Ya’ hang around bad theology long enough and you’ll adopt it.  It’s as simple as that.  And many people you’d otherwise respect in prominent evangelical and “mainstream” Christendom are leading the pack.  Today’s Social Gospel preachers are turning a culturally relevant theology into a culturally based theology. 

What’s the difference, you ask? 

A culturally relevant Gospel is a God-glorifying, Resurrection-based, evangelically motivated, historically preserved, and socially concerned Gospel promoting good works to a culture from a Christian’s changed heart. 

The Social Gospel is culturally based.  Its aim is an increasingly perfect world by glorifying man’s innate motivations and abilities.  The Word of Truth in a Social Gospel becomes subservient to relative truth (i.e. what’s true for you and what’s true for me are different things).  The necessity of man’s improving social circumstances betrays a belief that God isn’t actually real and Christ isn’t needed.  We’re all we’ve got and that’s enough.  

The two gospels (the Gospel of Jesus Christ versus the Social Gospel) are markedly different to the discerning mind because they are founded on different views of the Truth.  But, God doesn’t evaluate our world and our actions the way we do.  

A case in point: The hysteria regarding the US non-participation in the Paris Climate Accord. Where’s God–especially among the countries pushing for it?  To some, we’ve abandoned the world and condemned it to death.  Mankind is going to perish completely unless we find technologies to make Mars livable for when the Earth is not.  This is not what the Bible teaches. 

According to the Bible, when the Earth goes, Mars goes. God is still sovereign and the only thing left when it’s “Game Over” is … what you did with Christ.

A Social Gospel is being preached in plenty of churches these days.  They’re preaching racism and refugees more than Christ’s Resurrection; injustice more than the One who justifies; relative truth versus Jesus as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life;” and an the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it consequence of climate change and politics versus the “end of the world” because frankly, God promised it (2 Peter 3:11-13).

In a Social Gospel, there is a blending of Christianity with multi-cultural awareness until it becomes genuine syncretism (a theological smoothie of many religions), and adopting a chameleon gospel that changes with its political surroundings—all of this is way too easy and really, really wrong.

To that kind of mentality among the Resurrection-deniers, the Apostle Paul tells the church at Corinth,

Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”  Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God– I say this to your shame. (1 Corinthians 15:33-34)

To Social Gospel proponents, we must ask “What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?”  Resurrection is both the Gospel’s turning point and the determinant of humanity’s future.  This Earth will perish—it’s supposed to. 

As good environmental stewards, we won’t hasten its demise, but eternal life requires Resurrection and a New Earth.  The Kingdom of God isn’t better health care while nurturing Mother Earth, or colonizing Mars just to be safe.  The Kingdom of God in the hearts of believers displays sacrificial service until Jesus’ return.  Then there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth just as Jesus promised. 

This is the Gospel that the Apostle Paul talks about to those of his day:  Galatians 1:6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel– 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.

How do we get through to many evangelical, Protestant, and Catholic leaders of our day?  How can we show them the seductiveness of exchanging exclusive truth of the Gospel for a worldly facsimile, just enough off to become corrupt?  To become a different gospel? 

The truth is the Resurrection changed everything now and forever. In the future, we don’t need a Social Gospel and we don’t need Mars to live. 

What do we need to live?  We need Jesus whose Resurrection paved the way for ours.  And that’s the Gospel truth.

You may have heard the phrases, “Eat, drink, and be merry” or “Life’s short, eat dessert first” or “Life stinks then you die.”  All of those buy into modern ideas that human beings are no different than leaves on the forest floor.  We have a season of life, living for today, and then we return to dust as soulless physical beings on our way to being tomorrow’s compost.  In such a view, there is no other being to hold you to account, no other life to live for as tomorrow.  No rules, just right…in your own eyes…and your right to do what you want. 

The obvious result of such ideas would be enjoy life to the hilt and don’t let anyone else’s rules get in your way of your good time.

Kind of like that scene from Groundhog Day in which Bill Murray’s character, weatherman Phil Connors, realizes that his death in a cycle of Groundhog Days doesn’t matter.  Therefore he can live life without rules and without consequences:

I’m not going to live by their rules anymore … It’s the same thing your whole life: “Clean up your room. Stand up straight. Pick up your feet. Take it like a man. Be nice to your sister. Don’t mix beer and wine, ever.” Oh yeah: “Don’t drive on the railroad tracks.”

