MICHAEL GREEN1Michael Green is professor of evangelism at Regent College, Vancouver, British Columbia. He is the author of Evangelism in the Early Church (Eerdmans, 1970) and To Corinth with Love (Word [Dallas], 1988), from which a chapter was adapted for this article.
However hard a recession bites, the undertakers are not going to go out of business. Death is the unwelcome fact at the end of the road. Thus, one of the great tests of any philosophy is what it makes of death.
Reading the New Testament reveals how quickly the early church came to grips with this inevitable reality of life. The apostle Paul had to tackle the issue regularly in his preaching and writing. We see this especially in his dealings with the church at Corinth.
We are not altogether sure how the Corinthians themselves handled death. Some of them had died since Paul preached to them about Jesus and the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:6). This raised problems there, as it did in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 4:13–5:1). On the whole, the Corinthians seemed to shy away from thinking about death and its implications. Theirs was a religion of a spiritual, realized resurrection. They reveled now in the powers of the age to come. They showed little interest in what happened after the last enemy struck. And they expected the return of Christ in power and glory, perhaps in their own lifetime. So why worry?
Some of them, however, did worry. This may explain in part why Paul wrote chapter 15 of 1 Corinthians, a chapter that details the Christian implications of death and resurrection. It is hard, after all, not to worry when your loved ones die. Perhaps the Corinthians feared there might not really be life after death. Even more probably, Paul wrote this chapter because the idea of bodily resurrection repelled them. The Corinthians had so understood—and experienced—the physical side of life, that the idea of being bound to it forever was utterly repugnant.
Whatever the controversies, this chapter is full of insights about Christ’s resurrection and its implications for believers—in this life, and the next.
How A Christian Views Death
Paul had much to teach the Corinthians in this area. In the first place, he argued, death is not the end; it ushers in a further life, as the resurrection of Jesus Christ has made abundantly plain. Therefore, it is sheer folly not to give it due consideration.
Equally, death was not a friend, as Socrates had managed to persuade himself. It was an enemy: the last enemy (1 Cor. 15:26). Therefore, it must be approached with awe and misgiving. Such an appraisal keeps us, as it kept Paul, from believing those who say they are not afraid of their own dissolution; they are deceiving only themselves.
There was an element of dread even in Paul’s approach to his own death. The delightful imagery in 2 Corinthians 5:4 makes this clear. He says, in effect, “It is not the dress of immortality I am shrinking from. What I don’t want is to be stripped naked of the clothes of this life before putting the new clothes on.” This dread of exchanging the known for the unknown, the now for the then, must remain in every Christian’s heart.
Having said that, Paul approached death with remarkable equanimity and confidence, even enthusiasm. In his letter to the Philippians he can write “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.… My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain in the flesh is more necessary on your account” (Phil. 1:21, 23–24). Even after staring death in the face, he can speak about it calmly: “We were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death; but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead; he delivered us from so deadly a peril, and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Cor. 1:8–10). He could have this peace because the sting of death had been drawn. This sting was human sin, human alienation from the holy God. Despite his outwardly respectable life, Paul therefore knew he could not face God on his own merits. He also knew, however, that Christ had died for him on the cross, and that as a result, his sins, which were many, had all been dealt with. Accordingly, he could face death confident in the final verdict, which he owed to Christ and him alone.
This was Paul’s reason for confidence in the face of death. He was able to cease fretting about those who had died, knowing they were with Christ (1 Thess. 4:14). He was serene in the assurance that nothing in life or death could separate him from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:38–39). He could even face the deterioration of his own bodily powers and the prospect of his dissolution, confident in the Spirit within, who renewed him daily. The prospect of having a house to live in with God once the tent of this life’s abode was struck made all the difference (2 Cor. 5:1). Paul could live to the full because he was not afraid to die.
Christians, then, do not face death with confidence because they are blind to its horrors, nor because they have not stopped to think about its implications. Neither does their confidence rest on supposed messages from the dead through a séance, or philosophical investigations into the survival of the human ego. The experience of those who were technically dead for a short time and revived has nothing to do with it. Christians instead look unambiguously to the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth after his crucifixion under Pontius Pilate.
