“If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (I Corinthians 15:17). That’s the bottom line for Paul: the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is the make or break of the Christian faith. “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die’” (15:32). “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people the most to be pitied” (15:19).

But the gospel message is this: “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried; and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (15:3-4). And in the resurrection of Jesus we find the promise of our own eternal life: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died” (15:20).

We still get to die, though, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable” (15:50). We go to heaven in a spiritual body: “what is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable … it is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (15:42-44). At some point in the future it will happen that the Lord returns: “we will not all fall asleep, but we will all be changed” (15:51). I had always thought of that as the verse we should post on the church nursery wall, but it seems it has another application as well …

* * * * *

Because you are the resurrection and the life, O Lord, we trust in you: and our faith is not in vain, for you have called us, and in life and in death we belong to you. Calm our fears, in the face of death: enable us to know that death has indeed been swallowed up in your victory.