical letter is not a very common practice anymore. But if you were to write a letter, how would you start it off? Well, you would say, dear, so and so. You would first address the recipient of the letter. And then you would probably have an opening greeting. And then you’d have the content of the letter. And then you would sign your name at the end. But the epistolary practice, the practice of letter writing in the first century was kind of different.

If you were writing in the first century, you would open up your epistolary, your letter, by first of all, identifying yourself. You would sign your name first. And then you would address the recipients. So that’s why Paul begins 1 Corinthians by identifying himself. He signs his name, if you will, right out of the gate. And he identifies himself as Paul, Paulos in the Greek. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother, Sosthenes. So how does Paul identify himself? Not only does he identify his name, he says that he has been called by the will of God. It has been God’s sovereign will that he be called vocationally speaking to be an apostle. Now, what is an apostle? We have folks today claiming to be apostles. Are they?

Are there apostles in the church today? Well, that term apostle can have sort of a generic use. It’s a word that can mean messenger or even missionary. So in that kind of informal, non-technical sense, yes, our missionaries are in that generic sense apostles. But Paul is identifying himself, I believe, as an apostle in the specific technical sense. An apostle in this specific technical sense was someone who had been directly commissioned by Christ himself to serve as his authoritative spokesman, his authoritative messenger. And one of the qualifications for being an apostle was that you had to have been an eyewitness to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. Paul saw Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. He didn’t just have a subjective hallucination or vision of the Lord Jesus. Jesus actually appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, just as the resurrected Lord Jesus had appeared to the other 11 disciples after his resurrection from the dead.

So Paul was indeed an eyewitness of the resurrected Christ. And no one who claims to be an apostle today can claim to have been an eyewitness to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. And that’s why we in the OPC believe that there are no apostles in the technical sense today. Now why does Paul, right out of the gates, identify himself as an apostle? Well, it’s likely that Paul begins this letter by identifying himself as an apostle of Christ because his apostolic authority was being challenged and questioned by some in the Corinthian church. So that’s why in identifying himself, he calls himself, he highlights his office and his calling as an apostle of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And then he is saying, he also acknowledges that he writes in cooperation with our brother Sosthenes. Who was Sosthenes?

Well, Sosthenes, this is perhaps the same Sosthenes mentioned in Acts chapter 18 verse 17. And Sosthenes had been the synagogue ruler in Corinth when Paul first visited that city. So here again, Paul identifies himself and then what does he say? He then addresses, he then names his addressees. And he says in verse 2, to the church of God. Now that’s significant. Church of God. If I’m remembering my research correctly, this is one of only three times when Paul addresses the church as the church of God. Usually he just says to the church of the Thessalonians or to the church of Christ or what have you. But here it’s the church of God. Why does Paul identify the church to which he’s writing as the church of God? Well, I suspect that the reason that he’s doing this, and perhaps he has in the background of his mind the fact that this terminology is similar to the way that the old covenant church was spoken of.

Namely as a congregation of God. A congregation, a covenant congregation gathered together for the worship of God. In any case, he addresses the church of God, that’s a generic term for the church universal. But it’s not just the church universal, the church of God that is in Corinth. The church has an address. The visible church has an address, and it has a definite membership to it. And then he specifies, he gets more specific about those whom he is addressing. He says to those sanctified or set apart in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Here Paul identifies the intended recipients of his letter as the church of God that is in Corinth. This is a local expression of the universal church.

The universal church including all of those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. In verse two upholds what could be called the catholicity of the church. That term Catholic doesn’t mean Roman Catholic. The term Catholic is a perfectly fine term. It means universal. It’s referring to all true believers scattered throughout the world, all who profess the true faith of Christ united together in the worship of Christ as Lord and Savior. So again he starts off reminding us of the connectionalism of the visible church. Independence by the way is not a biblical form of church government. The churches of the New Testament were connectional. They were connected to each other and they recognized their spiritual unity with other local congregations of this universal church of God.

And then after identifying himself and identifying his recipients he pens those familiar words in verse three, the words of the apostolic salutation which you hear every week at the beginning of each worship service. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now in saying this is Paul just saying wishing them well? No friends, Paul as an official spokesman of the Lord Jesus Christ declares authoritatively to the church of God at Corinth that God’s grace and peace rests upon them. And this is the importance by the way of the salutation as well as the benediction at the end of the service. The salutation is not just the pastor saying hey welcome on in, hope you’re all doing well. No it’s Jesus himself through his minister declaring to his people my grace, my peace rests upon you, you who are believers in Christ.

And so this is how he opens up the letter. Now what are some of the things that we can derive? What are some of the lessons we can learn from this opening section? Well first of all notice believers, brothers and sisters, we are already in principle, in position and by identity we are already sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be saints, set apart ones. Sometimes you hear folks say well I love Jesus, I try my best to be a faithful follower of Jesus but I’m no saint. Let me tell you this, according to the Bible if you are in Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit you are a saint. You are a saint. You don’t have to wait until you get to heaven to be a saint. If you have been truly converted, if you are repentant for your sins and trusting Christ alone for your salvation, the Bible addresses you as a saint and you say well I don’t always feel like a saint, I don’t always behave like a saint.

That may be true but if you are in Christ you are sanctified, you are a saint. As you would see if you read first and second Corinthians carefully, the Corinthians did not always act very saintly but in terms of their position before God they were saints, they were set apart ones. This is what the theologians would call positional sanctification or definitive sanctification and that is the foundation of progressive sanctification where we grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord Jesus and are enabled more and more to die unto sin and live unto righteousness. The challenge and adventure of discipleship is learning to live out in our daily practice what we already are in principle and by our spiritual identity before God. If Christ is truly your Savior from sin, if you’ve received and rested upon Christ and Christ alone for your salvation from sin, then you are already a saint, a sanctified or holy or set apart one.

Christian, are you living in practice like the saint that you already are in position and by your identity in Christ? And Church of God also consider that since we all share a common position and status and identity before the Lord as his saints, his holy ones, his sanctified ones, let’s treat one another as the brothers and sisters in Christ that we are, as brothers and sisters who share a common calling as saints. Let us not harm the communion of the saints through divisive behaviors, attitudes or actions. Instead, by the grace of God, let us manifest the holy status that God has graciously bestowed upon us by making every effort to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. So friends, we have considered that our Christian unity is rooted in our shared position as saints, as sanctified ones.

But next, as we move on to the next section, which we’ll cover very briefly, verses four through nine, this opening Thanksgiving, we consider next that the hope we share in common is a hope that should strengthen our Christian unity as we make our pilgrimage to glory. The hope that we share in common as brothers and sisters in Christ is a hope that should strengthen our Christian unity as we make our pilgrimage to glory. We learn in this passage that this is the hope that God is faithful to sustain us to the end so that we might be found blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. As it says in verse four, as Paul again following that typical pattern of the way letters were written in the first century, he has his opening Thanksgiving.

And he says, I give thanks to my God always for what? Does he say to the Corinthians, I thank my God that you guys are so great, that you’re walking so faithful, so worthily? No, Paul’s going to have a lot of rebuke and pastoral correction to offer in this letter. But he doesn’t, he doesn’t mention that right out of the gates. He sets the tone of the whole letter by saying, I thank my God always because of the grace that was given you in union with Christ Jesus. Though the Corinthian believers have many problems and have many things that they a great deal of Christian growth that needs to take place in their lives and in their congregation, Paul still recognizes the grace of God that has been at work in their midst. And he thanks God for his grace.

And then he goes on to say, he thanks God for the grace that in every way. And this particular grace that he focuses in on is what we might call a serving grace. God had richly blessed the Corinthian church with many gifts of the Holy Spirit. Some of those gifts, of course, are gifts that we would not expect in the church today. The Corinthian church was blessed with many revelatory and signed gifts. They were blessed with words of wisdom and prophecy, as well as miraculous gifts, healings, speaking in tongues, and so forth. And we ought not to expect those gifts to be operating today because of the fact that we now have the full and complete canon of Holy Scripture. Yet the Holy Spirit does continue to gift God’s people in the church, even though we should not expect to be speaking in tongues or have the gift of faith healing, although we should certainly pray, we believe that God does sometimes choose to miraculously heal people in response to prayer.

And yet, nevertheless, the Holy Spirit gives so many gifts. There are non-miraculous continuing gifts that the Spirit continues to give to the church today. And in any case, the Corinthian church had a super abundance of these grace gifts from the Lord. And Paul thanks God for that. He says he thanks the Lord for the grace that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you. Now what is Paul referring to when he talks about the testimony of Christ, the testimony of the gospel being confirmed among them? There’s different views of what that could mean. Perhaps he’s speaking about the fact that these gifts of the Holy Spirit confirmed the truth of Christ that they had believed through the preaching of Paul.

But nevertheless, whatever that’s referring to, he goes on to say in verse 7, so that you are not lacking in any gift. They’re incredibly gifted. You’re not lacking in any gift as you do what? As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. What revealing is he talking about there? He’s talking about the second coming. And this is the stance of the church ever since the first century, that we await the glorious return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and we live and operate in the church in light of that future eschatological glorious return of Christ at the end of this age. But then he goes on again to say this in verse 8, this Lord Jesus Christ, and again notice that he repeatedly says, our Lord Jesus Christ, he gives the full name and title of the Lord Jesus Christ, that he is the divine Lord, the God man, the Messiah, that this Lord Jesus Christ will do what according to verse 8, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This dysfunctional church with so many sins, so many problems, so many weaknesses, nonetheless Paul expresses gospel confidence that even in their case, God is able to sustain them to the end, faithful, even guiltless unto the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So we have here, this is a passage that underscores and bolsters our belief, our confidence in the security of the true believer in Christ. And then he goes on to reaffirm what he just said in verse 8, he says, God is faithful. You may not be faithful, we are often unfaithful, but God is faithful and it is by him by whom This is speaking of the saving effectual call, not just the general gospel call, although the saving call comes through the general call of the gospel, but God has sovereignly called you in grace into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

You’ve been savingly called into union with Christ, God who began a good work on you will carry it through to the day of Christ. He will carry through to completion unto the day of Christ in spite of all of these sins and problems and issues in the church. Beloved, not only do we share a common status and position before the Lord as his holy ones, his sanctified ones, his set apart ones, his saints, but by his sovereign grace, we also share a common hope, a common destiny. We who know Christ, we are all heading in the same eschatological direction. Now you may say, well wait a minute pastor, is it a hope or is it a certainty? Now when we use the term hope, and I’ve explained this before, but it’s good to be reminded of this, when we use the term hope, we often imply a certain amount of uncertainty.

You might say something like, I really hope the American economy doesn’t face a depression. Now in saying that, you’re expressing a wish and there’s some question about whether or not that wish will be fulfilled. But when the Bible talks about the hope of the gospel, it’s not talking about something that is uncertain, rather it is talking about something that is an absolute certainty and yet still in our future. We who are in Christ, we have been saved, but will we be ultimately saved? Well what does Paul say? The Lord Jesus Christ will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son Jesus Christ our Lord, and as Paul writes elsewhere in Philippians chapter 1, he who has begun a good work in you will carry it through to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

So our Christian hope is not an oh I hope I’ll make it in the end, no. Our Christian hope is the certainty of our final salvation, our eternal inheritance, and we can walk in confidence that as the scripture says in Romans 8, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. If you are in union with Christ, you need not fear condemnation. That doesn’t mean it’s okay to get lazy in your walk with the Lord, not at all. In fact, this certainty should motivate you and spur you on to greater action and greater faithfulness. But you are secure, so live in the joy and confidence of that security. Well a couple points of application before we move on to the final point and wrap up our time. First of all friends, as we see, the Corinthian church was a very gifted congregation.

Many grace gifts, many gifts of the Holy Spirit. But the presence of abundant spiritual gifts in their congregation did not in and of itself produce spiritual fruit in the life of their church. This my friends is very instructive to us because it indicates that the presence of spiritual gifts, including gifts of the Holy Spirit, that’s what spiritual gifts mean, gifts of the Holy Spirit. The presence of such gifts does not itself guarantee spiritual maturity or the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. We can praise God for the gifts that he gives, but we need to remember that the gifts of the Spirit are to be exercised in service to the fruit of the Spirit. Many today boast in gifts, their gifts, but oftentimes those who boast in their gifts are lacking, sadly lacking in the fruit of the Spirit.

Today we pray that God in his grace would not only gift us as a congregation, but would enable us to receive those gifts and use those gifts in a way that bears fruit in spiritual maturity and growth in grace. We also are reminded in this passage that we serve a faithful covenant-keeping God, a God who will complete the work that he has begun in us. Dear believer, hold fast your confidence that God will preserve you blameless on the day of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as he promises to. Grab hold of this promise and believe it and live your life in light of it. But finally, beloved, and we don’t have a lot of time to spend in this final section, but the final point I want to make based on verses 10 through 17 is that since Christ himself is not divided, we who are his body, his church, must not be divided by worldly things such as personality, cults, hero worship, or factions.

Christ, the God-man, the Word-made flesh, our all-sufficient Savior, he is not divided, he is one Christ. And therefore we who are his body, his church, we must not be divided by worldly things such as personality, cults, hero worship, or factions. Let me just read a couple of these verses here in this passage. Paul begins to start addressing some of the problems in the Corinthian church here in verse 10, and he begins not by harshly addressing them. He addresses them very pastorally with a great deal of love and with an appeal, not with an order, not say, I’m an apostle, you better listen to me and shape up. He does kind of get that tone a little bit later on, but he says here at the outset, I appeal to you, brothers, brothers, and you know, he includes the sisters as well in that terminology, he’s using it generically, I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, in other words, I appeal to you on the basis of who Jesus is and all that he’s done, that you all agree and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.

And then he explains why he’s given this appeal, he explains the reason for this appeal in the following verses, for it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people, we’re not sure who Chloe’s people were, there’s debate about that, but he’s been given insider information that there is quarreling among you, my brothers, and then he explains the kind of quarreling he’s talking about, he says, what I mean is that each one of you says, I follow Paul, and so you had the Paul contingent in the church, others said, I follow Apollos, Apollos was a great teacher in the early church, or I follow Cephas, that would be Peter, perhaps those were the Jewish Christians in the Corinthian congregation, say, well we follow St. Peter, being an apostle to the Jews, and some of them, apparently, claim to be above it all, well I follow Christ, I’m not schismatic like you guys, I follow Christ, right?

And then he asks the question in verse 13, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you, or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name, Paul’s focus when he was with the Corinthians was preaching the gospel to them, not administering the sacraments, and then he has, we have here a divinely inspired record of apostolic memory lapse, as Paul goes on to say in verse 18, parenthetically, well I did also baptize the household of Stephanus, beyond that I do not know whether I baptized anyone else, for Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, that was another thing that the Corinthians were into, is wisdom, but he did not make it his goal to preach the gospel in fancy terminology, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

Apparently there were factions in the church and people that would attach themselves to their favorite preachers and perhaps their favorite apostle, perhaps the one that had baptized them. In any case, we see the problem here, division, factionalism, but Paul reminds us Christ is not divided, we should not be either. Now friends, back in the earlier days, and I’ve shared this story before so forgive me if it’s repetitious to you, but in the earlier days of my ministry when I served in orthodox Presbyterian mission work in New Jersey, I remember during one of my sermons offering some criticisms of a popular television preacher for some serious doctrinal errors that he was promoting in one of his books, a book that I happened to have in my pastor’s library, and so I mentioned this man and his teachings and I was critical.

Now a dear sister in Christ in the congregation at the time got very upset with me that I would dare to offer public criticism of this particular preacher, this popular celebrity preacher. I criticized him by name and she was just really upset by that. Now if you’ve sat under my preaching for any length of time, you know brothers and sisters I don’t usually make a practice of criticizing other preachers by name from the pulpit, but in this particular case I was convinced and I believe I was right at the time, I believe I was justified to offer a warning about the particular false doctrine that this man was teaching in his book. I wasn’t saying that everything that this man taught or preached was bad or wrong, much of what he preached was edifying and helpful, but in this particular book he was teaching false doctrine that really struck at the heart of the gospel, so I felt the need to warn the congregation.

I admit I probably could have been a bit more diplomatic or nuanced, maybe not pounded the pulpit quite so much when I made the criticism, I get it. I was young in the ministry, but what struck me brothers and sisters about this dear sister’s reaction is that it seemed to me to be a symptom of a really big problem in the American church, the same problem apparently that was found in the Corinthian church, and that is the problem of cults of personality and devotion to celebrities, in our case celebrity preachers. Just as the world has its celebrities, especially actors, musicians, entertainers, and nowadays social media influencers, well friends just as that’s the case in the world, so we in the church, we have our own celebrities don’t we, let’s be honest. The danger here is that our devotion to our favorite celebrity preacher can tend to outweigh our devotion to the truth of God’s word, and this is similar to what was going on in the Corinthian church, but Paul says in verse 10, brothers I appeal to you by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you agree and that there be no divisions among you.

When he says all of you agree, that could literally mean say the same thing, in other words avoid party cries, be united, the Greek indicates be mended. And so what can we learn from all of this? Many things, but let me just mention as we close our time in the word a couple brief points of application. First of all friends, we can certainly be thankful for the gifts of teaching and preaching that God has given to his church, and we can be thankful for the teachers and preachers that God raises up to lead and to instruct his church. We stand on the shoulders of giants, we can learn from the great theologians and Bible scholars of the past, and we can appreciate the preaching gifts of those whom God has raised up in the present church as well.

But at the same time, let us be warned against factionalism and against exalting any man above Christ, even if that man’s name happens to be, oh I don’t know, Martin Luther, John Calvin, J. Gressam Machen, John Knox, Cornelius Van Til, Gerhardus Voss, or even R.C. Sproul. Brothers and sisters, these are great men of God, incredibly gifted in their theological gifts, we can learn much from them, let’s appreciate them, let’s use them, let’s learn from them, but let us also avoid becoming factionalists. Let us avoid the, well I’m of Calvin, or I am of Machen, or I’m of Van Til, or I’m of Gerstner, or I’m of Sproul. Let us be of Christ. And finally, take to heart the fact that gospel-grounded Christian unity in the church is not an option for we are one in Christ.

Paul is not saying be united for unity’s sake alone. He’s not talking about unity for unity’s sake alone. He’s talking about unity in Christ, unity in the truth of the gospel. We must maintain that unity. May God grant us the grace to do so. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you that we are one in Christ by your spirit and through the word. We thank you that we are sanctified, set apart ones. We would ask that you would help us, Lord, to walk together as brothers and sisters in Christ, to study the word together, to confess Christ together, to live out our callings, our vocations together faithfully. We pray all of these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. As we close our time of worship, let’s rise and we’ll sing together hymn 488, May the Mind of Christ my Savior, 488.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

August 11, 2024
Death in Adam, Resurrection in Christ

About this sermon

1. Understand the principle of representation. (v. 12)
2. Consider some of the practical implications of this doctrine. (v. 12)

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Sermon transcript

Friends, please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. We take a little break this morning from the Foundations of Faith series that I’ve been preaching on, using the Apostles’ Creed as a guide to that series. But even though we’re taking a break from that sermon series this morning, we are considering a foundational passage, a passage that deals with a very foundational aspect of our faith, our Christian faith, and that is 1 Corinthians 15, verses 21 through 22. Now I’m gonna read the first 28 verses of this chapter to give us the fuller context. It’s a very important portion of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. So let us hear God’s holy word. But again, our focus will be on verses 21 and 22, but I’m gonna read the first 28 verses. And you’ll find this, by the way, on page 1142 in your Pew Bible.

Dear friends, hear the word of God. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.

For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no 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, 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, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For God has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when it says, all things are put in subjection, it is plain that He has accepted who put all things in subjection under Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subjected to Him, who put all things in subjection under Him, that God may be all in all. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of His Word. Our gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we would ask that by your spirit you would attend the preaching of your word this day.

We pray that you would give us the grace to hear and receive that which the spirit is speaking to us in this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word. And we ask that you would set a guard over my lips, Lord, that I, your unworthy servant, may speak only that which is faithful to the word, edifying to your saints and glorifying to your holy name. Be with us now, Lord. Open our minds to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. Congregation, you may be seated. If you have your sermon outlined, you’ll notice there are four key words you can be listening for in my sermon this morning if you find that helpful in following along. Those words are, of course, resurrection, gospel, representative, and hope.

Well, dear friends, I’m not an expert in home building, but I imagine that any competent home builder knows that the stability of a house depends upon the stability of its foundation. A house that is not built on a firm foundation will not stand in the face of severe weather. For example, in areas of the country which experience hurricanes and tornadoes on a regular basis, why is it that mobile homes usually seem to be the homes which experience the most damage? Well, the answer would clearly seem to be that these homes usually do not have the kind of solid foundation that ordinary homes do. Well, dear listener, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, then it’s important for you to check the spiritual foundation upon which you are building the house, if you will, the house of your Christian faith.

The stability of your faith in Christ and the stability of your Christian life will depend, in large part, upon the strength of your spiritual foundation. If your professed Christian faith is built upon a foundation which includes, for example, such things as false doctrines or unbiblical ideas or mere human traditions, worldly wisdom, legalistic tendencies, and so forth, Well, then you’ll find yourself being tossed about by every wind of doctrine. You’ll find yourself unstable in your faith because you’re not rooted and founded on a solid foundation. And you’ll be blown about by every wind of doctrine, just like a small rudderless boat tossed about by the giant waves of the ocean. Unless your Christian faith is built upon the solid rock foundation of sound Bible doctrine, you will find your stability in Christ easily upset. And friends, this is why it’s so important for us as believers to review those basic foundational truths of the gospel from time to time.