Of course, this strikes many people as naive. Christ could not have risen from the grave; after all, the dead don’t rise, they argue. Indeed, nobody is claiming that they do. We are claiming that this man rose—the man who is the ideal for all humanity; the man whose birth is as mysterious as his end; the man who claimed to reveal God, to forgive sins, to be the light of the world, to live a sinless life, to judge us at the last day, and to accept the worship of his followers. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is unique. It stands or falls on hard facts. What are they?
The Facts Of History
In 1 Corinthians 15 we have the earliest and fullest writing about the resurrection of Jesus Christ that has come down to us. It offers no less than six factors for our consideration.
First, look at the man who wrote it. This was Saul of Tarsus, the chief enemy of the Christian “heresy.” He was turned around in midcourse by the resurrection (1 Cor. 15:3–4). On the Damascus Road he was, as he puts it in Philippians, “apprehended by Christ Jesus.” “Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” he asks in 1 Corinthians 9:1. No single event apart from the resurrection of Jesus has been so determinative of the course of Christian history as the conversion of Paul. As Lyttleton put it in the mid-eighteenth century, “The conversion and apostleship of St. Paul alone, duly considered, was of itself a demonstration sufficient to prove Christianity to be a divine revelation” (Observations on the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul, 1747).
Second, consider the prominence of this message. Paul delivered to the Corinthians “as of first importance” this message of the resurrection that he himself had received with such power and joy into his life. It was the heart of Christianity. The Resurrection was so prominent in his preaching at Athens, in fact, that his hearers could satirize Paul as proclaiming two new deities to add to the pantheon, Jesus and Anastasis (that is, “Resurrection,” Acts 17:18). The Resurrection is therefore no tailpiece to Christian doctrine. It is the centerpiece.
Third, notice the age of the tradition. Jesus was executed in A.D. 30, 31, or 33. First Corinthians was written in 54, some 20 years later. It would be a very good tradition if the evidence went back only that far, but it goes back even further. Paul says, “I delivered to you … what I also received” (1 Cor. 15:3). That is to say, he passed on the message he had himself received. This immediately takes it back to within three or four years of the resurrection, when Paul was converted. The approximate date of this can be determined from Galatians 1:18 and 2:1. If the “14 years” of Galatians 2:1 means 14 years after his conversion, then it would have been in A.D. 35 that he came face to face with the risen Christ. If the 3 years of Galatians 1:18 are to be added to those 14 years, then we must assume that he came to faith in 33, for the visit to Jerusalem can be fixed at 49. In either case, the time gap between the event and Paul’s discovery of it was tiny.
Even more significant than this small time gap is Paul’s choice of words for “receive” and “deliver.” They are technical words, both in Greek and in the underlying Hebrew, for receiving and handing on authorized tradition. The resurrection fact and story were already authorized tradition in Christian circles before the conversion of Paul. No wonder the German theologian Edward Meyer has called these verses “the oldest document of the Christian church.”
Fourth, consider the source of this tradition. Paul stresses in 1 Corinthians 15:11 that he proclaimed precisely the same message of the resurrection as did the Jerusalem church. His message comes from the very center of the events themselves, and within only two or three years of those events. Could one have better evidence of any historical event than this? Incidentally, in this passage Paul mentions two names of great significance—Peter and James. Both met with Jesus after his resurrection (1 Pet. 5:1; 1 Cor. 15:7). Paul went up to Jerusalem, three years after his conversion, to question them (Gal. 1:18).
Confidence Beyond Fabrication
Fifth, there is a confident note of conviction in this passage that would have been hard to fabricate. The short, staccato sentences throb with discovery and assurance. They also display a remarkable change of tense. In Greek the aorist tense is commonly used for events in the past; the perfect tense is used for past events that have present overtones and effects. Paul writes a string of aorists: “Christ died … he was buried … he was seen.” When he comes to the resurrection, however, a mere aorist will not suffice for him. He bursts out into the perfect, egegertai, meaning, “He rose, and he is alive!”
