Resurrection Incentives
1 Corinthians 15:29-34
We are continuing in our study of the 15th Chapter of 1 Corinthians, coming this morning to verses 29 through 34. 1 Corinthians 15:29 to 34. Now there are some of you persistent Bible students in this congregation who have asked me to interpret 1 Corinthians 15:29 for the nine years that I've been here, and I have stalled you off until this very hour. And how I can no longer stall you because here we are, at a very, very difficult passage in the scripture that we'll endeavor to gain an understanding of as we look at this morning.
Now, I've entitled this passage the incentives of resurrection, the incentives of resurrection. And just a basic principle to start with that'll help you to understand the approach we want to take, all doctrine, whether it's the doctrine of resurrection or any other doctrine in the Bible, all Bible doctrine, all theology, all truth in scripture is given in order that it might bring about a practical response.
Scripture is never intended to be theory. It is always intended to have practical incentive built into it. Right doctrine leads to right behavior. Right principles lead to right conduct, that's the way the Bible goes. God lays out certain truth and then expects certain kinds of behavior in response to that.
The theology of scripture is not something just to be discussed and just to be talked about among theologians, just to be adhered to in creeds. It is something to be lived out and inherited all theology, all truth about God is the fact that a practical response is commanded by the very truth itself.
A good illustration of this would be to draw you back in your Bible to the 12th Chapter of Romans just to point out what I mean in this principle. In the 12th Chapter of Romans, the first part of the verse, verse 1, says this, "I beseech therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living sacrifice." Now we stop right there. This is the first exhortation given to the believer in the book of Romans, for all in tense and purposes. This is it.
It doesn't come until the 12th Chapter, which means there are 11 chapters of theology. The greatest theological treatise in the New Testament is the first 11 chapters of Romans. And after all of that theology, all of that truth about God, all of that pure doctrine, finally he says, "therefore," and therefore is the key word in Chapter 12. "Therefore, on the basis of all of these doctrines," which he calls by the way the mercies of God, all of these things that are connected with the nature of a merciful God, all of these theological truths because they are presented therefore you are to present your body as a living sacrifice.
So after 11 chapters of theology, then you have the exhortation to behavior. It is always characteristic of the apostle Paul that Christian ethics or Christian behavior or Christian morality rises off of the foundation of redemptive accomplishments. You feel in Romans 1 to 11 that Paul's mind is sweeping and searching across the infinities of the nature of God. And he's grabbing every...every salient point out of God's nature and the whole of theology. And after he's been all up in the infinities dealing with that, all of a sudden he comes down to earth and he says, "now brothers, therefore, this is required of you."
Now every great theological truth has practical implication. In fact, in Psalms 116, we come to what really could be said to be a response to the whole book of Psalms. The whole book of Psalms discusses who God is and what he's done. Who God is and what he's done. And then you get to 116:12, and you hear the Psalmist say this, "What shall I render the Lord for all His benefits for me."
In other words, all that He is and all that He has done lays up on me, the necessity to render to God something of myself in response. Now you have it again illustrated, I think, well in the 7th of Luke, and I want you to look at, because I want to establish this principle in your mind from this passage. In Luke 7, verse 40, Jesus answering and He said unto Simon, now watch this, "Simon, I have somewhat to say to thee." And he said, "Master, say on." "There was a certain creditor who had two debtors. The one owed five hundred danerei and the other fifty. And a Danereous would be a day's work, so that's a lot. On owed five hundred days work, one fifty in money.
"And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me therefore, which of them will love him more or most?" Simon answered and said, "I suppose that he to whom he forgave most." And He said unto him, "Thou hast rightly judged." Now, this is what that's saying, our response is in measure to the degree that God has benefited us. In other words, we must look and see what God has done and respond in kind to the magnanimous comprehensive work of God on our behalf.
That's the essence of this principle. First of all, you see the sweep of what God has done, and then there is to be a response in our lives that fits the comprehensiveness, the totality of the grace of God on our behalf. Very simple principle, and yet very, very important. Now, as we come to 1 Corinthians 15:29, this is precisely what Paul is dealing with here. He is saying look, the whole concept of resurrection truth lays out some very strong imperatives. Because the resurrection is a reality and he has established that in the first 28 verses beyond doubt, because the resurrection is a reality, because the resurrection is a fact, it carries with it some great incentives or some great motivations. If we remove bodily resurrection, we lose those incentives. We lose those motivations.
