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.
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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