Sixth, glance at the historical evidence adduced. The repeated hoti in the Greek of 1 Corinthians 15:3ff. suggests to scholars that Paul is quoting a very old document, indicating “that” Christ died according to the Scriptures (such as Isa. 53), “that” he was buried (hint of the empty tomb), “that” he was raised again on the third day as Scripture predicted (as in Ps. 16:10 and Isa. 53:10–11), and “that” he appeared to Cephas and the others.
Paul also adduces the evidence of several resurrection appearances: Peter, the 12, James, the 500, all the apostles, and finally himself. He hints, perhaps, at what is explicit elsewhere: there were changed lives that resulted from that resurrection. Peter changed from coward to martyr. The 12 changed from a rabble into a church. James changed from skeptic to Christian leader. Paul changed from persecutor to apostle. The Corinthians changed from homosexuals, robbers, and fornicators into the people of God. It was remarkable evidence not only that Christ rose, but that he lives. All through history it has been repeated continuously, through the transformation of sinners into disciples.
The seventh and final piece of evidence that wells up from this account is the new movement itself. Christianity started. Something must have triggered it. It had little to differentiate it from Judaism except the triumphant, exultant conviction that the long-awaited Messiah had come, had died for the sins of the world, and was alive again to become potentially the companion of all.
Such were the facts from history on which Paul based his own confidence in the resurrection, and commended it to the church at Corinth—and to us.
What If He Didn’t Rise?
Paul faces the implications of Jesus not being raised with shattering realism. This is especially true in 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ did not rise, he wrote, the apostolic proclamation is empty, and the Corinthians’ faith is in vain. Believers are still in their sins, unsure, without the resurrection, that Christ’s atoning death did, in fact, suffice. What is more, dead Christians are not “sleeping,” but have perished. Christians are then of all people the most to be pitied because they are deluded about the ultimate end of humankind (1 Cor. 15:13–19).
But what are the implications of the truth of his resurrection? Here are ten consequences that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15.
1. The resurrection validates the uniqueness of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:4). His rising from the dead substantiates his claims (Rom 1:3–4). He is unlike any other teacher there has ever been.
2. The resurrection attests the achievement of Jesus on Calvary (1 Cor. 15:3). Because he rose, we know that his death has atoned, and that God has vindicated him. He “was put to death for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25).
3. The resurrection initiated the gospel of Jesus (1 Cor. 15:3–11). Without it there would have been no gospel to proclaim. The Easter faith is based on the Easter event. It goes back to eyewitnesses.
4. The resurrection means that Jesus can be known today (1 Cor. 15:20). If he not only rose but is alive, then he is available, and people can meet him and know him.
5. The resurrection of Jesus is the first fruits of a great crop to come. His deed has undone Adam’s fall (1 Cor. 15:20–22). His resurrection points to our future if we are in him.
6. The resurrection of Jesus has robbed the last enemy of its fangs (1 Cor. 15:55–56). The unpleasantness of dying remains, but the fear of what lies beyond death’s wall is gone. Christ partook of our nature “that through death he might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb. 2:14–15).
7. The resurrection of Jesus gives victory to human beings who trust him (1 Cor. 15:56, 57). He can and does change our human nature, refining it and giving us a power over our evil inclination that we otherwise would never know. As Paul puts it in Ephesians 1:19–23, the power that raised Christ from the dead is available to set us free from the grip of evil.
8. The resurrection of Jesus is the pledge and model of our resurrection body on the last day (1 Cor. 15:35–38, 42–43, 49). There will be continuity of life, but difference in the way that life is expressed. We shall be recognizable, but glorified.
9. The resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of his return (1 Cor. 15:51; cf. Acts 17:31). That he died and rose in the past is a pledge that he will come again at the end of time, as he said he would, to bring all history to a climax.
10. In the meantime, the resurrection of Jesus is the spur for Christian action in our quest for justice, our service to mankind, and our proclamation of the gospel (1 Cor. 15:57–58).
By Michael Green.
Through A Glass, Darkly
While the certainties surrounding the resurrection of Christ are reassuring, there are many questions we should love to ask for which the answers are, at best, complex. Here are three:
1. Does the bodily resurrection of Jesus—rather than some mere spiritual survival—matter? Yes, it matters a good deal. In the first place, Jews could never have conceived of a resurrection that was not in some way physical, and it is not difficult to sympathize with them. What sort of spiritual continuity is possible if Jesus’ body lies moldering in the grave? In what sense could it be Jesus that survives? How could they have known it to be him?