Those truths by which we are saved through the work and grace of the Holy Spirit who applies those truths to our hearts and lives. Friends, few Bible truths are more foundational, more fundamental than the glorious gospel truth of Jesus Christ’s literal, physical, bodily, supernatural resurrection from the dead. Christ is risen. And when we say Jesus is risen, we mean it. We’re not just talking mumbo jumbo. We’re not just talking in metaphors or myths or symbols. Jesus of Nazareth, who was literally crucified, literally buried on the third day, he vacated the tomb in which they buried him. Jesus is risen. Jesus is Lord. In fact, the resurrection of Jesus is such an important gospel truth that you cannot honestly call yourself a Christian, at least not in any kind of meaningful historical sense of that term, nor can you expect to go to heaven unless you believe this divinely revealed truth.

As the Word of God teaches in places like Romans 10, verse 9, it says in that passage, Wonderful gospel promise there, that if you confess with your lips the Lordship, the divine Lordship of Jesus, and believe in your heart God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. You will be saved by the person and work of Jesus Christ as He’s offered to you in the Gospel. But friends, a clear implication of that passage is that if you do not acknowledge Christ’s divine Lordship nor believe in His resurrection from the dead, then you will not be saved. So as you can see, the historical fact of Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead, and therefore the significance of that fact in our lives as believers, are absolutely foundational to the Christian message. Absolutely foundational to the message of the gospel.

This is what makes the gospel What, children, what does the word gospel mean? It means good news. This is what makes the Christian message, a gospel, such good news. On this Lord’s Day, known as Easter Sunday, it is well for us to consider some foundational truths related to the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Namely, we are gonna consider today the truths of our death in Adam, on the one hand, and our resurrection in Christ, on the other hand. Now before we get to the main thrust of our passage for today, it’s important to put our passage in its context. And so let me kind of give you some background information about 1 Corinthians. It’s very important background information. In the Apostle Paul’s first letter, his first epistle to the Corinthians, he addresses a number of very serious problems that were being experienced in the Corinthian church, the first century church of Corinth.

And dear ones, as we consider some of these problems, we really need to throw out the commonly held idea that the age of the earliest apostolic church was somehow a pristine golden age of church history, as if, you know, oh, if we could just go back to the apostolic church, if we could just go back to being like the earliest Christians, everything would kind of be better in the church. Well, friends, The truth is that the early church had many of the same kinds of problems that the church today faces. And really, that shouldn’t surprise you, because after all, the church back then was full of sinners, just as the church today is full of sinners. And what is a sinner? A sinner is one who has missed the mark, one who has not perfectly obeyed God’s law with all heart, soul, mind, and strength, one who has missed the mark and fallen short of the glory of God.

And we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so the church is a hospital for sinners. It’s not an exclusive club. It’s not a holy club for those who have their lives all put together. Well, we certainly see that in the Corinthian church. The Corinthian church was in fact a perfect example of the imperfection of the church in the apostolic age. This body of believers in Corinth had really a long list of problems that the apostle Paul set out to address in his first epistle. If you read through 1 Corinthians, you’ll see these problems coming to the forefront. For example, there was division and a spirit of sectarianism in that church. There appears to have been a lack of respect among these believers for the God-given authority that Paul had as an apostle of Jesus Christ.

Now, Paul deals with that lack of respect and that questioning of his apostolic authority. He deals with that more directly in 2 Corinthians, but it still is implied here in 1 Corinthians. Not only that, there was some sexual immorality in the church at Corinth. In fact, a degree of sexual immorality that would have made the Corinthian Christians’ pagan neighbors blush Some of the Corinthians were actually taking each other to court before pagan civil authorities instead of dealing with and working out their differences in a biblical Christ-like way. Some of the Corinthian believers were thinking about divorcing their unbelieving spouses. Some of them even apparently were still participating at the pagan temples in pagan feasts which involved them in idolatry, in the worship of idols. Even add on to that, some of the Corinthian Christians were getting drunk during their celebrations of the Lord’s Supper.

Need I go on? I mean, friends, this was a church with some major, major pastoral and Christian lifestyle problems, if you will. We might describe the church in Corinth or at least the church culture of that congregation in modern terms, we would use the term dysfunctional. This was a highly dysfunctional, disordered church. But one of the biggest problems in the Corinthian church, this troubled church, was a doctrinal problem, a theological problem. Yes, there were practical pastoral problems. There were problems of sinful lifestyles and so forth. But there was also a major doctrinal problem, a problem that Paul spends the whole of chapter 15 dealing with. In this long chapter, Paul addresses some false ideas about the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, false ideas that were beginning to have an influence among the believers in this congregation.

You see, apparently, some of the Corinthian believers were saying that there was no resurrection of the dead, or at least they were questioning the resurrection of the dead. Now a few Bible scholars think that what this means is that the Corinthians were saying that Christ’s resurrection was not physical in nature. They were denying Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead. And they would, I think this is the minority view, a minority view among Bible scholars, but it kind of traces back to this idea that is rooted in ideas that floated out there in Greek philosophy. In Greek philosophy at that time, there was this idea that the body was a prison house for the soul. And in this kind of mindset, the goal of salvation is to be delivered from the prison house of the soul.

The idea is you want your soul to be separated and freed from the body. And so according to this view, the body was either evil or at least far inferior to the soul. And so certainly if you deny the goodness of the human body, why would you believe in the resurrection of Christ’s body? But other Bible scholars think that these Corinthians were not denying Christ’s bodily resurrection, only they were denying the resurrection of believers at the end of this age. They were denying the bodily resurrection of believers on the final day, when Jesus returns in glory and raises us from the dead. In other words, they didn’t deny the bodily resurrection of Christ, but they said that the Christians’ only experience of resurrection is a spiritual resurrection. Perhaps they believed that this spiritual resurrection took place at their baptism.

Well, whatever the case may be, I believe that this interpretation makes better sense of what Paul is arguing in this chapter. He’s basically saying, look, if you deny in principle the future general resurrection of the dead at the end of this age, because you have problems with the resurrection of the body, then look, if there’s no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised from the dead. And there are all kinds of negative implications to that. Now after, in terms of a survey or an overview of this chapter, after Paul reviews the gospel that he had preached to them, and he does so, he summarizes in a encapsulated form the gospel that he preached in verses three through eight, Paul then goes on in verse 13 to say, but if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

Paul then goes on to explain the logical implications of denying the bodily resurrection of believers. Look at verses 14 through 20. He writes as follows, and if Christ has not been raised, then what? Then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. Friends, if Jesus is not literally physically raised from the dead, then you’re wasting your time being here today. You might as well go and celebrate the Easter bunny and forget about celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Because if Christ is not raised, Christian preaching is vanity. It’s futile. It’s worthless. Verse 15. He goes on to say, we, meaning we apostles and we preachers of the gospel, 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.

If Jesus has not risen from the dead, Paul was a liar, I am a liar, Christian preachers who preach the resurrection are liars. They’re misrepresenting God. That’s a pretty serious accusation, a pretty serious implication if there is no resurrection of the body and thus no resurrection of Christ’s body. Verse 16, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, here he brings it home. He says, here are the implications for you. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. You’re still dead in your trespasses and sins, headed for divine judgment. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ, he’s using a euphemism there for death. Those who have died, those Christians who have died, have perished.

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. You see, friends, the resurrection of the body is a doctrine that is absolutely essential to the Christian gospel. Because without the resurrection of the body, there is no resurrection of Christ’s body. And the bodily resurrection of Christ is a foundational, fundamental truth of the gospel. It’s because Christ has been raised from the dead that we can be assured that death will not have the final say for us and for those of our loved ones and friends who die in the Lord. Friends, if there is no resurrection of Christ, there is no gospel. Good news. And if there’s no gospel, there is no salvation. And if there is no salvation, then all hope is gone. Only darkness remains.

All is lost. And we must all perish in our sins. But thanks be to God. that though all have died in Adam, in Christ all whom he represented will be made alive. And that brings us to verse 21. that we are considering today. As Paul writes, for as by a man came death, who do you think that’s talking about? That’s Adam, that’s the original Adam. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. Who’s that? That’s talking about Christ. So let’s consider these two verses now and see what they have to teach us about our death in Adam and our resurrection in Christ as we consider some points of application from our passage for today. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, this is the first point here.

Beloved, understand the principle of representation. If we’re gonna understand what Paul is saying here, we need to understand the principle of representation. We must understand this principle, or else the glory of Christ’s resurrection will not impact us the way that it ought to. Picture, if you will, a family here in the United States, and a young boy in that family asks his father, Daddy, why am I an American citizen? His father answers, son, you’re an American citizen because you were born into an American family, or in the case of a child who’s been adopted, you’ve been adopted into an American family. Because his parents, in a sense, represent him and have authority over him, legal authority over him, he shares in their citizenry. That’s one mundane, earthly example of representation. We who are parents, in a very real sense, represent legally and otherwise we represent our children.

We see this principle of representation on the sports field as well. Let’s say you’re part of a baseball team and it’s time for a game and you’re in the locker room. What do you do? You put on your team’s uniform. And as you wear your team’s uniform and you go out, into the field and play that game, while you are in your team’s uniform, on the field, engaged in that game, you are representing your team. Or think of our political representatives. Why is it that we, in our American system of government, elect our politicians, elect our congressmen and so forth? Well, we elect them to represent us, to speak for us in the halls of power. I know that they don’t always do that in the way that we might hope for them to do, but that’s the way it’s supposed to work, at least. they represent us.

And so these are just a few of many examples that could be given of corporate representation. And what is true in terms of the corporate reality of representation on the earthly mundane field is also true in the higher realm when we’re talking about spiritual and covenantal realities with respect to our relationship with God and His gift of salvation. And we learn in the Bible, we learn in the Word of God that there are basically two representative men. There is Adam and there is Christ. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15 verses 21 and 22, he says, for as by a man came death, By a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. You see, God appointed Adam as the original covenant head and representative of the human race. And so when Adam acted, when he disobeyed God, when he neglected to remain faithful to God and to guard the Garden of Eden from the incursions of Satan, and when he was put to the test by the snake, was by Satan through the snake, and was told to eat the forbidden fruit, and he caved to that temptation.

When he acted in rebellion against God and in rebellion against God’s word, he acted as our spokesman, our covenant head and representative. And so therefore, what are the wages of sin? The wages of sin is death. In Adam, we died. In Adam, we are fallen. As Paul says here in verse 21, for as by a man came death, it doesn’t stop there. Aren’t you glad? The wages of sin is death. As by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. And by the way, by implication, if you deny the covenant representation, the covenant headship of Adam, in order to be consistent, you would have to also deny the covenant headship of Christ. And that is to deny his saving work. Because Jesus died for his own sin? No, he didn’t have any sin.

He was the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. The Word made flesh. He was without sin when He died on the cross. Why did He die on the cross then? He died, brothers and sisters, for our sins. He took our place. He took the punishment we deserve. And the Father, out of love for us, sent His Son. It’s not that Jesus died to make an angry God loving. That’s a misrepresentation of the biblical doctrine of the atonement. No. It was the Father’s love that moved Him to send His Son. As it says in Romans 5, verse 8, God’s love is demonstrated in this, that while we were yet sinners, not good people, not people who had it together, while we were yet sinners, Christ did what for us? Christ died for us in our place, in our stead.

And so we see the two representative men, Adam and Christ. And Paul fleshes this out in more detail in Romans 5, verses 12 through 21. Let me just read that passage very quickly. Romans 5, verses 12 through 21. Paul writes this, or the Holy Spirit through Paul says the following. Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, again, the original Adam, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned, For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. There’s a parallel there, in other words, between Adam and Christ, between the first Adam and Jesus, the last Adam.

But notice the contrast, verse 15, but the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. and the free gift is not like the results of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if because of one man’s trespass death reigned through that one man, much more, Will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through that one man, Jesus Christ? Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. You see there. the back and forth and how Paul both compares and contrasts the first Adam, the first representative man, and Jesus, the second representative man. Now getting back to our passage for today, if you look at verse 22 in 1 Corinthians 15, it says this, all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” This verse makes it clear, beloved, that Paul uses the terms Adam and Christ to refer to real historical individuals. In other words, Adam, the first Adam, is just as historical as Jesus Christ, the last Adam. And that’s important because many folks today, especially in liberal theology, try to dismiss the historicity of the original Adam.

They deny the historical Adam and Eve. They say, well, you know, that’s just a story. That’s just a metaphor or a myth. The word Adam in the Hebrew means man. That’s one way to translate it. And so they say, well, Adam is not a real individual man. He represents every man, they would say. Well, he does represent every man. The reason he’s able to do that is because he himself was a real man, just as Christ himself was a real historical individual. So consider what these two representative men obtain on behalf of those whom they represent. What do we learn from this passage here in 1 Corinthians 15 and from the parallel passage that I read to you in Romans chapter five? Well, think about it, brothers and sisters. In Adam, the original covenant head and representative man, in Adam, we are fallen and sinful.

But in Christ, we who believe in him as Savior and Lord, we are redeemed by his grace and spiritually raised to newness of life. In Adam, we lost original righteousness. God created Adam righteous and holy, yet capable of falling into sin through his own free will. And sadly, he did abuse his free will and fell into sin. In Adam, In Adam, we lost that original righteousness, but in Christ, we are given as a gift his perfect righteousness. The guilt of Adam’s sin is imputed to us, that’s the bad news, but in Christ, the guilt of both original and actual sin is fully atoned for, and Christ’s perfect, everlasting righteousness is credited to us, imputed as it were to our spiritual account. In Adam, we are sinners. But in Christ, by faith in Him, we are saints, set-apart ones, indwelt by the Spirit of God.

In Adam, we are slaves to the power and dominion of sin. But in Christ, brothers and sisters, we are, in principle at least, we are freed from the power and dominion of sin. Sin need no longer be our slave master. because we’ve been raised to newness of life in Christ. In Adam, we are subject to the just penalty for sin. In Christ, we are freed from the penalty of sin and made heirs of eternal life. In Adam, we face a dreadful resurrection unto condemnation if we remain in Adam. We face a dreadful resurrection unto damnation, but in Christ, if we are in Him, united to Him by faith, we look forward to a resurrection unto life eternal. Now notice, by the way, who these representative men actually represent. Look at verse 22. It says, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

Now let me just say something. Some folks who hold to the view known as universalism, which is the view that in the end, everybody will be saved. They have a certain view of universal atonement that says, well, because Jesus died for everyone, they say, and therefore, everyone will be saved. And it’s different from Arminianism, which teaches that yes, Jesus died to make salvation possible for everyone, but only those who believe will be saved. We say that Christ died. Christ’s death is of infinite value, but he died specifically to save those who would come to believe in him, the elect. John 3.16 makes that clear. God so loved the world. How does God demonstrate his saving love for the world? Well, he gives his son so that whoever believes in him Whoever believes in him, that’s a limited group of people, might not perish but have eternal life.

But our universalist friends will latch onto this verse and say, aha, see, it says in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, right? It’s the same all. But what they neglect to do is to read on. to the context, in the context of verse 23, where it says, That qualifies the all that Paul is referring to back in verse 22. In Adam, all without qualification died. But in Christ, all who by grace come to believe in him as Lord and Savior, those who belong to him will not perish, but will live. Again, this passage does not teach universal salvation. The all whom Christ makes alive are from the perspective of divine sovereignty. They are all whom the father has given to his son, those whom Christ refers to as his sheep or the elect.

But from the perspective of human responsibility, it includes all who repent of their sin and by faith are incorporated into Christ. Dear listener, who is today your representative man? Adam or Christ? If you’re not sure, I’ve got good news for you. Jesus says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. The Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Christ died to save all who through his mercy come to trust in him as Lord and Savior. Jesus died on the cross for our sins. He rose from the dead so that all who believe in him might not perish. but have everlasting life. Repent and believe in Christ. Turn to Christ as your savior from sin today. You might say, well, pastor, does that mean I have to clean up my life first?

No, come as you are. He’ll clean up your life. He’ll change your life. But come recognizing, acknowledging your sin, acknowledging your shortcomings, humbling yourself before the Lord. Receive and rest upon Christ for salvation. And the word of God says that you will be saved. Now as we close our time in the Word today, I want to just close with a few of the practical implications of this doctrine. There are many that could be mentioned, but a few I want to mention as we close our time. First of all, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, if you’ve trusted Christ as your Lord and Savior, the truth of our Lord’s resurrection from the dead, and the truth of our union with Him and being represented by Him. This should be a tremendous encouragement to you, because Christ’s resurrection guarantees your own participation in the resurrection of life.

Jesus makes this clear in passages, for example, like John chapter 5, verses 26 to 29. We read these words. Jesus says, For as the father has life in himself, so he has granted the son to have life in himself. And he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the son of man. Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. And of course, we only do good by the grace of God, that’s the fruit of a true and living faith. And if you are in Christ, you are promised that you will be raised in the resurrection of life.

And that should be a source of great comfort and encouragement to you. Believer, you should also be comforted about those friends and loved ones of yours who have died in the Lord. We’ve all probably, most of us I imagine, have been to a funeral service. We’ve all lost friends, loved ones, co-workers, whatever, and we all know the experience of grieving the loss of loved ones. But if your loved one is a believer in Christ, if your loved one is in the Lord, then you need not grieve as those who have no hope. For friends, Jesus rose from the dead. That means not only that you, believer, will rise from the dead, but that your believing departed loved one. will be raised as well at the end of this age, and you’ll get to see that loved one again.

You know, the most glorious thing about heaven and about living in the new heavens and the new earth after the resurrection of the dead at the end of this age, the most glorious thing is that we’ll get to be with Jesus. That’s the most glorious thing. People say, will I get to see aunt or uncle so-and-so when I go to heaven? Well, yes. But the greatest thing about heaven is that we’ll get to see Jesus. But a secondary blessing is that we’ll also get to see those loved ones and friends who were near and dear to us who died in the Lord. And so this should give you comfort and hope for those friends and loved ones are now with the Lord and will one day participate with you in the resurrection of life. This truth also gives us even more reason to cast off pride and to put on the mantle of humility.

For our salvation is all of God’s grace and all because of Christ and His work. For Christ represented you and me, brothers and sisters, in His life, in His death, and in His resurrection. We have nothing to boast in except in the Lord. So may the truth of our Lord’s resurrection humble us before Him. But finally, the resurrection can give us strength and peace to face the sufferings and struggles of aging and death. You know, sometimes the older years are referred to as what? The golden years. But they’re not always very golden, are they? It’s hard to grow old. It’s hard to face the prospect of death. It’s a source of great anxiety, but we need not fear the grim reaper. for we know that he will not have the final say. We know that in Christ we will be raised.

So let us live with confidence and hope. Christ is risen. Christ is risen indeed. Hallelujah. Amen. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you that you have given your son Jesus to represent us. We thank you that Jesus obeyed the law for us in our place and in our stead, thereby making up for all of our disobedience to your law. We thank you that he stretched out his arms upon the hardwood of the cross and took the penalty that we deserve for our sin upon himself. He absorbed your holy and righteous wrath against our sin. He took that upon himself so that we might be spared. We thank you, Heavenly Father, that you have raised Jesus, our Savior, your divine, eternal Son from the dead. and that we, united to Him, will be raised from the dead.

We thank you that in Christ, we have not only been raised, but are seated with our Savior at your right hand, oh Heavenly Father, and that when He returns, He will return for us. May these truths give us hope and joy on this resurrection, Lord’s Day, and always. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s close our time of worship by rising and singing this glorious resurrection hymn, 360, Christ the Lord is Risen Today, 360.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 31, 2024
Foundations of Faith: Crucified, Dead, and Buried

About this sermon

1. Consider the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as first-order gospel truths (vv. 3-4a).
2. The Old Testament Scriptures anticipated the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ (vv. 3-4).
3. The central importance of our Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection (vv. 3-4).

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Sermon transcript

of God’s Word. Today my sermon text is 1 Corinthians 15, verses three and four. I’m gonna read the first 11 chapters, not the 11 chapters, the first 11. Boy, we’d be here a long time. The first 11 verses to put this passage in its larger context. 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1-11. Hear God’s holy word. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12.

Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever.

Please join me in your hearts in prayer. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we do pray that by your spirit you would once again open our minds and our hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. Make us eager to learn that which the spirit is speaking to us in this portion of your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible word. And we pray that you would once again set a guard over my lips that I might speak only that which is faithful in your sight and edifying to your people. We pray all these things, Heavenly Father, through Christ our Lord and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. As we continue the Foundations of Faith series, we consider today the statement in the second credo, the second, I believe, statement of the Apostles’ Creed, that Christ our Savior was crucified, dead, and buried.

And the key words to be listening for in my sermon today, I’d encourage the children to listen for these words, the words faith, creed, scripture, doctrine, death, burial, and gospel. Well, my dear friends in Christ, as followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is important for us to have a basic idea of what we believe and of why we believe it. And towards that goal, it is helpful for us periodically to review the foundations of our faith. And that is what we’ve been seeking to do in this Foundations of Faith sermon series, a series which is, of course, being guided by that classic summary of Christian belief known as the Apostles’ Creed. Friends, as we continue our study of these foundational beliefs, this Lord’s Day morning we consider the biblical truths that are summarized, as I said, in the second credo, the second, I believe, statement of the Creed, namely that Christ, God’s only begotten Son, was crucified, dead, and buried, that is the focus of our consideration this morning.

