Series: The Resurrection of the Dead (1 Corinthians 15)

The Hope of Final Victory

1 Cor. 15.50-58

This is the final part and the crescendo of Paul’s argument about the resurrection of the dead. Some of the Corinthians did not believe in the resurrection of the body. But Paul begins by reminding them that the Gospel was preached to them that Christ rose from the dead. He is the first-fruits from the dead.

If Christ was not raised then the whole of the Christian faith amounts to nothing. But Christians have hope in Christ that He will come to put away death forever and raise all the dead. If there is no hope of the resurrection then there is no motivation to live for Christ now.

The Corinthians may have thought that Paul was teaching that the resurrection body would be just like our mortal bodies. But Paul clarified that the resurrection body will be of a different kind or a different order from the bodies we now have. Our bodies now are subject to death, which is the legacy of all of Adam’s children. But our new bodies will be like Christ’s glorified and immortal body.

We cannot enter into the Kingdom of God, or the New Creation, with these mortal bodies. We must be changed. The final victory will come only when the saints put on their new, immortal bodies and death itself becomes obsolete. This is the final stage of our salvation for which we are waiting in eager anticipation. Until then we live in hope knowing that our lives here are not in vain but are leading to a glorious revelation when Jesus comes again.

The difficulty with Paul’s argument is that it is all based on events that are still in the future. We tend to become wrapped up in life here and now and the future looks dark and unknown. But some things about the future are known, at least to faith.

Hope is faith looking forward into the future. What does faith see when looking forward? It sees this final victory over our greatest enemy, which is death. We have to have hope in order to live properly in this world of sin and death. If we have no hope then we will be swept away by the world and its passions and lust and will give in to despair. We live in a generation that is quickly giving up all hope. Many people wonder why they should go on living, and more and more are choosing either to dull their senses with some kind of artificial escape from reality, or perhaps to end their own lives in a final act of despair and desperation.

As we consider this passage and the hope of final victory, we must not only think about the future but must ask what this hope in the future does to us now and how it helps us live today. Because this was Paul’s purpose: to give Christians encouragement in the present by giving hope for the future.

Let’s begin by attempting to define the nature of Christian hope. Hope is one of those things that the world has managed to make ambiguous. Language often hides meaning rather than making it clear. When we use the word “hope” in common speech we usually mean something we are wishing for. We hope that we can someday purchase a particular home or have a certain career. These wishes may never come true. At least with some of these wishes there are concrete steps we could take to make it happen. We can save money for a down-payment on that home or go to school to have a career. But we still might not reach our ideal situation. But there are other things we wish for that we have no control over whatsoever. We might wish that no one in our immediate family gets sick and dies. But we know there is nothing we could do to stop this possibility. Even a simply thing like wishing for a sunny day so we can enjoy an outing is out of our control. We hope it won’t rain, we wish for the perfect weather pattern, but we know we have absolutely no control over the weather! Christian hope is not analogous to either of these examples.

The things we are hoping for are not what we can make happen. In fact, the coming of the Kingdom of God does not depend on any of our work at all! Jesus rose from the dead without our help and He will come again when He is ready apart from anything we might have to say about it. But there are some people who say that Christians are just wishful thinkers. We are just starry-eyed dreamers who want to escape from the unpleasant realities of this world and so we have created our own little fairy-tale world to help us feel better. That’s why Karl Marx famously said that religion is the opiate of the people. Instead of working to create change and a better world now, we just accept the suffering of this present world because we believe a better world is coming.

How can we respond to this criticism? Well, let’s use Marxism as an example. Is Marxism a reality or is it also just wishful thinking? Anyone who knows anything about history and politics knows that the vision of Marx and his followers has never become a reality. In fact, it has failed miserably in the real world. But is the Christian hope of a New Creation like the wishful thinking of a failed ideology? Christianity is NOT an ideology. This Gospel did not come from man but from heaven. And we are not working toward a better world, like all the rest of the political and social ideologies. We are WAITING for the New Creation to come in when God is done with His purpose. So our hope is in God, not in the progress of mankind, and not even in the progress of the Church and its mission in the world.

So when Christians speak about the hope that we have we are not saying that we wish that the world would accept our ideology so that a new and better age can be ushered in. We are waiting for no utopia on earth. We are waiting for something from Heaven. Actually, we are waiting for SOMEONE from heaven who will usher in the eternal kingdom of God. There is something very concrete about Christian hope because it is anchored in a person and not in an ideology.

