O Grave! Where Is Thy Victory

O Grave! where is thy Victory?

1 Corinthians 15:51-58

When Paul heard of what was going on in the Church at Corinth which he had founded, he must have wondered whether he had just wasted a year and a half of his life establishing the church. The church was divided into factions. Some held to Paul, others Apollos, others Cephas (Peter), and others Christ. There was moral depravity in the church. Members in the church were suing other members in court. People were boasting about the spiritual gifts as though this made them better than everyone else. The church met at the Lord’s Supper and were seated according to social rank. And what was worse than all this, there were those who denied the resurrection of Jesus Christ. After fourteen chapters of dealing with the former problems, he spends the long 15th chapter dealing with the resurrection of the dead. Of all the issues in the church, this was the most vital.

Paul in this chapter rebukes sharply those who denied the bodily resurrection of Jesus. without the resurrection of Jesus, then there is no resurrection of anyone. Without the resurrection, there is no forgiveness of sins either. What is the use of coming together as a church if they denied the resurrection? Did Paul suffer rejection, beatings, imprisonments, an shipwreck to start a philosophical debate club?

Paul goes on to present evidence of Jesus’ bodily resurrection. In this, he agrees with the gospels. He does mention additional evidence such as the appearance to James, the Lord’s brother and the appearance to over 500 men at one time. There were a lot of witnesses to the resurrection. Jesus ate fish with them and invited them to handle (grope) Him to prove that He truly arose in a body and not as a phantom. There was something different about His resurrected body as it could appear in the middle of a locked room. Paul affirms that we also will have our mortal bodies transformed at the final resurrection. Jesus rose as the firstfruit from the dead on the Hebrew Day of Firstfruits. His resurrection is a prototype of our resurrection. The firstfruits of the barley harvest is the same grain as the rest of the crop, even though it is set apart as being especially holy. Jesus participated in the weakness of human flesh in a mortal body. He arose in a new immortal body. So shall we. It is called a spiritual body, but it isn’t just a spirit. It will be like His.

At the end of this 15th chapter, we come to today’s text. It begins with the well known: “Behold! I tell you a mystery.” We need to understand here that to Paul, a mystery is something which was once not known and is now been revealed. God now wants us to know this truth. It is not to be kept a mystery.

Paul then tells us that we all shall not sleep (the sleep of death) but we all shall be changed. The pronoun “all” is placed first in the sentence in Greek for emphasis. All of us will not taste death. there will be those who are alive at Christ’s return. Paul affirms in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 which is also implied here in 1 Corinthians 15:52. whether by way of the grave or we remain alive to hear the last trumpet, we shall be transformed.

This transformation will be instantaneous, in the blink of an eye. The Greek actually uses “in an atom.” the atom is the smallest division that can be made. But “in the blink of an eye” is more poetic and soothing. I like the German “augenblink” which says it in a single word. There is no intermediate state. To die in this life is to be with the Lord. when we close our eyes in death, the next awareness will be to be in the presence of God. There is no waiting room in which we have to endure while awaiting the resurrection.

This transformation will occur at the last trumpet. In the old Testament, the trumpet was sounded to announce the beginning of a feast. At the time of a wedding where the groom came to the city of the bride, the best man brought a trumpet which he sounded as the groom was arriving at the bride’s village. That bride was transformed in the sense that until recently, the bride left the surname of her father and took the last name of her husband.

We know that men are continuously trying to find ways to live longer. They are looking to stop the wear and tear on our DNA. They are trying through science and technology to cheat death and live for ever. But what kind of “eternal” life would that be? There can be no quality of life, no matter how long it be prolonged, if we have to live in sinful bodies an a sinful world. Could you imagine having to hear the 6 o’clock news for eternity, a world in which tyrants never die and strife never ends. Huxley’s “Brave New World” does not sound like heaven to me. We would still through violence manage to kill each other, even though our bodies would stop aging. People would commit suicide out of despair to end having to live in such a world.