May 9, 2004
by J. David Hoke
50
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. 54 When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." 55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. 58 Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:50-58, NIV)Let me begin with a quote, although I’m not sure of the author:
There is a preacher of the old school but he speaks as boldly as ever. He is not popular, though the world is his parish and he travels every part of the globe and speaks in every language. He visits the poor, calls upon the rich, preaches to people of every religion and no religion, and the subject of his sermon is always the same. He is an eloquent preacher, often stirring feelings which no other preacher could, and bringing tears to eyes that never weep. His arguments none are able to refute, nor is there any heart that has remained unmoved by the force of his appeals. He shatters life with his message. Most people hate him; everyone fears him. His name? Death. Every tombstone is his pulpit, every newspaper prints his text, and someday every one of you will be his sermon.
[quoted in John F. MacArthur, First Corinthians (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 441-442]One thing is for certain, death has been considered an enemy throughout all time. Death strikes fear in the hearts of almost everyone. And every thinking person knows that it is inevitable.
Think about the secularist or the atheist–– about those who believe that this life is all there is–– what despair must they feel? Not believing in any afterlife, and knowing that each hour that passes is one that they can never relive, one that moves them closer to that moment when they will cease to exist, has to be something they refuse to even allow to enter their minds. Otherwise, the sheer hopelessness of it all would be enough to drive them crazy.
The idea of immortality is fascinating. But how would you do it if you could? Would you stop the aging process at 21 and live forever with that body? Some of you weren’t happy with what you had at 21. We might not come up with as good an idea as we think.
I do believe that God has a better idea. It’s the idea of a new resurrection body that is fitted for eternity without the imperfections of the old earthly body. You can find this idea expressed by the epitaph that Benjamin Franklin wrote for himself, and which is engraved on his tombstone in the cemetery of Christ’s Church in Philadelphia:
The body of Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here food for worms. But the work will not be lost, for it will appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.
[quoted in John F. MacArthur, First Corinthians (Chicago: Moody Press, 1984), 442]God, the great author and creator of our human body, has something in store for us that will exceed even our wildest imagination. We will experience a glorious transformation that will take place at the last trumpet–– that is, at the coming of Christ–– in which we will be changed from flesh and blood to incorruptible, imperishable beings, victorious over death. That is what we have to look forward to. So today we must to give Christ our all, holding nothing back, because all we do for him will last forever.
But you might ask why. Why should I work hard now? Why shouldn’t I just wait for heaven? I have given my life to Christ. I have been redeemed. Why shouldn’t I do just enough to get by? Why should I work as hard as I can now?
This is the beauty of this text. It points us to the future in order to give us perspective for living today. You see, because we will one day be transformed into imperishable beings, victorious over death, we need to focus, not on that day, but on giving our all for the cause of Christ today, fully following and laboring hard for him, because our work counts. It counts eternally!
May God help us see that, because we have been given the privilege to see what God has planned for us in the future, we must focus on fully living for him in the present–– whatever the cost–– because it has eternal significance. Our future destiny must control our present behavior. We can be fully set free to live to the full today because we know tomorrow has already been taken care of.
So let’s look at two future facts about us, guaranteed by our text, and how they issue to us a powerful present challenge.
We Will Be Transformed
50
I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— 52 in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. 53 For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. (15:50-53)One fact guaranteed by our text is that we must all go through a total transformation. And the reason for this is that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Our current human physical body is perishable. For eternity, it needs to be imperishable. This is the reason for our bodily resurrection. In it we get a new body, not some recomposition of the old body. We are about to enter into a new realm where the things of this earth have no value.
In our world today, people put a premium on things that will never make it into eternity. You see, he is not merely saying that our human bodies will not make it into the kingdom of God when he uses the term flesh and blood. He is saying that our human resources are temporary. The things upon which we put so much value do not impress God and will gain us nothing in eternity. I like the way pastor Ray Stedman illustrates this:
A young man called me up not long ago. He introduced himself on the phone as a young Christian and a businessman. He said he was sure that in the next few years he would probably be making about fifty million dollars, and his question to me was, "How can I use my money to lay up treasures in heaven and not treasures on earth?" I told him, "You do not need money for that. In fact, the biggest obstacle you will have to laying up treasures in heaven may be your money, depending upon how you use it." Then I quoted to him the words of Jesus in the 16th chapter of Luke, "... that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God," {Luke 16:15 KJV}. Now if you are going to take that verse seriously –– and remember it comes from the lips of Jesus himself –– you will see that it agrees exactly with what Paul is saying here. Flesh and blood cannot do anything of value in the kingdom of God. It cannot lay hold of it; it cannot achieve anything within it.
What Paul says, in effect, is: "Nothing that wins the approval or the applause of men has any value at all in the sight of God." This includes all the Hollywood Oscars, all the athletic trophies, all the academic degrees, all the Nobel Prizes, or achievements of a lifetime of labor. None of these can ever impress God in the least degree.
[quoted in Ray C. Stedman’s sermon, The Victory of the Mystery, http://www.pbc.org/dp/stedman/1corinthians/3607.html]When we stand in the very presence of God, we will then see just how unimportant are the things we felt were so important in this earthly existence. And the reason that Paul is writing to the Christians in Corinth in this way is to prepare them for that day.
Don’t give your life for things that don’t count–– that have no eternal significance. Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, not merely treasures on earth. You might be thinking, "But you don’t understand. We have bills to pay. We have to work for a living. We can’t always give ourselves to eternal things. We can’t be full time in the ministry."