So, what is Christian hope, exactly? Hope has to do with looking forward or anticipating some future event. Hope is closely related to faith. We have hope because we have faith in God and His promises. We believe God, that is, we believe that His word is trustworthy.

So when God makes a promise about a future that He will bring about, we believe God is not lying and we have hope that God will bring these things to pass in His time and in His way. This is the very thing that Abraham and Sarah had to do when God promised them a son. And they had to believe in God’s promised future even though what God promised was impossible to the flesh since they were too old to have children. God’s promises are always a challenge to the abilities of the flesh. Whatever God promises to do will take God’s power to accomplish, and that is certainly true of the final victory over death and the resurrection of the dead.

What could we possibly do to defeat death and raise the dead? We have to trust God to make that happen. Because we believe God and we trust His promises we have the hope of the resurrection. So hope is faith looking forward. We can look back and see how God has made promises and kept those promises. We know that God cannot lie. God is consistent and does not change (See Heb. 6.13-20). So our hope is based on the veracity of God’s word and the immutability of God’s character and purpose.

Hope is something positive. I could believe that something is something is coming in the future that is very bad. That is not hope that is fear and dread. Hope is a positive expectation that something will change for the better. A person who is sick, for example, has the hope of one day getting better. Someone who is poor may have hope that they will have more money eventually.

Hope means that I have a reasonable expectation that my situation will improve. Now the key word here is the word “reasonable” because there are some hopes that really do not have their foundation in reality. Hopes can be disappointed, or we can have what is called a “false hope.” A false hope is a hope that is unreasonably founded.

I may have a false hope that is based on nothing but a lie. There would be no good reason for me to base my hopes on a lie and in the end I will be disappointed. Now this happens in real life all the time! People believe in all kinds of things and build their hopes on things that turn out to be false.
Some people believe that the Christian faith is a lie and that Christians are placing their hopes in something that will ultimately disappoint. Paul has already made the point that Christianity really is a false hope IF Christ did not rise from the dead. If Christ did not rise then the Gospel is a lie and there is nothing on which to place our hopes for the future. But if Christ has been raised from the dead, then placing our hope in Christ IS a reasonable thing to do and we are not going to be disappointed if it is true that He was raised.

Those who hope in the Lord will NOT be disappointed in the end, unlike those who place their hopes in the things or people of this World. Christians believe that things are going to get better.

Christ is going to come again and death itself will die. There will be a New Creation and God Himself will dwell with His people forever. We will inherit eternal life. Our hope is the anticipation of a great change that is coming. The most personal aspect of this change will be the change in our bodies. For those who believe in Christ this change will be the fulfillment of all their hopes. We will be forever with the Lord. Hope is like the feeling seen in a young child who is waiting at the window, perhaps standing on her tiptoes, straining to see her daddy pull into the driveway. She looks forward to running into his arms and being caught up in love and affection. We are waiting with eager anticipation to be caught up in the arms of our Savior and Bridegroom. That is Christian hope. Our hope is in a person who will come for us. We are waiting for Jesus. Jesus will bring with Him all of the other things that we are longing and hoping for, including these resurrection bodies, but the main thing is to see Christ.

We will be changed by that vision into an immortal creature of such glory it would probably be unbearable if we were to see ourselves now in that state. We will be like Him for we will see Him as He is, and that is a purifying hope even now as we are waiting for that day to come (See 1 John 3.2-3).

So we have been trying to understand the nature of Christian hope. It is not wishful thinking or blind optimism in human progress. It is faith looking forward into the future, being based firmly on God’s word and character. And hope is the anticipation that things will get better.

Things will change and we greatly desire this change, especially the end of death and the immortality of a resurrection body. Those who hope in the Lord will not be disappointed because Christ has risen from the dead and will come again to bring the fulfillment of our hope.

We need to think further about the ground or the reason for this hope that we have in Christ. I have hinted at this already. Hope has to have a reasonable foundation or it is nothing but wishful thinking or a false hope that is based on a lie.