Paul wants to say here, we can't people to present their bodies to Christ. We can't get people to come to Christ. We can't get people to serve Christ. We can't people to live a holy life if we don't have a resurrection. And so again, we see that Paul's approach in this chapter is to say to the critics in verse 12 there, who said there's no resurrection. If you say that, here's what you've done. And in this little section, he says in effect what you've done is to remove some major incentives out of Christian living.
Principles of behavior. And what it boils down to is this, people are not going to give their life to something they don't really have hope in. And if you tell people there's no bodily resurrection, what makes you think for a minute they're going to bother with Christianity? Or what makes you think they're going to live a sacrificial life? Or what makes you think they're going to set their life apart to holiness if there's no resurrection, if there there's no consequences, if there's no rewards, if there's no punishments, if there's never any accountability? That's the essence of this chapter.
On the other hand, if there is resurrection, if we will face Christ, if we will have to be at the judgment seat of Christ, if there will be a day of reunion in heaven, if there will be a time when we dwell with the Lord Jesus and the saints and the ages forever, if there are those things in eternity for which we hope and in which we can believe, then there is incentive for this life.
That's his point. I'm sure you would agree with me that nothing short of the confidence of resurrection hope would ever have allowed Stephen to lay beneath the stones while his life was being crushed out and asked for forgiveness for those who did it. Nothing less than resurrection hope could have allowed as tradition tells us. Andrew to be crucified by being tied to a cross and left there for days until he was dead. Nothing less than resurrection hope would have left Peter to live his life out for Christ, finally to be crucified upside down again as tradition reminds us. If it wasn't that he believed that someday he'd see his master face to face and hear well done Peter.
And that some day he'd be in heaven and see some of the fruit of his labor. And I'm sure nothing but resurrection hope would have allowed the apostle Paul to give his life continually and finally to put his head on a block and have it severed from his body, nothing less in resurrection hope would have made him do that. He did it with absolute faith that he would see Christ and that he would see the people he loved and won to Christ in this life and he'd part of the redeemed community forever with God.
It was that kind of hope that was incentive to those kinds of people. Now if you remove the possibility of resurrection you have removed this great, great incentive. That's what he's saying. Now, he picks out three areas, three incentives. He says if you remove the resurrection, you have removed an incentive to salvation, you have removed an incentive to service, and you have removed an incentive to sanctification.
He zeroes in on three key powerful incentives that would be lost without the belief in the bodily resurrection. Now you see bodily resurrection is the faith that some day, after we die, we will live again in a glorified body in a resurrection body. A body like, but unlike, the one we have. But the point is that we will rise again to be who we are minus our sin, and to dwell with God forever as who we are.
There is real resurrection for us as individuals. Now, this is what Paul has been through in the first 28 verses. This great hope is at the heart of the Christian faith and the gospel. If you remove that, first of all, you remove a great incentive to salvation. That's his first point. Let's look at it in verse 29.
"Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?" Now that verse beloved has between 40 and 400 interpretations. Any one of which might be right with some exceptions. What it's saying, I really don't know. I'll be very honest with you. I do not know. I will...I will take a calculated risk. I will throw myself at your mercy this morning and you can determine whether or not there's much ground for my conclusion.
But believe me, you don't hardly have time during one week to study 40 views intelligently, let alone to come to a conclusion, but I have one anyway and I'll offer it to you. I will not be dogmatic on this, simply because this is one passage that is so obscure and so difficult that we couldn't be dogmatic, but we can draw some conclusions that I think the context sort of lends itself to.
Now, let me give you a basic point that I'm working with as a result of working over the text. By the way, I started with a completely different view on Monday than I wound up with on Friday. In fact, I was very surprised at my conclusion. I think three people talk to me during the week and I told them three different views that I was holding on that day.
But anyway, this is Sunday morning and here we are. Ask me tomorrow, you don't know where I'll be. But anyway, I think that the context lends itself to the fact that Paul is trying to point out things that would be lost if we give up bodily resurrection. And so in my mind, there must be legitimate things. And there's much reason for that. I just make that statement to you.
But I think what Paul is saying here is simply this, people get saved because they anticipate resurrection. In other words, one of the strongest incentives for people to become Christians is the hope of resurrection. You know, it...to become Christian means you don't have to look at the bleakness of the...of the grave. You can have resurrection hope.
To become a Christian means that you can be rejoined with everybody else as a Christian and spend eternity with them. To become a Christian means you can enter into heaven and dwell with God and live in His celestial kingdom and all the marvels of that kind of afterlife. You see, that in itself is a great incentive for salvation. And I think essentially that's what Paul is saying here.
