1 Corinthians 15 Now I make known unto you brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, 2by which also ye are saved, if ye hold fast the word which I preached unto you, except ye believed in vain. 3For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; 5and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve; 6then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep; 7then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles; 8and last of all, as to the child untimely born, he appeared to me also.

The last few weeks we have been talking about sin, sin that we inherited from Adam and the consequence of that sin, Death. Dying has been around since the garden of Eden. Death is a problem and today we want to see how God fixes the problem, the consequences of sin, Death.

Death comes as consequence to man’s rebellion, It’s not very surprising. If God is the Creator and gives life, then if you detach yourself from this God, if you defy this God, what is there but death?

The only death is defeated is, if someone dies, and then comes back to life.

He’s the one who brought it all into being in the first place. He didn’t bring it into being that it might be completely autonomous from him, so if one walks away from him, what is there but death?

If you pronounce your own good and evil and decide for yourself what is up and what is down, then you have detached yourself from the God who made you, and there is nothing but death.

All the affects of sin must somehow be reversed and overcome. Otherwise, death just keeps going on. It is still a decaying universe. There is still pain and sorrow and death, but the Bible, with clarity, begins to lay out hope of a transformed universe with no more death or decay.

If the entailment of rebellion and sin, of being cut off from the Creator, is death, then God’s justice requires some kind of debt even while this God forgives the sinner.

That death is not to be judged an evil which is the end of a good life; for death becomes evil only by the retribution which follows it. They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them. Augustine of hippo,

John Climacus, a seventh-century ascetic who wrote Ladder of Divine Ascent, urged Christians to use the reality of death to their benefit: “You cannot pass a day devoutly unless you think of it as your last,” he wrote. He called the thought of death the “most essential of all works” and a gift from God. “The man who lives daily with the thought of death is to be admired, and the man who gives himself to it by the hour is surely a saint.” “A man who has heard himself sentenced to death will not worry about the way theatres are run.”

Pinchas Lapide is an orthodox Jewish theologian who has worked hard in the cause of Jewish-Christian relations and in recent years has become the favourite Jewish conversation-partner for German Christian theologians. A few years ago he took the unprecedented step of accepting (without becoming a Christian) that the resurrection of Jesus was a real historical event, and in this book explains why.

(1) The historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, while not unambiguous enough to convince the determined sceptic, is very good. In particular, Lapide is impressed by the transformation of the disciples from a frightened and despairing group on Good Friday to a confident missionary society: only a real historical event can explain this.

(2) The disciples’ experience of Jesus’ resurrection must be understood as a genuinely ‘Jewish faith experience’. Its preconditions (especially the Jewish expectation of resurrection) are Jewish beliefs which Lapide as an orthodox Jew shares.

(3) Lapide sees Christianity as part of God’s providential purpose to spread the knowledge of the God of Israel throughout the world. But, he reasons, in that case the resurrection of Jesus, without which there would have been no Christianity, must have been a real act of God in history. It does not make Jesus Israel’s Messiah (and so Lapide has not become a Christian), but it gives Jesus a prominent place in God’s preparation of the world for the coming messianic age.

The First Death to Cover Man’s Sin

There were long term effects that flowed from man’s rebellion in the garden. “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” They used fig leaves. If he uses garments of skin, then there has been the shedding of blood, a sacrificial animal. At this stage, there is no system of sacrifice (that comes later), a priestly system with sacrifices and prescribed animals and a tabernacle or a temple.

None of that’s in place, but God knows they need to be covered. They have so much shame to hide. He doesn’t say, “Take off those stupid fig leaves! If you just expose yourself and be honest with one another we can all get back together again and live happily every after.” There’s no way back!

He covers them with something more durable, but at the price of an animal that sheds its blood and is slain, the first of long trajectories of bloody sacrifices that reach all the way down to the coming of Jesus who was announced by one who comes just before him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

By his bloody sacrifice, by his death we are covered over, our shame and our guilt addressed because he dies in our place. A lamb can’t do that. Here it’s just a picture of what’s coming, but it’s the first step of a whole institution of sacrifices that point us, finally, to the supreme sacrifice and what Jesus did to take away our sin and cover up our shame.