Now please understand that I am not saying that Christian faith must be reasonable according to a purely human logic or according to the standards put down by the wisdom of the world. If we apply human reasoning to the Gospel it becomes foolishness because the world’s wisdom begins and ends with man and cannot take us any farther than that. But there is a certain reason or logic to faith and to the hope that springs from faith. If we begin our reasoning process by contemplating the power of God then our hope in the resurrection becomes quite reasonable. I think Paul has implicitly been doing this kind of reasoning through this chapter in Corinthians. Some of the Corinthians were in error because they did not know God and this made the hope of the resurrection unreasonable to them. But with God all things are possible! The God who made the world with all of its complexity and mystery can certainly make a New Creation and can also make new bodies for us to live in His New Creation.

The first reason or basis for our hope is the Gospel. That is how Paul began this chapter, by going back and rehearsing the simple facts of the Gospel: Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ was raised. This is the starting point and the bedrock upon which our hope is built.

What is the Gospel? It is the message about what God has done in Christ to redeem us from sin and death. All the heavy lifting has been done. The Gospel is a report about certain facts that have actually happened in our world. In this way Christianity differs from an ideology, a philosophy, and even a religion. An ideology is an idea about how the world SHOULD be and perhaps how to change it. A philosophy is an idea about how the world works. A religion is about what we can do to change ourselves. The Gospel is none of those things. The Gospel is simply the message about how Christ has won the victory against all of our significant enemies and that one day He will return to consummate this victory. The only thing that is left to us is to make sure that we are on the winning side.

I was not alive to witness this, but I have heard stories about the wild jubilation that overcame Americans when it was announced that the Second World War had ended -- first on VE Day and then on VJ Day. (Victory in Europe and Victory over Japan, respectively.) On receiving this good news the nation could have hope that things were going to change and were going to get better for everyone concerned because all the death and fear of war had passed and victory had been obtained. Of course, there was a high price for this victory. But even those who were not directly involved in paying this price were still going to benefit from the victory and could therefore rejoice and be glad.

The same is true of the Gospel. In this case, Jesus paid the price for the defeat of our enemy, which was death, and all of us get to reap the benefits of His victory, both now and especially in the future when He comes again. The Christian life here and now is really just beginning to appropriate the victory that Jesus won. But there is much more to come in the future, and that is our hope of the resurrection.

That leads me to the second aspect of the ground or basis for our hope: the coming of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God has to do with God’s purpose or will being accomplished in the earth so that what was once out of harmony, or alienated, is brought back into union with God. Now there is a sense in which the Kingdom has already come. But it is still coming. The plan has not yet been completed in which all things will finally be in perfect union and harmony with God the Father.

We know that Christ has risen and is reigning in heaven. But only when He comes again from heaven and death is finally put away for good will the Kingdom of God have come in all its glorious fullness. And earth and heaven will be one, all things being brought together in Christ (See Eph. 1.10). At that time anything that is not reconciled to God will have to be put away for good, including death, the last enemy to be destroyed.

The book of Revelation gives us that final act in the drama of redemption in this apocalyptic imagery:

“Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. From his presence earth and sky fled away, and no place was found for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Then another book was opened, which is the book of life. And the dead were judged by what was written in the books, according to what they had done. And the sea gave up the dead who were in it, Death and Hades gave up the dead who were in them, and they were judged, each one of them, according to what they had done. Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:11-15).

That passage in Revelation is saying in apocalyptic imagery the same thing that Paul is saying in our text. But Paul is saying it from the perspective of the redeemed and the victory that we will experience at the resurrection of the dead.

We have already submitted ourselves to God’s plan and have already become a part of His Kingdom that keeps on coming. So when it comes in all its fullness that will be glory for us. So while we believe the Kingdom has already started, we also have hope that there is much more to come. We have only seen the first-fruits of the Kingdom of God.

The third basis for our hope is the coming of Christ. I have already made this point. Christians are waiting for Jesus to come again. Our hope is in Christ. When He comes He will usher in the fullness of the Kingdom of God. His command will cause the dead to rise and death itself to become void. When Jesus comes we will be changed from mortal to immortal and the earth itself will also be changed, the present heavens and earth passing away and a new world emerging. All of these things will happen when Jesus comes again. So it is the coming of Christ that will fulfill all of our hopes. Jesus Himself spoke of the events that the Apostle Paul is expounding in my text: “an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment” (John 5:28-29).

When the New Testament speaks about the end of time, or what theologians call eschatology, the main feature is the coming of Christ. This does not mean that the other events associated with the end of time are unimportant. But these other events take on their significance because of the One who is coming to bring the history of the world to an appropriate conclusion.

