The Teaching Of 1 Corinthians 15

by Ferguson, J. L. | Category: The Coming Of The Lord Jesus Christ | Mar 1954

THE FACT OF RESURRECTION.

Two nouns are used in the New Testament to describe Resurrection. They are anastasis and egersis. Exanastasis is a strengthened form of the first. Egersis occurs in Matthew 27. 53 only (though there are many verbal forms of the word) in connexion with the Lord's own resurrection, and exanastasis once, in Philippians 3.11, where Paul longed for a present experience of the outworking of the resurrection life in all its reality. Anastasis occurs forty-two times, and is always translated "resurrection," except in Luke 2.34, covering, apart from the two references just referred to, the whole field of resurrection in the New Testament. Liddell and Scott define anastasis as "a making to stand or rise up, an awakening."

Resurrection then has to do with that which goes down into the grave at death. It has to do with the "mortal body" of human beings. What lies down in death will rise again in resurrection. That all lie down in death is a fact proved by human experience. That all will rise again from the dead is proved to faith by divine revelation.

The Sadducees said that there was no resurrection.1 To-day, many still confidently repudiate it. But all such greatly err, knowing neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.2 In this stupendous matter of the resurrection of the myriads of the dead of all the ages, the limitless power of God will fulfil, in His own time, the pledge of Holy Scripture. There faith rests, fully assured that what God has promised He is able also to perform. And as to-day the inexhaustible power of God in things visible flows faster and faster into the tiny comprehension of men, and as men are confessing in their inmost being an ever deepening awe at the marvels of the universe around them, the challenge from the fettered Paul in the brilliant court of Agrippa seems never more appropriate: "Why is it judged incredible with you, if God doth raise the dead?"3

The mighty forces of God are irresistible. In the matter of the resurrection they are twofold-the Scriptures and the power of God. We are not unmindful that resurrection is written large in nature, so that Luther said, "Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection not in books alone, but in every leaf in Springtime." How true! We confine ourselves in this short article, however, to the witness of the Scriptures and the power of God.

The fact of resurrection is everywhere taught in the Old Testament Scriptures. God spoke directly of it.4 The prophets proclaimed it.5 The types depicted it.6 The spiritually enlightened rejoiced in it.7 History confirmed it.8 The twelve tribes hoped to attain to it.9 The faithful accepted torture in confident anticipation of it,10 yes, and of a better country, that is a heavenly.11

But when we reach the New Testament writings the glorious truth expands in the full light of divine revelation, and nowhere in such irrefutable spiritual logic as in 1 Corinthians 15. Here the Holy Spirit, who searcheth the deep things of God, confirms to us in essence the whole principle of resurrection in the Lord's own rising again from the dead. The apostle leads in his witnesses-Cephas, the twelve, about five hundred brethren at once, James, all the apostles, then, last of all, himself-incontrovertible evidence of a risen Lord. Yet while he was writing, the lying report of the bribed, corrupt soldiers was still current among the Jews, "His disciples came by night, and stole Him away while we slept."12 What a preposterous blunder! Joseph was granted "the corpse of Jesus." But only the radiant Lord Jesus in triumphant resurrection could transform His worn-out followers from "and they said nothing to anyone; for they were afraid" to "and they went forth and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them."13

Paley wrote a hundred years ago in Chapter VIII of his Evidences of Christianity

"Every piece of Scripture recognises the resurrection. Every epistle of every apostle, every author contemporary with the apostles, of the age immediately succeeding the apostles, every writing from that age to the present, genuine or spurious, on the side of Christianity or against it, concur in representing the resurrection of Christ as an article of history, received without doubt or disagreement by all who called themselves Christians, as alleged from the beginning by the propagators of the institution, and alleged as the centre of their testimony."

The risen Redeemer was in the foundation of all New Testament teaching. Without Him in resurrection the whole superstructure of divine doctrine was meaningless, all preaching was vain, the believers were still in their sins, the radiant joy of the suffering saints was pitiful in the extreme. But the unanimous testimony of all the eye-witnesses was in perfect accord with many infallible proofs. All attested to the one glorious truth that "now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep."14

0 glorious second Man, the Lord from heaven! If by the first man death has come to all, even so by the second Man all will come to resurrection. If in Adam all died, even so in Christ shall all be made alive, and from their graves come forth, the just to the resurrection of life, the unjust, alas, to the resurrection of judgement.

