For those of you who are new guests and visitors, we are thinking these Wednesdays about the teaching of the Apostles' Creed. We have all been trying to memorize it in Latin, because there are less words in Latin than there are in English. There are only 100 words! This means that way back in the history of the Christian church, there were people who were answering the question, "Is it possible to explain the Christian gospel to somebody in 100 words or less?" And the answer they came up with is, “Yes, if the person understands Latin!” If they don't understand Latin, it takes a few more words. But this is really a remarkable summary of the Christian faith.

Many of us who are in the room today use these words probably 50 or more times (some of us perhaps 100 times, and I could imagine some of us say it more than 100 times) every single year. And yet when somebody asks us, "Could you just explain the Christian faith to me simply?" I rather suspect somehow we leave that in church and it never dawns on us. We will rush down to the local Christian bookstore and say, "Can you give me a book that will explain the Christian faith?" The man who wants to sell you books will come out with a pile this size and say, “You can have all of them for $100”! If we only meditated on the Apostles' Creed! What a marvellous little instrument it is in the hands of Christians to be able to explain the Christian faith.

We have noticed that it is really in three sections. The first deals with God the Father, the second deals with God the Son, and the third deals with the work of God the Holy Spirit. So it is a marvellous piece of teaching not only about the Christian faith, but about the greatness of God and about the marvels of being a Christian.

Is the Doctrine of Jesus’ Resurrection Important?⤒🔗

We have come today to the statement in the Apostles' Creed that we believe that our Lord Jesus Christ rose again from the dead on the third day. Now, here is a question: Can you be a Christian without believing in the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? I ask the question because I have often been given the answer. I have actually been given the answer by people far more frequently than they have asked the question! And I have known numbers of people who have said things like, "Well, I am a practising Christian, but of course" (often they will use little phrases like “of course”, which means: “I am a thinking individual; I am a reasoning individual; I am a 21^st century individual”) "I don't believe that He rose again from the dead." So the question is: Is it possible to be a Christian and not believe that Jesus rose from the dead?

(Transcription of audio file from 06:51 to 07:07, 07:10 to 07:34 and 07:50 to 08:31 omitted.)

I remember a group of young people who meant a tremendous amount to me when I was between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. Among the group of friends there was a girl in this group. And I remember she said one day, "You know, the experience of being a Christian has been so wonderful for me and it has so transformed my life that even if Jesus was not the Son of God, I would still be a Christian." I very distinctly remember thinking (as I know she now thinks), “That is incredibly muddle-headed! Because if He is not the Son of God, and therefore if He hasn't risen from the dead, this experience of Jesus that you are talking about is nonsense. There isn't a Jesus to have experience about!” I have not thought about that for more years than I would like to number, but it just came back to me.

I remember this very interesting thing that C.S. Lewis once said. He said that you are always meeting people that say, "Yes, I am a Christian. Jesus is a great teacher. But of course, I don't really believe that He was the Son of God and that He rose from the dead." Lewis said, "How muddle-headed can you get? The man who goes about teaching people and claiming to be the Son of God is either the person He claims to be, or He is on the level of the person who tells you that He is a poached egg” (paraphrased from Mere Christianity, 1952). You go and get the men in white coats and you say, “This poor man thinks He is the Son of God.”

Actually, there are probably countless people today in the world who believe that they are the son of God, and they are either leaders of some lunatic religious fringe group or they are all in psychiatric institutions! So this is the point that Lewis was making, that Christians have actually made right down through the ages: “Aut Deus, aut non bonus; aut Deus, aut non sanus”. That is Augustine in Latin. He didn't know what a poached egg was, but he was saying exactly the same thing: He is either God or He is mad. He is either God or He is not good. But as Lewis says, let's not have any more of this silly nonsense that He was a great moral teacher but He wasn't God, when all of His moral teaching is based on His claim that He was God. The man who says to you that He is the Son of God is either mad or He is bad, or He is indeed God.

(Transcription of audio file from 11:27 to 11:39 and 12:00 to 12:09 omitted.)

This is where the rubber meets the road in this question, "Is it possible really to be a Christian and not to believe in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead?" And you will notice that what Paul is giving us here in these verses is his own testimony, really. We could ask him the most important questions we could ever ask him about the resurrection, and he actually answers them in these 20 verses. So let's bring him on and ask him the questions.

Question one: Is it really important? Is it really important to the Christian faith that Jesus Christ rose from the dead? And he answers that in verse three:

For I delivered to you…

(I taught you; I preached to you)

…as of first importance what I also received…

(“I didn’t make this up”, he says).

