Tim Challies: If Dead Men Don't Rise

Almost 2,000 years ago, a Christian named Paul wrote a letter to a group of people in Corinth, a city in Greece. People in that city had at one time been enthusiastic about the Christian faith, but had then begun to have some second thoughts. They had written a letter to Paul to ask something like, "You told us that this man Jesus died and then came back to life. We're pretty sure you don't actually expect us to believe that a man was dead and then alive again. That must have been some kind of a metaphor or a moral, right?"

But Paul doesn't blink. He says, "Yes, that is exactly what I am saying." In this letter to those Christians he affirms again and again that Jesus really and actually died. Paul is concerned that these people in Corinth are faltering in what they believe about the resurrection and he addresses them in an interesting way. He says, "Okay, so you think that dead people simply cannot come back to life. Well why don't we just take a moment to consider that. Let's consider the implications if that is true." He does this in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19.

I find it very interesting that he approaches things in this way. You and I need to think about the implications of what we believe, or what we don't believe, or what we refuse to believe. Sometimes we have these little dangling threads in what we believe and we just haven't considered them properly. What Paul does here is say, "Let's think about what will happen if we say that dead people don't ever come back to life. Let's just ponder that for a few minutes." He begins to tug on that loose thread. Read more