1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 12-14, 20-28, 35-38, 42-44, 50-58

             WHAT IS THE FINAL GOAL OF LIFE?     July 24, 2005

    This morning I brought with me some flower bulbs.  Let’s pass them around.  To look at these, there is not much to them.  Nothing pretty.  Nothing attractive.  Not very promising if we did not know what they were.  In reality, these are day lily bulbs.  They spring up every year with little to no care.  They spread rapidly in a yard.  And year after year, they produce beautiful flowers, among my favorite.  But it all begins with these ugly rooty little tubers.

    In this chapter of Corinthians, Paul compares us in many ways with such bulbs.  Looking at us in our weak, sickly fallible human nature, one might never guess at our final destination, our final goal in life.  Paul says we are meant for much more than what we see now.  We are headed for eternal glory.  However, many Christians in many churches have confused ideas about that eternity.  So did the Corinthians.  They also misunderstood the meaning of Paul’s message about the future life.  So in Chapter 15, Paul sets out to answer three questions—Will the dead raised?  When will the dead be raised?  How will the dead be raised?

    Paul addresses this question because we see in vs. 12 that some in Corinth doubted a future resurrection of the dead.  Why did they doubt?  Well, for many of the same reasons that people doubt today.  First, there were those who thought that death was the end.  Do whatever you please because there is no future life.  The whole gospel was simply a fairy tale.  Many today live like there is no future. 

     Another misunderstanding was thinking of the future life only in terms of the soul.  Plato, the great Greek Philosopher, taught that the body is a prison, evil, wicked, and at death, our souls escape the prison of the body to go on to eternity.  This was the view that some new Christians carried with them from their Greek past.  Amazingly, this is still the view that many Christians understand today.  We hear it often at funeral sermons—our bodies are only a useless shell and the soul is what is important.  But this is not the message of the NT gospel. 

     So what is the message of the NT about the future?  First, Paul answers the skeptical question, will the dead be raised.  Paul looks at resurrection of Jesus.  Look at vs 1-8.  Paul uses the word “received” in both vs 1 and 3.  He uses the same word back in chapter 11 when talking about the Lord’s Supper.  Paul says that he has passed on what he received.  This word “received” means a testimony from an eyewitness.  What did Paul receive from eyewitnesses?  That Jesus Christ was crucified died and was buried.  And on the third day, he rose again.  Those words should sound familiar to us.  They are the words of our creed each week.  How do we know this is true?  Eyewitnesses.  Paul says that Jesus rose from the dead and then appeared to Peter and the twelve disciples.  He appeared to his brother James. Over 500 other people saw him.  Finally, he appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus.  Jesus resurrection is not a mere fairy tale.  There were many eyewitnesses and we have received their word.  Many people struggle with what to believe.  But the real question is who do you believe.  Who will you receive?  For me, I believe these Apostles who lived lives of love and who gave their all telling the world of Jesus resurrection.  Is there a future?  Will the dead be raised to new life?  The answer is that there is one who has already been raised.

   Secondly, Paul addresses the question of when will the dead be raised?  Look at vs 23.  Paul says Jesus is the first fruit of the resurrection, the assurance from God to us that we also shall be raised.  When Christ comes again, all shall be raised with him.  The final resurrection of the dead will occur when Christ returns.  We will be raised to a new life with Christ.  

    Where are the dead now?  II Cor 5 and Phil 1 teach that at death the body sleeps but the spirit is at home with God. Jesus told the thief next to him on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  The moment we die, we are with God in Spirit.  We have escaped this world of death.  Plato and the Greek philosophers were correct in this.  However, that is not the final goal.  Too many Christians even today think of God saving souls and leaving the body and this physical world for destruction.  When I worked with the UMC in Philadelphia, an evangelist told me that our work to feed the hungry, help the poor, and repair homes was not important.  All that mattered was saving souls.  But each week, we proclaim that we believe in the resurrection of the body. Listen.  God has made this physical world, including our bodies, and all that God has made is important to Him.  Not just souls, but bodies.  God will not give anything He has made over to death.  Look at vs 24-26.  Christ already reigns now.  But he is still at work to put all enemies under his feet.  And the last enemy to be conquered will be death.  When Christ returns, all creation will be redeemed and we will be raised to new life. 

     How will the dead be raised?  Different Christians make one of two mistakes here.  Some doubt any bodily resurrection at all and look only for a soul life in Heaven.  Others think of a resurrection in the crassest terms, the same actual flesh coming out of the grave.  Both these ideas are not NT thought.  Paul tells us his key point in vs 50—flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.  The resurrection of the body is not the reconstruction of the body.  This is no crass teaching that dead men and women will just walk out of their graves exactly as we were before.  But we are not simply going to be souls in heaven forever either.  We will be like Jesus in His resurrection.  Jesus, the first fruit of the dead, was changed from what he had been.  He appeared and disappeared.  He walked through walls.  He was not always completely recognized.  He was different.  Yet, he was also the same.  The disciples could touch him.  He ate with them.  He talked with them. They knew who he was. Listen.  The resurrected Christ was the same man he had been and yet he was changed.  And the same will be true for us.  Paul says that the seed which is planted is not the same as the plant that grows forth.  Yet it is the same plant.  Tulip bulbs do not grow lilies.  When we are raised into the new kingdom of God, we will still be who we were before.  We will know our family and friends.  They will know us.  But none of us will be the same.  Paul calls it a spiritual body. 

    What happens after death?  The NT teaches a two step process.  Even now, the minute we pass from this world, we will be with God.  We will be aware and awake and at home with Christ who reigns in Heaven even now.  But our final goal is when Christ will reign on Earth as it is in Heaven.  Then we will be with him, raised to new life in spiritual bodies.

     So what?  Why is any of this important? Look at vs 52.  All this is important because Christ will come in a flash, in the blink of an eye.  So we must be ready.  How can we best be ready?  Look at vs 58.  We are ready by giving ourselves to the work of the Lord.  We need not worry about when he will come. We do not need to fret about the end.  We need to get busy with the labor.  The NT Greek word for labor is kopos which means “the fatigue involved in hard work.”  Modern Christians need to know that the work of the Lord and the work of God’s Church is hard labor.  That is our calling and the reward is eternal glory.

    Sigmund Freud, the father of modern psychology, commented that “finally there is the painful riddle of death, for which no remedy has yet been found, nor probably ever will be.”  But the promise of the gospel is that Christ is the remedy.  Death will win nothing which God has made.  Christ raised is the first fruit.  All of creation will be God’s final harvest.  Amen.