And as a biblical foundation in support of this creedal affirmation, we turn this morning to Saint Paul the Apostle’s summary of the gospel that he preached, as we find that summary recorded for us in this very significant and central passage, 1 Corinthians chapter 15. And we will focus, as I said, especially on verses three and four of this chapter. Now, let me put this chapter and, indeed, briefly put the entire letter of 1 Corinthians in its context. If you study, if you’ve read 1 Corinthians, if you’ve read it carefully and not just skimmed over the surface, well, even in a certain sense, even if you have skimmed over the surface, one of the things that you will notice is that, wow, these Corinthian Christians, they had a lot of problems. They had a lot of issues.

The first century church in Corinth was indeed a deeply troubled congregation. I believe the modern terminology would be that they were a deeply dysfunctional church community. And so there were many pastoral problems and issues in that congregation that needed to be addressed. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul addresses these problems and issues head on, and he also answers some of the questions that the Corinthian believers had addressed to him in a letter that they had apparently sent to him. Back in 1 Corinthians 7, verse one, Paul seems to refer to this letter. He says in that verse, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, and then he proceeds to answer the questions that they had written to him and were asking him for guidance on. Well, one of the major issues, and there were many issues in the church.

I mean, they were having problems with divisiveness and factionalism and schism. Some of the members of the Corinthian church were continuing to attend idol feasts, and there was immorality in the church. People were getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper. There were all kinds of practical pastoral issues that needed to be addressed, but there was also a very significant doctrinal issue. that needed to be addressed in the Corinthian congregation. One of the major doctrinal issues in the Corinthian congregation was that apparently some of the members of the church were either questioning or were outright denying the doctrine of the future general resurrection of the dead at the end of this age. In chapter 15, the Apostle Paul now turns his attention to addressing this particular doctrinal issue. And in laying the groundwork for his defense of the future general resurrection of the body, Paul begins his argument for the future resurrection of the dead by defending the physical bodily resurrection of Christ from the dead.

After all, Christ’s bodily resurrection was and is the divine pledge and guarantee of our bodily resurrection from the dead at the end of this present age when Jesus returns in glory and ushers in the new heavens and the new earth. In the course of defending Christ’s resurrection, Paul reviews the basics of the gospel message which he had preached to them. And here he introduces this discussion in verses 1 and 2 of chapter 15. where he is shifting attention, he has been speaking about the spiritual gifts in the church in chapters 12 through 14, but now he indicates that he’s gonna change subjects and deal with this matter of the resurrection of the dead. He says in chapter 15, verses one and two, now I would remind you, brothers, there might be a little bit of subtle sarcasm here, I’m reminding you of what you should already know.

I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, I mean, you should understand this gospel, you’ve already received it and confessed it, in which you stand, this gospel in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. Well, friends, this brings us to our passage for this morning. And if you’re following along in your sermon outline, this is the first main point that I want us to consider from verses three and the first part of verse four. Beloved, first of all, let us consider the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as first order gospel truths. Let me repeat that. Let us consider the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ as first order gospel truths.

Paul writes again in verses 3 and 4, for I delivered to you as of what? As of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried and so forth. Of first importance. This is what I’m getting at when I use this terminology of first order. And actually, Dr. Albert Mohler, who I believe was, if I think he might still be, the president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, we have some differences with him as a since he’s a Baptist and we’re not, but he, I believe, leans Calvinistic or Reformed in his understanding of the Gospel, and so we share many of his beliefs. A number of years ago, he wrote an article in which he distinguishes First Order, Second Order, and third order doctrines.

What he means by first order doctrines, first order doctrines are doctrines which are so central and so fundamental to Christianity that the denial of them represents the immediate or at least the eventual denial of Christianity itself. First-order doctrines are doctrines that you cannot deny or cannot be unclear about without putting yourself outside of the Christian fold. Second-order doctrines are doctrines about which Bible-believing Christians may disagree, but they create significant boundaries between believers, whether as distinct congregations or as denominations. and there’s many examples of those second-order types of doctrines. Third-order doctrines are doctrines upon which Christians may disagree and yet still remain in close fellowship even within local congregations. By the way, as a quick aside, an example of a third-order doctrine within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church would be the issue of are you two office or three office in your view of church office.

In other words, does the New Testament reveal only two offices, the offices of elder and deacon, and within the eldership there are teaching elders and ruling elders, that’s the two office view. And then there’s the correct view, which is the three office view. the view that there are actually three offices, the office of minister of the word, the pastoral office, as well as the office of church governor or ruling elder and then the office of deacon. Now within the OPC, we have folks in the OPC including ministers and elders who hold to the two office view and those who hold to the correct view, the three office view. But nevertheless, we still fellowship together and we work together as brothers in the Lord. In any case. in this scheme of different orders of doctrine, based on the kind of definition of the various levels of orders of doctrine that Dr.

Moeller describes. It is clear, my friends, from Paul’s language here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, that he viewed belief in our Lord’s death by crucifixion, our Lord’s burial, and of course our Lord’s resurrection from the dead. Paul viewed these doctrines to be first order doctrines. To disbelieve in or deny our Lord’s death by crucifixion, his burial or his resurrection from the dead is to disbelieve in and to deny the Christian faith at least in any meaningful biblical or historic sense of that term. And thus to place oneself outside of the Christian fold. And this, by the way, was one of the reasons why Dr. J. Gresham Machen was correct in his famous book, Christianity and Liberalism. He made the case in that book that theological liberalism, or modernism as it’s been called, theological liberalism, which tends to view doctrines like the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, Christ’s bodily resurrection as optional, if not mythological and metaphorical, Machen made the case that liberalism, though it uses Christian terminology, is actually an altogether different religion.

It’s not Christianity at all. And he is correct, according to the standard, at least, of the Apostle Paul, the standard of God’s word. So let’s dive into our text. In verse three, Paul begins by saying this, for I delivered to you. He’s reminding them of the gospel, the good news about Jesus that he had preached to them, and he had delivered this gospel to them. I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received. In other words, he’s saying to them, brothers, sisters, this gospel message that I preached to you, which includes the message of Jesus’s death for our sins, his burial, and his resurrection from the dead, this message, I didn’t make it up. It doesn’t originate from me. I received it. Ultimately, he received it from the resurrected Lord Jesus himself, as well as receiving it from the other apostles.

It had been passed on to him and he was passing it on to them. Through this language, by this language, Paul handed on to them, as by tradition, a body of doctrine which they had received from him. One Bible commentator in commenting on this received and delivered language found in the first four verses of chapter 15 writes this, The commentator says, Paul is using commonly recognized language for handing on intact a body of information that one has received from others. And by the way, this is one of the reasons why we in the OPC and at Grace Church stress the importance of scripture and catechism memory work. Not because that’s a magical practice, but because these are some of the vehicles that are well tested and tried for passing on the faith from one generation to another generation.

These are time-tested vehicles for passing the faith along to the next generation. And so Paul had received the faith once for all delivered to the saints. He received it from the Lord Jesus and from the other apostles, and he was passing it on to them. And in doing so, he reminds them of the doctrines that he especially stressed in his preaching of the gospel to them. And he uses this terminology. He says, for I deliver to you as of what? As of first importance. Here he is laying before us first order doctrines. He says, what did he deliver to them? That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. We’re gonna consider the significance of that phrase, in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture.

Now in the English Standard Version, as well as the New American Standard Version, this phrase, the Greek term, the Greek words are en protois, en protois, as of first importance, or some translations like the New King James Version translate it as first of all. Dr. W. Harold Mayer says of this phrase, some have understood the words translated of first importance in the temporal sense of at the first. But that seems redundant because at all times Paul’s preaching identified the death and resurrection of Christ with the gospel. The stress is on the centrality of these doctrines to the gospel message. In other words, friends, the context of this passage by describing doctrinal truths such as Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection as being of first importance. Through that language, the context of this passage indicates that Paul is stressing these doctrines as first order doctrines.

Truths that are absolutely non-negotiable. Truths that are absolutely, undeniably, irrefutably, unquestionably, and unavoidably essential to the very gospel message itself. And so to deny these truths is to deny the good news, the gospel, and to put yourself outside of the Christian fold. Now, I wanna make a couple points of application. Some of you may feel uncomfortable with this language of first-order doctrines versus second-order and third-order doctrines. And you might be saying, well, wait a minute, Pastor. All of the Bible is God’s word. Aren’t all of the truths of the Bible important? Isn’t this whole book of first order truth? Well friends, let me just say and make it clear, it is indeed true that all Bible truths are important. All Bible truths are important because God has revealed them and he has caused them to be incorporated, inscripturated in his written word, the Bible.

You and I are not at liberty to take a sort of a cafeteria pick and choose approach to the Scriptures. If the Bible clearly teaches something, you and I as followers of Christ are obligated to believe the Word of God because it is the final authority. It is the Word of the true and living God. But at the same time, While all Bible truths are important, some Bible truths are of first importance with respect to the gospel message. Some are first order doctrines that are essential to the gospel message itself and therefore essential to our salvation. As our confession of faith states in chapter one, section seven, which is the chapter on the scriptures, the holy scriptures, in that section, and you can follow along if you’d like, it’s on page 920 in your Psalter hymnal, Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter one, section seven, seems to assume this kind of hierarchy of doctrinal truths when it writes, when the Westminster divines say the following. they write in that section of the Confession.

In other words, there are some passages of the Bible that are easier to understand than others. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet, those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of Scripture or other. that not only the learned but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. When it comes to saving truth, The saving truth of the Bible is clear for those who are willing to put the time and effort into reading the scriptures and understanding them. And another comforting aspect of that section of our confessional standards is it’s basically saying you don’t have to be a Bible scholar or a theologian to understand the gospel.

Through a due use of the ordinary means, even the unlearned, may attain to a sufficient understanding of the good news of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But again, to clarify, this does not mean that Christians are free to take a pick-and-choose, cafeteria-style approach to the Bible, accepting those things which we like, but rejecting those things which we dislike or find untasteful. Instead, it is a recognition, beloved, that some parts of the Bible are easier to understand than others. And also that sincere Bible-believing Christians, Christians who love the Lord, who are devoted to His Word, and who desire to believe and live in accordance with the Word of God, even such sincere Bible-believing Christians at times come to different conclusions about how to understand and interpret certain passages of the Bible. And I mentioned as a third order debate within sort of an in-house debate within the OPC, the two office, three office debate, but there are other debates.

For example, think about the different interpretations of Revelation chapter 20 that are out there. That’s the chapter which speaks about the thousand year millennial reign of Christ. Is that to be understood in a literalistic sense? Is Christ at his return going to set up an earthly throne in Jerusalem and reign from Jerusalem as many of our brothers and sisters of a dispensational bent believe? Or is that symbolic of the church age? Which is the correct view, again. But again, There are Bible-believing Christians who come to different conclusions about the millennium and how to interpret it. That’s not to endorse theological relativism or to say that they’re both true in their own way, no. But it is to say that some things are easier in the scriptures to understand than other things. And so let’s keep that in mind.

All Bible truths are important, because they are part of God’s word, but some Bible truths are of first importance. In particular, the truths that are central to the gospel message. Another point of application I want to make, beloved, let us, beloved, seek to avoid theological hobby horses. And instead, let us always seek to keep Christ and the gospel central to our church’s life and doctrine. And again, don’t misunderstand. This is not to say that there’s no place for our church’s distinctives or to stressing our Presbyterian and Reformed distinctives. But all of these things are in service to the gospel. We need to keep Christ and his gospel always front and center and not be known as, well, that’s that church over there that has this hobby horse or that hobby horse. A number of years ago, I think in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was a movement known as the Family Integrated Church Movement.

And a lot of churches identified themselves and advertised themselves as, we’re a family-integrated churches. And what did they mean by that? Well, these were churches that were committed to rejecting the practice of having age-segregated Christian education classes. So they didn’t have age-segregated worship. They didn’t have a children’s church, for example, which I think I actually agree that we shouldn’t do that. Children should be welcomed. in the worship service from as early as possible. But then they also said, you know, we don’t think it’s right to segregate the children of the church away from the adults. And so family integrated church. Now here, brothers and sisters, I’m not here to say that that’s necessarily wrong. Some churches use that model in their Christian education program. We at Grace Church, we have an age segregated practice in our Christian education program.

But that’s not how we advertise ourselves. We don’t advertise ourselves as, well, we’re not a family-integrated church. We’re an age-segregated church. No, that’s not what we’re about. We’re about Jesus. We’re about the gospel. We have certain practices when it comes to Christian education, but we need to be careful that we don’t get onto hobby horses and emphasize those at the expense of emphasizing the gospel. Again, Paul says, I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received. And that brings me to my next point, and that is, beloved, The Old Testament scriptures anticipated the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The Old Testament scriptures anticipated the death by crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. And this is the thrust of Paul’s language here where he talks about these things being in accordance with the scriptures.

What scriptures is he talking about? At the time of his writing of 1 Corinthians, the New Testament scriptures were still in the process of being written. When he writes in accordance with the scriptures, he has in mind in particular the Old Testament scriptures. And so he says in verse three, for I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins. He died for our sins, what? In accordance with The scriptures, the Greek is katatas grafas. What do we learn from this language and Paul’s expression here? We learn, beloved, that Christ is at the heart and center of all of the Bible, including the Old Testament Scriptures. The Old Testament Scriptures anticipate, they point forward to, and they even predict the person and saving work of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And many examples could be given. But this is not what Paul means here. He’s not simply saying that, well, there are certain messianic prophecies which predict isolated predictions of Jesus’ sufferings, death, burial, resurrection, and so forth. No, the whole tenor of this Old Testament Scriptures points forward to and anticipates the Lord Jesus Christ and his saving work. For example, consider the sin and guilt offerings of the sacrificial and ceremonial law. You know those quote boring sections of and kind of gory sections of the book of Leviticus? You read through the book of Leviticus, and it’s kind of tedious to read, and it’s got all this stuff about the various kinds of sacrifices that the Israelites were to offer before God on the altar, and instructions for the priests, well, make sure to cut out the entrails, and wash the entrails, and offer the fatty lobe, and all of that stuff.

And you read that, and you’re like, what is this getting at? It’s pointing to Jesus. It is instructing the people of God that, hey, sin is so serious that it needs death to atone for it. You need a substitute. You need the shedding of blood. And all of this points forward to Jesus, the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world. There are also passages in the Old Testament that directly predict the sufferings of Christ. One of those prominent passages, of course, is Psalm 22. And let me just read a couple verses from Psalm 22 to illustrate this. In Psalm 22, verse one, here are some familiar words. The psalmist who is David here says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Where have you heard those words before? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus spoke those words on the cross. This anticipates the sufferings of Christ, where he was abandoned by the Father on the cross as he bore our sins. And then skip down to verses six through eight, David writes under the Spirit’s inspiration, he says, but I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me and they make mouths at me, they wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord, let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him. You read the gospel accounts and Jesus endured this type of mockery while he hung on the cross. And then skip down to verses 12. through 18, many bulls encompass me, strong bulls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion.

I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint. That’s what crucifixion does. It yanks your bones out of joint. My heart is like wax, it is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircle me. And they have what? Pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They state, They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. Read the gospel accounts of Christ’s crucifixion. These things happened. These are direct predictions of our Lord’s suffering and death by crucifixion. And then, of course, there is the famous suffering servant passage of Isaiah chapter 53.

And I could go on. Well, dear ones, As we approach the Bible, we need to realize that as God’s word, it points us to Jesus. Christ is at the heart and center of scripture. Dear ones, we read the Bible, we approach and read the Bible wrongly when we read it, for example, as a book of moral stories and lessons, sort of like a divinely inspired Aesop’s fable. Or when we read it like a collection of inspirational tales for self-improvement, sort of like a divinely inspired chicken soup for the soul. Or when we read it like a blueprint or a manual for improving society or for creating a Christianized nation and culture. or if we read it as a psychological drama, a psychological drama which reveals social and psychological archetypes that help us to understand the human psyche and human society.

Or even, and this may speak more directly to our reformed situation, even when we read it like a systematic theology textbook. The Bible’s full of theology, but it is not a systematic theology textbook. Beloved, the Bible is none of these things that I’ve mentioned. Instead, the Bible is the true story. It is God’s story, the story of God’s great plan to redeem and save a lost and dying world through sending His Son to be a crucified, risen Savior for sinners. While the Bible certainly does contain moral and ethical guidance through the law of God and certainly reveals a system of theological truth, it is fundamentally a book about redemption. It is a book about God’s mighty acts of redemption which culminate and climax in the person and saving work of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, especially the good news of Christ’s death by crucifixion, his burial, and his resurrection for us and for our salvation.

In other words, friends, the whole Bible, including the Old Testament, leads to and centers upon Jesus Christ and his saving work for us sinners. The good news of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection is in accordance with the scriptures. And as we close off our consideration of this passage today, I would have us briefly consider the central importance of our Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection. The central importance of our Lord’s crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Again, Paul writes, for I deliver to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died Paul doesn’t say directly that he died by crucifixion, but that’s implied. Paul mentions the cross elsewhere in his writings. Christ died by crucifixion for our sins in accordance with the scriptures and that he was buried and so forth. Again, why is it that Paul lists as of first importance our Lord’s death and burial as being first order essential gospel truths?

Why couldn’t the Savior have died by strangulation or by dying? Why couldn’t our Savior have been put to death in any number of other ways? Why did it have to be by crucifixion? The reason it had to be by crucifixion, my friends, is the Old Testament law indicates that anyone who is hung on a tree is cursed. Turn to Deuteronomy 21, and let me read Deuteronomy 21, verses 22 and 23. Deuteronomy 21, verse 22 and 23. Moses writes there, and if a man has committed a crime punishable by death and he is put to death, and you hang him on a tree, his body shall not remain all night on the tree, but you shall bury him the same day, for a hanged man is cursed by God. You shall not defile your land that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance.

Why is that so significant? Death by crucifixion is a cursed death. This is significant, my friends, for by dying and a cursed death on the cross, Christ took the curse of our sins upon himself in order that we might receive the blessings of eternal salvation. This is what Paul emphasizes elsewhere in his letter to the Galatians. In Galatians chapter 3 verses 12 and 14 Paul writes, but the law is not of faith rather the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the what? From the curse of the law. How? By becoming a curse for us for it is written Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised spirit through faith.

Beloved, Jesus had to die on the cross. a cursed death on the cross that the curse we deserve for our sins might be laid upon him so that we through him might receive the blessings of God. And it was necessary that Christ die for our sin. We’re told in verse three of our passage that Christ died for our sins. In other words, he died a penal substitutionary atoning death. He took our penalty upon himself. He died in our place, in our stead. Now friends, think about it. To the Jewish mind in the first century and to the Jewish mind of today, the idea of a Messiah who would die and accursed death by crucifixion was an offense. It was a stumbling block. After all, The Jews were expecting a messianic king who would wield political power and who would defeat their political oppressors, in that case, the hated Romans at that time, and would set up an earthly political kingdom, gaining political independence for Israel and bringing in an age of earthly and material prosperity and blessing.

The Jews of the first century were expecting sort of a health and wealth political Jesus. They were expecting a political messiah. And yet, sadly, they had grossly misinterpreted their own scriptures. For the Old Testament taught not only that the messiah would conquer the nations by his grace and rule the nations, but that he would also be a suffering servant who would die for the sins of his people in accordance with the scriptures. Christ’s death proves that the Father’s wrath against our sins has been exhausted, that the curse has been overcome in our Lord’s penal substitutionary atonement. But what about the burial of Christ as a first-order doctrine? Not only does Paul say, as of first importance, the truth that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures and that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, but that He was buried How is the burial of Christ a first order doctrine?

How is it that the burial of Christ is according to the scriptures? Well, the truth of our Lord’s burial proves that our Lord was indeed dead. The Old Testament lays stress on the importance of a proper burial. Christ was properly buried in the tomb of a rich man. and his burial proves that he was actually dead, and not that he had merely swooned or merely appeared to be dead. There’s a ridiculous skeptical theory out there called the swoon theory, the idea that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross, he only seemed to be dead, and the Roman soldiers didn’t recognize that he was actually dead. as if these Roman soldiers who knew how to distinguish a live person from a dead person would mistake that. But anyways, they say Jesus still had a little life in him.

He just kind of swooned. He was sort of in a comatose state. They took him down from the cross and they laid him in the tomb and the cool airs of the tomb revived him. Nonsense or hogwash. I could use stronger language, but I won’t. That’s nonsense, my friends. Jesus was practically mummified. He’s wrapped up and he’s put in this tomb with a heavy stone rolled in front of it. And he’s going to get up and somehow move that stone up here to his disciples and say, hey, I’m the risen Lord. And they’re going to believe that. No, he would be in great need of medical attention. The burial of Christ proves that he was actually dead, and the death of Christ proves that he has fully, perfectly atoned for human sin. The Son of God incarnate actually died on the cross, his burial proving it, and in doing so, all our sins, brothers and sisters, were buried with him.

