I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

9Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Corinthians 15-16.

    Paul emphasizes here that Chrit’s death and resurrection are the core of the Gospel message. That without them, the Gospel is meaningless. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, those who first preached the Gospel were liars. Worse than mere liars, they lied about God. The mystery of the Gospel is that Jesus defeated Satan by dying, but the evidence of His victory was His resurrection. There are those who believe that Jesus never died: either the person on the cross whom people thought was Jesus was someone else, or Jesus went into some kind of trance (the explanation for that varies) and the Romans merely thought He was dead. The first one of these makes a mockery of the Gospel, which states that Jesus died for our sins. It has someone else dying in Jesus’ place rather than Jesus dying in our place. The second one has no one die, and therefore our sins are not forgiven. More importantly, Jesus’ death was His victory. When Jesus died, Satan had done the worst to Him that He could do and it was not enough to make Jesus forsake the will of His Father. Jesus’ resurrection is the evidence of His victory. Even more than that, without Jesus’ resurrection, the Gospel is hollow. If the end of the story is death, Satan wins in the end because no one is left to oppose him. However, death is not the end. It was not the end for Jesus, and it will not be the end for those of us who put our faith in Him.