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If Christ Is Not Risen (1 Cor.15:13-19)
In a BBC Radio 4 broadcast over Easter one
commentator expressed regret that so much emphasis was placed on
the death of Jesus and not enough on his moral teachings. Of course,
the Bible is a tremendous repository of moral teaching, no better
example being Christ's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount which
calls for us to be humble, to seek after righteousness, show mercy,
be peacemakers, pure of heart and prepared to make sacrifices for
the kingdom, to be salt and light, loving our enemies, giving to
the needy. However, although the earliest church leaders also taught
these moral precepts of the kingdom, their emphasis was always on
the death and resurrection of Jesus. In one of the earliest summaries
of essential Christian teaching Paul wrote in c.55AD about an already
established tradition ("what I received"):
"What I received I passed on to you as of
first importance; that Christ died for our sins according to the
Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third
day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter,
and then to the Twelve" (1 Cor.15:3-5)
In placing the emphasis here they were following the example of
Jesus himself who said to his disciples:
"We are going to Jerusalem and the
Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and teachers of
the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to
the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill
him. Three days later he will rise" (Mk.10:33-34, c.f. Mt.20:17-19;
Lk.18:21-33)
I wonder sometimes at the fact that people can look on the Ten Commandments
as severe and unforgiving while they regard Jesus' teaching in the
Sermon on the Mount with warmth and sentimentality. In the code
from Mount Sinai God commands that we should not murder, while in
Jesus' sermon we are told frankly that if we are angry with our
brother we have murderous hearts and stand condemned. In the Ten
Commandments we are forbidden to commit adultery, while in Jesus'
teaching we are told that even to look on a woman with lust is to
commit adultery in our hearts. We hear people sometimes say, "I
am not such a bad person! I haven't murdered anyone. I haven't committed
adultery." CS Lewis was correct when he wrote in Mere Christianity:
"No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good"
Paul wrote to Christians in Rome that, "No
one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law;
rather through law we become conscious of sin." (Ro.3:20)
In a letter to believers in Galatia Paul addressed the question,
"What, then, was the purpose of the law?"
and answered, "The law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that
we might be justified by faith" (Gal.3:19,24)
Paul develops his argument in Romans in a paragraph that has been
described by Charles Cranfield as 'the centre and heart' of Paul's
message and by Leon Morris as 'possibly the most important single
paragraph ever written'. In Romans 3:21-26 Paul writes about "a
righteousness that is from God" (showing that the initiative is
God's); that everyone has sinned and will be "justified freely through
the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a
sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood."
Finally, that, "This righteousness
from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe."
This, finally, is the Easter message
and Paul was correct when he wrote to the Corinthian Church:
"If Christ has not been raised, our
preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are
then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified
about God that he raised Christ from the dead"
Now that is a stark and uncompromising thing to say. However, Paul
has good reason to cast us as without hope, our preaching useless
as well as our faith.
"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are
still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in
Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we
are to be pitied more than all men"
Christ did not bring us a moral code that we might spend a futile
lifetime failing to keep; he brought us a salvation and a hope that
we, through faith in his completed work on the cross, can trust.
He did not simply set an example that we would spend a lifetime
struggling and failing to follow; he brought us a righteousness
from God that can be ours through faith in the one God sent. He
did not tell us what to do and then leave us to it; he made available
a new life through faith in his name, a life that we can live, "by
faith, from first to last, just as it is written: 'The righteous
will live by faith'" (Ro.1:17)
When people ask us to give the reason for the hope we have (1 Pe.3:15)
this is our answer, what Paul described as "of first importance".
When sometimes we are accused of being presumptuous in our confidence
of our salvation this Easter message is what we tell them. In all
our discussions and witnessing we can cover much ground addressing
many important points of doctrine but if it doesn't lead here, and
sooner rather than later, we are failing those to whom we witness
and the one whose message we carry into the world. Easter came early
this year; let's not leave it behind in the blustery March winds.