There are a lot of questions there. I’m glad you asked them. First of all, if you are a Christian, you are in the ministry. God has called every Christian to use his or her gifts in ministry. Secondly, you are a full-time Christian whether you work in "secular" employment or not. Thirdly, we all have bills to pay, and we all must earn money to pay them. But we are the ones who choose the kind of lifestyle we are working for. And those choices determine how much money we will need to pay for it all, and consequently the amount of time and energy we will have to expend to make that amount of money.
If you choose to live in an upscale neighborhood where the homes start at a half-million dollars and up, drive a Lexus or Hummer, have a boat, wear expensive clothes, a Rolex and fine jewelry, it will take a lot of money to do that. Unless you have inherited it, you will probably have to work long hours, perhaps even in more than one job. You will find yourself so busy trying to make a living that you have no time for living. You will soon find that you have no time for church, no time for your family, and probably begin to plan work related vacations. And all for what? All for things that you will leave behind. Don’t choose to do that! And you are the one that can do something about it. I know it may sound like heresy in America, but you might consider choosing to live more simply in order to have more time to give to the work of Christ’s kingdom.
This is the mystery of our future destiny. We will be totally transformed at the coming of Christ. It will happen in a flash, he says. Whether we have died–– he calls it sleep–– or whether we are alive when Christ returns, we will all be changed. The signal will be the last trumpet. That trumpet will sound, signaling the coming of Christ, and the dead will be raised imperishable while those of us who are still alive will be changed. This transformation is not something we can buy with money or inherit. It will be like we are given a new set of clothes to wear. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. Just as in redemption, we have been clothed with the righteousness of Christ, so in resurrection our redeemed spirits will be clothed with redeemed bodies.
We Will Have Victory
54
When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." 55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (15:54-57)The second future fact our text guarantees is that we will have victory over death. We began our study speaking of death is our great enemy, as indeed it is. But there will come a day in the future when death will die, and we will stand triumphantly basking in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Notice the connection in our text, in verse 54, between the when and the then. It is at that moment in the future when we receive our resurrection bodies that we will experience the ultimate victory over death that we have been promised. At that moment the great prophecies in Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14 will be ultimately fulfilled. Isaiah says of the Lord that "he will swallow up death forever." In Hosea God says, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeemed them from death. Where, O death, are your plagues? Where, O grave, is your destruction?"
Because of the law, we see the power of sin. It is the law of God that reveals us to be its transgressors. We stand guilty, and the penalty for our sin is death. We experience the sting of death because of our sin against God. The Bible teaches that the wages of sin is death. (Rom. 6:23) If we get what we have earned, what we deserve, it will be death. But the point of the Cross is that we do not get what we have earned because through Christ the penalty has been paid. Instead of judgment we receive mercy. And there is no one to thank for that except God himself. He is the one who gives us the victory, over sin and over death, through the finished work of our Lord Jesus Christ.
As we look at the future fact of our ultimate victory over death, we see that death truly holds no sting for us. If Jesus tarries, then death will be like closing our eyes in sleep only to be quickly awakened in eternity. We are reminded of the words of the poet John Donne: "One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."
We read in the book of Revelation: "Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death." (20:14) And again, "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." (21:4)
The two future facts that are guaranteed to us are that we will be transformed into glorious, immortal, and imperishable spiritual beings with spiritual bodies and that we will be given ultimate victory over death itself–– that we will never die.
This brings us to the definitive implication of the argument the apostle Paul is carefully constructing in this text. He points us to these two future facts in order to bring us back to the present reality of our current walk with God. In other words, based on what we know will be true then in the future, how should we now live today? Our future should impact our present.
You see, many of us, who study the various theories concerning the end times, see a potential danger in those who believe that things are just going to get worse and worse until Jesus comes again and sets things right. The potential danger is in living with the attitude that there is not very much we can do in our current situation. After all, things are just going to get worse, so what we need to do is just hunker down and ride out the storm as best we can. We might as well write this world off and turn our attention to the blessed hope of the soon coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Come Lord Jesus, and the sooner the better. You might call this the Christian survivalist mentality. It misses the point.
We Must Give Fully
58
Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. (15:58)The point that is being missed is that the guarantee of our future transformation and triumph issues to us a powerful present challenge to give ourselves fully to the present work of God. Now is not the time to do less; it is the time to do more.
Verse 58 begins with the word "therefore." One rule of reading Scripture is that when you come to a "therefore," you need to ask what it is there for. And what Paul is saying here is that because our future is secure, we are now set free to give our all in serving the Lord today. In fact, it demands it!
We are told to stand firm. This is alternately translated by the word steadfast. It refers to him being firmly settled. The NIV translates what the NASB translates as immovable with the exhortation... Let nothing move you. The word in Greek carries the strong notion of being totally motionless. When these words are taken together they speak of our being firmly grounded in the truth of God’s word and will–– of not being "tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming." (Eph. 4:14, NIV)
But on the positive side, we are exhorted to always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord. We are not to retreat. We are to advance. We are to bring the fight to the devil. We are to storm the gates of hell until they fall under the mighty onslaught of the Church of Jesus Christ. We are to work. The work of the Lord is work–– hard work at times. It is translated toil in the NASB, and with good reason. But although it is labor, if it is in the Lord it is not in vain. Jesus said:
"Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done. (Rev. 22:12, NIV)
Seeing all that God has done for us and all he will do in the future, how can we do any less than to give ourselves fully to his work until he comes? There is no sacrifice too great to make, no price too high to pay, as long as there is one person left who needs Jesus. Let’s give it our all until he comes. He is bringing his reward with him. What will your reward be?
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