The doctrine of the resurrection isn’t some fringe doctrine of Christianity on which we can agree to disagree. According to Paul, everything stands or falls with it.
 
Apparently, there were some believers in Corinth willing to affirm Jesus had risen from the dead while denying God would raise His people bodily from the dead. Paul won’t let those two things be separated. He tells us if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised, and if Christ hasn’t been raised, then his preaching is empty, our faith is useless, sin still reigns, and those who have died in Christ are forever lost.
 
Paul minces no words: Without resurrection, there is no Gospel! “But as it is,” he writes, “Christ has been raised from the dead.”

Those words shift the entire argument. Christ isn’t just an isolated exception to the rule of death. Paul calls Him the ‘firstfruits’. In Israel’s worship, the first portion of the harvest was offered to God as a sign that the rest of the harvest was coming. They weren’t the entire harvest, but they did guarantee the harvest had begun.
 
Likewise, Jesus is the firstfruit of the resurrection. What happened to Him will happen to those who belong to Him. This truth reshapes the way we see the world. Creation isn’t disposable. Human bodies are not temporary containers with no lasting value. God intends to redeem embodied human life.
 
This resurrection body is described as imperishable, glorious, powerful, and animated by the Spirit. What he describes is the transformation of human existence. God’s plan isn’t to discard what sin and death have damaged. He plans to raise and renew it.
 
Paul ends the passage with a call to be steadfast and faithful. Resurrection is real, and our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Resurrection changes reality because it changes the future, secures our hope, and gives us the ability to live faithfully in the present.

Do you think of the ultimate Christian hope as primarily leaving this world, or as God raising His people to a renewed creation? What work, obedience, or service sometimes feels wasted to you right now? How does the hope of resurrection challenge that conclusion?

Father, recalibrate my view of the world through the resurrection of Jesus. Keep me from reducing my hope to the vague comfort of escape. Make me steadfast and faithful in the work you’ve given me, especially when the fruit is difficult to see. Help me live today in the certainty of the resurrection yet to come. Amen.

“The resurrection reminds me that my faithfulness is never __________________.”