Now I know you're saying well, I don't see it. Well, I'm going to try to help you. Let's look first of all at the simple statements in the verse. "What shall they do who are baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all? Why are they then baptized for the dead?"
Now the Mormon church takes this verse and they take what appears on the surface to be the most obvious view, that somebody is baptized for a dead person. And the Mormons call it vicarious baptism. And they teach...and incidentally you might note that that is not common only to Mormonism. That was a heresy taught by two ancient fathers in the church known as Cerenth and Marcien. They both believe this. In fact, it was branded as heresy even then.
But they say Paul is saying this that a Christian who is alive and has been baptized can get rebaptized for a dead person so that the dead person can get saved by proxy. Okay? So like if you're great dear friend at work dies without the Lord, you can come here and get baptized for that dead person and by proxy he'll get saved. The Mormons, of course, teach that the spirits of those who have died can't enter heaven unless a Mormon is baptized for them by proxy.
Now it's obvious, I think, to all of us that we don't believe that. Proxy baptism, vicarious baptism could only be extrapolated out of this text, and there's a simple principle, a biblical interpretation. You never generate a doctrine out of an obscure text when no other text in the Bible teaches it.
I mean, you...that's mercilessly attacking the Bible with your own bias and making it say what you want it to say and you can't do that. The person who gets baptized himself doesn't get saved by being baptized let alone a dead person. We believe you're saved by faith in Jesus Christ, right? And baptism is simply an act of obedient faith that proclaims that...that testimony of salvation. But no one is saved by baptism. Not living people to say nothing of dead ones.
It is a point unto men once to die the Bible says and after this the baptism? After this, the judgment. Christian baptism is in view in this verse. Let's look at that. You see the term baptize. Let's take it piece by piece. The term baptize is referring to Christian baptism I believe. It's the normal term. Some would assign it to some pagan custom, but it seems rather undefined, the most common understanding of this to anybody reading it would be Christian baptism. And I don't see any reason to make it any other thing.
Some people are being baptized in a Christian manner. Some people are coming to Christ is what it's literally saying. Now mark this in your thinking. Whenever you see in the New Testament the idea of being baptized, it always has a relationship to salvation unless it's talking about something like the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which is a spiritual thing. But when you're talking about water baptism in the New Testament it is something that is synonymous with salvation. And that goes all the way back to the words of Jesus in the great commission. Because Jesus said, "Go into all the world and make disciples, baptizing and teaching."
And He didn't teach baptismal regeneration. He didn't mean save them by dunking them. What He was saying was, "Go into all the world and make disciples, first by winning them to Christ and then by teaching them." In other words, from the very utterance of Jesus, baptism was a term used synonymously with salvation.
And you see those terms used that way in many cases. When Paul talks, for example to the people in Acts 19 who were disciples of John and asked them if they've been baptized. He's not talking about some ritual. He's really wanting to know if they've been saved by faith in Christ.
So those are synonymous. So in that sense of synonym, when you look here and see this, you could read it this way. "What shall they do who are saved?" In other words, it's synonymous with them being saved. Some people, and note that they would probably be somebody who is not a Christian, the we in the next verse referring to the believers and particularly the apostolic group, and so he's pointing off into the distance and says "What about those people, unbelievers who are being saved and baptism being the outward symbol of it."
Now we go to the next word, for and then the dead. Now could somebody get saved for the dead? Well, let's look again at the next word for. And this becomes arbitrary all the way along the line, but I want you to see how this one view seems to hang together. The word for here is hupare in the Greek. Now that word can be translated by no less than probably 12 different words.
It could be translated over the dead, above the dead, across the dead, beyond the dead, on behalf of the dead, instead of the dead, in the name of the dead, because of the dead, in reference to the dead, or with regard to the dead. And we see a little of the problem. And all of those translations would be if the context permits and the case permits accurate.
So what you really find out is you have to pick one. And as I look at it, I think perhaps the best one would be a causal use and that we could translate it because of. Hupare can be translated because of and it would read this way, some people, unbelieving people are being saved because of the dead. Now it is most likely that the dead have reference to Christians. The dead.
Now, why would they do that if the dead don't rise? Now let me give it to you simply. There are some people who come to Christ and are saved because of some dead person or persons. What do I mean by that? Just this. There are two things I think in this particular area that draw people to Christ. One is this, an unbeliever sees a Christian and he watches that Christian face death. And that Christian has hope and confidence. He is encouraged. He anticipates being with Jesus. For example, Mike McKillip was told that he would just have a little while to live. Now they really don't know how long, but originally he had a little while to live. He...his response was oh, then I get to be with Jesus all the sooner.
