¹²Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; ¹⁴and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.

The resurrection of Christ was universally embraced by all the apostles and virtually the entire expanding first-century Christian movement. So then, what was it about the general concept of the resurrection of the dead that some of the Corinthians did not believe? We don’t know how many had this problem of faith, nor what prompted this disbelief. We may speculate the influence of the Epicureans (who believed the soul can no longer exist after death), the infiltration of the Sadducees (who denied the resurrection altogether), or general Roman pagan views (which generally did not include life after death). But at the peril of reading too much into the text, we simply take Paul’s comments as they stand: some simply denied the resurrection of the dead.

Paul’s comments form one of the gauntlets modern apologetics throws down to unbelievers, namely that if one could prove that the resurrection of Christ did not historically occur, then the whole case for the Christian faith would fold. The implications are enormous. No resurrection in general would mean no resurrection in particular, namely of Christ. If there was no resurrection of Christ, then gospel preaching would be completely useless—it would be good news, but fake news! If the message is fake news, then we must conclude that faith in the resurrection is useless, nothing more than an exercise in positive thinking. If that were the case, then believing in the fake news would be useless for facing the difficulties of life, including death.

To put it another way, for life to have any useful meaning and purpose, there must be a resurrection of the dead and a belief in that resurrection. The testimony of the apostles and other eyewitnesses is that Jesus did in fact rise from the dead, and therefore there isa resurrection for all—question answered!

Why would someone want to deny this truth, when without it there is no hope for a future life? If all we have is right here and now, there is not enough fuel to keep our faith engines running—sooner or later we will run out. Yet vain theological speculation has plagued the church since the beginning. We must keep going back to the facts: Jesus Christ and Him crucified, raised from the dead, and witnessed by a multitude of people. On this, all else in the Christian faith rests.

Lord, I believe in the death and resurrection of Your Son Jesus Christ, and that someday I too will be raised from the dead to be with Him.