RECONCILIATION AND FAILURE OF THE LAW105

`Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of

the dead?'

We have here an argumentum ex absurdo. The apostle had established upon indubitable evidence and the

testimony of Scripture that `Christ rose again the third day'. How therefore could anyone say, `There is no

resurrection of the dead', for if resurrection is proved to have taken place once it may take place again.

`If the species be conceded, how is it that some among you deny the genus?' (Alford in loco).

Verse 13 takes up the other position and shows its disastrous results:

`But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen'.

If it be absurd, and unphilosophical to give credence to the idea that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, it

renders also faith in the resurrection of Christ absurd and vain too. Pursuing this aspect, the apostle with relentless

logic shows that they who deny the doctrine of the resurrection deny the whole scheme of salvation. The apostle's

preaching would be vain. The word literally means `empty'. Their proclamation would be like sounding brass or

tinkling cymbals. So also the faith of those who had put their trust in the Christ they had preached. Then for a

moment the apostle pauses to consider the position in which this denial placed the apostles themselves - men who

had hazarded their lives for the truth they believed; men who had all to lose and nothing to gain in this life by their

testimony - these must be branded as false witnesses of God, if Christ rose not from the dead, for they declared that

God had raised Him from the dead as the very basis of their evangel.

Notice further the way in which the impersonal doctrine of the resurrection is used interchangeably with the

historic fact of the resurrection of Christ. He does not say, `Whom He raised not up, if so be that Christ rose not',

but `Whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not', and that this is the thought verses 16 and 17 show:

`For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is in vain; ye are yet in

your sins'.

Surely the apostle perceives and would have us see that Christ took no empty title when He called Himself, `The

Son of man'. His resurrection is the pledge, not merely of the resurrection of some, but of `the dead'. We shall see

that this thought lies here when we come to the central passages which speak of Adam. The apostle's final exposure

is given in verse 18:

`Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished'.

Words could not more strongly plead for the absolute necessity of the resurrection. The apostle had no place in

his teaching for `a never dying soul'; immortality was a part of his gospel, but it did not pertain to the human soul by

nature, it was found only in Christ. This gift of immortality, however, has not yet been given to any believer.

Further on in this chapter he shows that this mortal puts on immortality at the time of the resurrection. With one

sweep the apostle disposes of the idea of a conscious intermediate state, and that at death the believer passes straight

away to heaven or to paradise. If there be no resurrection, and if Christ be not raised, there is not even a state of

hopeless despair or unclothed waiting, but all will have perished. John 3:16, so often quoted and so little studied,

places perishing as an alternative to everlasting life. In 1 Thessalonians 4, when the apostle would comfort the

mourners; he does not adopt the language of our hymn books or of poets, and say to the sorrowing ones that their

departed friends were then with the Lord, therefore rejoice; what he does say is, that when the Lord comes all will be

raised and reunited, `Wherefore comfort one another with these words'. If we do not feel that our all hinges upon

the fact of Christ's resurrection and our own, then we have not the same faith as the apostle who penned

1 Corinthians 15:18.

One verse only now intervenes between this long argument and the triumphant assertion of positive truth. That

verse just pauses to reflect upon the hopeless state of the Christian in this life:

`If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable' (15:19).

Comment upon such a statement is unnecessary. All who have sought to live godly in Christ Jesus have realized

that it involves in some degree the loss of this life and its advantages.