“And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless. And we apostles would all be lying about God—for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave. But that can’t be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.”
~ 1 Corinthians 15:14-19 New Living Translation (NLT)
In this passage, the Apostle Paul is being brutality honest with the church in Corinth. He tells them outright that Christians should be “pitied more than anyone else in the world” if what he and the other Apostles were preaching was not true. And with good reason. At this time in history, Christians were being heavily persecuted by both the Roman Empire and the Jewish leaders. They were being dragged from their homes, tortured and publicly executed. Paul and the other Apostles were no exception.
“Even now we go hungry and thirsty, and we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no home. We work wearily with our own hands to earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us. We appeal gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage, like everybody’s trash—right up to the present moment.”
~ 1 Corinthians 4:11-13 New Living Translation (NLT)
These were the founders of the church. All but one of them, the Apostle John, would be executed for their beliefs—Paul himself was beheaded in Rome, and John died in exile. To me, this is yet more proof of the Bible’s validity. The Apostles clearly believed what they had witnessed—and they had witnessed something; there is no other explanation for their actions. No one would be willing to suffer and die for something they’d made up.
Most cult leaders are after fame, money, and pleasure. Not poverty, torture, and death. But in the first century, that was what it meant to be a Christian. If you accepted Christ, there was a very real possibility that you would be killed for it. Which is why Paul said what he did in 1 Corinthians 15:14-19.
Paul only had one message that he preached, no matter where he went, and it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ. (2 Timothy 2:8-10)
“Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then, and you still stand firm in it. It is this Good News that saves you if you continue to believe the message I told you—unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.
“I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.
“Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him. For I am the least of all the apostles. In fact, I’m not even worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted God’s church. But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me—and not without results. For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles; yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace. So it makes no difference whether I preach or they preach, for we all preach the same message you have already believed.”
~ 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 New Living Translation (NLT)
Jesus is the beating heart of Christianity—not to mention the Head of the church. (Ephesians 5:23) Anything else is peripheral.
In short: If you don’t have Jesus right, then you don’t have anything right. So if anyone ever tries to derail you with a peripheral debate, turn the discussion around; always bring it back to Jesus, who he is, and what he did for us. Jesus is the center of everything we believe, and people have been trying to discredit him for the last 2000 years.
First they said he was not human. Now they say he was not God. Some even go so far as to claim that Jesus never existed—despite the testimony of thousands and the mountain of archaeological evidence to the contrary. And, of course, there are those who have said that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Since the day the church began, intellectuals, governments, and religious leaders have searched for Jesus’ body—desperate to prove us wrong. But they have yet to succeed.
Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. (1 Corinthians 3:11) He is the one thing no one can refute. So we must always bring everything—every spiritual issue, thought, and discussion—back to him.
“For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.
“You were dead because of your sins and because your sinful nature was not yet cut away. Then God made you alive with Christ, for he forgave all our sins. He canceled the record of the charges against us and took it away by nailing it to the cross. In this way, he disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross.
“So don’t let anyone condemn you for what you eat or drink, or for not celebrating certain holy days or new moon ceremonies or Sabbaths. For these rules are only shadows of the reality yet to come. And Christ himself is that reality. Don’t let anyone condemn you by insisting on pious self-denial or the worship of angels, saying they have had visions about these things. Their sinful minds have made them proud, and they are not connected to Christ, the head of the body. For he holds the whole body together with its joints and ligaments, and it grows as God nourishes it.”
~ Colossians 2:12-20 New Living Translation (NLT)
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