What If There Was No Resurrection? Series

Our hope as true Christians and believers in Jesus Christ lie is fact of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. Without any one of these three things, our faith would be futile and worthless.

“Can you be Christian and not believe in the resurrection?” shouts the headline in the Salt Lake Tribune (April 3, 2010, the day before Easter). What a crazy question. You would think that as soon as the journalist began researching this topic among Christian clergy, she would have decided that it was a foolish question not worth pursuing. Instead, her opening paragraph states, “Many scholars dismiss it. Some theologians downplay it. Even some worshippers dodge it. But, for most Christians, the idea that Jesus Christ’s body literally was resurrected is a given, a fundamental of the faith.” The only surprising thing here is that it wasn’t unanimous among the Christian leaders she interviewed that without the resurrection, our preaching and even our faith itself are useless.[1]

Can you believe it? There are folks in our world who call themselves Christian and also claim to not believe in the resurrection. A quarter of people who describe themselves as Christians in Great Britain do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus, a survey commissioned by the BBC suggests.[2]

There are some liberal so-called Christian groups who do not believe in the bodily resurrection. Many will hold to a “spiritual resurrection. Just google the question:

“Can you be a Christian and not believe in the resurrection?” and see the interesting results.

Paul was dealing with this problem of disbelief in the resurrection in his day. The popular Greek philosophy of the day spoke of a spirit world outside of the physical material world. The spiritual world was good and the material world was evil and out of this grew the gnostic heresies of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

The Bible is quite clear when it speaks of the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of human kind, it is not just spiritual, but the full physical bodily resurrection of Jesus and those who follow.

1 Corinthians 15:12–19

Last week we looked the witnesses to the resurrection and Paul laid out the bases of the Gospel:

1 Corinthians 15:3–4 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,

The core of our Christian beliefs is that Christ died for our sins and God raised Jesus up on the third day. This is not an “either/or” statement, but a “both/and” statement. But there were some who disputed that believers would ever be raised from the dead. They believe Christ rose for the dead but but ordinary people would never rise. Paul refutes them.

1 Corinthians 15:12 Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

There are those who scoff at the resurrection. The Corinthians were not the first to object to that. When Paul preached on Mar’s Hill in Athens:

Acts 17:32 Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some began to sneer, but others said, “We shall hear you again concerning this.”

Some of the current thinking of that day and was thought to be factual as common knowledge among all was that there was no such thing as a bodily resurrection. But some wanted to hear more. Then there were those who knew of Jesus’ resurrection but wanted to cover it up.

Matthew 28:12–13 And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers, 13 and said, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came by night and stole Him away while we were asleep.’

Why do people do that, cover up the truth? Jesus came to proclaim the truth:

John 8:40a But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God …

Jesus’ enemies procured His death because they did not want their false views of the world destroyed. In Jesus’ day there were many who did not believe in the resurrection of the dead – the Sadducees of which included most of the priests – including the chief priest.

Mark 12:18 Some Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Jesus, and began questioning Him, saying,

Acts 23:8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all.

I have a hard time understanding the Sadducees: If there is not resurrection of the dead, why spend your time and efforts being religious? The Sadducees were the liberals of their day. They held the power and being religious was a means to that power. It was the way they controlled people of their day. I don’t know about liberals, but it is the same today as it was back then, they will put forth any system that will increase their power and control the masses. But Jesus said: