Reading: 1 Corinthians 15-16, Psalm 148

Paul’s great chapter on love was the summation of his argument. Now he turns to the thing that the people of God really should be looking at. Stop looking for your rights, and start doing what is right, because Jesus rose from the dead. Does that seem like an odd leap? It might seem to be on the surface, but it really is not. Paul has identified one of the problems in the Corinthian’s thinking that has lead them to live a libertine lifestyle. They have turned away from one of the core messages of the gospel- life in the name of Jesus.

This is hardly the only time this will come up in the history of the Church. The idea of physical resurrection from death has been confounding people since day one. It is not, as some have said, the inability of ancient people to apply reason that accounts for their belief that Jesus got up from the dead. Ancient people found resurrection every bit as awkward as we do in the modern world. We do not observe dead people ceasing to be dead. The Scriptures say they do. What are we going to believe?

Paul accuses the Corinthians of making an accommodation with their own reason. They just cannot accept that dying is a temporary state. That being the case, they have turned to libertine lives with little concern for the consequences. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If there is no resurrection of the dead and no afterlife, one may as well do whatever makes oneself as happy as possible in the moment. Sound familiar? There really is nothing new under the sun. From the skeptic of Ecclesiastes through the church in Corinth and right up to the present day, this dangerous idea that there is no accountability has been tempting humans to excesses in sex, food, and money. It all roots back to the inability to accept that people rise from the dead.

But there is a flip side to this. If Jesus is the raised from the dead, and we are to join him in being raised from the dead, there is accountability for everything. We have circled back to the subject of judgment. There is one judge. He will judge. Everything matters and will be revealed.

Paul is not writing to scare his audience, though. He is trying to encourage them. I think he got the read on the Corinthians, that what often motivates people to reject resurrection and do whatever makes them happy in the moment is that they fail to live righteously when they try. We have seen Paul address this problem in himself in the letter to the Romans- For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. But Paul wants the Corinthians to understand that there is hope beyond what they have experienced. He believes that the resurrection is more than just a restoration of what humans were before they died. Neither is it a subtraction of what is bad about humans. It is an addition of something more. The way the Scriptures talk about resurrection bear similarities to the way we talk about putting on clothes. It is an addition to our person, not a subtraction from it. Paul wants the Corinthians to have hope in that addition. Yes, it is imperishable. Indestructible. Immortal. But more than that, it is a new kind of being alive and a new way of being human. Paul tells the Corinthians that the resurrection makes everything matter, but it also makes all things new. Paul quotes the powerful Psalm: Death is swallowed up in victory! O death, where is your victory? O Death, where is your sting?

Paul wraps up his first letter to the Corinthians with some personal greeting and an admonition to pay attention to trustworthy people- Apollos, Timothy, the household of Stephanas- these are people that have gained authority through acts of service. Paul wants his audience to pay attention to such people, not the impressive orators of their city. Unfortunately, as we shall see in the second letter to the Corinthians, this advice was not heeded terribly well.