Paul argues that if there is no resurrection, then he and the other apostles suffered for nothing. It was joy in the truth about the risen Christ—and the hope of the resurrection of believers—that drove the apostles forward to endure all of the persecution that they bore for the sake of the Gospel and the building up of the people of God. Paul reasons that, if there is no resurrection, we should give ourselves entire to hedonistic living because that would be all there is in which to find joy in this empty, futile and passing world. 

I’ve always had something of an aversion to the “if Christianity is not true what do you lose” sort of apologetical approach—precisely because Scripture is God’s word and because it is perfect in all that God reveals in it. To raise the question almost seems to inadvertently jeopardize the veracity of it. Nevertheless, that is precisely the kind of reasoning that the apostle Paul utilized in 1 Corinthians 15 after he appealed to the clear teaching of Scripture about Jesus’ death and resurrection (1 Cor. 15:1-3).
What is at stake if we deny the resurrection?
Writing to a church that was in danger of allowing false teaching to creep in, the apostle tackled the issue of what was at stake if we deny the resurrection. Beginning in verse 12, Paul raises eight “ifs” (following them up with some of the weightiest of all theology) in order to explain the significance of the resurrection for the life of the believers. Consider the following eight “ifs” about the implications of denying the resurrection:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (1 Cor. 15:12)

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised….For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. (1 Cor. 15:13, 16)

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. (1 Cor. 15:14)

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. (1 Cor. 15:15)

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. (1 Cor. 15:17-18)

If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. (1 Cor. 15:19)

If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? (1 Cor. 15:29)

If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” (1 Cor. 15:32)

According to the apostle’s argument, if the resurrection never occurred one can categorize all that is lost under the following eight heads:
1. The Apostolic Message
The first thing that is lost, if we deny the resurrection, is the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus in the apostolic message. That is the central message of Christianity. How can some profess to be Christians and deny the central message of Christianity? The resurrection cannot be said to be a mythological or analogical story. It was an historical event that turned the world upside down. This, Paul, said—at the outset of the chapter—was an essential part of what was “of first importance.” In essence, Paul is saying, “If there is no resurrection, we have nothing left to preach because our message centers on Christ having been raised from the dead.”
2. A Living Redeemer
Next, the apostle heightens the argument by insinuating that if there is no resurrection from the dead, then “Christ is not risen.” We not only lose the central message of Christianity if there is no resurrection.
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Lyte preached as a dying man to dying men. He knew that life was but a vapor and that sinful man must make haste to close with Christ. And even as his own life began to fade, Lyte pointed others to the solace that he found in knowing that our unchangeable God abides with all His people in life and in death. 

I don’t like change, and I know I’m not the only one. Change, even if it is a good and needful change, carries with it a tinge of sorrow and uncertainty. As we reflect upon the goodness we’ve enjoyed and so often overlooked, we wonder if that same goodness will be on the far side of change. “Will my children make new friends after the move? How will I handle being an empty nester? What if my new career ends up being worse than my old one? How will I spend my time when I’m not going into the office every day?”
The feelings of sorrow and uncertainty are only magnified when the change is unexpected and unwelcome. “What happens if our country goes to war? What will the world look like for my children and grandchildren? How can I get out of bed in the morning without my spouse by my side?” As time changes everything about us and around us, the hymn “Abide with Me” provides special comfort to those who long for something constant, something that forever remains the same.
“Abide with Me” was written by the Scottish Anglican priest Henry F. Lyte (1793-1847). Lyte was a reputed poet and hymnodist (“Jesus I Thy Cross Have Taken” and “Praise, My Soul, the King of Heaven” come to us from Lyte’s pen), and a faithful minister serving All Saints Church in Lower Brixham, Devonshire, England for 23 years.
Lyte’s health was always fragile; asthma and tuberculosis were constant threats to his wellbeing. Shortly before journeying to Italy to escape the biting cold of winter, Lyte preached what would be his final sermon. The story goes that “Lyte nearly had to crawl to the pulpit and his message came as from a dying man. His final words made a deep impact upon his people when he said that it was his desire to ‘induce you to prepare for the solemn hour which must come to all by a timely appreciation and dependence upon Christ.’”[1] Lyte’s daughter tells us that it was on that same night that he placed the words of “Abide with Me” into the hands of a family member, together with a tune of his own composing. Two months later, Lyte succumbed to tuberculosis and died in Nice, France on November 20th, 1847.
Lyte preached as a dying man to dying men. He knew that life was but a vapor and that sinful man must make haste to close with Christ.
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Written by T. M. Suffield |
Saturday, October 21, 2023
We could do with being a lot more like him: not naïve, not living on the clouds, or ignorant of the deep scarring pains of existence on the face of the earth; rather embracing joy such that temptation does not touch us. It will be harder for us to be led astray by the strange lies of the modern age if we live in reality and participate in God in Christ.

We live in a strange moment of time and cultural winds that gets called all sorts of different names, but we can all agree its ‘modernity.’
Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, how concerned we are by it, and what features it has that we should embrace or push against are all tendentious topics. Of the writing of many essays there is no end.
It won’t surprise regular readers that I am not sanguine about modernity. I don’t think it’s been a good thing for the world or the church. Some of you may instantly want to quip that I should try living in the Middle Ages without anaesthetic, so for the sake of clarity I am not simplistically suggesting that everything was better six hundred years ago. It self-evidently wasn’t, and I’m as much a child of modernity as any of the rest of you reading this; even if it was better, it would seem confusing, strange, and worse to me.
We live in a moment that many would call ‘late modernity’ which does rather assume we know the future, but has replaced ‘postmodernity’ at least among thinkers who are not keen on the postmodern. The implication being that over five hundred years into modernity (when it starts could be argued but we’re probably talking about the Tudors, which might surprise some of you. We could also pick the Reformation, the English Civil War, or the American Revolutionary War.) we’re seeing features that feel like it’s end-stage. The promise of liberalism is falling apart. What was called postmodernism twenty years ago is now largely regarded as a natural development of what came before, it’s just being modern writ large.
Why should we care in the church? We and everyone we know for generations backward have been swimming in waters and telling stories that have been tweaked and moulded by these philosophical currents. This is true of previous eras too, but it’s more difficult to see the winds that still surround us.
The modern age gifted us wonders, like Protestantism, and terrors, like the separation of symbol from thing. We lack a sense that one thing has much meaning or connection to another thing. The world is made of atoms, right? So, each thing is just a thing and their baring on each other exists in the form of the gravitational attraction of atoms towards atoms but not beyond that. Each thing is therefore what we say it is.
But the world isn’t made of atoms, it’s made of stories.
This thinking is a feature in many of the ways that the modern world pushes against Christianity, whether we think of gender ideology or a memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper (sort of the same thing).
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