DARING TRUTH

Paul seems to be raising the stakes. He sums up the faith of Jesus’ followers as hanging on a single historical event. All our preaching and faith is useless, he urged, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead. And if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, nothing matters beyond this life. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). To put all the emphasis on this single claim feels daring.

But Paul was not arguing that our preaching and faith are useless, nor that followers of Jesus are the most pitiful people in the world.

He had already presented the remarkable evidence for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus. After His resurrection, Jesus was seen by progressively larger groups of disciples, including appearing “to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living” at the time of writing (1 Corinthians 15:6).

The point that Paul was making in these bold and dramatic statements was that the resurrection of Jesus was the single most important fact of their faith.

He made this argument after presenting his list of witnesses, many of whom his first readers might have met or could track down. It was not an obscure theory but something that had happened in the real-life experience of a significant number of the earliest believers in Jesus. So, the stakes had already been raised. The hundreds of witnesses to Jesus and His resurrection gave ample evidence that the scenarios Paul was detailing were not a cause for fear but a cause for celebration. Because Jesus has been raised from the dead, our preaching and our faith change everything. And because our faith gives us hope in this resurrected Christ, we are blessed beyond all imagining.