Mike's a young man in our church. Then I get to be with Jesus all the sooner. As a result of that, hearing that, and knowing that somebody came to Christ. In other words, the hope of the Christian in the face of death becomes an incentive for other people who look at death so fearfully so blackly and so bleakly.
So that sometimes when a Christian dies the very death of that Christian with confidence and faith and hope can actually be the thing that draws somebody else to Christ. I'll give you an illustration of it. I found an article about seven soldiers of the Red Army during a period in the Finish-Russian War. It was written by an imminent engineer in Finland by the name of Nordenburg who was actually in on the experience. This is what he said, "I offered my services to the government and was appointed an officer in General Manerhiem's army. It was a terrible time. We besieged a town that had been taken by the Red Army and we overtook it.
A number of Red prisoners were under my guard and seven of them were to be shot at dawn on Monday. I will never forget the preceding day. The seven men were kept in the basement of the town hall and in the passage, my men stood at attention with their rifles. The atmosphere was filled with hatred. My soldiers were drunk with success and taunted their prisoners, some swore and beat on the walls with their bleeding fists, others called for their wives and children who were far away because they knew at dawn they were all to die. We had the victory.
That was true enough, but the value of it seemed to diminish as the night advanced. Then something strange happened. One of the men doomed to death began to sing. He is mad was everyone's first thought, but I had noticed that this man whose name was Koscanen, had not raved and cursed. Quietly he sat on his bench. Nobody said anything to him. Each was carrying his burden in his own way. Koscanen sang rather waveringly at first and then his voice grew stronger and became natural and free. And all the prisoners turned and looked at him as he sang these words. "Safe in the arms of Jesus. Safe on His gentle breast, thereby His love are shaded sweetly my soul shall rest. Hark it's the voice of angels born in the song to me over the fields of jasper, over the crystal sea."
Over and over again he sang that verse, and when he had finished everyone was quiet for a few minutes and then a wild looking man broke out and said "where did you get that you fool, are you trying to make us religious?" Koscanen looked at his comrades with tear-filled eyes as quietly he said, "comrades, will you listen to me for a minute? You asked me where I got this song, it was from the Salvation Army.
I heard it three weeks ago. My mother sang about Jesus and prayed to Him often." He stopped a little while as if to gather strength and then he rose to his being the soldier that he was and looked straight in front of him and said, "it's cowardly to hide your beliefs, the God my mother believed in is now my God. I can't tell how it happened, but last night as I lay awake I suddenly saw mother's face before me. It reminded me of the song I had heard. I felt I had to find the Savior and hide in Him. I prayed that Christ would forgive me and cleanse my sinful soul and make me ready to stand before Him.
It was a strange night, there times when everything seemed to shine around me. Verses from the Bible and the song book came to mind. It was God's answer to my prayer. I couldn't keep it to myself. Within a few hours I shall be with the Lord, but saved by His grace."
Koscanen's face shown as if by an inward light is comrades sat quietly. He himself stood transfixed. My soldiers were listening to what this Red revolutionary had to say. "You're right," Koscanen, said one of his comrades at last. "If only I knew there was mercy for me too, but these hands of mine have shed blood and now I've reviled God and trampled on all that is holy and I realize there is a Hell and that's the proper place for me." And sank to the ground in despair. "Pray for me Koscanen," he groaned. "Tomorrow I shall die and my soul will be in the hands of the devil."
These two Red soldiers went down to their knees and prayed for each other. It was no long prayer, but it reached heaven and we who listen to it forgot our hatred. It melted in the light of heaven, for here were two men who were soon to die seeking reconciliation with their God.
The change in the atmosphere was indescribable. Some of the men sat on the floor, some on the benches, some wept quietly and another talked of spiritual things. None of us had a Bible, but the Spirit of God was speaking to all of us. The night was almost gone and the day was dawning. No one slept a moment. "Sing the song once more for us Koscanen," said one of them and you should have heard them sing not only that song, but verses and choruses long forgotten. The soldiers on guard united with them for the power of God had touched everyone. Everything changed in the venerable town hall basement resounded in the early morning hour with the songs of the blood of the lamb. The clock struck 6:00 and how I wished I could beg mercy for these men, but I knew it was impossible.
Between two rows of soldiers, they marched out to the place of execution. One of them asked to be allowed to sing Koscanen's song once again and permission was granted. And then they asked to be allowed to die with uncovered faces and so with hands lifted to heaven they sang with might and mane "Safe in the arms of Jesus." And when the last line had died out the Lieutenant gave the word fire, and we cli