But today it seems that the whole focus of eschatology, at least in Evangelical circles, is on the other events associated with the end times rather than on the coming of Christ Himself. You seem to hear more emphasis, for example, on the coming of the Antichrist than on the coming of Christ! This has to be wrong because this is not the emphasis of the New Testament. And if we are not careful we can allow a wrong emphasis to rob us of our hope.

The coming of Christ is designed to cause hope and anticipation to flame up in our hearts. But many people do not have hope flaming up in their hearts when they think about the end times. Many people actually have fear, which is the very opposite of hope and the antithesis of the purpose of the Gospel! If we think about the end of time and are unsettled and afraid then we need to go back and reconsider the meaning of the Gospel. The salvation promised in the Gospel will not be complete until Jesus comes. In this hope we have been saved and are being saved (See Rom. 8.23-25).

We have tried to define the meaning of hope and the basis or reason for our hope. But these considerations could be merely academic unless we consider what hope can do for us now. Hope is looking toward the future and anticipating something that has not yet happened and that we have not yet received. But does that make hope irrelevant to our lives now? Many Christians seem to think so, because this whole subject of the resurrection of the dead seems to be ignored today. People seem to be blind to the connection between this future hope and our lives now, as if there are aspects of the Gospel that are irrelevant. But we cannot live without hope. People who don’t have hope either despair of life completely and give up, or they become completely devoted to pleasure in an attempt to get all they can now before their eventual and inevitable demise. Neither of these options are open to the Christian.

So how can we apply hope to our present situation? Or, how does hope help us live as Christians now, even in this present, evil world?

First, we must apply the hope of future victory in Christ to the reality of death. What I mean is that unless we are alive when the Lord returns and are simply changed without having to suffer death, we will all have to face the eventual demise of our earthly vessels, our bodies, and also the death of our loved ones. How we respond to this reality is the real test of our faith in the Gospel and our hope. It may be easy to name the name of Christ when we are in relative ease and comfort and the leaves of the tree are green. But the seasons of life change. Death is the great robber of men’s hopes. Every hope that we have in this world will eventually be taken from us by death. And it might seem hard to think about, but God is the one who has declared this to be. That is because God did not intend for our hopes to be realized apart from Him. Adam’s race is doomed to die. There is no hope in Adam. Every hope that is anchored in Adam and this present order are doomed to disappointment. We must look beyond Adam and this world to Christ and the Kingdom of God to have any hope beyond death. Only when death is destroyed and we are clothed in immortality will our hope be realized.

Secondly, we must apply our hope to facing opposition.We live in a world that is opposed to God and opposed to faith and hope. Having faith and hope in this world is like trying to climb a mountain or swim upstream against a fierce current. When we do encounter any kind of opposition we must have a strong hope that in the future things will be different and that this present conflict and suffering will not last. Unless we have this strong hope we will eventually despair and give up. If we have no reason for hope, then there is no reason to continue to face opposition for Christ. Why suffer if no hope?

Finally, we must apply our hope to facing times of discouragement.The first thing I would say about this is that every believer can become discouraged. The important thing is what we do with this discouragement. But think about why we get discouraged. We might feel like what we are doing is futile or insignificant. But this fails to take into consideration that the victory is not won through what we do, but through what Christ has done and what He will do in the future. As long as my main focus is what I am doing, then I have a reason for discouragement because my work will never be enough. If I focus on Christ and the Gospel then it becomes impossible to be discouraged because the victory is already mine and my future is also secure! I still have to fight the good fight of faith. But my fight will be effective because Christ has already secured the victory and the future is not in doubt.

Now we can summarize and conclude. Christian hope is not just otherworldly wishful thinking. The most powerful incentive for living is found in the hope of the resurrection. Because the final victory is sure there is really nothing for us to fear in this life, not even our own death. Nothing can hurt the believer and so he is free to give himself completely to the work of the Lord.

In this life we are surrounded by the old order, which is still dominated by sin and death. There are always reasons for us to give up in despair or to be afraid. But if the resurrection of the dead is true then there is really nothing for us to fear. If death is defeated then what other enemy can hurt us?

This is how we must reason so that we will not become distracted from the work of the Lord and give up. The only question that remains is whether or not we really believe in the resurrection of the dead.