In a similar way, that same kind of “logic of no rules” is used by the Apostle Paul in today’s passage:  1 Corinthians 15: 29 Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour?  31 I die every day– I mean that, brothers– just as surely as I glory over you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”

Paul’s answer, as he builds his cyclical case, is that the dead ARE raised.  Therefore you’ve got an eternity ahead of you with your decisions prior to your death determining where that eternity will be spent.  And moreover, whether heaven or hell, each of us will have our earthly lifetime flash before our eyes.  We’ll recall all the decisions that we made and all the rules we disobeyed.  And justice means there will be consequences.  Most of us quake at that thought.

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?    It means this life has consequences beyond today.  We will all experience consequences for what we have done (Revelation 20:12-13, Revelation 22:12).  Only Christians have received forgiveness and the grace of Christ who paid for our sins on our behalf.  Other people wanting a do-it-yourself project of earning their way will find that receiving wrath really isn’t a job for amateurs and eternity is a hell of a long time to pay for breaking the rules.

If you find yourself presently in the do-it-yourself category and you don’t know how to get started on a relationship with Christ and the forgiveness He offers, please contact me and I’d love to explain why it’s infinitely preferable and requires nothing from you but surrender to God and agreeing with Him about who you are and what you’ve done.  He already knows it.  He’s just waiting for you to admit it.  

 The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

Continuing my thinking about What It Means to Be Resurrected and a sovereign God as a final authority, I was remembering a time in seminary when one of my professors talked about being in college and his roommate asked, “Hey Dude, do you think God could create a rock so big He couldn’t lift it? Whooaaaaa. Deep.” (OK not really deep, but it was pretty funny and I still chuckle at it.)

The Apostle Paul deals with that same kind of thinking in today’s passage (continuing in flow from these verses before it):  1 Corinthians 15:24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

1 Corinthians 15: 27 For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. 28 When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all.

Can God put everything under Himself … until it means He’s under … Himself? Waaaaat?

Of course not. That’s Paul’s point.

Loosely quoting Psalm 110:1 and attributing it to Christ, Paul says that Jesus submits to God’s authority and became God’s commissioned One to do battle and to complete it. He’s doing a march of total victory, that final enemy (death) and all other enemies (sin)…boom! They’re all conquered! And then Jesus faithfully reports back to His Commander-in-Chief, the final authority–the Father Himself.

The Message (a Bible paraphrase) helps to make this clear: “When everything and everyone is finally under God’s rule, the Son will step down, taking his place with everyone else, showing that God’s rule is absolutely comprehensive—a perfect ending!”

In a medal ceremony of sorts, God the Father rewards the final victory. The Father bestows upon His Son Jesus the position of head over everything (Ephesians 1:22-23), and the Name above every name (Philippians 2:9-11) so that the Father, the final authority for the Resurrection, is glorified.

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  It means we have a day in the future in which prayers prayed through the centuries ‘Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) will be finally accomplished, once done and for all time.  The Father, the final authority for the Resurrection will see to it “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10-11).

Death stinks. I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. So when Facebook reminds Seminary Gal “It’s been a while since your readers have heard from you,” I wonder if you’d all think “Just as well” so long as this is where my mind is. My mind has been pondering death in part because our longtime furry companion (a permanent loaner from our daughter whose apartment only allowed one dog), our Bichon named Sammy had cluster seizures this past week despite ample doses of anti-seizure medications. He ended up with extensive neurological/brain damage and paralysis and so on Friday, I told him he was a very good dog and that I loved him. I held him while he went to doggie heaven. (OK, the Bible says nothing about it, but I cannot bring myself to believe otherwise. Not this week.)

And then there was the attack at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.   Primarily children, teenage girls who looked forward to enjoying entertainment with a pop icon were targeted for murder by terrorists who have no value for life, for whom death is their currency of evil, and well I’m angry at what death does.  And what death leaves behind.

When we last left off with the Apostle Paul, he was laying out his legal case for the Resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:20-23). Today, he reaches the conclusion that humanity has had an enemy since the Fall. That enemy is death. And having held yet another part of God’s creation as it passed from life into the shadows of death, I think about the source of life, God, and the breath of life, His breath and how the body may look, even feel the same, but there’s a profound difference between one who is alive physically and one who is dead, permanently.

Back in Eden when mankind fell into mortality…Satan, it seems, won the day.  But he didn’t win the war.  Jesus came and conquered!

Revelation 12: 10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. 11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. 12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them!