Have your sins been nailed to the cross of Christ and buried in his tomb? You can know that they have been, as by grace you repent and turn to Christ, trusting him and him alone as your very own Lord and Savior. Believe and repent today and you shall be saved. Again, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, Paul says. that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. Let us believe and embrace these truths of the gospel. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you and praise you for the finished work of Christ and for your presence with us this day. We pray that these truths would find a lodging place in our souls and that by your spirit you would cause these truths to bear much spiritual fruit in our lives.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s rise and we’ll sing as our closing hymn, How Deep the Father’s Love for Us, hymn 351, How Deep the Father’s Love for Us.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

January 21, 2024
Foundations of Faith: Our Lord

About this sermon

The basic Christian confession is ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and the Apostles’ Creed calls him ‘our Lord.’ Paul writes to a troubled church at Corinth and first reminds them that they are sanctified in Christ and call on the name of the Lord Jesus with all his people everywhere. Calling on his name means worshiping him as God, as the church did from the start, long before Nicaea. Confessing Christ as Lord means living under his rule, standing for the truth, and speaking it in love.

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Sermon transcript

In standing for the reading of God’s Word, we continue our consideration of foundations of faith, this Bible-based series that has been guided by the Apostles’ Creed. The title of my sermon this morning is Our Lord, and our sermon text is 1 Corinthians 1, verses 1 and 2. I’m going to read through verse 3 to fill out the context of this opening section of Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, his first epistle to the Corinthians. But let us hear God’s holy word. 1 Corinthians 1, verses 1 and 2. called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother Sosthenes, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Dear friends, the grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for God to bless the preaching of His Word. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you and praise you that you have given us a sure and certain word. You have communicated your revealed will to us in the holy scriptures, your God-breathed, inerrant, infallible, authoritative word. We thank you for your word for indeed, Lord God, again, it is a lamp unto our feet, a light unto our path. It is a guide to our way. We ask that by your spirit, you would open our minds and hearts to behold wondrous things from your word. We pray that your word would find a lodging place in our souls this day and we pray that by your spirit you would bless the proclamation of your word.

Oh Lord, set a guard over my lips that I, your unworthy servant, might declare your word with clarity and power and with the assistance and grace of your spirit. We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said. Amen. You may be seated. like to encourage especially the children but also the adults to follow along in your sermon outline. And children, the key words you can be listening for in my sermon today are the words Lord and Lordship, Unity, Holiness, Apostle, Worship, Obedience, and Trust. Well dear friends, the basic New Testament creed, the basic Christian confession can be summarized in three simple English words. The words, Jesus is Lord. Lord, Jesus is Lord. Friends, when we truly confess that Jesus is Lord, sincerely from our hearts and in accordance with the word of God, then we are expressing true saving faith in Christ.

It is because confessing the Lordship of Christ is an expression of true saving faith in Christ that it is, in this sense, necessary for salvation. That very familiar passage I quoted often, and you can turn there if you’d like, but that very familiar passage in Romans 10, verse nine, the Apostle Paul, if you recall, says the following. He says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Paul there, he’s not denying the truth of justification by faith alone because true faith expresses itself by mouth confession, heart belief and mouth confession ordinarily at least go hand in hand. Indeed, my friends, confessing the Lordship of Jesus Christ is one of the marks that sets apart a Christian from a pagan.

The Apostle Paul makes this clear in 1 Corinthians 12, verses 2 and 3. And I’ll just read that briefly to you in these verses. Paul, as he’s discussing the matter of the spiritual gifts in the early apostolic church, Paul writes, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know, again he’s addressing these Christians who had been converted to Christ from a pagan background. He says, you know that when you were pagans, you were led astray to mute idols however you were led. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one speaking in the spirit of God ever says Jesus is accursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. Well, dear ones, the historic Christian church, both in its liturgy and worship, as well as in its corporate life together as a covenant community, has commonly referred to Jesus Christ not merely as the Lord, but as our Lord.

We find this kind of corporate communal language, confessing Jesus Christ as our Lord, being used in that ancient Bible-based creed of the historic church that is known to us today as the Apostles’ Creed, that creed which is guiding our series, our Bible-based series in the foundations of the faith. In the Apostles’ Creed, in the second credo, or I believe statement of the creed, we confess together with the universal church, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, and what comes next, our Lord, our Lord. This creedal language is used in our passage for this Lord’s Day morning, as the Apostle Paul refers in verse two, to all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. This statement will be the main focus of my sermon for this Lord’s Day morning.

But in order to appreciate the depth of what is being said here in this portion of God’s Word, it’s important to understand this passage in its historical context. It’s important to understand why Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. When did Paul write it? And who wrote it? Well, we know that Paul wrote it. It claims to be written by Paul and no scholar, even the liberal and skeptical scholars, agree that this is a genuine Pauline epistle. The apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians probably sometime between 53 and 55 AD. The scholars differ upon the exact year, but probably sometime around 53, 54, 55 AD. And he wrote this epistle to the church in the ancient city of Corinth. Now what do we know about the ancient city of Corinth? Corinth was quite a center for trade and commerce.

As one commentator puts it, Corinth sat on the isthmus connecting the Greek mainland with the Peloponnesian Peninsula. This location made it a flourishing crossroads for sea traffic between the Aegean region and the Western Mediterranean. It was a place where many cultures and religions mingled. But friends, not only was Corinth a center of trade and commerce and business in the ancient Roman Empire, Corinth was also a center for pagan religions, and it contained at least 12 idol temples. Its most infamous temple, of course, being dedicated to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, whose worshipers practiced religious prostitution, and which at one time was served by a thousand sacred prostitutes. Corinth was a city that was absolutely, utterly saturated with paganism and idolatry. Pagan idolatry was part of the warp and wolf of everyday life. It was inextricably connected to business life.

It was connected to family life, culture life. Everything was centered around and saturated with and influenced by pagan idolatry. So it was a very challenging environment in which to be a Christian. Many of the believers in the Corinthian church were Gentiles who had been converted to Christ from a background of pagan idolatry. Now friends, given the ungodly environment of the city of Corinth and given the pagan background of many of the members of the church in Corinth, it really shouldn’t surprise us that some of the Christians in the Corinthian church struggled to put away their old idolatrous ways and their immoral practices from their pagan past. And many of them struggled to live out consistently and in a mature way the implications of Christ’s lordship in their lives. It should also not surprise us that the church in Corinth was a highly dysfunctional church.

It’s a church that had many pastoral issues that the Apostle Paul needed to address and which he does address in 1 Corinthians as well as 2 Corinthians. If you read the Corinthian letters and read it in depth and with a sensitive eye to discerning the original setting, you’ll realize, wow, this is a messed up church and yet it is Christ’s church. Its membership includes those whom Paul describes in verse two of our passage as those sanctified, set apart, consecrated as holy in union with Christ Jesus, in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, holy ones, set apart ones. These issues that Paul has to address in 1 Corinthians would include such things as spiritual immaturity in the church, divisiveness, immorality, idolatrous practices. Some of the Corinthian believers continue to engage in various idolatrous activities and sought to rationalize that.

There were cases of conscience, there were marital issues, and there was doctrinal error. Here in his epistolary introduction to this letter, Paul anticipates some of the major themes of this apostolic letter to this troubled, dysfunctional church. To quote from one commentator, Paul’s apostleship and the Corinthians’ sanctity and unity are among the letter’s most important themes because those were amongst the biggest issues that this church faced. So let’s dive into our text for today, and let me just briefly explain the first couple verses. As I mentioned before, we’re gonna focus especially on the end of verse two, but let’s start off with verse one. How does Paul begin this letter, this epistle? Well, he begins, as was customary in the Greek custom of letter writing, he begins by identifying himself. He says, Paul, an apostle called by the will of God to be an apostle, a commissioned messenger, an officially sent messenger and spokesman of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes, Sosthenes being an aid and assistant to Paul, to the church of God that is in Corinth.

Again, as I mentioned, Paul follows the typical Greek custom of letter writing. which begins with identifying the author first of the letter and then identifying the audience to which he’s writing, and then there’s usually some opening greetings, and then it gets to the body of the letter, and there’s usually also a closing set of greetings at the end of such letters. But what does Paul start off doing right out of the gate? Well, he begins by asserting his apostolic authority and asserting the divine origin of his apostolic call. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Why does he do this? Why does he start off by identifying himself as an apostle and by asserting his apostolic authority? Well, because there were some in the Church of Corinth who were questioning Paul’s apostolic authority.

So right out of the gates, Paul identifies himself. He says, look, I’m an apostle of Jesus Christ. I didn’t choose myself to be an apostle. This is not a letter that I’m writing. This is not a personal letter that I’m writing from my own merely human perspective. He is writing in his capacity as an official spokesman, as an apostle of Christ Jesus. And he is an apostle. He didn’t choose himself. He didn’t raise himself up. He’s not a self-anointed, self-appointed leader in the church. He was appointed and called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. So his words must be taken with utter seriousness because what Paul says Jesus by his spirit is saying through him. You know, some liberal scholars like to try to drive a wedge between Jesus and Paul.

They try to say, well, you know, Paul kind of is not really speaking for the real historical Jesus. But friends, when Paul speaks as an apostle, which he does in the New Testament writings, he speaks in the name of Christ on behalf of Christ. What is said in this epistle, this is the will of Christ, this is the revelation of Christ to his church. And he addresses the church in Corinth as the church of God in Corinth. What does it mean, the church of God? Well, it means formed by God and belonging to God, not to some party. If you read on in 1 Corinthians, one of the biggest issues in the Corinthian church was a party spirit, divisiveness. There were cults of personality. There were Christians in Corinth who gravitated towards their favorite teachers.

Some said, I am of Paul. I’m Paul’s man, he’s my man. I’m of Apollos, I’m of Cephas or Peter, I am of Christ, I’m above all of you guys, right? There was this party spirit, but Paul is reminding them that they are the church of God, not the church of Paul or of Apollos or of Cephas or what have you. thing to understand or recognize is that the word church, which is ekklesia in the Greek, means assembly. And sometimes this word was used to refer to secular or civil assemblies. And that is perhaps why Paul describes the church in Corinth as the church of God in Corinth. You are the church of God, you’re not just a secular human assembly. It is the church of God. This helps to distinguish the church from secular and civil assemblies.

And how are they described as the church? Again, as I already pointed out, he immediately identifies them as to those sanctified in Christ Jesus. Now, again, brothers and sisters, if you read 1 Corinthians It’s clear that this is such a dysfunctional, messed up church. But Paul does not begin his letter to these believers by wagging his finger at them, by rebuking them. There’s plenty of finger wagging, if you will, and rebuking that comes later on. But Paul begins by reminding them, first of all, of their identity in Christ. Every pastoral issue in the church, every spiritual issue in our lives as Christians, must be addressed from the standpoint of our identity in Christ, because that is the only way, ultimately, that those issues are going to be addressed and resolved. And he says, they are sanctified, set apart, together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Why does he talk about those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord? Well, again, Paul here is stressing the unity of the Corinthians with the church universal. Now some commentators, like I believe Charles Hodge, think that when he speaks of all who in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus, that he’s reminding them that, look, you’re united in Christ with the other churches in this region. But I tend to agree with those scholars who believe that what Paul is doing here is he’s helping, he’s trying to point them to the unity of the universal church, the church Catholic or universal, that we are united with all believers everywhere. in our confession of the Lordship of Christ. So friends, all of which leads us, all of this leads us to consider some of the implications of Christ’s Lordship.

Again, Paul says that you are called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. What are some of the implications of the Lordship of Christ as Paul is speaking of it here in this passage? Well, first of all, beloved, confessing Christ’s Lordship highlights His deity, His Godhood, and therefore his worthiness to receive religious worship. This is the first point in your sermon outline. Confessing Christ’s lordship highlights his deity and therefore his worthiness to receive religious worship. Paul speaks here, he uses this language of calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. That indicates worship. I want you to think about this. If Jesus Christ is not fully God, if He is not true God even as He is true man, the God-man, if He is not fully divine, then offering him religious worship in our prayers, in our praises, in our hymnody, in our worship song, in our confessions of faith, such acts would be acts of idolatry and violations of the very first commandment, you shall have no other gods before me.

If Jesus is not God, then every time we gather together to worship him as God, we are committing idolatry and blasphemy, high blasphemy against the God of heaven. But what’s interesting to me, brothers and sisters, In many of the mainline churches, theological liberals and modernists, many of whom reject the literal deity of Christ, many of them continue in their worship services to offer prayers in Jesus’ name and to sing praises to him in their hymnody. But again, if Jesus is not fully God, then our liberal and modernist friends who do this while rejecting the literal deity of Christ would, again, they would be guilty of high blasphemy against God. If you’re ever in a conversation with a theological liberal who questions or disagrees with the truth that Jesus is God, you might wanna bring this up.

Well, if Jesus isn’t God, do you pray to him? Do you pray in his name? In your church services, do you sing hymns that are addressed to Jesus as a deity, as God? However, friends, passages like our sermon text for this morning highlight the truth that the church has worshiped Jesus as its divine Lord from the very beginning of its existence. For to call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that language means to invoke him in religious prayer and worship. Now, the reason I bring this up, if you, If you’re familiar with the arguments that skeptics and atheists often use, one of the biggest arguments is that they’ll say, well, the earliest Christians didn’t believe that Jesus was God. The earliest Christians didn’t worship Jesus. That was a belief that developed later on in the history of the church.

I even, I recall watching a video clip from, some of you may be familiar with the podcaster, I think Joe Rogan, and he’s an interesting character, but he’s not a Christian. I remember watching a clip where he once, I think he said something along the lines of, oh, come on, these Christians believe ridiculous things. The belief that Jesus was God was not, that was invented at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, right? This is a common historical myth that’s out there, this idea that the early Christians did not believe that Jesus was God and did not worship Him as God. Friends, contrary to what you will commonly hear today from the lips of the ignorant, the misinformed, and from pseudo-intellectual Dan Brown Da Vinci Code types, it is simply not historically accurate to assert that the earliest Christians did not believe in the deity of Jesus and that the church only gradually and at a later stage of development came to believe in the divinity of Jesus and to worship Jesus as God. from a historical perspective that is historical hogwash.

It’s simply not true. And our passage for today helps to demonstrate the falsity of those skeptical assertions. After all, as I mentioned before, the Apostle Paul wrote 1 Corinthians sometime around 54 or 55 AD. only a little over 20 years after the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. And yet the language that Paul uses here in verse two about calling on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, this language indicates that the practice of calling upon the name of Jesus Christ as Lord, calling upon him as divine, in acts of prayer and worship was a well-established practice very early on in the life of the earliest apostolic church. In fact, I would suggest to you that an unbiased investigation of the evidence from the New Testament indicates clearly that the early apostolic church confessed and worshiped Jesus as divine Lord, as God, from the very beginning of the Christian movement. at least since the resurrection of Christ and his ascension into heaven and the pouring out of the spirit on the day of Pentecost.

The church from the beginning confessed and believed in the deity, the Godhood of the Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, the earliest Christian heresy, the earliest heresy in the church was not the denial of Christ’s deity. but one of the earliest heresies was the denial of his full humanity. The Gnostics denied the Lord’s full humanity, not his deity. Dear friends, this being the case, Let me ask you, dear listener, do you accept the deity, the full deity of Jesus Christ? Yes, Jesus was also a man. He’s fully God and fully man, true God and true man, united in one divine person. He is the God-man. He is the word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us. He has two natures, yet is one person. He has a divine nature and a human nature, but we’re focusing today on the divine nature, because as Paul writes here, Christians are those who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.

Do you accept his deity, dear listener? Do you worship him as your Lord? And so the lordship of Christ clearly highlights his deity, but another implication of Christ’s lordship is that the lordship of Christ indicates his sovereign rule over all, and especially over the universal church. The Lordship of Christ indicates His sovereign rule over all, and especially over the universal church. Now I wanna take you, as we compare Scripture with Scripture, I wanna take you to another passage, a very familiar passage, Matthew 28, verse 18. This is after Jesus has risen from the dead, and He is speaking to His apostles before His ascension, and He is giving them the Great Commission. And what’s the first thing that Jesus says in His Great Commission? Look at verse 18. It says, And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Now let me pause there. Let me ask you, dear listeners, how much authority has been given to the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ? How much authority? Some authority? All authority. All authority where? In heaven and on earth. In other words, all authority in the entire universe has been given to the Lord Jesus Christ. Now let’s pause there. Some of you may say, now wait a minute, Pastor. If Jesus is fully God, if He’s eternally God, hasn’t He always, as God, had all authority in heaven and on earth? Well, He certainly has. But how then can Matthew speak of, have Jesus speak of authority being given to him by the Father? Well again, Jesus speaks here in Matthew 28, 18, he speaks here as the incarnate authority. word, as God incarnate, as the God-man. So as the God-man, all authority has been given to him.

But with respect to his divinity, his deity, he has always had all authority in heaven and on earth. But this, I just highlight this because again, this underscores the truth of his sovereignty over all. Every tiny atom in the most distant galaxy is governed by the Lord Jesus Christ. He is Lord over all the universe. He is Lord over all of the nations and He is Lord over you and me, dear brother and sister in Christ. He is sovereign, and the lordship of Christ not only implies his deity, but along with his deity, it implies his absolute sovereign rule over all, and especially over his church. Dr. Charles Hodge, in commenting on the meaning of calling upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, wrote the following in his commentary. He writes, to call upon the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, is to invoke his aid as Christ the Messiah predicted by the prophets and as our almighty and sovereign possessor and ruler.

It is in that sense Jesus is Lord. all power in heaven and earth has been committed unto him. And he died and rose again, that he might be the Lord of the dead and of the living. That is, that he might acquire that peculiar right of possession in his people, which arises from having purchased them with his blood. to call upon the name of Jesus as Lord is therefore to worship Him. It is to look to Him for that help which God only can give. And then he goes on to say, all Christians therefore are worshipers of Christ. And every sincere worshiper of Christ is a true Christian. Amen. Brother Hodge. And of course friends, the reason Christ is able to come to the aid of his church is because he is indeed the sovereign Lord over all.

Dear ones, since Jesus Christ is Lord and since therefore we as Christians may call upon him for aid as our Lord, let us not be fretful or anxious. We face troubling times, don’t we? We face violent and uncertain times. And it’s easy for us to be anxious. It’s easy for us to fret because of the wicked and their scheming. But we need to remember, brothers and sisters, and I’m not saying that everything’s gonna be comfortable or easy. Who knows what the future holds for us? For all that we know, 2024, the year that will soon be upon us, may involve suffering for the church. It may involve persecution. It may involve trials and tribulations. But whatever happens, whether good or ill, we can rest knowing that Jesus is the sovereign Lord, that he is in control, and that he, as he has promised, causes all things to work together for our good, our ultimate good, and for his ultimate glory.

Remember, we serve a Savior who is indeed Lord, sovereign over all things, governing us and all things for His own ultimate glory and our own ultimate good. Dear listener, do you trust Him as your sovereign Savior? Do you confess Him as your ruling Lord? Are you resting in His sovereignty? Finally, the Lordship of Christ implies His absolute right to require our unquestioning allegiance. This is the final point in your sermon outline. The Lordship of Christ implies His absolute right to require our unquestioning allegiance. What is the basic Christian confession? It is Jesus is Lord. That means, of course, as we’ve seen, that means that He is divine. He is fully 100% God. It also means that he is the sovereign Messiah King, the one who possesses the absolute right to require of us and of all people, our unquestioning, unhesitating trust, our full submission, our total allegiance, and our wholehearted obedience.

He is indeed King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He sits on the throne of heaven, reigning over the universe. He reigns over the nations. He reigns in a special way over His church. And He has the right to reign on the throne of your heart and mine. Brothers and sisters, He is our Lord Jesus Christ, as Paul describes Him here in verse 2. And yes, He is indeed the personal Lord and Savior of every true believer at an individual level. That’s very popular language, church language, in our contemporary church culture, you know, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior? The Bible doesn’t exactly use that kind of language but I understand what that’s getting at and certainly we affirm the need to personally repent of sin and personally trust Christ as our very own Lord and Savior in order to be saved.

You can’t be saved simply by belonging to a church. You have to personally, by the grace of God, you must repent. You must trust Christ as your Lord and Savior from sin, as he is offered to you in the gospel. And yet notice that Paul here in this passage, because he’s addressing a church, a covenant community, as most of the New Testament does, notice that Paul here emphasizes the corporate and communal aspects of Christ’s lordship over the church. And he describes the church how? As those called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. And friends, this was a key truth that the Corinthians were not grasping. The believers in the Corinthian church, they were They were fighting, they were engaged in personality cults, there was division, there was conflict, there was neglect of the poor in their midst and so forth.

There were a lot of problems. And these problems in large part stemmed from the fact that the Corinthians did not grasp the significance for the church of Christ’s lordship over his church. The Corinthian church struggled with division and with unholy behavior. Resolving these issues would require them as it requires us to recognize that confessing Christ’s Lordship requires maintaining genuine spiritual unity and pursuing holiness in heart and in life. The point being, beloved, in closing, as we wrap up our time in the word today, dear ones, true unity and sanctity under Christ’s divine lordship go hand in hand. Genuine spiritual unity in the church is a unity in the truth of the word. It is a unity in the gospel. It is a unity in God’s word. but it is also a unity that cannot exist without acknowledgement of Christ’s Lordship.