Of course, resurrection is no crude resuscitation. Rabbis used to argue about whether resurrected bodies would have warts and all! That is a long cry from the resurrection of Jesus. Lazarus was resuscitated, but Lazarus had to die again. Jesus was raised to a new dimension of life. “Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom. 6:9). The early eyewitnesses knew that the resurrection meant the transformation of the body of Jesus into a new genre, like the transposition of gasoline into energy, or a sperm and ovum into a child. But the continuity mattered. It is not just that we may be confident of the identity of Jesus, but that we may be confident of the destiny of the world.
Much that passes for Christianity these days is a form of Gnosticism where the physical does not matter. A spiritual resurrection might suffice for Christ and his followers, but the biblical hope is not of a spiritual escape from this world; rather, it is of a new heaven and a new Earth. God will not scrap us but refashion us. The doctrine of bodily resurrection in some form or other seems essential if God’s promises in and for this world are to be made good. It is not a matter of indifference that the Jesus who took our flesh and died in it also rose in it on Easter Day and is even now at the right hand of God.
2. Is there an intermediate state? The answer to this oft-asked question is, surely, yes. The constant teaching of the New Testament, and not least 1 Corinthians 15:49–53, is that the resurrection body will not be for any believers until it is for all. At present, only Jesus has a resurrection body—that is, a mode of personal expression that is final and fitting. Other believers await that, either in a state of nakedness, if you take one line of imagery (2 Cor. 5:3), or else in a state of suspended animation akin to sleep, if you take another (1 Thess. 4:13–16). On any showing, the believer is envisaged as being with Christ, which can be described as “gain” and “far better” (Phil. 1:23). Elsewhere we read, “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord … that they may rest from their labors” (Rev. 14:13).
If you look at it from our point of view, the departed are still caught in the nexus of time and space; their souls cry out, “Lord, how long?” (Rev. 6:9ff.). Seen from God’s point of view (and perhaps from their own?), however, they “sleep” until the last day at the return of Christ, when the dead will be raised and given their resurrection bodies, and the living will be changed into that final state without having to undergo death (1 Cor. 15:51 ff.; 2 Cor. 5:4ff.). Then we will forever be with the Lord (1 Thess. 4:17).
What will that be like? Let the author of Revelation paint the picture. “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. And he who sat upon the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new’ ” (Rev. 21:3–5a).
3. How can we conceive of the resurrection body? We have little to go on, but in 1 Corinthians 15 there are two pointers that go a long way. First, Paul’s teaching that there is a wide variety of “bodies” (that is, forms in which the self can be expressed) is helpful. It liberates us from undue literalism about the subject, while forbidding us to think only in terms of a purely spiritual survival. God will give us a means of expression in heaven that totally befits our environment.
Paul’s other contribution comes in answer to the question “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” (1 Cor. 15:35). He offers us two specific, though partial, answers.
The first is that their bodies will be like Christ’s risen body: He is the first fruits of the crop and will someday share his nature with his followers (1 Cor. 15:23). To understand the nature of our resurrection body, we therefore look to Christ. His resurrection body was recognizably his own, yet no longer subject to the confines of time and space. It could vanish; it could also eat fish.
The second partial answer to questions about the nature of the resurrection body comes from the grain of wheat (1 Cor. 15:37). If you had never seen an ear of corn waving in the wind of a summer’s day, you would hardly believe that it sprang from that little shriveled grain you held in your hand last winter. There is a continuity of life that somehow survives the “death” of that grain of corn in the ground. First the blade, then the ear, then the ripe corn in that ear, sprung from the single grain. There is continuity of life, but the ear is much more glorious than the single grain. So it will be with the resurrection of the dead. “What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor. 15:42–44).
That, no less, is the destiny that awaits erstwhile robbers, drunkards, and libertines at Corinth. That, in the infinite mercy of God, is what awaits you and me. What a difference that hope can make to the way we live and to the way we approach bereavement and our own death! Whether Jesus returns or we have to go through death first, our desiny is to be with him—and to be made like him, forever.
