He was the one, was He not, that said at the grave of His friend: 'I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die'. It was He that claimed that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and of the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. The resurrection is central to the Christian gospel, the resurrection is central to all the facets of Christian doctrine, and of course we need go no further than the words we have already heard tonight, and the words we read in the gospel of our Lord Jesus, to see that His bodily resurrection was central to His own claims. The resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns, and without which none of the other truths would much matter'. ![]() One famous Bible teacher and scholar has put the importance of the resurrection down to this fact: 'Just as the heart pumps life-giving blood to every part of the body, so the truth of the resurrection gives life to every other area of the gospel truth. That is the reason why Paul starts his argument by using the resurrection of the Lord Jesus as an example as to how and why we one day will be resurrected too. They were not doubting the Lord's resurrection, they were doubting their own resurrection in a day that was yet to be. I do not believe that they had imbibed this false doctrine to such an extent that they thought that the Lord Jesus had never been resurrected. Now what I do want to say before we go on any further is that I believe that the Corinthian believers in Corinth believed that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead. ![]() If Christ did not come back to life there is no salvation from sin, there is no eternal life for any of us to look forward to. As we read this passage we have to read between lines a little to think that probably there were false teachers coming into the church and teaching this that we would not rise again from the dead bodily in a day yet to be. There was evolving a sceptical attitude towards the Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. They weren't sure what that was, but one thing we do know is that when we look into the Corinthian church the influence of those Greek philosophies was beginning to be seen. In that famous chapter 17 and verse 32, we read that some mocked him and others said: 'We will hear thee again of this matter', because most of the Greeks of that day believed what their philosophers taught: that the body was a prison to the human being, that the human spirit was like a bird caught up in a cage, and therefore death could only be seen as the release of that bird into a paradise. If you remember, when the apostle Paul was in the Greek city of Athens, he preached on the resurrection. Indeed there was a Jewish sect called the Sadducees who did not believe in the bodily resurrection, either of the Lord Jesus or of human beings of any kind - as the little quip goes: 'That's why they were sad, you see'.because they didn't believe in the resurrection. That was the belief of the Greek philosophers of Paul's day. In Paul the apostle's day there used to be a motto that hung in the city of Athens that read like this: 'Once a man dies and the earth drinks up his blood, there is no resurrection'. Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed". But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. After that, he was seen of James then of all the apostles. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. ![]() Verse 1: "Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. The resurrection is central to the Christian gospel, the resurrection is central to all the facets of Christian doctrine.
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