Genuine spiritual unity cannot exist in a church that rejects Christ’s Lordship and its implications by tolerating, excusing, or celebrating sin, or by neglecting the pursuit of practical holiness and godly living. I grew up in a so-called mainline church, A church that has a wonderful, in many ways, Bible-based liturgy. I learned many scriptures from the liturgy of the church, but I didn’t hear the gospel proclaimed in that church. And like many of the mainline churches today, this church has fully embraced, this church in which I was raised, has fully embraced current cultural fads and current ideologies such as the legitimation of homosexualism, transgenderism, the LGBTQ plus ideology and so forth. In other words, the church in which I grew up has rejected the implications of Christ’s divine lordship over the church. We think more recently of the United Methodist Church, a very old mainline denomination in our land.

It’s my understanding that this church is splitting, that the conservatives in the church are exiting, and there’s been a big church split. Oftentimes when those kinds of splits occur, the theological liberals or modernists in the church will point their fingers at the conservatives and say, you guys are being divisive. You guys are being unloving. You’re being bigoted, right? It is common for theological liberals and modernists in the church who typically reject the deity of Christ It’s common for them to accuse those of us who are theologically orthodox of being divisive and unloving. They accuse us of dividing the church. They accuse us of being schismatics because we’re not willing to kind of go along to get along. Now let me just say that sometimes we Orthodox, those of us who affirm the full authority and inerrancy of the Bible and seek to defend the Orthodox understanding, the biblical understanding of the Christian faith, sometimes we can be unkind or harsh in the way that we defend the truth.

Sometimes we can come across as being very angry. And sometimes we have reason to be legitimately angry. I mean, I get angry. My blood boils when I witness false teachers leading the sheep of Christ astray, leading them away from Christ and towards practices and beliefs that will be spiritually harmful to them. But nevertheless, the scriptures call upon us, brothers and sisters, to speak the truth in love. We must speak the truth boldly, without compromise, but we must seek to speak the truth in love. So, point well taken. However, friends, the real schismatics and dividers in Christ’s church are those who reject his lordship, those who reject the authority and the teachings of the Bible, those who tolerate unrepentant sin in the church. In the second credo of the Apostles’ Creed, we confess together, I believe in Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord.

If we confess that Jesus is Lord, we must live under His Lordship. We must do the things he commands. We must believe the things that his word requires us to believe. And we must stand for the truth of the gospel and the law of God without compromise in the face of pressure and even in the face of persecution. Friends, Jesus is Lord. Is he your Lord? He is our Lord. let us submit to His Lordship and honor His Lordship by our faith and by our lives. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You that Jesus, our Savior, is Lord, that He is God, that He is We ask that you would grant us the grace to live consistently and in a mature way under his divine Lordship, and help us to give faithful witness for the Lordship of Christ, even in the face of a hostile culture.

Be with us now, Lord, and bless us. We ask these things in Jesus’ name, amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

December 3, 2023
Resurrection Identity and Victory

About this sermon

Paul contrasts the first Adam, a living soul made of dust, with the last Adam, Christ, a life-giving Spirit from heaven. Believers bear Christ’s image, and that union establishes their true identity. At the last trumpet the dead will be raised imperishable in the twinkling of an eye, and death will be swallowed up in victory. Because Christ has won that victory, his people’s labor in the Lord is never in vain.

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Sermon transcript

for this evening is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 45 through 58. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, and as I’ve been here for the last few times, we’ve been working through this text, and this evening we’ll finish the chapter together. So beginning in verse 45, We’ll read through the end of the chapter. Please hear God’s word. His holy, His inspired, His inerrant word. Thus it is written, The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first, but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood not inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory?

Oh, death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Please be seated. Let’s pray as we prepare to focus our eyes and hearts upon the exposition of God’s word. Our Father, we thank you for your word, that you have spoken and that you have had your prophets write your words for us. Let us know as we embark on this study this evening that this truly is your word, and that when you speak, we listen. And so God, consecrate our hearts right now to hear your words and to obey them.

In Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Intergenerational poverty is described as poverty that persists from one generation to the next. It has been stated that families, quote, face barriers that often trap them in poverty for multiple generations, unquote. As I was reading about this, perhaps one of the most interesting findings of the study that I saw was that 9 out of 10 or 90% of those experiencing intergenerational poverty would describe themselves as being on strong footing. Strong footing. Now this evening as we open up the Word of God and as the Word of God opens up us, this text will assure us that Christ’s resurrection provides strong spiritual footing. So you want to talk about strong footing, there’s no better place to go than the Word of God. And here, in a spiritual sense, we have strong footing for us to escape the poverty of death and to be victorious now and for eternity.

As a result, I urge you, I encourage you to cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. If you are in Jesus Christ this evening, if you have placed your faith in Him, then these promises are yours. And therefore, you can cling to them and you can live them out. So cling to and live out that victory that you have in Jesus Christ. And this evening we’ll look at three aspects of the resurrection that will help us do that very thing. We’ll begin with Christ’s resurrection as we see it establishes our identity. Christ’s resurrection establishes our identity, verses 45 through 49. There’s a lot of talk about identity. People say, well, I identify as this, or I identify as that, and this is my identity. Your identity can be the foundation of good or ill.

Think about that for a minute. What is your identity? How do you identify yourself? Furthermore, how is your identity established? Who establishes your identity? How is your identity established? Where is your identity found, grounded? What is it tied to? Well, here in our text, we find those answers. Remember that Paul began by asking two questions back in verse 35. If you look up at the page at verse 35, someone will ask, how are the dead raised and what kind of body do they come? He asks these questions, he proceeds to answer them. This morning we saw this. He illustrates his point with kernels and wheat and grain and seeds in verses 37 and 38. He illustrates his points further with animals and birds and fish, the sun, the moon, the stars in verses 39 through 41.

He proceeds in verses 42 to 44 with a series of contrasts of how the body is sown and how the body is raised. Now verses 45 through 49 extend and explain these contrasts by providing a grounding contrast between Adam and Christ. And this gets at the root of our identity, because we will either be identified ultimately in Adam, regardless of how we think we want to identify ourselves, we are ultimately identified either in Adam, or in Jesus Christ. And here there’s a contrast between the first Adam and the last Adam. I want you to notice in these verses, verses 44 through 49, the use of the term man. The word man here is found eight times in these five verses. One commentator says this, Paul treats Adam and Christ as representatives, not simply individuals. They’re men, but they represent man, mankind, all of us.

They’re representatives. They’re not just simply individuals. And if you think about it, you are under a representative. You’re either under representative Adam or you’re under representative Jesus. These two are the only two representatives of the human race. And here we’re told in verse 45, Adam was a living being, but Christ was a life-giving spirit. You see this contrast begin. You remember Adam was made of the dust. Even here in this little section, he’s called the man of dust. You go back to Genesis 2, and you see the creation of Adam, and he’s formed of the dust. Genesis 2, verse 7. And in a sense, we could say, well, Christ is not the one formed. He’s the one who does the forming. He is the creator. And yet, nevertheless, he came also as a man. And you have the man of dust and you have the heavenly man, Jesus Christ.

You see, we need the resurrected Christ. It’s not enough to be in Adam. If we are only in Adam, we are only united to Adam, and Adam is our only representative, we’re actually in big trouble. We need Christ. We need to be united to Him and represented by Him. Verse 46, it says, But it is not the spiritual that is first, the natural, and then the spiritual. Here there’s a general law that the lower precedes the higher. You’ll see that as well if you read John chapter three and Jesus speaking about Nicodemus. He says something similar there to him. But the lower precedes the higher. Now John Calvin helps us a little bit with that. And he explains, he says, look, you’re born before you’re born again. Right? The natural birth takes place before the spiritual birth.

And that does relate to what Jesus is saying to Nicodemus. And so there’s a relationship there. But there’s also a relationship when you think about resurrection. We live before we rise. The natural precedes the spiritual. The natural body precedes the resurrected body. We are born in Adam. But then we need to be born in Christ, united to Christ, raised with Christ. Verse 47 says, the first man was of the earth, a man of dust, but the second man is from heaven. Hodge says this, Adam therefore had a body suited to the earth. Christ had a body suited to heaven. I want you to think about this with resurrection in mind. Adam was given a natural body. And of course under the fall, as we talked about this morning, that body is subject to death and decay and disease and all these things.

And we being in Adam, we have these natural bodies. We’ll see in a minute those are called flesh and blood. And yet Christ, in His resurrection, has a heavenly body. And we, if we are in Christ, will have the hope of having that sort of heavenly body as well. I mentioned last week in an illustration funerals. And I said you go to a funeral, and if it’s a funeral of a believer, you say, I want to see that person again. Well, there are other dynamics that happen at funerals as well. Sometimes you go to funerals and you may have had this experience where even if the person’s not a believer, everyone wants to hope that they’re in a better place. And they’ll say, well, he or she, they’re in a better place. As if everyone goes to heaven.

And yet the Bible teaches us that that’s not true. We are born in a natural state, and we are born under condemnation, and we need to be united to Jesus Christ so that we can be where he is, and we have that hope if we are in him. There’s a reminder here that we need Jesus Christ, because apart from him, we are not suited for heaven. We are born with that natural body. We have that in Adam. We are born of the human race, and we have all the things that constitute us as humans, and yet that’s not enough. And this is what the text says. We need to be like the man that is of heaven. There’s a union that we have naturally with Adam. We are of the dust. But those who are in union with Christ are of heaven.

We bear the image of Christ. We have the hope of heaven. Look at verses 48 and 49. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as of the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. You see, those who are in Christ will be like Him, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust. we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. What a wonderful promise that is. But it’s also a reminder that we ought to be sure that we are in union with Jesus Christ. And it’s as simple as knowing that we believe in him, we trust in him, we’ve turned from our sins and we’ve given our lives to him. And if that is the case, we are in union with Christ.

Our identity is in him. Our identity first and foremost is His name, Christ, Christian. We have His name stamped upon us. We are united with Him and we bear the image of Jesus Christ. Romans 8.29 says this, God has predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son. What a wonderful promise. For those who are in Jesus Christ, we are predestined to be conformed to His image. Remember, as an unbeliever my identity was self-constructed. I identified myself various ways, I acted certain ways, and the way I portrayed myself with my self-proclaimed identity and the way that I acted was in a worldly way. And as I became a Christian and my identity changed and my heart changed and my desires and my passions changed, the way that I wanted to live was different as well.

I had a different identity. And now, being in situations and contexts and places where I would formerly be comfortable, I was no longer comfortable. And that’s good, because I had a different identity. And here, what Paul is saying is that in Adam, We are of the dust. But in Christ, we have a new identity. We have a different representative, and we have hope in Him. Because we are identified with Jesus Christ, we have that hope. So we said that Christ’s resurrection establishes our identity. Secondly, His resurrection secures our victory. It secures our victory. Verses 50 through 57. And brothers and sisters, this section It’s such an exciting section of Scripture. You think about victory, and we’re victors with Christ. We’re on, so to speak, the winning team. It’s not because we went and secured the victory.

It’s not because of our might and our power, our strength, our wisdom, any of that, but only because Christ Himself has the victory. So I want us to see three things about that victory as we scan through these verses. 50 through 57. First of all, verse 50 talks about the nature of our victory. Take a look at verse 50. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Here we come up against that phrase, flesh and blood. One commentator said this, in Jewish parlance, flesh and blood usually denotes the frailty of human creatures. Think about that man of the dust, Adam. You think about our natural constitution. I said we have decay, we have death, we have weakness, we have all these things.

And flesh and blood, that phrase denotes that very thing, the frailty of the human creature. Jesus said in Matthew 16, to Peter. He said, flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. You could see the contrast there between the natural, the flesh and the blood, versus the Father who is in heaven. So as we had read through this whole section, you saw words like that, like natural, or earthly, or of the dust. And all those words that we saw, even just in that previous section, 45 through 49, those are the same thing. To be natural, to be earthly, to be of the dust, that is to be flesh and blood. And yet we need more than that. He says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

We can’t just take, as we said this morning, our bodies as they are and just recycle them up into heaven. He says no, flesh and blood as it is in Adam cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Christ is the giver of resurrection life. And when we think about that, we can think of the new birth in John 3, 3, as Jesus said to Nicodemus, that we need to be born again. We need to have spiritual life pumped into us. We need to be born from above. And yet, we also need resurrection life. And that spiritual life that we have through the new birth, through the regeneration, that in a way is a down payment of that resurrection life that we will partake of when Christ comes again. That flesh and blood will be transformed. You can think of that as those corruptible bodies, those perishable bodies.

That will be transformed. That flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, but at the resurrection we’re transformed. And so you can see the emphasis not just on the body or not just on the spirit, but the whole person. Spiritually speaking, yes, we have that regeneration, but physically speaking, yes, we have resurrection. And so it’s the whole person, not just the body or not just the spirit, that is renewed and perfected for eternal life. That is the nature of our victory in verse 50. Verses 51 to 53 speak of the swiftness of our victory. When we have this resurrection, when Christ returns and we are resurrected, what will it be like? What will that victory be like? Well, there’s a swiftness to it. Now when I think about speed and I think about swiftness, one thing I don’t think about is me getting up in the morning.

That’s not the picture of speed. That’s not the picture of swiftness. Actually, as I was walking in this evening, we were speaking together and we were talking about the afternoon nap and And I had an afternoon nap, but it took me a little bit to get going. My wife said, let’s go for a walk. And I said, OK. And she said, why are you so slow? I said, well, it takes me a little bit. But you see, that’s not what it’s like here in verses 51 to 53. Here we have this phrase. If you look at verse 52, it says, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. Here there’s a strong emphasis. that this resurrection, when it happens, will be instantaneous. This isn’t a slow process. No, this is instantaneous. It’s the Greek word atomos.

Think of the word atom. Think about the smallest particle. A-T-O-M. Atom. And you say, well, what is an atom? Well, we might define it as an indivisible particle. And yet here, this Greek word that it’s derived from, atomos, in this context is translated in a moment. And the idea here is that it is an indivisible moment in time, not an indivisible particle, an indivisible moment in time. It’s the quickest, fastest, most instantaneous thing that you could think of. And the best they could do in the English to translate it is say, in a moment. The instantaneousness is further intensified by the phrase, in the twinkling of an eye. And you say, well, what does that mean? And I think that’s not a hard one to get. Just even in our common language, we speak that way.

If you look at Robertson’s word pictures, he says this. This phrase was used by the Greeks for the flapping of a wing, the buzz of a gnat, the quivering of a harp, the twinkling of a star. Another commentator says it this way, since the eye can move more rapidly than any other part of our visible bodies, It seems to well illustrate the sudden transformation of believers. It’s like what we would say of the blink of an eye, right? The blink of the eye, perhaps one of the fastest movements you could think of. And he says, this is perhaps the best he can do. And so Paul’s straining with his language to try to describe the instantaneousness, the quickness as best as he can. It’s atomos, it’s sudden. It’s the blink of an eye. But he also uses the word trumpet in verse 52.

It says there, at the last trumpet, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable. Here Hodge tells us this, as the trumpet was used for assembling a people or marshaling a host, it became the symbol for expressing the idea of the gathering of a multitude. And so there the trumpet used to gather and to marshal the host and to bring in together the group and here, The multitude will be gathered at the last trumpet. 1 Thessalonians 4, verse 16. The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel and the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. The swiftness of our victory. You also see the impact of our victory. Verses 54 through 57. What is the impact of the victory?

What is the power of it? What is the effect of it? Let me just ask you a question for a minute. How would you illustrate victory. If you had to illustrate it and you had to use language to try to describe the impact of victory, what sort of language might you use? Well, the language Paul uses is found in verse 54. He says, when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. His illustration is the swallowing up. He describes victory as swallowing up death. And that’s not an illustration that would be unheard of or uncommon or unfamiliar to the reader. The reader of Scripture would have several things come to mind. And perhaps you’re thinking of several things now from scripture that uses that sort of language.

Perhaps you’re thinking of Aaron and Moses in Egypt. And Aaron throws down his staff and it becomes a serpent. And the magicians, the sorcerers, throw down their staffs and become serpent. And Aaron’s staff swallows up the sorcerer’s staffs. Or perhaps you’re thinking of Korah and his rebellion. And Korah stands and everyone gets out of the way and the earth swallows him up. Or maybe you’re thinking of the Red Sea that swallows up the Egyptian soldiers as they pass through, seeking to overtake the people of God. Or a New Testament reference you might think of, perhaps, 1 Peter 5.8, your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Same word, swallow up. Here, Paul assures us death will be swallowed up in victory. Isaiah 25, verse 8. He will swallow up death forever.

The Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces. The reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. The Lord will swallow up death forever. What a wonderful, wonderful promise. Verse 55. Oh death, where is your victory? Oh death, where is your sting? Here death is pictured as an animal. An animal with a poisonous stinger. We saw a bumblebee this morning outside, and there’s a stinger. My two boys were both stung by wasps at my dad’s as we went to cut his grass last week, and they have stingers. Here, some of the commentators would argue that the animal in view perhaps is the scorpion. This scorpion that has this powerful stinger, and yet it’s rendered powerless. Powerless. Hosea 13, verse 14 says this, I will deliver them out of the power of hell, or Hades.

I will redeem them from death. Where is thy penalty, O death? O Hades, or O hell, where is your sting? Sting is gone. The power is quenched. Death will be swallowed up. There will be no more sting. Verse 56, he says, the sting of death is sin. and the power of sin is the law. Romans 7, verse 5, there Paul says our sinful passions are aroused by the law and bear fruit to death. And now in this sinful state and in this state of struggle, he says that the power of Sin is the law, and yet we are reminded just a few verses later in Romans 8, verse 3, God says what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do, God did. God did by sending His Son. See, those who rely on the law as if it’s a means or a mechanism for salvation and righteousness find that all they can do is break it.

And Paul illustrates that in Romans 7, that there’s a heaviness and a weightiness of that law-breaking that weighs you down, that guilt. And yet God did what the law could not do. by sending His Son, Jesus Christ. And verse 57 assures us in these words, thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He gives us the victory not because of our hands or our work or our law-keeping. No, He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. How? Well, because Christ kept the law. Romans 10, verse 4, it says, for Christ is the end of the law. A better translation, I would say, is fulfillment. Christ is the fulfillment of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. Isn’t that wonderful? Christ fulfilled the law. The demands of the law And therefore his righteousness and living according to that law can be applied and is applied, is imputed, counted to everyone who believes.

And therefore we have victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. Hodge says this, because he has satisfied the demands of the law, it has no power to condemn those who are clothed in his righteousness. If you are in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven. And you are clothed in his righteousness. It’s as if your dirty clothes, your filthy attire is just covered over. And now he’s given you new attire. He’s given you his robe of righteousness, clean and pure and spotless, without blemish. And you are covered in that. And now death has no power. The law has no sting. Praise be to God. through the Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to understand that your victory, although you don’t feel it day to day, all the time, you need to be reminded that it is certain.

You have a certain victory. It is tied to Christ’s victory. And His victory is full. It’s complete. It’s It’s stamped in. He’s already died on the cross. He’s already rose from the dead. He’s already ascended into heaven. And he sits at the right hand of God as king. It’s in place. It’s secure. It is sure and certain. And in Christ, we have victory. We will someday experience the fullness of it. That victory is tied to his life, to his death. to His resurrection. What will it be like for you? What will it be like for the believer? Well, verse 51 says we will be changed. Verse 52, we will be imperishable. Verse 53, we will be immortal. Verse 54, we will be forever alive and forever victorious. He not only clothes us in His righteousness, He also And this is good news too.

He empowers us even today, even now, to obey His law, to live our lives for His glory. glorify Him and to enjoy Him forever. And so that brings us to our last point this evening, and I want us to see that Christ’s resurrection motivates our ministry, verse 58. We’re going to briefly look at verse 58. Let me just read it first. Your labor is not in vain. Christ’s resurrection motivates our ministry. Even in the present tense, we have a motivator here. Paul gives us built-in application. And there are three parts to this, and let’s just quickly, briskly walk through those. First of all, he says this, be steadfast and immovable. What does that mean? It means firm, seated, settled in your thinking, settled in your beliefs, settled in your conviction. Be steadfast, be immovable. The gospel. combats hopelessness.

The gospel gives you and me purpose for our lives. This ties back to our identity. Because we are identified with Christ, we have victory in Him. And because we have victory in Him, we have purpose. And now we can go out and live with that purpose, be steadfast and immovable. Secondly, always abound in the work of the Lord. To abound is to excel. It’s related to the word abundant, and one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture with that word abundant is 1 Corinthians 9.8. Listen to what it says. It says, “…God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” You hear that? All grace, all sufficiency, all things, at all times, in every good work that you may abound.

Thirdly, he says, know that your labor is not in vain. Vain, vanity, empty. He says your labor is not vanity. It’s not empty. This is a word in Greek. It’s the word kinos. And interestingly enough, in this little section, we saw the word victory and the word for victory is Nikos. It’s the word that they get Nike from. And so there’s a little word play. These two words kind of sound like each other, kinos and nikos. And he’s saying, look, there’s a contrast between nikos and kinos, between victory and vanity. He says, your labor is not in vain. Why? Because you stand in the victory of Jesus Christ. See, there’s a practical application here. as we live our lives, as we minister the gospel. And no matter what that ministry looks like, you can say evangelism or any other sort of thing that you’re doing for the kingdom of God.

