The Victory through Our Lord Jesus Christ
(The Beauty of the Resurrected Life)
1 Corinthians 15:1-58
Key Verses 15:57,58
“But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
In this world there are many things that seem beautiful but in essence are so ugly that they should not be described as beautiful at all. But not so with the beauty of the resurrected life, as one dictionary defines beauty as a “pleasing quality associated with harmony and color, excellence of craftsmanship, truthful, original, a quality or feature that is most effective." Based on this chapter, let us tap into the beauty of the resurrected life, in two ways:
First, the resurrected life is beautiful because it is free from sin.
Look at verses 1-4. "Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures..."
Notice the expression, "Christ died for our sins." Here "our sins" refers to my sins, your sins, the sins of the Apostle Paul, the sins of the Corinthian brothers and sisters, the sins of the Jews and the sins of the Gentiles, and the sins of all peoples on earth in all generations.
Christ is the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. Jesus is perfectly pure. He who is without sin died for the sins of many that those who believe in Him would no longer be under the rule of the power of sin. The net effect of Christ dying for our sins is that for those who believe in Jesus and live by his power and wisdom through the Spirit from God, sin no longer has any hold on them.
Sin makes man ugly, first in his spirit, then in his mind and soul and body. As it makes one's heart corrupt, it eventually destroys man's life inside out. The ugliness spreads out beyond the bounds of his personal life. It starts destroying relationships and environments. It makes living conditions unlivable; it turns an otherwise beautiful environment into a living hell.
The Corinthians were no exception to this. Being a port city, Corinth served as the center of moral corruption with her influence affecting people and society even to the 21st century. At the heart of the city’s center was maintained the Temple of Aphrodite which housed 1,000 prostitutes. The worship of Aphrodite (goddess of love) fostered open, unbridled, sexual immorality in the name of religion. Their reputation was so bad that the Greeks coined the word Corinth to mean illicit sex. People affected by the morally liberal society made their ways into the church of Corinth. They turned an otherwise beautiful fellowship in the Lord into an ugly place as ugly as a pig farm. The church fellowship began to manifest all sorts of ugliness: divisions among the church members, sexually immoral relationships mushrooming, lawsuits among believers, abuse of gifts, abuse of the Lord's Supper, laxity in discipline and so on.
The situation is no different in our generation, for according to one grand-mother, nowadays even a two year old is addicted to the Internet. So she let her grand-daughter sit down and do a puzzle.
But thank God. Christ died for the sins of the world. Jesus sacrificed himself for the sins of the world. He did it to put an end to the life of sin. In Jesus we have a complete solution to the problem of sin. In Jesus we have his sin-forgiving love. In Jesus we can forgive others of their sins. In Jesus we have all the means to keep ourselves free from the power of sin and death.
In Jesus we have the Spirit who enables us to live a resurrected life. In Jesus we are empowered to practice Christ's self-less love for others. As we practice Christ's love through the Spirit of His love and power, the Lord prepares for us a perfect unity of love. As we forgive and build the unity of love, we can create a beautiful environment where we can learn from one another and grow up to God's greatness. In Jesus we can build sound relationships at home and in church fellowships.
Spiritual, sound, saintly relationships work like a fresh body of water where schools of fish can prosper. When we nurture and expand healthy human relationships in the Lord, the Lord breeds for us the hope to grow our children, grant children, great grand children so they would grow strong and sound. In this way the Lord blesses us to build a bright future for us living in this generation and for the children living in the generations to come. As we keep producing spiritual children growing up in a God-fearing, God-loving environment, through them God will build our family, society, and nation strong and powerful.
Second, the resurrected life is beautiful because it gives us blessed work to do.
We can divide this chapter into two parts, that is, verses 1-4 constitute the first part which deals with the life that is without sin, and verses 5-58 that call us to live the life of mission. We already saw the life that is free of sin.
In the second part we see the Risen Jesus giving his servants the blessed mission. In verses 5-7 the Risen Jesus showed his resurrected body to his disciples (particularly Peter and James) so they would live as witnesses to the Jews. In verses 8-9 Jesus commissioned the Apostle Paul to live as a witness to the Gentiles.
The point of the mission is to witness about Jesus’ death and resurrection. We call this mission a blessed one. In what respect is this mission blessed? We can call it a blessed mission because the message itself is a blessed one. Why is this message such a blessed one? There are four fundamental reasons:
Thanks to Jesus’ resurrection hedonism lost its basis (12-19). Because Jesus rose again no one can say, “There is no such a thing as a dead person coming back to life.” Hedonism is based on the idea that once man dies, that is it. Their life-script is, “Let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die.” But since Jesus rose again the foundation of hedonism can no longer sustain itself. Thanks and praise be to the Lord for through the resurrection of the Lord he set us free from the life of meaningless exercises.
The picture of the perfected kingdom of God came to light for everyone to see (20-28). In verses 20-28 the Apostle Paul gives us a tunnel vision on how the power of Jesus’ resurrection will continue, until he perfects God’s plan for the perfected kingdom. When God’s perfected kingdom comes here on earth human history will come to an end. However we do not know exactly when the end of human history will come. But we know the order of the critical events that must take place before the end comes. What is the order? The order is this: Jesus the firstfruits rose again; then when Jesus comes again, all who belong to him will rise; in the meantime Jesus will do a clean up. He will get rid of all powers, authorities, and forces that are hostile to God and God’s people; and then Jesus will turn the perfected kingdom over to God, so that God would be all in all. This vision provides us with the reason to be faithful to the Lord to the end.