So, when the Bible tells us that Jesus was the firstfruits of the Resurrection and that eternal life belongs to those who defeat death by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, it’s a cause for joy. It’s a source of hope. It’s a truth worth believing in and a power worth waiting for.  It’s a balm to the hearts of the broken and devastated.

The Apostle Paul says Jesus, the firstfruits, has already been raised and as followers of Christ, we will someday, in turn.  1 Corinthians 15:24 Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

I’m eagerly awaiting that final destruction of our accuser. I hate him. I’m tired of death. I am tired of thinking about death. So, I’m looking for Christ at His return with the rock-solid assurance of resurrection, that day in which death is no more…and of the glorious day in which we’ll hear a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:3-4) 

When we left off with the Apostle Paul’s legal case for the Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, he drew the inevitable conclusions from the false assertion of the Corinthian Resurrection-denyers.  Paul logically concluded that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, all who proclaim that He was are not only being deceived and deceivers, but we’re also fools.  We are to be pitied because we’ve believed a lie.  And now Paul states the truth. The other shoe drops in Jesus’ being the firstfruits of the very real Resurrection.

1 Corinthians 15:20 But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22 For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. 23 But each in his own turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.

Do you see Paul’s intellect?  No one can deny that all people die.  It’s one of the most empirically proven facts of the universe.  Paul says, if you believe all people die (which traces back to the Fall of Man and the introduction of mortality) then it’s not a stretch to believe that if Jesus was Resurrected, He’s the firstfruits and the same will apply to those who belong to Christ. 

Adam represented us in sin leading to earthly death.  Jesus Christ–the firstfruits–represents us in eternal life which means Resurrection for all who believe!

In Bible-speak, firstfruits are the best of the crop which can represent the first of the harvest (Leviticus 23:10-11, 17, 20) as an offering to God acknowledging the whole harvest belongs to Him, and the term firstfruits also denotes the best.  First in time.  First in quality.

Jesus is the firstfruits.  Jesus is the best!  As the author of Hebrews writes:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:2)

What Does It Mean to Be Resurrected?  After the perfect sacrifice and firstfruits of Christ in His Resurrection, Jesus paved the way for the rest of the harvest.  That’s you and me and all of us who acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ.  He is the author, the pioneer, the perfecter, the firstfruits–wholly acceptable to God.  Not just wholly but holy, therefore acceptable to God, just as we will be because of the blood of Christ has made us acceptable to the Father!

Our series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be accessed fully from the archives beginning April 2017.

In every generation, there is a hunger to know fact from fiction … an intrinsic need to have something reliable-rock solid-on which to take a stand.  Something … somewhere … worth believing in.  Something worth dying for.                      

Today, the Apostle Paul demonstrates that his hands may have been a tentmaker’s but his heart belonged to God.  His life’s vocational training prepared him for tent-making, but God prepared him for so much more than that.  Paul could have been a top litigator as today’s passage displays.  God takes tentmaker Paul’s love for Christ, his legal mind, his preacher’s style of exhortation and turns his theological thoughts to What It Means to Be Resurrected. 

Paul begins today to lay out his rock-solid case:

1 Corinthians 15:11 Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. 12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 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. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

You see, not all Jewish sects believed in a resurrection, and not all Gentiles believed in it either. To this situation, Paul says,

Take a stand!  Decide for yourselves if it’s rock-solid or a futile faith!” 

If the Resurrection of Christ is real (and it is) then you’re headed for resurrection, too.  Because if it weren’t real and true and reliable, then this delusion would be a dangerous one.  In fact, we ought to be pitied for placing our hope in something that didn’t happen. If it didn’t happen for Christ (who was perfect), then it certainly won’t happen for us and we’ve still got a sin problem.

What Does it Mean to Be Resurrected? 

It DID happen for Christ, and therefore it WILL happen for us.  It’s rock-solid and not a futile faith.  We are not to be pitied for believing the truth and for the upward trajectory Christians have in a Gospel that’s true, rock-solid, and reliable.  By faith in God’s Word, through the grace of Christ, and the mercy of the Father, a Christian’s sin problem ends at our death. To quote Randy Alcorn from his book Heaven : “For Christians this present life is the closest they will come to Hell. For unbelievers, it is the closest they will come to Heaven.”

Our series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be accessed fully from the archives beginning April 2017.