As we prayed for Uruguay and as we prayed for the university and any other thing that we’re praying for, your work for the kingdom of God, there is meaning, there is purpose, there are results that last forever. Why? Because God’s word does not return void. Isaiah 55, it always accomplishes because the Spirit of God always accomplishes the purpose for which it is sent. Therefore, know that your labor is not in vain. The hope of the resurrection, one commentator says, makes all the efforts and sacrifices worth it. No work done in his name is wasted in light of eternal glory and reward. So let’s just pull all of this together. Earlier we said that Christ’s resurrection provides strong spiritual footing for us to escape the poverty of death and to be victorious now and for eternity. 2 Corinthians 8, 9 says, for you know the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. that though he was rich, he became poor for our sake, so that you, by his poverty, might become rich.

Cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. His resurrection establishes our identity. It secures our victory. It motivates our ministry. We have victory in Jesus Christ. Do you believe it? Will you live in accordance with it? Cling to and live out the victory that you have in Jesus Christ. Let’s pray. Our God in heaven, we thank you for the victory that we have in Christ. And we pray, God, that you would apply that to us, helping us to know that in him we have hope for eternity, that we will be raised to be like him, but also that we have the ability to walk in confidence, knowing that you will accomplish your purposes, even through our weakness here on earth. For we pray it in Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Well, please stand for the singing of Psalm 33.

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July 30, 2023
A Glorious Resurrection

About this sermon

Some ask how the dead are raised and with what kind of body. Paul answers that a seed must die before it grows, and God gives each kind the body he chooses. The body is sown perishable, in dishonor and weakness, and raised imperishable, in glory and power. God who turns a caterpillar into a butterfly will transform his people’s lowly bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.

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Sermon transcript

Well, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15. This morning we’ll be reading verses 35-44. 1 Corinthians 15 verses 35-44. Please hear God’s word. But someone will ask, how are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come? You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body, for not all flesh is the same. There is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies. But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another.

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars, for star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Well, praise God. Please be seated. Let’s begin with prayer. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your word. And now, as this word is expounded, we pray, God, that you would be ever-present, that your spirit would take our hearts and mold them by your word. We ask God that you would make our minds attentive to your word.

Not just that we might be good students. No, that we would be those who are being transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And we ask that you would use even this, even this sermon, even right now, even today, as a means of transforming us into the image of Jesus Christ, a means of grace. We pray it in His name. Amen. Perhaps one of the most amazing transformations in nature is that ugly little caterpillar that hides itself in the cocoon and then emerges shortly thereafter. as a beautiful butterfly. And of course, all of you perhaps are familiar with this very one. It’s an amazing, amazing transformation that we find in nature. How does it happen? Well, I can bore you with a talk of enzymes and the chrysalis, metamorphosis. But instead, what I’ll do is I’ll simply remind you that the amazing transformation as part of God’s creative design.

It’s part of God’s wonderful handiwork. That’s what we want to think about this morning. You see, if God could transform this homely looking caterpillar into a majestic butterfly, is He not able to raise us up from the dead? To transform our lowly bodies? at the resurrection. That’s what we want to think about this morning. Here as we begin in verse 35, what you find are two questions. If you cast your eye down on verse 35, you’ll see them. How are the dead raised and what kind of body do they come? Here in the text that follows, Paul answers these questions for the Corinthians and for us. His answers are rich. He roots them in the nature of God Himself, of Christ, and man, and salvation, and eschatology, or the end times. So much richness in His answers.

And His answers provide for us instruction and encouragement. And this morning, I pray that you would walk out of here being instructed and encouraged by the words of God. Trust in the Lord. and in His glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in His glorious resurrection work. Paul is going to help us this morning to do that very thing. He’s going to direct our attention to three gracious yet powerful actions of God. You think about the work of God, the actions of God. Here Paul gives us three. They’re gracious. but they’re powerful. So let’s dive right in. The first gracious and powerful action of God that we find in the text is this. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God brings resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37. How is it that we’re raised from the dead?

How is it that we can be resurrected? Well, God is the one who brings that resurrection life from the dead. If you look back at those questions in verse 35, you see there are two questions there. And here Paul begins, he’s going to begin in reverse order. He’s going to answer that second question first. With what kind of body do they come? But before he even does that, what he’s going to do is he’s going to dismantle some of the presuppositions that the Corinthians have that are false presuppositions, the things that their neighbors, their culture are telling them that are mixing up their ability to understand the truth. And so this section here of God bringing resurrection life from the dead, verses 36 and 37, Paul is really dismantling these presuppositions to get ready to answer that question with what kind of body do they come?

And if you remember from last week in the evening when I was here, their issue is really an issue with the bodily resurrection. Not the bodily resurrection of Christ, but the bodily resurrection of themselves. See, they live in the midst of a Greek culture, and this Greek culture had a dualistic mindset. Dualism. You say, what does that mean? Well, simply that the spirit is good and the body is bad. And you see, if you have this dualistic mindset, spirit is good, body is bad, well then how can you raise up, or how can God raise up this bad body? How’s that going to work? And apparently they didn’t understand how the material bodies These bodies that we have, subject to sin, subject to sickness and death and decay, how could these bodies, these weak bodies that we live in, we just prayed about that very thing, how could these weak, decaying bodies be raised up and live eternally?

See, the problem is, they were thinking that the bodies that are raised up are gonna be the exact same bodies that we’re in now. And if you were thinking that way, you would be confused too. You’d say, well, I don’t want this body for all eternity. Because it’s weak. It’s decaying. And maybe if you’re young, you might say, I’m good. But you won’t always be. That’s going to get older. It’s going to get weaker. Remember when I turned 40, I was thinking, hey, I’m pretty good. But it wasn’t long afterwards where I think I feel a little difference. It happens. They assumed that the future bodies would be the same as they are now. And what does Paul do? Look at verse 36. He says, you foolish person. He calls them fools. Why? Well, Ephesians helps us out.

In Ephesians 5.17, he says this, do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. Just think about that for a second. Do not be foolish. Okay, what does it mean not to be foolish? He says understand what the will of the Lord is. So to be foolish is to go and to listen to those voices of the culture and those people around you who are telling you all these things. But to not be foolish is to understand the will of the Lord. In other words, start with the Scriptures, the importance of the Scripture. That’s our beginning point. That’s our foundation. That’s our rock. That’s where we begin and hear the truth of God. And we ground our understanding and we solidify our convictions, not what the people of the world tell us.

This is a good reminder for us that we must begin with the Word of God. What are the things that you believe? How is it that you live your life? And what is the root of those things? Is it based on what the culture is saying? Or what you’ve heard by some guru or scientist or expert or self-proclaimed expert? Or is it derived from the Word of God? Well, here Paul is going to now, again, dive in. We said he’ll be dismantling their presuppositions. I want us to see how he does that. Let me begin by sharing with you a quote by a commentator. He says this, he says, that of the seeds in verses 36 through 38 illustrates both the genuine continuity of the future body with the present one and the reality of its transformation.

So Paul’s gonna use this botanical illustration, the seed illustration, And the seed illustration’s a really good one because it emphasizes both continuity and discontinuity. And I want us to see both of those. So let’s think about them in turn. Let’s begin with continuity. See, this was their concern, continuity. Problem was they were thinking 100% continuity. I’m gonna be the same then as I am now. But what Paul does is he begins by affirming continuity. There is some continuity. In other words, our current bodies are not the exact bodies that will be resurrected, but they are still our bodies. There’s continuity. It’s not like that body’s gonna be completely, it’s not like that’s not gonna be you anymore. It’s not gonna be somebody else. It’s still you, there’s continuity. Look at verse 36, he says, what is sown is what comes to life.

It’s not something different that’s sown, it’s something completely, 100% different that comes to life. Verse 37, what is sown is a kernel of what is raised. It’s not exactly the same. We’re gonna look at the discontinuity in a minute, but it is a kernel of what is raised. There is continuity. You can even go back to the opening illustration of the caterpillar and the butterfly. They’re vastly different, but it’s not a completely different being. The seed and the plant are not exactly the same. there is some continuity. You can think about that idea of germination, but it’s enough just to say that there’s continuity between the seed. I wouldn’t expect to plant an apple seed and have a pear tree emerge. There’s a continuity between the two. The same is true for our bodies throughout our lives.

Think about your body throughout your life. You’re born And then perhaps so many number of years later, you die. And that body undergoes many changes. And if you study biology, they’ll tell you that these cells die and new cells grow and all these sorts of things. Nevertheless, it’s still you. you’re still you from conception all the way to natural death. And I think this is a good thing for us to stop and ponder for a minute, the sanctity of human life from conception to natural death, because there’s continuity. That child that is conceived and that is formed and fashioned in the image of God, Psalm 139, all the way to that person who dies, the natural death, there’s a sanctity there because there is no change at some point where this begins to be a person or this ceases to be a person.

And you see, these are the sorts of things from the scripture that energize our worldview and that are in direct conflict with some of the voices that we hear around us in our culture. Continuity was their issue. However, there was also the discontinuity. And this is where Paul really pressed in to the Corinthians. The discontinuity. Because remember, they believed continuity. They just had a little too strong of an opinion about continuity. So let’s hear what Paul has to say in these two verses about discontinuity. First, I want you to see this. that Jesus used a similar illustration. John 12, verse 24, listen to what Jesus said. He said this, “‘Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.’” See, the body sown is not the exact body that will come up from the ground in every single way.

There’s a difference. There’s a transformation between our current bodies and our resurrection bodies. Verse 37, he says, what is sown is not the body to be. Yes, there’s a continuity, but it’s not exactly the same in every way. Charles Hodge in his commentary gives a very helpful comment. He says this, In what sense is a sprouting acorn the same as a full-grown oak? Not in substance, not in form, not in appearance. It is, however, the same individual organism. The point of the illustration is that what comes up is very different from that which is deposited in the ground. You sow a seed and a plant appears. Isn’t that amazing, right? What a wonderful illustration. I have a hard time not looking at Bruce as I think about his garden through all of this. What a wonderful illustration.

My wife actually said this morning, make sure you tell him how good those tomatoes are. What an amazing thing though, that you can plant a seed in the ground and by the work of God it comes up different. Same organism. different in appearance, different in form, different in substance. And as we get down to verses 42 to 44, Paul’s going to emphasize discontinuity between the present corruptible bodies and the future immortal, incorruptible bodies. We’re going to get there in a few moments. But remember, Paul prepares to answer the question, with what kind of body do they come? He greases the skid, so to speak. He sets the stage. He says there’s discontinuity and there’s continuity, and you’ve got to understand that with God. But now he’s ready to answer that question, with what kind of body do they come?

So we said that God brings resurrection life from death. through both continuity and discontinuity. But let’s see how he answers that question now. The second gracious and powerful action of God that Paul wants us to see is that God molds the resurrection body. God molds it. God is the one who crafts and forms that resurrection body. Verses 38 through the beginning of verse 42. God molds the resurrection body. And that’s the first thing I want you to see and really digest and really, really just meditate upon this in your hearts and minds, even as we’re thinking about it right now. Verse 38, but God, but God gives. it a body as He has chosen. But God gives it as He has chosen. You see this. The resurrection body is a product of what? Not of natural processes.

Not of something that we do or think or say. No, it is a product of the sovereign God. But God gives. God affects the transition between seed and plant. God is the one who gives. And he does it by his sovereign choice. And when you think of that word give, you could turn it around and say what is given is what? It’s a gift. This is a gift from God. The body is a gift from God. Our current bodies are gifts from God. Our resurrection bodies will be gifts from God. So think about your body even now. Consider how it is that you view your body even now. How is it that you take care of your body? How do you steward your body even now? It’s a gift from God. I want you to see in verse 39 that God’s creative work is not limited to a single ingredient.

It’s not as if God had one ingredient. And He made all the creatures, the birds, and the animals, and the fish, and us, and we’re all the same thing. Same ingredient. That’s not the case. His creative work isn’t limited in that way. Here Paul answers that question with what kind of body do they come? And I want you to pay attention to that word, kind. Because he uses it three times in the first three verses of this section. And what he’s saying is there are different kinds. even now, before the resurrection takes place. And this, again, illustrates to us how the resurrection body can be a different kind, continuity at this continuity, but be a different kind from our current bodies. And so he illustrates and says, even now there are different kinds. Humans are different from animals.

Animals are different from birds. Birds are different from fish. These are different kinds. You go back to Genesis in the creation and he creates them as kinds. And you take this idea, you combine it back with verse 38, God has given it a body as he has chosen. And we see that humans are clearly distinguished from animals as a result of God’s sovereign design. You want a strong biblical argument against macro evolution, Darwinian evolution, this is it right here. God has made us according to our kinds, and he says there are different kinds. We are not the same. Birds don’t turn into animals, and fish don’t turn into birds, and animals don’t turn into people. God decreed and God made them differently. But I want you to see in verses 40 to 42, the beginning of 42, that God assigns glory.

Paul says God gives heavenly glory and He has earthly glory. There are different categories of glory here. You have heavenly and you have earthly. We just talked about the earthly. There are different categorizations even within the earthly glory. The birds, the fish, the animals, the humans. And now He gives us a second one. There are heavenly bodies and heavenly glory as well. So there’s differentiation within each category. Within the earthly, there are different kinds. And within the heavenly, there are different kinds. And yet the earthly and the heavenly, both are different as well. I have humans and animals and birds and fish over here. I have moon and stars and heavens over here. And he distinguishes between the two and he distinguishes within the two. Look at verse 40. there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies.

But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon and so on.” So God is creative in His handiwork and I want you to think about the implications for us. Our current bodies and our resurrection bodies belong to two different categories. That’s what Paul is driving at. Yes, there’s a continuity, but there’s a discontinuity, and praise to God for that. They belong to different categories. One is earthly, and one is heavenly. Not heavenly in the same way as the stars and the moon and the planets. Heavenly in a very spiritual way. Look at verse 44, for example. He says this, It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there’s a natural body, there’s also a spiritual body.

Verse 49, just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven. So you see there’s this contrast between the dust and the heaven, the natural and the spiritual. And he’s saying here, our bodies now are a different glory, a different kind than our bodies that will be raised. They both are consistent with the glory assigned to their kind. Since the Corinthians recognized that heavenly bodies differ from earthly bodies, they should not expect the resurrected body to be a recycled earthly body. Think about that for a minute. They get it that there’s differences in the sun and the moon and the animals and the birds and all that stuff. And so they should understand by way of illustration that, hey, This makes sense.

It’s not just a recycling of the same old earthly body. God chooses and God gives the body. God assigns the glory. Now you might be saying at this point, well I don’t understand how that all works. How does God do it? And let me just say this, it’s enough to understand that God does it. We don’t have to understand exactly how God does it. And let’s take another illustration. One commentator I think had a really good illustration there. He said this, the farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth. And you actually see that in Mark 4, 27. The Bible actually says that very thing. The farmer does not know how the seed grows in the earth, but only trusts that God is active and will bring it to pass. I may not have to know or understand exactly all the things that are happening under the soil, but if I know, I can know and I can trust that if I plant that in the soil, that if God, by his good kindness, desires for that thing to grow up, to full growth, he’ll do it.

He’ll do it, and I can anticipate that. And that’s encouraging for me with the resurrected body. How does that exactly work? I’ve had a friend of mine ask me questions before, well, but you have certain molecules in your body and the cells and all these things, and how does that work? Who cares? I mean, it’s neat to think about, but ultimately, God can do it. If God can make it in the first place, God can do it the way that he said he would do it. How’s that all work? I don’t know, but I’m glad that God does it. So we need to trust in the sovereignty and the promises of God, regardless of whether we can get our minds around it. At the end of the day, it’s foolish to question God. If God tells us how something’s done or why something’s done, then fine.

If not, we trust what He told us. And we know here this, that God brings resurrection life from the dead. We said that was our first point. We also know that God molds the resurrection body. That was our second point. But there is a third gracious and powerful action that we must see in this text. And that is that God transforms us from humility to glory. He transforms us from humility to glory. And what a crescendo in the text. Verses 42, the end of 42 through verse 44. Remember the two questions in verse 35. With what kind of body would they come? That was actually the second question. He just answered that. And now verse 35, the first question, how are the dead raised? Here, Paul is going to take up the answer to that question.

How will the dead be raised? That word raised is significant. One of the things I like to do in studying the Bible is to pay attention to repetition of words, because repetition typically indicates emphasis. And this word raised is found four times in these three verses. There’s an emphasis on this idea of being raised. Brothers and sisters, we get so caught up in our earthly lives. Sometimes we forget, oftentimes, perhaps too often, we forget that we will be raised up and it will be glorious. We ought to be reminded to look forward to the coming of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of the dead. We ought to yearn for it. Oh, we we need to be awakened. And may this text do that very thing. Here in this section Paul uses a series of contrasts to show that our new body will differ from the present one.

While our current bodies are sown natural and they’re sown perishable, they’re sown in dishonor, they’re sown in weakness, Paul says that our resurrection bodies will be raised spiritual. imperishable in glory and in power. So you have these four sets of contrasts. It’s sown natural and it’s raised spiritual. it’s sown perishable, it’s raised imperishable, it’s sown in dishonor, it’s raised in glory, it’s sown in weakness, and it’s raised in power. And let’s just quickly look at those four together and consider those. First, he says it’s sown perishable and it’s raised imperishable, or your translation might say in corruption and in incorruption. In other words, imperishable. It’s corruptible. That’s what we talked about earlier, that there’s decay, there’s sickness, there’s death. And when it’s imperishable and it’s incorruptible, there is no more sickness. There is no more decay.

There is no more death. Think about even the pictures that God paints for us in the Old Testament. Oftentimes, the Old Testament’s like a picture book, and you see little pictures of this. For example, Jonah’s life. In Jonah 2.6, when he’s under the sea and he’s drowning, it says his life is brought up from the pits. You think about Daniel 3, the men who are in the fiery furnace, and they’re found to be without harm. You see, this is a picture of the fact that we will be imperishable. We will be incorruptible. Listen to this, 2 Timothy 1, verses 8-10. Wonderful New Testament passage assuring us of this very thing. Paul writes this, Now listen to this, which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, here it is, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

Immortality, imperishability, incorruptibility. And Paul is tying in there all the same things that we’ve been tying in here. He says this was given to us in Christ Jesus by the will of God. Remember we talked about Him giving it as a gift. And he says Christ has brought this to us. And therefore, we can suffer for the gospel, he says. We can live our lives in ways that have meaning and purpose and value, because we know these truths. We’re convicted of them, and they drive us to live according to them. You know, your actions will reflect your convictions. So he says, first of all, from perishable to imperishable. Secondly, he says, we are sown in dishonor, and we are raised in glory. In other words, there is no more shame because of sin, that dishonor, that shame that we have.

Even today, we confess our sins to God. He says there is no more shame because we’re sown in dishonor, but we’ll be raised in glory. There will be no more sin. There will be no more temptation to sin. Thirdly, he says what’s sown in weakness is raised in power. We’ve prayed about those who are weak, frailty. We’re frail physically, but we’re also frail in some ways via our temptation. What’s sown is weakness. We’ll be raised in power. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 13, verse 4, I love this passage, he says about Christ, for He was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. We also are weak in Him, but we will live by the power of God. You see that we’re united to Christ in His death. And we are united to Christ in His resurrection.

Therefore, we can live by the power of God. 1 Corinthians 6.14, if God raised the Lord, He will raise us up by His power. Not only are we raised spiritually and regenerated by the power of God, we will be raised to newness of life for all eternity in resurrected bodies by the power of God. The fourth one, he says, is what is sown is natural. what is raised is spiritual. There will be no more limits in this time and space sphere. The natural limitations that we face are gone. Again, another one of those things, it’s hard to wrap your mind around exactly what that means, but it will be a different kind, in a sense, a different glory, and God will do that. We’ll look at that a little bit more tonight, what it means to be natural, and we’ll see this phrase, flesh and blood, and we’ll consider that together this evening.

But what’s sown, flesh and blood, or natural, is raised spiritual. There’s an already and a not yet sense. In a way, we have these things in a seed form now. There’s already a seed planted in us if we are in Christ. and that seed will grow, and that seed will sprout, and that seed will come to fruition on the last day. And we’re gonna talk about that more this evening, so please, please be here as we hear that word together this evening. Aren’t we thankful? Aren’t we thankful that God is at work? God is at work in wonderful ways, even more wonderful than the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. God is at work in you, brothers and sisters. Philippians 3, verse 21 says this, He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body.

Let that soak in. He will transform our bodies to be like Christ’s glorious body. He is at work. He is at work and we see his gracious yet powerful actions. God brings resurrection life from the dead. God molds the resurrection body. God transforms us from humility to glory. Are you clinging to, are you relying upon God’s gracious and powerful work? Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Trust in the Lord and in his glorious resurrection work. Let’s pray. Our God, we thank you so much for your powerful word and your goodness and your grace. We pray, God, that you would truly impress this into our hearts, that we would trust in you. and in your powerful work, that we would know the continuity, the discontinuity, we might not understand all of the details about it, but that we could at least understand that it’s true.

That it will be me. It’ll be all of us, not somebody else, who will be raised from the dead, and yet we will be gloriously transformed. And not at all because of anything that we do, but only by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. So may we be humbled. And may we know that in your time we will be exalted. In Christ Jesus’ name, amen. Please turn in your Trinity Psalter hymnal to Psalm 113, selection A. Psalm 113, selection A. Please stand to sing. Remain standing for the benediction.