That none is excluded is evident. "All that are in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth."15 Resurrection thus follows an inexorable divine law, "all .... shall come forth." Elsewhere it is written of the day of the great white throne judgement,

"and the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man according to his works. And death and Hades were cast into the Lake of Fire." Death here plainly refers to that which holds the body, to be called forth in inescapable resurrection, while Hades refers to the place where are the souls of the departed, recalled by that same resurrection word to reunion with the body in readiness for the eternal state. And into that same eternal state of bliss or woe will go all the generations of the human family of all ages, races and creeds.

Not only is the fact of resurrection beyond doubt, but it is also predicted in Scripture as occurring with an orderliness worthy of God. "But each in his own order, Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end .... For He must reign, till He hath put all His enemies under His feet."16 It is a great pity that the several stages of the resurrection have become obscured in the minds of many sincere believers due to a defective exposition down the centuries of the Scriptures bearing on the subject. There is no doubt of course that the Lord Jesus spoke of resurrection in relation to "the last day." In John 6. for example, there are notable references to it. Thus taught of the Lord, Martha said of her brother:

"I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day."17

But the Holy Spirit in the subsequent New Testament letters revealed that the resurrection would take place in several orders and stages. This is not everywhere understood. When the Lord Jesus predicted the manner of His own resurrection the disciples questioned "among themselves what the rising again from the dead" might mean. Many to day are equally in doubt as to the prior resurrection of, for example, "they that are Christ's at His coming."

It is evident, for example, from 1 Thessalonians 4. that the dead in Christ, together with the living saints, shall be caught up at the Coming of the Lord to the air. That will be prior to the commencement of Daniel's 70th week. It will be a selective resurrection, selective of the whole Body of Christ from amongst the myriads of the dead, but not selective within the Body. The members of all the centuries since Pentecost will enjoy the great eternal "togetherness" of the One Body. There will be no separations any more.

The saints of this dispensation must be raised before the millennial reign of the Kingly Lord, for in His days the faithful of this day are to be His princes. So too the Old Testament saints, who at the close of Daniel's 70th week receive their reward in the day when the Kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ,19 when "many shall come from the east and from the west and shall sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.20 So too the martyred saints who come victorious from the Beast and from his image they shall live and reign with Christ a thousand years.21

These are all resurrected from among the dead, each in his own order, and time. But" the rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished "22. Then- " I saw a great white throne . . . "23 That will be the general and final resurrection of the dead, the great and the small. The ransomed from Israel under the Old Covenant will not be there; nor will the redeemed from all the nations in this day of grace; nor will the elect from the dark day of Jacob's trouble. Their resurrection has preceded it. But the rest of the dead shall come at last to the resurrection of the last day.

No purpose of God can be restrained. His age-long adversary may defy His counsels but he can never ultimately defeat them. Therefore when the Most High closes the day of human history and moves on in the loftiness and awesomeness of His purposes to a new heaven and a new earth which will never be marred by sin, the bodies of all the dead will have been raised, the dead from all ages of time and from all the burying places of earth and sea. Thus the general resurrection at the last day will be the final act of God in His absolute sovereignty over His creatures, despite all the forces of evil which have contrived to outwit His plans. It will be the initiation also of the eternal state in which the entire human race from Adam onwards will in resurrected bodies be in everlasting glory or in eternal destruction.

So resurrection rests finally on the power of the Lord God the Omnipotent. That power silences all doubts and gives assurance to faith. It was that same power which raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. Therefore in Jesus is still proclaimed the resurrection from the dead.24 He is the Resurrection and the Life.25

"But some one will say, How are the dead raised? And with what manner of body do they come?"

1 Matthew 22.28.

2 Matthew 22.29.

3 Acts 26.8.

4 Exodus 3.0.

5 Isaiah 26.10.

6 Leviticus 23.10.

7 Job 19.20.

8 2 Kings 4.35.

9 Acts 26.7.

10 Hebrews 11. 35.

11 Hebrews 11.16.