Passage Read: 1 Corinthians 14-15
Meditation Verses: 15:12-14
Thought
It seems the Sadducees are promoting their philosophy. Some in Corinth have decided that Christ's resurrection does not mean that we all will rise from the dead. Some have decided that there is no resurrection for the rest of us. Paul won't have it: If there is no resurrection for us, then there is no resurrection for Jesus either! If Jesus was raised, then why wouldn't we also be raised? God is not limited. He has promised eternal life to all who believe in Him, and He will fulfill that by raising us who believe in Jesus from the dead with a body that cannot again die. So why would someone argue against the resurrection of believers? Why would they try to remove that hope? That hope is the thing that drives us to conform our ways into the likeness of Christ. If someone argued for merely a spiritual form of eternal life, then they could argue that anything done in the flesh doesn't matter, which would free us from living a righteous life; we're made perfect in Christ in our spirit, so all is done. Or, they could argue that there is no eternal life, all we have is this life, so we'd better get what we can from it while we're here. If there is no eternal life, there is no judgment of the dead. This is all there is. Again, you can find reason to live as you please rather than living to please the Lord. Paul points this out a few verses later. The denial of the resurrection is the denial of eternal life and a doorway to turning God's grace into a license for immorality. That's the only reason to deny the resurrection of the dead!
Application
The resurrection of Christ and the promise of our own resurrection is the hope of the Gospel, that the righteous in Christ will inherit a world free from sin and filled with the power and glory of God! And that life is promised to never end! Both John and Paul argue that those who have such a hope purify themselves from all unrighteousness. The promise and hope of the resurrection instruct me to deny ungodliness and live for righteousness. More than that, it gives me something to offer others, and impresses on me the responsibility to plead with and warn others of the judgment to come and the only way to survive it! If some are raised to eternal life and others to eternal judgment, how can I claim to care about people, how can I claim to possess the love of Christ if I'm not also compelled to tell others about the only hope of salvation? The hope of eternal life is not something that is just for me; to receive it for myself but seek to share it with no one else is a perversion of the love of God in Christ! That is not saving faith.