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July 30, 2023
Christ’s Resurrection, Our Foundation

About this sermon

Some Corinthians doubted that the dead would rise, and Paul answers that if there is no resurrection, then Christ has not been raised and their faith is worthless. Christ has in fact been raised, the firstfruits of those who sleep, and the resurrection is the foundation of the church’s faith, hope, and love. In Adam all die, and in Christ all will be made alive, as he reigns until every enemy, even death, lies under his feet. Belief in the resurrection has consequences, so believers must wake up from sin and live holy lives before a watching world.

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Sermon transcript

The text for the sermon this evening is from 1 Corinthians chapter 15. 1 Corinthians chapter 15. We’ll be reading verses 12 through 34. I recognize last time as I started, it just dawned on me to wonder what version of the Bible you use is your chair Bible or your pew Bible. And I notice now that it’s the New American Standard. I was reading from the ESV. For those of you who are using the one in the pew, you’ll find the reading on page. One thirty eight in the New Testament, I’ll read from your New American Standard so that that will be easy to follow. First Corinthians chapter 15 will read. verses 12-34. Please hear God’s message. Now, if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain. And your faith also is vain. Moreover, We are even found to be false witnesses of God because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact 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, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. And those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, all men, most to be pitied. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who died. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each to his own order. Christ the firstfruits. After that, those who were Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end. When He hands over the Kingdom to the God and Father. When He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. He has put all things in subjection under His feet. But when He says all things are put in subjection, it is evident that He is accepted who put all things in subjection to Him. When all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all.

Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, then why are they baptized for them? Why are we also in danger every hour? I affirm, brethren, by the boasting in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If from human motives I fought with wild beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived. Bad company corrupts good morals. Become sober-minded as you ought and stop sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.” Please be seated. Well, please pray with me. Our God, as we have read Your Word and are prepared to hear an exposition of it, to meditate upon it, we ask God that You would presently work in our hearts and our minds, that You would do a mighty work in us, that You would clear away distractions from our midst, that You would focus our minds, focus our hearts, and that You would take Your Word by Your Spirit and impress it upon us, that we wouldn’t just be hearers of Your Word, but we would be doers.

And we pray this in Christ’s name, Amen. The Corinthian church had its share of problems. It was a young church situated in a pagan city. And Paul writes to them in this first letter to address various issues. And there’s a whole array of various issues that he’s addressing. But here in this section, chapter 15, the particular issue in view is their doubt that the dead would be raised. Now, it’s arguable that they believed that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. They believed the Gospel, that which He proclaimed and declared to them and which we find in the first 11 verses. Yet, the surrounding culture around them would have them to believe that they would not be raised from the dead. That they wouldn’t be resurrected. That that was a foolish thing. One commentator said it this way.

He said, the concept of a physical embodied existence after death was known mainly from popular fables and was thought by the educated. Paul deals with the Corinthians denial of and confusion about the future bodily resurrection of Christians. Over these next few times I’m with you together tonight and then I’ll be here next week in the morning and evening we’re going to look through 1 Corinthians chapter 15 together. We’re going to look at this section and then the two following ones and we’ll look through the entire remainder of 1 Corinthians 15. I actually believe I preached the first 11 verses not long ago. I guess previous when I was here, probably around two years ago. But as we dip into this text, I want us to think about foundations. Think about foundations for a moment. Perhaps as a little child, you’ve read the book, The Three Little Pigs.

And you remember the three little pigs. There’s the one that builds his house out of the straw and it gets blown down. And then the one with the wood and that gets knocked down as well. The strong house, the one with the brick remained. Perhaps you have been in a context where there was a tornado warning, or perhaps even worse, there was a tornado. And if you are in a structure that had a foundation, perhaps you were thankful, you were happy, you had a better sense of security. See, a foundation, in many contexts, is essential. And spiritually speaking, that’s the case as well. Jesus Christ, you remember, in Matthew chapter 7, He said, Build your house on the foundation of the rock, not on the shifting sands. And here, as we come into 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 12 this evening, I want us to think about the foundation that the resurrection lays for our faith.

The resurrection is a foundation. And we ought to stand on the foundation of the resurrection. So our foundation here in this text, the resurrection, is our foundation in three ways. We’re going to see that it’s the foundation of our faith, the foundation of our hope, and the foundation of our love. And if you’re taking notes, that’s going to be our outline this evening. So let’s just jump right in and let’s consider how the resurrection is the foundation of our faith. Here we’re going to be thinking about verses 12 to 19 together, the resurrection as the foundation of our faith. Paul comes into this section of the text hitting hard. Paul comes out of the gates blazing. And Paul argues that the resurrection is the foundation. And right away, he’s reminding the readers that Christ has been raised.

Christ has been raised. To believe in the resurrection of Christ and to deny the resurrection of the body of the believer is not consistent. And so Paul goes back to the Gospel in chapter 15, verse 1, those first 11 verses, and he reminds them of the Gospel that they believed, and he calls them to hold on to that Gospel, and he says, you know what’s fundamental to the Gospel? You know what is foundational to the Gospel? Jesus Christ. On the third day, He rose again. They were confused. I would say anyone who would claim to believe that Christ rose from the dead and deny their own resurrection is confused. And it happens. It’s not so far out. I had a roommate in college who had that same confusion. One commentator says this, Paul argues that there is a seamless connection between the resurrection of Christ in the recent past and the future resurrection of believers on the final day.

So you see what Paul’s saying in v. 12 and then now in v. 13. He’s saying, if we are not raised, then Christ hasn’t been raised. He’s arguing for that unity and that connection. And he says, if we’re not raised, Christ hasn’t been raised. V. 13, v. 16. And that follows out of that beginning of the chapter where they claim to believe that Christ is raised. And if Christ is not raised, he says, our preaching is in vain. Our message is futile. Your faith is in vain. All of Christ is God and for nothing. If Christ hasn’t been raised, His resurrection matters. It is literally the foundation of Christianity. It’s essential. And through Christ, being united to Christ by faith, we are not just raised spiritually, We are. We’re regenerated. And we are spiritually alive.

We’re born again. But we will be also raised physically as He was. And this becomes a cornerstone to his argument. So he says Christ has been raised. But then he goes on and he says the Gospel has been preached. How can you say there’s no resurrection from the dead? if Christ is proclaimed as being raised from the dead. Here we have the importance of preaching. Back in v. 1-11, he says, I proclaimed this Gospel to you. I testified. And so have others of this very truth. He goes on again to say, you have been forgiven. And you have been changed. V. 17 That restates and it extends v. 14. It proclaims that there can be no forgiveness of sins apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In v. 18, if Christ has not been raised, then those who have died are gone forever.

Now, I want you to think about that for a moment. This is really an emotional argument. It evokes emotion because we eagerly await seeing our loved ones who have died. And at the funeral, particularly, I’m thinking of a funeral of a believer. Because for others, sometimes they want to borrow these ideas and say the same things, and it’s just a groundless hope. But for the believer, there’s a true hope. And when you say, I will see that person again, you say it because that person was united to Jesus Christ. And you, through faith, are united to Jesus Christ. And you’re not just saying something that’s a salve to make you feel better. You’re saying that because Christ will come. And all those who are dead in Christ will rise. And here Paul is saying in verse 18, if that’s not true, then those people are gone.

Verse 19 If in Christ we have only hope for this life. We are of all people to be most pitied. I want you to think about what it’s like to be a Christian. And you know this from your experience. It’s not always an easy thing to be a Christian. Especially in our day and in our age, you are oftentimes a minority. You may be laughed at or ridiculed. You face difficulties and dangers in the society. apart from the social dimensions, we live in a cursed and a fallen world. And we know that we only have a certain amount of time. And Paul is saying, look, if Christ has not been raised and we’re not to be raised and we’re living in a way that Christians live, self-control, discipline, restraint of impulses and passions, Thinking of others first.

Deferring to others. Loving others rather than thinking of yourself first. Emphasizing giving over receiving. Standing in the midst of persecution and tribulation in a way that an unbeliever wouldn’t do. If we step into all of this for nothing, Paul says we’re the biggest fools there are. But there is a resurrection. And we have something to look forward to. And we have a reason to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. And not to indulge in all the things of the world. We have the hope. We have the forgiveness of Christ. And that’s something that we live in daily. So the resurrection is a foundation for our faith. But it’s also a foundation for our hope. And I want us to look at that next. That is the second point this evening, the resurrection as the foundation of our hope.

Here, we’ll look at verses 20 through 28. First, you ask the question, what is hope? And there’s some really good definitions. One writer defined it this way. Hope is the confident expectancy, not wishful thinking. but a firm assurance about things that are unseen and still in the future. You see, hope is a future gaze. And it’s not just how we use hope often. It’s not a wishful thinking. No, this is a confident expectancy about those things that are to come. In a way, faith looks backwards and we have faith and we believe in the things that God has done and that Christ has done and we look back in faith, but we look forward in hope. Hope, you could say, in a sense, is anchored in the past. It’s looking forward in the future, but it also has an impact on the present.

It impacts you even now, even here. And I want us to think about a few anchors of hope that we see in this text. Actually, there are three, and all of them point us to the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the anchor of our hope. And we see it here in three ways as Paul expounds His resurrection to us. First of all, we see that Christ is the firstfruits. Look at verses 20 and 23. He says Christ’s resurrection. And everything flows out of this fact. Everything flows out of this truth. And because He is the firstfruits, Those who are united to Him will also be resurrected in the same way as Him. That’s this whole idea of Him being the firstfruits. And you say, well, firstfruits, that’s not a familiar term. That’s not a word I use all the time.

What is firstfruits? What does that even mean? Well, it is an agricultural term. And it refers to the first sample of a crop. So you can think about a harvest and they take a sample, a first sample of the crop, the first fruits. And that sample indicates the nature and the quality of the rest of the crop that’s going to be harvested. There’s an indicator there. There’s a similarity. And Christ being the first fruits is an indicator. of the nature of what the rest of the harvest will be like. And we are part of that harvest. His resurrection then becomes an indicator for our resurrection. He is the firstfruits in that He is the first of many others who would be raised from the dead. And since Christ is the firstfruits and He has been raised, then we, the remainder of the harvest will be raised also.

Isn’t that wonderful news? Praise be to God. That is an anchor of our hope. A second anchor of our hope we find is that Christ is the second Adam or the last Adam. You see that in verses 21 and 22. Here you have a double contrast between Adam and Christ. Adam brought death, but Christ brought resurrection from the dead. Adam failed. But Christ succeeded where Adam failed. Adam tore down and Christ built up what was torn down. Take a look at that. Verse 21. It says, “…for by a man came death.” by a man has come the resurrection of the dead. I don’t want us to gloss over that. I want to see that use of the word man. Christ is truly God and He’s truly man, but we are men. We are mankind. There’s a connection there.

He is our representative as the perfect man. And as mankind, We who are united to Him will share in all the benefits of His work as the God-man. So, He’s our representative. He is our head and that headship matters. We don’t have to be self-made people. We don’t have to go out and do it on our own. We don’t have to go out and earn our own salvation. We don’t have to go out and resurrect ourselves from the dead. We don’t have to go out and create our own identity. And this world wants you to identify with so many different things, and yet, our identity is squarely found in Jesus Christ. We identify with Him. He is our head. He is our representative. There’s a third anchor of our hope here that we find in the person of Jesus Christ, and that is that He is King.

Look at verses 24-28. Here you have His resurrection as the beginning of the dawn of the last days of a new age. And now you see His reign as King, that He was raised up. He ascended to the right hand of the Father. And He reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords. And here in this section, you also see the end. That He will come again. That we will all be raised up. The general resurrection. We will be judged. He will judge the living and the dead. And then you have the consummation and you have the eternal state. But there in verse 25, we find an emphasis that He is ruling and reigning now. It says, for He must reign. until He has put all enemies under His feet. You think of Psalm 110.

The last enemy to be destroyed is death. All things are in subjection to Him. And then verse 27 quotes Psalm 8, verse 6. Christ has been given dominion. And all things are under His feet. All things are in subjection to Him. And as we say in our catechism, He will come and destroy all His and our enemies. And brothers and sisters, there’s great hope in knowing this. That we will be raised from the dead. But we will be part of that crop that will be like Him and will be with Him. And as He sustains us even now as King from Heaven, He is ruling and reigning even as He brings us forward to that day. And He has us and He holds us in His hand. Christ is King. And that’s good to know in a world that seems to be swirling out of control.

What a comfort to know that He is King, that He is in control. And to know that because we are in Him, we will be raised with Him. We have hope. We have hope. The resurrection is the foundation of our faith. It is the foundation of our hope. But I want you to know Paul is teaching us that it’s the foundation for one other thing. And I already told you up front what that is. That the resurrection is our foundation the foundation of our love, verses 29 through 34, the foundation of our love. You say, our love? Really? Where is that in the text? Where do we see love in the section? Is it really there? Or is it just making a nice outline, faith and hope and love? I’ll say this. You may not see the word love, but you see the idea.

You see the concept. You see it there in perhaps a derivative way, an implicit way. I want you to remember this. He said, if you love Me, you will do what I command you. That concept is here. We’re going to look at it in just a moment. with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s here. We’ll see it. The so what part of the text. Have you ever had a so what moment? Where you’re learning facts and information and things and truths perhaps, even powerful ones, and you say, so what? What do I do as a result? And of course, our catechism tells us that the Lord wants us to know what we are to believe concerning Him, but also what duty He requires of us.

And here we have, in some ways, a so-what moment. You see, beliefs have consequences. Paul began this section by arguing about the consequences if the resurrection of the dead was not true. Remember what he was saying in the beginning? If the dead are not raised, then Christ isn’t raised. And if the dead are not raised, then my preaching is futile and your faith is in vain. If the dead are not raised, then even those who died in Christ are gone for good. All these things he’s saying in the beginning. If there is no resurrection, there’s consequences. But now he flips it over. And he says there is a resurrection. And there are consequences. We ought to live. in a way that reflects the fact that there is a resurrection. So what? So we live it.

If Christ was not raised, but Christ has been raised, so what? We ought to live as if our belief in the resurrection has consequences. And here in this section of the text, He gives us two motivators to do that very thing. I want us to see the two motivators. The first one is this. Good theology motivates godly living. Remember, I just said in the Catechism, what should we believe about God and what duty does He require of us? That theology becomes a foundation for how we live. You read the book of Romans. The first half is theology. The second half is application. Read the book of Ephesians. Read the book of Colossians. It’s the same way. Good theology motivates godly living. You know, it’s not all theology. Sometimes it has interesting applications or implications. Here in verse 29, you see an interesting example of that.

And this is the one that everybody’s probably scratching their heads about. Verse 29, it says, Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized of the dead? And you start to ask this question. We read this text a couple of nights ago in our family worship at home. And that’s the very first question that’s asked. What does it mean that people were being baptized for the dead? To leave you in suspense for a moment, there have been over 40 solutions that have been proposed to this problem. Over 40 solutions offered on baptisms for the dead. And you know that my favorite one is actually not a solution. Here’s what this commentator said, and I think this person got it right on the money. He said this. One may consider it as axiomatic that when there is such a wide divergence of opinion, No one knows what in fact was going on.

The best one can do in terms of particulars is point out what appears to be the more viable options, but finally admit to ignorance. So let me just pause there for a moment. 40 things that it could be. And it’s kind of vague. And what he’s saying is at the end of the day, we don’t really know. But listen to this part of what he says, because this is where it’s really important. He says this, what is certain, is how the text functions in the argument. Whatever it was that some of them were doing, those actions are contradicting to the position that there is no resurrection from the dead. You see, that’s the point that really is driven home is how is Paul using it in his argument? Paul is arguing against the position that there’s no resurrection from the dead.

And here he even pulls an example of bad theology. And I would venture to say something Paul doesn’t agree with and Paul is not promoting. But he’s saying, look at this practice. Even this proves that you’re not correct in thinking that. Look again at the verse. I read half of it on purpose. Look at the other half. Verse 29, otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? Look at the second part. If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? He doesn’t say they’re right. But what he’s saying is if that wasn’t true, why are they doing this? You see, this is an implication. This is something that affects the way people live their lives. Theology drives practice. Regardless of what baptism for the dead was, Paul is employing it to support his argument.

And here he’s transitioning from that argument to say why that is wrong and what that meant to transition to now say, what are the implications for the fact that it is true and how do you live your life? He’s employing this to show that the resurrection not only has implications for our hope tomorrow, but also for how we live today. The mention of the practice is at least that much. Implications for health. Maybe more than a few years ago now, there was a book written that many folks in reformed churches like to poke holes in and to maybe argue against. I’ll perhaps do the same. But Joel Osteen wrote a book called Your Best Life Now. And I haven’t read the book. I don’t intend to read the book. But the premise of the idea is that God wants us to be living our best lives now.

As Christians, there’s maybe a prosperity sort of gospel idea to that book. And what Paul’s saying in terms of how we live our lives now in hope of the resurrection and in light of the resurrection, I think is a bit different. Look at what he says in verses 30 to 32. He says this, he says in verse 30, Why would we be in danger? See, if the Christian life was compatible with living the best life now, everything’s going to be peaches and cream. He says, why would we put ourselves in danger? Verse 31, why would we sacrifice the way we do? Verse 32, why would we put ourselves in harm’s way rather than just living the good life? Well, we do it because we have hope of something greater. Jesus Christ said, what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his very own soul?

But when we have hope of something greater, we’re willing to live even in the midst of difficulty and challenge and persecution and hardship. We don’t seek it out. We don’t necessarily desire it, but we know there’s something greater on the other side. This was the problem of the rich young ruler. Remember when he comes up to Christ and he says, let me follow you. And Christ says, well, give away everything you have and come and follow me. And he wouldn’t do it because he loved his money and he wasn’t willing to part with that. He loved that more than he loved Christ. Another man came up to Christ and he said, I’ll follow you wherever I go. And Jesus said, foxes have wings and birds of the air have nests. But the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.

He says, are you still willing to follow me? You see here, Paul is driving home. There are implications of how we live our lives in hope of the resurrection. Theology matters. Does your love for Christ compel you to live for Him? Good theology motivates godly living. Lastly, good influences motivate godly living. You see that in verses 33 and 34. Here, He corrupts good morals. Or other translations say good character. What is the world telling you? What was the world telling the Corinthian church? They were hearing these opinions from the world, voices from the world, ideas from the world, but the only truth that matters is that one truth that is found in the Word of God. Not that the world can’t have any truth. God has given some common grace. Yet, any opinion that conflicts with or contradicts the Word of God, we need to be able to block out.

Because influence of bad company corrupts good morals. We’ve got to be careful regarding the company we keep. Hanging around worldly-minded people can be dangerous. 2 Corinthians 6-7, Paul says there, he says, does the church have to do with the world? What does light have to do with darkness? He says, don’t be unequally yoked. Bad company corrupts good morals. And then v. 34, He calls them to account. He says, do not go on sinning. Sometimes we need to be jostled out of what He calls here a drunken stupor in v. 34. Sometimes we just need to be jostled out of that stupor into holiness. We need to realize that just as others influence us, our actions and our words, our lives influence and impact others. And he says in verse 34, wake up from your drunken stupor. as is right.

Do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I say this to you.” There are many who do not know Christ, and yet they are watching our actions. They are listening to some degree to our words. So we need to be grounded. We need to have a firm foundation. And that is why this evening I pray that all of us here would be encouraged and motivated, knowing that the resurrection is the foundation for our faith, our hope, and our love. It has a real impact. We have been forgiven. We have been changed. We are united to Christ. Christ, the firstfruits. Christ, the second Adam. Christ, the mediatorial king. The one who rules and reigns over all. And these beliefs have consequences. They ought to motivate us to godly living and godly relationships.

Stand on the foundation of the resurrection. Let’s pray. Our God in heaven, we thank you for your word, for your truth. And we pray that you would enable us to stand on the foundation of the resurrection. We thank you that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. And in him and by faith in him, we have the hope of eternity that we too may be raised from the dead. Father, we give You thanks and praise, and we pray it in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. We’ll sing Psalm 8, Selection B together. Please stand.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

July 23, 2023
The Problem of Spiritual Immaturity

About this sermon

Paul rebukes the Corinthians as infants in Christ who can still take only milk, and their factions and worldliness prove it. The passage offers no support for a separate class of ‘carnal Christians,’ as some teach. Paul and Apollos are only servants, and God alone gives the growth. Believers grow toward maturity through the means of grace, the word, prayer, and the sacraments, and they live out their unity as God’s field and God’s building.

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Sermon transcript

Please remain standing for the reading of God’s word. This evening, we take a break from our consideration of the Psalms to consider a passage from from Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, first Corinthians. Chapter 3, verses 1 through 9 is my sermon text this evening. I want to begin back in chapter 2, verse 14, which is towards the end of that chapter and read through chapter 3, verse 9. So beginning at 1 Corinthians 2, verse 14, let us hear God’s holy word. But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. But he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one. For who has known the mind of the Lord that he will instruct him?

But we have the mind of Christ. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able, for you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? And are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am of Paul, and another, I am of Apollos, are you not mere men? What then is Apollos, and what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one. I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth.

Now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord’s blessing upon the preaching of his word. Once again, dear Lord and Father in Heaven, we ask that You would make our hearts tender, malleable, teachable, and we pray that by Your Spirit that Your Word would find a lodging place in our souls, and that You would use this Word to cause us to grow in the knowledge and love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. We ask that You would grant unto me, Your unworthy servant, the grace and assistance by Your Spirit, so to speak Your Word, that it would be edifying to Your people, glorifying to Your name, and would be a source of blessing even for the lost.

