Pastor’s Thoughts – 04-05-2026

What is the most important, personal reality for any living person? All of us have issues, problems, and difficult circumstances, but death is our most important and inevitable coming reality. This answer should be obvious to anyone because every person has this as an incurable problem. Our problem becomes noticeable as we age. Our bodies slow down displaying our nearing end. But death is no respecter of persons. It occurs to the very young and to people of every age. The Bible tells us that death is the inevitable result of sin, and because we are sinners there are no exceptions. In order to cope with death many people refuse to speak of it, or live as if they will never die, but we know it is a surer reality than anything else in this life. Others work hard to delay death, but death cannot be defeated by anything that anyone can do or invent.

There is one exception to our inevitable death, and that is related to our relationship to God through Jesus Christ. The Bible tells us that our Lord will return at some future time, and He will take those living that belong to Him to glory, and these will never have the experience of physical death. This is presented to us as an imminent hope, for we do not know the time of Christ’s coming. Regardless of whether we are blessed to be one of the few exceptions or whether we die physically, the real issue, the exclusive answer that defeats death is Jesus Christ and what He has done by overcoming the outcome of death. We are currently celebrating and remembering the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord. He was given to us by the Father Himself that He might be our substitute and defeat death in our place. It is not a fairy tale, but a more sure reality than death. There are many books outlining serious and comprehensive arguments verifying the Gospel message of His resurrection, and indeed all efforts to disprove it have been construed, but pale as ridiculous against the massive evidence of its reality. The Bible is the infallible proof of Him who was promised from the beginning that Christ came and defeated death just as the Bible said He would.

Paul makes one of the many proof texts for the resurrection of Christ in the fifteenth chapter of His first letter to the Corinthians. His answers are given in three obvious categories: the truth of Scripture, the many accounts from eyewitnesses, and the reality of changed lives. He then launches into a related rebuke to anyone having doubts not only of our Lord’s resurrection, but of the resurrection of all who love Him. Paul knows the resurrection is at the heart of the Christian faith and is no small matter. It is not up for discussion or debate. It is not a take it or leave it issue. To be a Christian is to believe or better said to know the resurrection of Jesus Christ occurred, and that He is a living Lord and Savior.

Paul wastes no time arguing with those who have no claim or concern to believe there is a God, but instead he brings reason into the realm of those who say they belong to Christ’s church, but waver about the doctrine of the resurrection of the saints. He begins by declaring that the Word of God itself promises there will be a resurrection. Most of these fully accepted the resurrection of Jesus. So, building from His resurrection Paul says, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised” (1 Cor. 15:13). Then he adds, “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. 15:14). He is declaring to them that if you doubt a physical resurrection, you are not part of Christ’s Church. He is the God of resurrection. There have been groups claiming the name Christian believing not in a physical resurrection, but an immaterial resurrection of the spirit and soul. This thinking and its confusion continue today, so that instead of studying the Word that teaches a bodily resurrection (as was Christ’s), they have generated a different doctrine that is not the doctrine of the Bible. For the doctrine of the physical resurrection of the body is taught from the beginning, starting with the oldest book of the Bible. “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will take His stand upon the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).

By calling Christ, “the first fruits of them who are asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), Paul completes any argument for the physical resurrection of all who belong to God through Christ. John says, “When He appears, we will be like Him” (1 John 3:2). The fact that God is carrying out His purposeful plan requires the necessity of the resurrection. And why is the resurrection necessary? It is because God is reversing the effects of the curse just as He promised. The key to this reversal is the defeat of death. Death is the ultimate enemy from the curse. Christ brought a complete defeat of death as shown by His resurrection. His promise is to do the same for all who put their confidence in Him. Our faith in Christ includes the resurrection of our bodies. If this is missing, our faith is not in the Christ of Scripture and is without substance. For if our Lord did not rise from death into a glorified body then our restoration is not possible. But Christianity is about a real restoration by the only One capable of such, our God. We will live with God for eternity in a new glorified body that will never age, never be ill, and never die. I hope we all see clearly that the resurrection of our Lord means everything. Not only is He living, but because He lives, He is the restoring life changing Christ, and He is coming to rule eternally. There is no better news than this! Paul says at the close of all his great discussion on the resurrection found in 1 Corinthians 15, “Therefore my beloved brethren, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Cor. 15:58). Father, thank You for the resurrection of Jesus Christ!