Do you know the powerful working of God’s grace in your life? Paul did.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them– yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. (1 Corinthians 15: 10)

I know it too.  It doesn’t mean there isn’t residual pain or stubborn doubt or opportunity to feel angry or be discouraged.  The joy is that God’s grace turns these wounds into scar tissue allowing us to remember the way God’s grace heals, it forgives, and those stigmata (scars) on Jesus’ hands and feet force us to recall that God’s mercy came at a very heavy, painful cost.

Remember my story from last week about AllExperts and the way 18 years of my life’s work simply vanished from the physical record?  Today’s Wall Street Journal had a story about About.com explaining a bit more about why it vanished.  Did I hear it from the authorities to whom I sent email inquiries? Noooo. I had to get it from a tech article in a newspaper.  The website has been in decline and the Chief Executive Neil Vogel is quoted as saying, “About.com is a funny thing.  Everyone knows what it is, but it doesn’t mean anything to anyone.”

Now perhaps it means even less.  And why?  Would the grace of God be in it anymore if His Word that brought Him glory was banished? 

It’s kind of like God’s modern nod back to the glory of God departing the temple (Ezekiel 10).  So About.com is changing its name.  Perhaps Ichabod would have been a more fitting choice (1 Samuel 4:21-22). 

No presence, no grace, no glory.

It was launched in days prior to Google and in 2000, it was valued at $690 million, 5 years later it was bought by the New York Times for $410 million, and was sold again in 2012 for $300 million.   Not exactly a winning trajectory.  And why?  Because the grace of God that made sites like AllExperts successful in answering people’s Bible questions (sometimes sincere, sometimes not) was lost a bit when About.com threw us into their den of Wiccans in 2000 and marginalized us again by selling us to the New York Times (sarcasm alert) that notable bastion of God-fearing evangelists.

Yet, some of us worked hard anyway.  Was it my success there?  Nope.  It was God working on me, and with me and in me there until the very end.  And the powerful work of God continues.  Now I have a personal object lesson on why it’s important to store up treasures in heaven.  My investment since 1999 as a volunteer had been in people and God’s grace was not without effect.  My investment timeline has been for eternity…a beautiful powerful hiddenness that is the essence of faith, and a reminder that God sees things we don’t.

Thank you to all of you who resonated with the loss I’ve known this week.  But let’s not leave it with a loss. 

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  God’s powerful grace is still at work in the seeds we plant and leave behind.  By faith, we know His grace is not without effect.

Our series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be accessed fully from the archives beginning April 2017.

“I AM WHO I AM.”  God’s famous words to Moses, revealing God’s own Name in Exodus 3:11-14.  His Name alone conveys truth and authenticity!  Just think about it!  As followers of Jesus Christ, we should aim to reflect the same kind of truth and authenticity.  To echo the Apostle Paul’s words “But by the grace of God I am what I am.”  Simply acknowledging that God’s grace alone is what makes a saint out of one who…ain’t. 

I am WHO I am, I am WHAT I am.

1 Corinthians 15:8 And last of all [Christ Jesus] appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.  9 For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am.

We have a record of only one person who ever saw the Risen Lord after He ascended to heaven.  That person is the Apostle Paul.  This was not just a vision per se or a dream.  It was Jesus, glorified, confronting Paul/Saul and asking, Acts 26:14 ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ 15 “Then [Saul/Paul] asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ “‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,’ the Lord replied. 16 ‘Now get up and stand on your feet. I have appeared to you to appoint you as a servant and as a witness of what you have seen of me and what I will show you. 17 I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them 18 to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.’

Paul never lost the shock and awe of that moment.  How could he?  He was fully aware of the horrible things he’d done his whole adult life.  He was completely ashamed of having persecuted the Church, and he was fully humbled by the grace of God available to sinners –among whom, Paul considered himself the worst (1 Timothy 1:15).

What does it mean to be Resurrected?  It means God’s grace and Christ’s sacrifice are enough to cover even the worst of what we do and what have done with who we have been: sinners.  Resurrection grace takes repentant sinners, forgives them, and makes them saints.

In the words of television personality and Christian brother Steve Harvey, by God’s redeeming grace, “I am who I am, and I was who I was. I’m cool with both people.”  It means when we walk around in a Resurrection to grace, we have been rescued from sin’s body of condemnation for who and what we were and are set free to be who I am in God’s sight.  Steve Harvey knows it.  Paul knew it.  Do I?  Do you? 

Our series on 1 Corinthians 15 entitled What It Means to Be Resurrected can be accessed fully from the archives beginning April 2017.