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

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

    In today’s passage Paul makes the case for the resurrection of the dead. He starts by summing up the Good News which he preached. This summation is an important thing for us to note: Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and rose from the dead on the third day. He then points out that Jesus was seen alive by a fairly large number of people after His death. He finishes this short section on the Good News which he preaches by pointing out that he and the other apostles preach the same message.

    Then Paul makes his primary argument for believing in resurrection of the dead. If there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ did not rise from the dead. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then the apostles, those who preached the Gospel were liars. If their claim that Jesus was raised from the dead was false, then everything else they taught was false as well. The Good News does not have the power to save us from our sins if Jesus did not rise from the dead. Further, there is no point in living according to the Gospel if there is nothing more than our physical beings. If the material world is all that there is, we may as well live solely for whatever pleasure we can derive in this life.

    However, this material world is NOT all that there is and Jesus was indeed raised from the dead. Therefore there is value in doing what is right and avoiding sin. If we trust fully in Jesus, we will be raised from the dead in His likeness. It is pointless to try to understand what sort of bodies we will have when we are raised from the dead. What we do know is that those bodies will not suffer the pains and disabilities which we experience today. Those who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead and try to follow Jesus’ teachings are the greatest of all fools. They are fools because our only source for what Jesus taught are people who also claimed that He rose from the dead. Lying about the Resurrection goes against everything else they were teaching. How could people who were either crazy or flat out lying about that teach anything of moral value?