Thanks to this hope and vision all believers can brave hardships and difficulties for the sake of the Lord (29-34).
We have the hope to receive a resurrected body for each of us (35-57). What will the resurrected body be like? Essentially, a resurrected body will be modeled after that of Jesus’ risen body. It is imperishable, free of the possibility for deterioration. It is immortal and glorious. It is directly from God not from the dust of the earth. It is a system which is designed to be more than a living being but a life-giving spirit. A living being is dependant upon an external source for life. A life-giving spirit is self-sufficient and so independent of any external resource.
In view of the above the Apostle Paul exhorts in verse 58, “Therefore my dear brothers, stand firm, and let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
This exhortation is the conclusion which Paul had in mind from the outset. It is to issue this exhortation that Paul wrote such a long epistle. So let us stop for a moment and think about the exhortation: “Therefore my dear brothers, stand firm, and let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.”
What does the work of the Lord mean? Here the work of the Lord means to have and live by faith in Jesus Christ (cf. John 6:29). In many of his epistles, especially in the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul emphasizes the importance of faith such as saying, “The righteous will live by faith from first to last.” Towards the end of his life Paul said, “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2Ti 4:7). This statement indicates that the great missionary work Paul accomplished was the product of his faith in the Lord.
Again faith is faith in the Lord. The call for us then is the call to work in and through Jesus Christ through reliance upon his power.
In reality however working with someone else is not easy. It requires you to pay close attention to your partner. In the first place in order for two person to work “together” the two persons musts be on the same page. I have been married to my wife for over thirty years. But on a number occasions we were not on the same page, so we ended up greatly disappointing each other. Spiritually we are married to Jesus Christ. He is the Lord and Savior.
To have the Lord Jesus as a work partner is a tremendous blessing. But at the same time it involves a lot of challenges. For example, in order for us to work with the Lord, or put it another way, in order for the Lord to be able to work with us seamlessly, on our part, we need to constantly deny ourselves - our own ideas, thoughts, plans, and so on, and struggle to be in tune with the Lord. And we need to be flexible enough to give up our own ideas and plans, if we sense that the Lord does not approve of what we have in mind.
Practically in order for us to keep in step with the Lord, we need to remain prayerful so that we would know what the Lord has in mind or where the Lord is going.
We also need to keep meditating on His word, knowing that the Bible is God’s final expression of his ideas, thoughts, plans, will, and purpose for us – the purpose that is good, pleasing, and perfect. The title of today’s daily bread message is the case in point: the Apostle Peter followed Jesus closely. But he did not know God’s will for him, for Jesus, and for everyone. He thought that he had a better idea. But Jesus said, “No more of this.” Peter and Jesus were not on the same page. Here Peter could be anyone – a pastor, a missionary, a shepherd, an evangelist. The point is physically you can stay close to Jesus, and still in your thought world you may entertain human thoughts, not God’s, so you end up doing that which is against God. And one of the best ways to cut human thoughts and adopt God’s thoughts in our life is to do the daily bread deeply. Lately I neglected doing daily bread myself. This morning my wife came back from the daily bread meeting saying, “Nowadays no one comes to the morning devotion. This morning, however, Dr. David Min came and shared his testimony. I don’t know why so many neglect doing the daily bread.” And I was speechless. Turn to your neighbor and ask, “Did you to do the daily bread this morning?” Then say to your neighbor, “I encourage you to do the daily bread seven days a week.” Say once again “Seven days a week.”
But there is one thing more that must be said: that is, each and every day, no matter what happens to our life we always must live by faith in the Lord. Why? It is because the Lord works in and through those who put absolute trust in Him, believing that the Lord exists and rewards those who live by faith in Him. This is a particularly challenging task for a man with a lot of human zeal, intelligence, and wisdom. Didn’t the Apostle Paul say that human wisdom and human strength can be in the way of the Holy Spirit working in us?
The Apostle Paul was a case in point. The Apostle Paul is known for his great human zeal, intelligence, and wisdom. But in his human zeal he ended up persecuting the church of Jesus. But God had mercy on him. On his way to Damascus the Risen Jesus caught him and gave him some training. [He saw the bright light of the Resurrected Jesus, collapsed and became blind for a while.] Since that time Paul learned what it is to deny himself daily, take up the cross and follow Jesus. Speaking of his personal struggles for self-denial, taking up his cross and following Jesus, Paul says in verse 31, “I die every day, brothers, I mean it.” So we need to die every day. As we do this, the Lord will start working in and through us as much as he finds it necessary. Then the Lord will enable us to experience the victory through our Lord Jesus daily.
In conclusion, we learned that the resurrected life is beautiful for it is free from sin, and it gives us the blessed mission to serve, that is, to live as a witness of Jesus Christ. The life that is free of sin and the life that serves the Lord make our life altogether beautiful.
One word: Victory through Jesus Christ
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