Proof Of The Resurrection Series

The hope of all believers – eternal life vice eternal death and everlasting punishment. But our hope for our eternity is more than just for life, it is being for all eternity with Life itself – Jesus. Jesus has told us that He is the way the truth and the life (John 14:6) and Jesus Himself is the Resurrection and the Life (John 11:25). Our eternal hope is based squarely on the resurrection of Jesus.

Our Christian hope is not mere wishing, or relying of eternal luck. Our hope is in God Himself who through out the ages have proven faithful over and over again. The biblical hope is hope in what God will do in the future. And at the heart of Christian hope is the resurrection of Jesus. Without the resurrection of Jesus, Christianity would be quite literally a dead religion and no different from all the other belief systems in the world: Mohammad is dead; Confucius is dead; Buddha is dead.

I serve a risen Savior; He’s in the world today; I know that He is living, whatever men may say; I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer, and just the time I need Him He’s always near.[1]

Hope is an encouragement to believers in the midst of suffering, but it also prevents believers from being content with present circumstances. Hope insists that Christians wait with eager longing for the great day when all of God’s promises are fulfilled.[2]

As a young man, D. L. Moody was called upon suddenly to preach a funeral sermon. He hunted all through the Four Gospels trying to find one of Christ’s funeral sermons, but searched in vain. He found that Christ broke up every funeral He ever attended. Death could not exist where He was. When the dead heard His voice they sprang to life.[3]

Between now and Easter (which is more correctly called Resurrection Day), we will be exploring 1 Corinthians 15. Here the Apostle Paul outline the Gospel itself and examines the resurrection of Jesus, for there were those who said there is no resurrection from the dead.

The Bible clearly speak of resurrection of Jesus and today’s passage talks about the proof of Jesus’s resurrection

1 Corinthians 15:1–11

Of all the things recorded in the Bible, there are three things that are hotly contested by non-believers, especially of those in the world of science:

1) The literal six days of creation, and the Bible record is that of a relatively young earth (approximately 6,000 years old).

2) The universal flood of Noah’s day (approximately 4,400 years ago according to the Biblical record).

3) The physical and bodily resurrection of Jesus.

In April 2002, the well-respected Oxford University philosophy professor Richard Swinburne used a broadly accepted probability theory to defend the truth of Christ’s resurrection. He did this at a high-profile gathering of philosophy professors at Yale University. “For someone dead for 36 hours to come to life again is, according to the laws of nature, extremely improbable,” Swinburne said. “But if there is a God of the traditional kind, natural laws only operate because he makes them operate.” Swinburne then used Bayes’ Theorem to assign values to things like the probability of God’s being real, Jesus’ behavior during his lifetime, and the quality of witness testimony after Jesus’ death. Then he plugged the numbers into a probability formula and added everything up. The result: a 97 percent probability that the resurrection really happened.[4]

Today we are going to examine the proof for the resurrection as Paul outlines the Gospel in these first 11 verses of chapter 15.

1 Corinthians 15:1–2 Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

Paul declared the Gospel to the church in Corinth. And on this truth of the Gospel, they make their stands. Paul will go on to give the Gospel again in the verses that follow, for this is not a new Gospel, they have heard it before. The gospel is unchanging. It is the same today as it was 2,000 years ago. But Paul proceeds to give them 4 different proofs of the resurrection. Proof to reinforce their holding fast.

Proof # 1 “by which also you are saved” (verse 2). Their salvation is proof. When we are saved, we receive God’s own Spirit, the Holy Spirit, and because of His presence in our lives, we know Jesus is alive.

Romans 8:16 The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God

Because we have the Spirit of God, we bear witness to the resurrection of Jesus. And Jesus has entrusted and given us the responsibility giving this Life-giving message of Jesus to the world.