…that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.1 Corinthians 15:3-4, RSV

In other words, the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the absolute cardinal elements of the gospel for the apostle Paul. This is very interesting, because when you think about the beginning of Jesus' life and then the end of Jesus' earthly ministry, there is a very interesting box effect. There are two ends. Remember that when we were thinking about the birth of Jesus I said that His birth was completely natural. There was absolutely nothing supernatural about the birth of Jesus. It was the conception of Jesus that was supernatural. And the interesting thing is that that was hidden away from men's prying eyes in the darkness of the womb of the virgin Mary. And it is interesting that we could also say there was nothing supernatural about what caused Jesus to die. It was completely natural. It was the way in which He was crucified. But there is something totally supernatural about His resurrection. And the interesting thing is that the resurrection also took place, as it were, away from men's prying eyes, when in the darkness of the garden tomb His heavenly Father raised Him from the dead.

And Paul is saying to us, as a witness to the original Christian faith, that this is of the very essence of the gospel. And one of the ways in which he underlies this is by the language he uses in verse two. He says in verse one, “I am going to remind you of the gospel, the good news I preached to you, by which you are being saved.” So what he is saying is, “Actually, not only is the resurrection of Jesus important to the gospel, but without the resurrection of Jesus it is not possible to be saved” (whatever that means; we will come back to that in a minute).

So is it important? It is absolutely fundamental! And if I don't understand that, then the problem is not with the fundamentals of the gospel; the problem is with my own muddle-headedness. It means I am making up my own gospel. The gospel of the Christian church depends upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So number one: The resurrection is absolutely essential.

Is the Doctrine of Jesus’ Resurrection True?←⤒🔗

Second question: But is it true? Or is Paul making it up? How does he go about answering this question? Well, he does it the only way you could answer this question: By summoning the defence witnesses. And he summons a whole series of defence witnesses. He says Simon Peter encountered the risen Christ. The apostles (the “twelve”) encountered the risen Christ. James (probably James the Lord's brother in this instance) encountered the risen Christ. And we know from the Gospels that there were others who encountered the risen Christ. But there are two categories in this list that he gives to us here that I think are particularly significant.

Firstly, he says, there was an occasion in which the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, met with 500 of the brethren (500 Christians all at once), “most of whom are still alive” (1 Corinthians 15:6). Now, why would that little phrase “most of whom are still alive” be relevant? Well, if somebody came up to me after lunch and said to me, "Do you remember a man [called so-and-so]?” I would say, “Of course I remember him…but he is still alive! You can go and speak to him yourself. You don't need to ask these questions of me. You can go and speak to him yourself." Paul is just throwing out this little challenge to his contemporaries. [He is saying], “There were 500 of them. You just go and ask them, and what you will find is this consistent testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

And then he adds one individual who belongs to a category all on his own. He says, "Last of all…he appeared also to me" (1 Corinthians 15:8). And he uses a very interesting description of himself: "as to one untimely born". He is kind of saying, "I seemed to arrive (from one point of view) in the Christian church at the most inconvenient time in my life and the most inconvenient time in the church's life. But you just need to think about me, and that should be powerful persuasion to you that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead."

(Transcription of audio file from 18:57 to 19:18 omitted.)

There was a very famous and extraordinarily brilliant Scotsman in the 18^th century by the name of David Hume. David Hume did more to destroy the Christian faith in the Western world than probably any other man of his period. David Hume argued against miracles like the miracle of the resurrection. And one of the ways he argued against miracles was really to say this: Really to believe in a miracle, you have to believe that it would take a greater miracle not to believe it. In other words, a miracle is such an amazing thing, so unusual, so beyond our experience, that in order to believe in it, it would take a greater miracle for you not to believe in it. Now, Paul writes here as though he knew exactly what David Hume was saying. And he is really saying, “Here is the miracle: I am the miracle. It would take a greater miracle for me not to believe in the resurrection of Christ than the miracle of the resurrection of Christ and the way that has impacted my life.”

How was that so miraculous? For a couple of reasons. First of all, because it was so completely and totally unexpected to this man whose heart was so hostile to Jesus. And second, because of the way in which it so gloriously transformed his life. If you would ask Paul, “What is the explanation for what you have become?” his answer would be, "Jesus Christ is risen from the grave." He has encountered Jesus, and he knows Him. And he is, as it were, to himself the single most miraculous evidence of the truth of the resurrection. So is it important? It is fundamental. Is it true? The apostle is saying it is rooted in history and it carries with it undeniable testimony.

What if We Don’t Believe in Jesus’ Resurrection?←⤒🔗

Then there is a third question. The third question is this: What would we lose if we didn't believe in the resurrection? You might think, “All we would lose is the resurrection. We would still have the teaching of Jesus.” No, you wouldn't. Because woven into that teaching is His teaching on the resurrection. But you would lose even more than that, Paul says. He says in these verses, “If the resurrection is not true, then we are liars.” That is what he is saying. “If the resurrection is not true, we are liars. We are guilty of bearing false witness.” If the resurrection is not true, I am certainly one of the greatest liars in this room, and I have spend most of my life propagating a falsehood. So you see, there is everything to lose if this isn't true.

