Resurrection Evidence
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2025 · 20 April 2025
1 Corinthians 15 is going to take us some time to get through it because of the great depth and significance. A Christian was walking through an art gallery and he came upon a small boy gazing at a painting of the crucifixion. He stood and watched and he said, “Son, what is that a picture of? “Why, sir,” said the lad, “That’s our Lord dying on a cross and bearing our sin.”
The man walked on, and suddenly, he felt a little tug. There was that same boy looked up and said, “Pardon me, sir, I forgot to tell you one thing. He’s not dead anymore; He arose.” And that is the message of the Gospel. He’s not dead anymore; He arose. And just as the heart pumps lifeblood to the body, so the resurrection is the heart of the Gospel, pumping life into every area of truth.
The resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns. If you take away the resurrection, Christianity comes out as wishful thinking and just another useless human philosophy. Christians know that the shameful death of Jesus Christ was not the last word, but that he arose and triumphed over death, and that He granted to anyone who believes in Him the same resurrection hope.
And it was this belief alone that turned the followers of a crucified rabbi into the courageous martyrs of the early Church. It was the resurrection that gave birth to the fellowship of the saints that became the Church. And they found, that they could imprison them, and they could beat them, and even kill them, but they could never make them deny the reality of the resurrection.
Now, 1 Corinthians 15, is really the chapter that explains a doctrinal issue. All the other ones are really practical issues, although they have doctrinal bases, but this is a purely doctrinal issue that has arisen in the Corinthian church to which Paul must address himself. And thank God he did, because he gave us the greatest statement on the resurrection ever penned.
Not only the resurrection of Christ, but the anticipated resurrection that you and I and every person who’s ever lived in the history of the world, both just and unjust, will experience. And for us it comes down the simple reality that the entire destiny of man hinges on whether Jesus Christ is simply a crucified rabbi, or whether He is God, as proven by His resurrection.
The resurrection is the core of the Christian faith. Paul said in Romans 10:9, “If you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” In other words, salvation is predicated on the confession of the lordship of a resurrected Christ. And if there is no resurrection of Christ confessed, there can be no salvation.
So, 1 Corinthians 15 is written primarily not to prove the resurrection of Christ to Christians. And it isn’t written to try to convince the unbeliever that Jesus really rose; it is written to try to prove to the Christians that because He literally rose, they too will literally physically rise from the dead. That’s the thrust of the fifteenth chapter. This is all about you coming out of the grave.
Now, the Corinthians were having a problem believing in the resurrection of Christ. They had never understood the ramifications. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, “You already believe in the resurrection. Right? Therefore, realize this: Christ is just the first fruits of all them that slept. So, if you already believe that, physically and literally, why are you hung up on your own resurrection?”
Well, you see, it came from this particular point. Now the Corinthians had allowed themselves to be victimized by the beliefs of their time. They had allowed the sins of their society to enter the church. They were really the world mixed with the church. They believed the Greek philosophy that said that there was no such thing as a bodily resurrection. They denied that.
So, when they died, the body which was evil and done away with; the soul which was good went into immortality. They didn’t have any problem with the immortality of the soul; it was the resurrection of the body they didn’t believe in. There’s no way that a Greek, would have understood a resurrection of the body. To him it was a strange message to be disbelieved.
Now, Paul points this problem up in 1 Corinthians 15:12. He says, “How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” Why are you saying this? And then in the first part of verse 12, “If Christ is preached that He rose from the dead.” I mean if you’ve already admitted that Christ rose bodily and physically, why can’t you believe that you will also?
Now, there were a group of Jews existing at that time known as the Sadducees. And they did not believe in bodily resurrection. That’s why they were so sad, you see? Because they had absolutely no hope. They had nothing to anticipate. They had nothing to look forward to. They did not believe in the resurrection. They didn’t believe in angels or the resurrection it says in Acts.
Let us look at two little points, testimonies to the resurrection. We’ll discuss these this time. Verses 1-2, “Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preached to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”
Verse 3, “That Christ died for our sins.” Verse 4, “That He was buried, and that He rose again the third day”. “Well, it’s the Gospel of the death - the substitutionary death - the burial, the resurrection of Christ. That Gospel.” “You received it.” John 1:12, “To as many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
From God’s standpoint, a true believer is kept, and from our standpoint, a true believer continues in the faith. The one who departs gives evidence of never having really been saved. Hebrews 10:38 says, “Now, the just shall live by faith.” You can tell a just man because he lives by faith. He doesn’t have a moment of faith; he has a life of faith. And he continues in that life.
True Christians are evident by their continued faith. So, if you move away from the hope of the Gospel, you get evidence that you believed in vain. Your faith was empty, useless faith with no commitment to the lordship of Christ. 1 John 2:19 says, “They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.”
One proof of the resurrection is the existence of the Church. The fact that the Corinthians had received it and stood in it and continued in it is evidence that Christ is alive. Who else could have changed them but a living Christ? Who else could have taken all these thieves, homosexuals, fornicators, liars, adulterers, and transformed them into a community of the living Christ?
The Church was founded on faith in the Messiahship of Jesus. A crucified messiah was one rejected by Judaism and accursed of God. It was the resurrection of Jesus, as Paul declares in Romans 1:4, which proclaimed Him to be the Son of God with power.” He’s saying if there was no resurrection, the Church would have died there, because the whole thing was predicated on that.
The resurrection faith is unique to Christianity. Buddhists don’t claim it. Muhammad died June 8, 632 A.D. at Medina, and nobody has ever claimed that he came out of the grave. But the Church continues to celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead. And every time the Church baptizes another believer, they portray His resurrection – into the water and back out again. That’s the heart of our faith.
The Gospel of the resurrection was not some late addition. Everything is predicted in the Old Testament. Paul says in verse 3, “For I passed on to you as most important what I also received.” Now, every good apostle, every good pastor is just a delivery boy. All God expects out of us is to get the right message to the people. And by the way, Paul received it firsthand.
So he says, “I received this from the Lord.” Paul fought a battle in his life. He was often accused of being a Johnny-come-lately. Later, in the next section, he calls himself “One born out of due time.” It means an abortion. But apparently, that’s what he was called, He was sort of a spiritual miscarriage. So Paul will say, “I am delivering to you what I received from the Lord.”
Paul says, “This is Old Testament prophesy. Old Testament prophets saw Jesus dying and rising from the dead the third day.” In Luke 24:25, Jesus, after His resurrection, is walking with two of the disciples, saying, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” He says, “You would have known they said He would die; and He would rise to be glorified.”
Our Lord said, “As Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the fish, so shall the Son of Man be in the earth.” Jonah was a prophecy of Jesus. In Isaiah 53, you have Christ dying. And at the end of the chapter, you have Him reigning in the earth in the kingdom. Well, you’ve got to have a resurrection. So, even the Old Testament speaks of the resurrection. Let us pray.