We pray these things in Jesus’ name and all of God’s people said, Amen. Congregation, you may be seated. There are a number of words you can be listening for in my sermon this evening, especially the children, and I’d like to encourage the children to help them follow along in the sermon to be listening for these words in particular, the words infancy, church and grace. The title of my sermon this evening is The Problem of Spiritual Immaturity. Well, as you all probably know, newborn infants cannot eat solid food. It’s pretty basic. Try to spoon a chunk of steak into a newborn’s mouth and what is likely to happen? Well, that newborn is likely to choke. They’re simply not at the point in their development where they have the capacity to handle solid food. So what do their parents feed them?

Their parents feed them milk and baby food. But as long as the child is healthy and doesn’t have any special developmental issues, it is expected that as she gets older, she will eventually learn how to handle solid foods. A normally developed, healthy eight-year-old who is still walking around in diapers with a baby bottle in her mouth and who’s not yet learned how to eat solid food would be a cause for some serious concern. Well, dear ones, in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, the apostle Paul confronts and rebukes a serious problem in the church at Corinth. And that problem was the problem of spiritual immaturity among the Corinthian Christians. See, on a spiritual level, the Corinthian Christians were like that eight year old in diapers who couldn’t handle solid food. Spiritually speaking, the Corinthians were still in the stage of spiritual infancy when they should have made progress in their faith and in their growth in Christ.

They were still, as Paul describes them in verse one, they were still still mere infants in Christ. They could only handle the spiritual milk of God’s word. when they should have grown by this time to the point where they could handle the spiritual meat of the word. Now, how does Paul know this? What gives him this assessment of them? What leads him to this conclusion about their spiritual state? Well, one glaring evidence of their spiritual immaturity was their factionalism and their worldliness. So let’s dive into our text, and I want us first to focus on verses one through four of First Corinthians, chapter three, as we take to heart an apostolic rebuke to spiritual immaturity and worldliness in the church. What we have here, first of all, is an apostolic rebuke to spiritual immaturity and worldliness in the church.

And so Paul writes here in chapter three, verse one. And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. Now, I want to point out that term spiritual there. I believe that the S should be capitalized. I would not speak of you as spiritual men, but as to men of flesh, as to infants in Christ. What is the setting here? Well, to quote from one commentator, Paul now shows the Corinthians how God’s choice to work through weakness for his glory applies to their divided church. Just as Paul and Apollos work together for the advancement of the gospel, so the Corinthians should stop boasting about their favorite Christian leader and build a united church. See, it was their disunity, their factionalism, their divisiveness that evidenced their spiritual immaturity.

And in the first two verses, Paul points out the problem of remaining in spiritual infancy and not advancing to Christian maturity, as he not only describes them as mere infants in Christ. He then goes on to say in verse two, I gave you milk to drink, not solid food for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able. Now, I want you to notice a couple of things. Paul does take them to task for their lack of Christian growth and maturity here. But notice how Paul addresses them. He addresses them, first of all, as brethren or brothers. Even though Paul is about to rebuke these believers, he addresses them in a very pastoral, brotherly manner. He’s not talking down to them. He’s not trying to be nasty with them.

But he needs to confront sin in their midst. And he does so in a very brotherly way. He recognizes them as his brothers in Christ, his brothers and sisters in Christ. And he says, I could not speak to you as to spiritual men. That term spiritual in the Greek, pneumatikoios, is contrasted with fleshly or sarkenoios. Whereas back in chapter two, verse 14, The spiritual men, the pneumatikos in the Greek is contrasted with natural men, the psychikos. Back in chapter two, verse 14, he says, but a natural man. does not accept the things of the spirit of God. Now, what’s the significance there? What’s what am I trying to say here? What I’m trying to say here, friends, is that back in chapter two, verse 14, when Paul talks about the natural man, he’s talking about an unbeliever.

He’s talking about someone who is not in Christ. He’s talking about someone who is devoid of the indwelling spirit of God, an unregenerate person. Whereas when Paul describes here the Corinthians as being fleshly, He’s not denying that they are born again. He’s not denying that they’re Christians. He describes them as as being infants in Christ, thereby acknowledging them to be in Christ Christians, but Christians who have some growth that needs to take place in their walk with the Lord. Furthermore, later on in this chapter, Paul affirms that God’s spirit lives in them as God’s temple. So he’s not denying that these Corinthians are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. He’s not denying that they are regenerate. He is simply, he describes them elsewhere as God’s temple. As we see in verses 16 and 17, Paul writes, Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the spirit of God dwells in you?

They are indwelt by the Holy Spirit. They are in Christ. They are believers, Christians. And he goes on to say in verse 17, if any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him for the temple of God is holy. And that is what you are. You are so again. Paul’s language here at the beginning of chapter three is not to be interpreted as if Paul is denying that these believers are true believers. He’s not saying you folks aren’t even born again. You need to be saved. He is addressing them as immature believers, as those who are only in the milk stage. As it goes, as he goes on to say in verse two, I gave you milk to drink. not solid food, for you were not yet able to receive it. Indeed, even now you are not yet able.” The Corinthians were still not ready for the meat of the Word.

They are still in the milk stage of spiritual development. They still need spiritual farina, spiritual baby food. They can’t handle the meat of the Word yet. Dear ones, God expects us as individual believers and as a church to graduate from the spiritual diaper stage and to press on towards spiritual maturity. Now, here’s the thing. Our catechisms, our confessional standards rightly teach that sanctification is not our work. It’s not something that we do. We don’t ultimately sanctify ourselves as our catechism reminds us of. Sanctification is a work of what? Of God’s free grace. Just as justification, God’s declaration of us as being righteous in his sight is an act. of God’s free grace, something God does outside of us, declaring us righteous in his sight. Sanctification is a work of God’s free grace. The spirit works within us to grow us up into Jesus.

If that’s the case, why does Paul take these Corinthians to task for their lack of growth in grace? Well, while it is true that we cannot grow ourselves up spiritually, just like in the natural realm, you know, our children, they don’t grow themselves up. It takes time. However, in the natural realm, it is possible to stunt a child’s growth. What do children, young children, need in order to grow up to be healthy, well-adjusted young people and ultimately adults? They need some vital ingredients. They need adequate nourishment, adequate rest, adequate exercise, and they need a loving, nurturing, caring environment in the home life. All of these things combined together will naturally produce, over time, a mature and maturing young person and eventually an adult. If that is the case in the natural realm, I think there’s an analogy here.

It’s not a perfect analogy, but there is an analogy in the spiritual realm. Ultimately, the Spirit will work in our hearts to ultimately conform us into the image of Christ in due time. But let us not put obstacles in the way of the Spirit’s work. in our lives. And let us diligently use those means of grace, especially the word and the sacraments and prayer and worship. These are means that God uses to grow us up in Jesus as we seek to. And furthermore, let us heed the exhortation from the scriptures to grow in the knowledge and love of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, dear Christian, let me ask you, where are you in the process of your spiritual growth? Are you still an infant in Christ who can only handle the milk of the word?

And by the way, there’s no there’s no shame in being an infant in Christ. If you are a new believer, we all start off as infants in the natural, in the natural realm. Likewise, in the spiritual realm, a new convert to Christ starts off as a spiritual infant, even if that new convert is 70 years old. If you’re a 70 year old, who is, you know, you can be highly intelligent and well adjusted and and, you know, be very competent and worldly wisdom. But if you’re new in Christ, you are spiritually an infant in Christ with the need to grow like the rest of the rest of us. We all start off in that stage of spiritual infancy. But over time, God intends to grow us up in Jesus. And so let me ask you, where are you in your spiritual growth?

Are you still an infant in Christ who can only handle the milk of the word or by God’s grace? Are you striving to make progress toward further growth and maturity in Christ? I would encourage us to heed, as I’ve already referred to this passage, But I want to just read it at the end of 2 Peter chapter 3. We read these words as as Peter rounds off and finishes up his second epistle. He says, You therefore, beloved, knowing this beforehand, be on your guard so that you are not carried away by the error of unprincipled men and fall from your own steadfastness. But what grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, to him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Let us, by the grace of God, strive to grow in the knowledge and love of our Savior.

What are the evidences of continuing spiritual immaturity in the congregation here in Corinth? Well, as I’ve already mentioned, and as Paul makes very clear in verses three and four, the evidences of their ongoing spiritual immaturity include jealousy and the idolization of their favorite preacher. Look at verses three and four. Paul writes, For you are still fleshly. For since there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly? And are you not walking like mere men? For when one says, I am of Paul, you know, I really love the apostle Paul. He’s my guy, you know. I’m Pauline or I am of Apollos. Are you not near man? What’s what’s Paul mean here? Paul says you are still fleshly. The NIV translates it as you are still worldly. And it goes on to ask, are you not like mere men?

What’s the point that he’s making here? Well, as one commentator puts it, although the Corinthians are Christians and dwelt by the spirit, their divisive behavior shows that they are acting like the unbelieving world around them. In terms of these particular behaviors that were going on in the church at Corinth, where there was where there was bickering, there was division, there was jealousy, there was strife, there were competing, competing factions. You know, I follow the Apostle Peter. I follow the Apostle Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Christ. I’m more spiritual than all of you. That kind of mindset in the church evidenced a fleshly immaturity. That’s what we would expect from the unregenerate. That’s what we would expect from those who are still of the world. Beloved, when there is jealousy and divisive behavior in the church, it shows that the church has a lot of growing to do.

It’s also shameful because it makes the Christians in such churches look like they are no different from unbelievers. Dear ones, Division in Christ’s church is a terrible testimony to those outside of the faith. If we want our church’s testimony and outreach for the gospel to be taken seriously by the unbelieving world outside, we need to walk together, yes, in orthodox sound doctrine. Absolutely. That’s foundational. But also as an outflow of that, we need to walk together in unity, harmony, peace and love by the grace of God. And insofar as it depends upon us. Otherwise, it is very likely that our gospel witness as a church will be ineffective. It’s unlikely that our gospel witness will be effective or will produce lasting fruit for God’s kingdom. And so again, Paul is addressing these issues in the Corinthian church.

And again, as I mentioned before, Paul loves these brothers and sisters. If you read, if you’re familiar with the Corinthian correspondence, the Corinthian letters, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Paul has a heart for these folks. He loves them. He affirms their giftedness in the Lord. But here he’s confronting areas of carnality or worldliness in their attitudes within the church. And, you know, this this this language that Paul uses here at the beginning of chapter three has been misinterpreted and misapplied, especially in recent times through the so-called Christian carnal Christian teaching. Are you familiar with that? Paul writes, I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual men. But as to carnal, as to men of flesh, and some have latched onto this language here and said, well, see, there’s there’s two types of Christians. There is the carnal Christian on the one hand and the spiritual Christian.

What is the carnal Christian? Well, this is the teaching that says, well, carnal Christians are those who have accepted Jesus as savior, but not as Lord. Whereas spiritual Christians are those who have accepted Christ as both Savior and Lord. And according to this teaching, there’s a whole category of Christians who are dominated by carnality. Yes, they’ve made a decision for Christ, quote unquote, or they’ve accepted Christ as their Savior, but they’re not living for the Lord and their lives are characterized by carnality and unrepentant sin. But those who are spirit-filled, those who have submitted to Christ as Lord, as well as trusted Him as Savior, these are the spiritual Christians. But this is a twisting and perversion of the language that Paul is using here in this passage. Yes, Paul uses some shocking language. He describes these Christians as fleshly, as mere infants in Christ, as those who are only able to handle the milk and not the meat of the Word.

But to say that true believers may have areas of worldliness and carnality and immaturity in their lives, as Paul in this passage tells us was the case with the Corinthian church, that’s one thing. But to say that a true believer’s entire life may be characterized as carnal and fleshly and thus completely dominated by the sinful flesh, that’s an entirely different thing. Paul affirms the former, that yes, true Christians can and most of us, in fact, we all in one form or another, we do have areas of ongoing carnality and worldliness and fleshliness in our lives. Do you continue to struggle with sin? If you’re an honest Christian, you will say, well, yeah, I do. Well, then you are fleshly in certain areas of your walk with the Lord. But that’s a different thing from saying that you are dominated by the sin nature.

Elsewhere, the apostle Paul himself teaches that those whose lives are completely dominated by the flesh or the sinful nature, as the NIV translates it, will not enter into the kingdom of God, which is to say that they have not been born again by the Holy Spirit. They are unsaved. Look, for example, at what Paul writes in Galatians 5, verses 19 through 21, I’m sorry, Galatians chapter five, verses 19 through 21. After he exhorts the Galatians to be led by, after he gives the promise, if you’re led by the spirit, you’re not under the law and so forth. He goes on to say, now the deeds of the flesh are evident and he lists a sampling of the deeds of the flesh or the fallen nature. which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, excuse me, jealousy, outbursts of anger. disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.

Paul is not saying if you’ve ever been guilty of any of these sins that he lists that sorry, there’s no hope of heaven for you. That’s not what he’s saying. He says, if you practice these things, if these things characterize your lifestyle, you will not enter the kingdom of God because these behaviors demonstrate that you have not been born again by the Holy Spirit, that you are still dead in your trespasses and sins. Now, certainly true believers can be fleshly and fall into patterns of worldly attitudes and behaviors. After all, in this present life, no Christian is perfectly sanctified. However, true believers cannot be dominated by the sin nature to such an extent that their entire lives are characterized by willful, conscious, unrepentant sin. True believers may sin. Indeed, they do sin. And sometimes we sin often and sometimes we can sin seriously.

But the difference is that the true believer experiences conviction for sin because the Holy Spirit dwells within us, and the true believer continues to repent and believe. The Christian life is not a life where you get saved, you have initial conversion, you initially repent and believe, and then it’s just smooth sailing from that point on, right? That’s not the way the Christian life is. Yes, there is an initial conversion. And whether you can remember your initial conversion or not, your Christian life is a life of daily, ongoing repentance and faith. Initial repentance and faith leads to a life of dying unto sin and rising unto newness of life. It is to live out our baptismal identity as those who are united to Christ in his death and resurrection. That’s the normal Christian life. It’s a battle.

It is a life fighting against sin, against the world, the flesh and the devil. And so, brothers and sisters, I would urge you, I would urge you to live a life by the grace of God of ongoing daily repentance and faith. And here’s the wonderful promise. The mercies of the Lord are new every morning. Every new day is a new opportunity to die to sin and follow Jesus, to believe upon Christ and enjoy the blessings of His forgiveness. Christ not only forgave you, When you came to Christ, when you put your trust and faith in him as your Lord and Savior, he continues to forgive you day by day. His mercies are new every morning. In the language of our confessional standards, I would exhort you from this passage to improve your baptism, to consider the implications of what your baptism signifies, that you indeed as is symbolized in your baptism, you’ve been united to Christ in His death and resurrection.

Therefore, having been united to Christ, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound, as Paul says in Romans 6, by no means, or I like how the King James translates it, God forbid. For how can we who died to sin in principle, we have died to sin through our union with Christ and have been raised to newness of life in him. And that’s really what Paul is getting at here as he’s exhorting these Corinthians. He’s saying, look, live out your identity in Christ and stop, stop your bickering, stop your factionalism, stop your divisiveness. Dear, dear listener, the bottom line is this. Jesus will not be your Savior if you willfully refuse and reject him as your Lord. Are you trusting Christ, the Son of God, as both your Savior from hell and as the sovereign Lord of your life?

And to say that is not to suggest a works righteousness scheme of salvation. It’s trust in Christ. It’s receiving and resting upon Him as your Savior, not only from the guilt of sin and the penalty of sin, but trusting Him to graciously reign in your life, enabling you more and more to subdue and die to sin and live unto righteousness out of gratitude for His gift of salvation unto you. Trust in Christ. Come to Him. Receive and rest upon Him as your Lord and Savior. by the grace of God, and you will be saved. And God’s Spirit will dwell in you and will enable you over time to grow in the knowledge and love of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now, as we move on briefly, consider a few more points from this passage.

Consider next how you are to view your spiritual leaders in the church. They are to be viewed as servants of the Lord and mere instruments in His hands. These Corinthians were gravitating towards their favorite celebrity preacher. And we in the American church can kind of relate to that today. We have a tendency to be to be drawn towards our favorite celebrities, whether we talk about the celebrities in the entertainment industry, the music industry, or even in the church. We in the Reformed church sometimes exalt certain popular preachers and they become celebrities, whether they intend to be or want to be or not. And so Paul is here reminding these Corinthians of who these leaders are. As Paul writes in verse 5, what then is Apollos? What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? His answer is servants through whom you believed, even as the Lord gave opportunity to each one.

Servants. Church leaders are servants. Dr. W. Harold Mayer says, the point is that no Christian worker is ever to be idolized. Believers are to realize that Christian workers are simply God’s servants. The word here in the Greek is diakonoi, from which we get the word deacon. Agents through whom people believe in Christ. And notice also, Paul points out that church leaders have different but complementary tasks and gifts. Look at verses five and six. What, then, is Apollos and what is Paul’s servants through whom you believed even as the Lord gave opportunity? Paul says, I planted, Apollos watered. But do Apollos and Paul, should they get the glory? No, because he goes on to say God was causing the growth. Growth comes from God, not from Paul, not from Apollos. Not from R.C. Sproul. We love Sproul here.

We, you know, Sinclair Ferguson, these are all gifted men of God from whom we can learn much. But ultimately, God is the one who uses these servants and they are just servants to grow God’s church into the image of Christ. And so God gives different leaders different spiritual gifts, and that’s true even among leaders that that fulfill certain offices. I mean, there are some pastors, for example, who are better at, say, counseling or administration Whereas other pastors are better at preaching and teaching and so forth. There’s even the gift mix of different pastors and different elders and even different deacons and other servants in the church can be different. But God gives these different gifts to build up the body of Christ. Our differences, brothers and sisters, are meant to complement each other, not to contradict or be in conflict with each other.

And that leads me to my final point based on verse nine. And I know this is a very quick overview here. There’s much in this passage that we could learn. The people of God take to heart your identity as God’s field, God’s building. And Paul goes on to say. He mentions that, you know, Apollos watered, but I planted Apollos watered. God gave the growth. Verse seven, so neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything but God who causes the growth. Stop looking to these men. Stop putting them up on a pedestal. Look to God. God is the one. who gives the growth. And again, let’s remember Paul is addressing a church. He’s primarily addressing the church corporately considered, although this has implications for our lives as individual believers. And then he says in verse eight, now he who plants and he who waters are one, but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

There’s a division of labor in the kingdom and church of God for we are God’s fellow workers, we apostles and preachers like Paul and Apollos. He says we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. He uses agricultural and architectural language here, describing the church, first of all, as God’s field. Consider the church as God’s field. Christ brings his church into being through what? Through sowing the seed of his word in the hearts of his elect. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of Christ. And as Paul says in Romans 10, how can they hear without a preacher? God’s ordinary way of of calling his elect to faith in Christ is through the preached word. Although certainly God uses the written word, the word as it is read, but The church is God’s field.

The preachers scatter the seed of the word, but God, the spirit, makes the heart good soil and causes that word to take root and bear spiritual fruit. And then the church is also described here as God’s building. Paul often uses this imagery in his epistles, and Peter does as well in 1 Peter 2. Christ is the chief cornerstone and we are living stones built together into a holy temple of the Lord. And I’ve I love this passage. I’ve read it, I think, recently, but I’m going to read it again because it’s so good and so relevant here. First Peter 2, 4 through 12. Peter writes, and coming to him, Christ, as to a living stone, which has been rejected by men, but is choice and precious in the sight of God. You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

For this is contained in Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a choice stone, a precious cornerstone, and he who believes in him will not be disappointed. This precious value, then, is for you who believe, but for those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, this became the very cornerstone and the stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, for they stumble because they are disobedient to the word. And to this doom they were also appointed. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. For you once were not a people, but now you are the people of God. You had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Because you and I in Christ have received mercy, we are God’s field, we are God’s building, and God is building us up in Christ as a holy temple in the Lord. Brothers and sisters in Christ, let us live out the implications of our identity as God’s field, God’s building. Through the Holy Spirit, God is conforming us by his grace and grace alone. He’s conforming us more and more into the image of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, and he is fitting us for the age to come. Therefore, let us seek to live up to our identity by striving to grow in the knowledge and love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May we grow. May we go forth and grow. from spiritual infancy and childhood into Christian maturity so that we can feed on the meat of the Word.

How do we grow again? Ultimately, God is the one who grows us up. Sanctification is a work of God’s free grace. Let us let us use the means of grace, the word and prayer and the sacraments and so forth. Let us diligently use these means by which the Holy Spirit causes us to grow in the knowledge and love of Christ. And let us strive to live out the implications of our unity in Christ, for we are one body. We are united in one spirit. So let us let us in the way that we treat one another manifest that reality. Amen. Let us pray. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you once again, Heavenly Father, for the richness of Holy Scripture. We ask, Lord, that by your Holy Spirit and through the word, you would indeed give us the grace to mature and grow in Christ.

And grant us grace, O Lord, to go on from from strength to strength, to be able to receive not only the milk, but also the meat of your holy word. We ask this heavenly father in Jesus name and all of God’s people said amen. Let’s rise and we’ll sing is our closing hymn. Number 467 cast down, O God, the idols.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.

March 12, 2023