One of the many opportunities I have had to teach on the Resurrection
In response to hearing a message on the importance of the Resurrection that I’ve given a few times in the past two months I have had a couple of people disagree with my claims. It isn’t that they don’t believe that the Resurrection is vitally important, but they both cited a verse that supposedly contradicts my statement about the centrality of the Resurrection in the sermons delivered by the apostles that are recorded in the New Testament. As we’ll see, my friends who have challenged me on this have overlooked a few key points, and they have misunderstood the verse they cited.
My previous blog post explained my position on the centrality of the Resurrection to apostolic preaching. It also includes an embedded video to a 25-minute presentation I gave on the subject. So how could one possibly object to my message which simply surveyed each of the sermons in the book of Acts and then Paul’s letter to the Romans to demonstrate how frequently the Resurrection was the focal point?
The objection made by my two friends is that Paul said in 1 Corinthians that he only wanted to preach Christ crucified. In making this claim, they apparently think that Paul was only talking about the Cross, and not the Resurrection. But this simply is not the case.
First, we are told in Acts 18 what Paul did when he went to Corinth. In Acts 18:4 we read that Paul “reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath, and persuaded both Jews and Greeks.” While this verse doesn’t specifically tell us what Paul said in the synagogue, we can be quite confident about the content of his message because the previous chapter tells us what Paul’s customary approach was in the synagogues he entered in the various cities. Acts 17:2–3 state, “Then Paul, as his custom was, went in to them, and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, ‘This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.'”
My new book on the Resurrection of Jesus includes a chapter about the disturbing trend of neglecting the Resurrection when sharing the gospel. See www.midwestapologetics.org/shop for more details.
So what did Paul do when he went into the synagogues? He reasoned with the people, “explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead.” What did he preach in the Corinthian synagogue? Undoubtedly, his message was that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. But we don’t need to rely on my deductions based on these passages, we have Paul’s very own words to the Corinthians!
In 1 Corinthians 15:1–4 Paul tells us exactly what message he preached to the Corinthians.
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures… (emphasis added)
Paul specifically tells us that he preached the gospel message of Christ’s sacrificial death, burial, and Resurrection to the Corinthians. But didn’t he say that he only wanted to preach Christ crucified? Not exactly. Let’s quickly take a look at this verse that my friends have cited.
In 1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul wrote, “For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.” A couple of brief comments are in order. First, Paul did not say that he only wanted to preach Christ crucified. He stated that he determined to preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It wasn’t only the Crucifixion that he preached; it was Jesus Christ and the Crucifixion. This would undoubtedly include the Resurrection (as we know it did based on his statement in 1 Corinthians 15).
Second, as with every other passage, it is very important to look at the context. In the surrounding verses, Paul explains that he didn’t try to wow the Corinthians with excellence of speech or human wisdom. Instead, his focus was on proclaiming the gospel message (sacrificial death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ), and to do this, he reasoned in the synagogue that Jesus is the Christ and that He had to suffer and rise again.
Paul also wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:23 that “we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness…” Someone may think this is an indication that Paul only focused on the Crucifixion, but this simply is not the case. Paul is likely using a figure of speech known as synecdoche, where a part of something is used for the whole. In this case, “Christ crucified” is shorthand for “the sacrificial death, burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.” I believe many Christians do the same thing today—they speak of Christ’s death on the Cross and neglect to mention the Resurrection, it isn’t because they don’t believe in the Resurrection, but it’s because in their mind, the Resurrection is a given. In a sense, by naming one (Crucifixion), they mean the whole message (death, burial, and Resurrection).
Did Paul do the same thing? I am very confident that this is exactly what he meant. After all, the death of Jesus was not foolishness to the Greeks. They didn’t have a problem with someone dying. What was foolishness to the Greek mind was the Resurrection. We see that the same thing happened in Acts 17:18 and Acts 17:31–32 when Paul was in Athens. As soon as he mentioned the Resurrection, the Greeks thought he was foolish. This is why he spent 58 verses in 1 Corinthians 15 establishing the importance of the physical Resurrection of Jesus and the future physical resurrection that awaits us. The Greeks really struggled with the concept of a physical resurrection since to them, the spiritual world was good and pure while the physical world was corrupted and evil. Why would someone even want to believe in an eternity involving physical bodies?
Acts 18 tells us that Paul spent 18 months in Corinth. Surely, he taught them all sorts of biblical doctrine (we know he told the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:27 that he had not failed to declare to them the whole counsel of God). Why would we think that he only spoke to them of the Crucifixion?
Paul, like Peter and the other apostles, always emphasized the Resurrection (as well as the Crucifixion) in his proclamation of the gospel. By neglecting this important truth, many well-meaning Christians have delivered an incomplete gospel message by focusing solely on the Cross. Notice, I did not say they delivered a false gospel, but their message is incomplete because they do not mention the Resurrection. As I’ve said before, the fact that Jesus died on the Cross for our sins is good news indeed, but the message does not become the good news until He conquers the grave.