And he says [then] our faith isn't worth tuppence. Now, I know there are many people who say, "The resurrection is a matter of speculation. We can be Christians apart from the resurrection." Paul is saying, “No, you can't.” He is saying that apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, actually what you are doing is standing on sand that is sinking, because it has no solid foundation whatsoever. You are living on the basis of a lie that was promulgated. And actually, what Paul then goes on to say is, “We are of all men most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19b). Why would he be pitied apart from the resurrection? He would just need to take the shirt off his back for you to understand why he should be pitied – he had lashings engraved in his back. He had forfeited everything because he believed in the resurrection of Christ. If there were no resurrection, then the man was just a plain fool.

(Transcription of audio file from 24:31 to 25:35 omitted.)

I cannot remember wanting to be anything else than a minister of the gospel. Think of the number of hours you have been in church. Think about the amount of money you have given away. Think about what you have said to people. Think about the words you have sung. Paul is saying that if the resurrection isn't true, we have been behaving like hardboiled eggs! Because at the very heart of our faith, what pulsates through our faith is that He is alive and that He is with us. And all the blessings that come to us make the sacrifices of living for Jesus Christ at all different kind of levels of our lives all seem so insignificant by comparison. As the great Samuel Rutherford, a 17^th century Scotsman, once said: When you grasp the message of the gospel, it is as much of a burden to you as wings are to a bird. It enables you to fly! So Paul is saying that this is not a small matter. Everything depends on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Because apart from it, our faith is absolutely futile.

So is it important? Yes. There is the centrality of the resurrection. Is it true? Yes. There is the historicity of the resurrection. Do we lose anything? Yes. There is the futility of our Christian faith apart from the resurrection.

Does Jesus’ Resurrection Make Any Difference?←⤒🔗

(Transcription of audio file from 27:17 to 28:18 omitted.)

And the fourth question for Paul: Does it really make any difference? Among the difference it makes, he says, is that when Christ rose, He rose as the first fruits. What was the first fruits? The first fruits are the first part of the harvest that tells you the harvest has already begun and the final fruits are guaranteed. Remember how the apostle Peter (Cephas, as he refers to him here) put it: “We have been born anew to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3b). And he is really saying that already we begin to share in the resurrection, life and power of the Lord Jesus, because as He is with us, He does for us individually and spiritually what He once did for Lazarus literally and physically. He comes to us and He says, "Lazarus, come forth." He says, “Sinclair, come forth. Come forth into newness of life, and know me in my risen power!" And it is because of His resurrection as the first fruits that we have this great confidence that death has been done a death blow in Him. And He has promised that He will therefore one day do death a death blow in us, and raise us up from the dust of the earth and give us resurrection bodies like our own.

But notice something that I didn't point out earlier on. He says, "If Christ has not been raised…you are still in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17). And now we see what he was talking about in the beginning. He said we need the resurrection of Christ in order to be saved (verse 2), because if we don't have the resurrection of Christ, then we are still in our sins. What does he mean here? Let me use an illustration. Remember how there was a day in the year in the Old Testament calendar when the high priest, after very careful preparation, would take his sacrifice right into the holiest place of all. As he moved through those areas of the temple that brought him increasingly into the presence of God, his garments had little bells on them. The people who were on the outside weren't allowed into the dark place where the priest was going to sacrifice on their behalf and ask for the forgiveness of sins. So as he moved around, the people could hear that he was still alive. They would still have a hope that God hadn't struck him dead and said, "I am not having any sacrifice for their sins. I am finished with them." And many of them knew that was what they deserved.

And there in a secret place, he would make the sacrifice. He would pour the blood on the altar. And then he would come out again, and he would raise his hands in what we know as the Aaronic benediction (the benediction of Aaron): “The LORD bless you and keep you. The LORD make His face shine upon you. The LORD lift up the light of His countenance upon you and be gracious to you.” The LORD be your shalom. And it was a word that God had accepted the sacrifice that had been made. Because the sacrifice of the high priest – who was as good as dead in the presence of God, because he really carried the sins of the people in symbolic fashion – had been accepted. And their sins could be pronounced as forgiven.

That is what the resurrection is, actually. The disciples must have had some inkling that Jesus had come to make a sacrifice, and the only sacrificial system they knew was this sacrificial system. And now for three days they were on tenterhooks and deeply depressed, because they could hear no bells and they assumed that He was dead. And then on the third day He rose again. Remember what His first word to them was, when He appeared in the room on Easter Sunday evening (this is really true!): His first word was "Shalom.” Peace. “The sacrifice has been accepted. As you trust me, your sins are forgiven. I have come to bring you new life." But if He is not risen from the dead (and this gets us back to our original question), none of that is true, and we are left to deal with God with our sins for ourselves.

I believe in the resurrection from the dead. What a great, great blessing it is! Not only to believe it is true, but to know Him [who], because of His resurrection, has become our Saviour and our Friend.