If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
1 Corinthians 15:19
Jesus affirms again and again the truth of the resurrection of the dead. And in His rising from the dead He places this doctrine as central and to who He is and what it will look like in the hereafter.
Many Christians act as if the resurrection and the hereafter isn’t really a thing. Or they just play lip-service and don’t take it to heart.
Our text clearly tells us that “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.” It says we are “false witnesses of God” if there’s no resurrection. It says if Christ has not been raised our “faith is empty” and we “are still in [our] sins.” That if Christ has not been raised then we are to be pitied as ones having no hope.
Those words are quite an endorsement of both the resurrection and its importance both in this life and in that to come.
Yet so many times Christians live as if this isn’t either true, important, or applicable to life. They live like there is no hope. They cling onto this life because they are unsure of what is to come. They fear the hereafter because they don’t really take to heart that there is one. But “Christ has been raised from the dead” and that is what gives us hope. Not just hope here, hope for what is to come. All that is to come. That there is a time to come. That what happens here is not the end of us. It is not the end of life. It is the beginning of new life. New creation. Full hope. All this because Christ has been raised from the dead is at the right hand of the father and goes and prepares a place for us that He might bring us to be where He is. Forever. With new life. With resurrected life. With full hope. With glorified bodies. Jesus came to suffer, to die, and to rise so that we would rise. He came to conquer death so that death wouldn’t be the end for us. We don’t know what our new, glorified, resurrected bodies will be like, but we know that it will be beautiful, incorruptible, perfect. We know that it will be in Him and be forever. And that’s a hope that we can take to the grave – and beyond. That’s something worth living for and not fearing dying for. Because that’s not permanent. Our time with God forever in resurrection is.
“Thank you, Lord, for conquering death and giving us resurrected hope forever. Help us to live in this life in that resurrected hope now because we have that to come. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
Scriptures
- 1 Corinthians 15:12-20
- Psalm 1