You cannot make sense of the Bible until you come to agreement with what the Bible says our problem is. The ultimate problem is our alienation from God, our attempt to identify ourselves merely with reference to ourselves, this idolatry that de-Gods God, and what we must have is reconciliation back to this God or we have nothing.

For all of the mess to be fixed, death has to be dealt with. If not, death is still in control, sin is still the winner.
God’s answer is the cross.

People who talk endlessly about being intimate with Jesus, how Jesus is leading them, how Jesus is their friend, how Jesus guides them, and how precious Jesus is to them … yet none of it anywhere is tied to his death and resurrection, that’s just “God talk.”

The text 1 Corinthians 15:3 does not simply say that Christ died and rose again; it observes that Christ died for our sins.
God has retained his honor while redeeming a rebel brood. We can be free from guilt, both the objective guilt before a holy God and subjective feelings of guilt. This is not because we are guiltless, but because Jesus himself bore our sin in his own body on the tree, and God himself accepts that.

God started the image of the need for a sacrifice in Exodus and the first Passover.

Imagine the first Passover, just before the exodus. Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones (two Hebrews) are discussing the remarkable events of the previous few weeks. Mr. Smith asks Mr. Jones, “Have you sprinkled the blood of a lamb on the two doorposts and on the lintel over the entrance to your dwelling?”

“Of course,” replies Mr. Jones. “I followed Moses’ instructions exactly.” “So have I,” affirms Mr. Smith, “but I have to admit that I’m very nervous. My boy Charlie, a son with a remarkable Jewish name, means the world to me. If the angel of death passes through the land, I just don’t know what I’ll do if my son Charlie dies.”

“But that’s the point,” says Mr. Jones. “He won’t die. That’s why you sprinkled the lamb’s blood on the doorposts and on the lintel. Moses said that when the angel of death sees the blood, he will pass over. That’s why we call it Passover. Why are you worried?” “I know, I know,” sputters Mr. Smith, somewhat irritably.

“But God has promised that the angel of death, when he sees the blood, will pass over. I take him at his word.”

So that night, the angel of death passes through the land. Who loses his son? Mr. Smith or Mr. Jones? The answer, of course, is neither, for God’s promise that the angel of death would simply pass over and not destroy was not made conditional on the intensity of the faith, but on the sacrifice.

We have come to trust Christ and his cross work on our behalf. The promise of his deliverance and the assurance that we are accepted by almighty God is not tied to the intensity of our faith, to the sincerity of our prayers, to the consistency of our emotions, or to the purity of every imagination, but to the object of our faith: to Christ.

God fixes our problem with a death on a Cross.

We’re told in Revelation 12:11, they overcome him by the blood of the Lamb.

10 And I heard a great voice in heaven, saying, Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accuseth them before our God day and night. 11And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb, and because of the word of their testimony; and they loved not their life even unto death.

What does this mean? It means that these believers escape the accusations of Satan himself, whether in their own minds (you know how we feel guilty, whip ourselves, and wonder how we can possibly be accepted by God) or before the bar of God’s justice because they make their instant appeal to the cross.

We’re looking at the God who grants new birth. John 3:1–15:

“Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus,’ Jesus replied, ‘Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born again.’ ‘How can anyone be born when they are old?’ Nicodemus asked. ‘Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!’

In this light, Jesus is clearly saying, in effect, “What we need is new men and women not new institutions. What we need are new lives not new laws. What we need are new creatures not new creeds. What we need is new people not mere displays of power.

What you really must have is what Ezekiel said, some act of God that does clean you up and actually fuses you with power from God himself from his Spirit so we are changed, transformed. You must have that or you cannot possibly be connected with the life of God. That’s what he wants. “Flesh gives birth to flesh. Don’t be surprised I demand something that is birthed from Spirit.”

Where there is new birth, where it has genuinely come from God, it will transform you. You will see change in the life. That doesn’t mean people have suddenly reached perfection. But, it does mean a change does begin, if not there is no reason to belief there is new life.

He says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”

The nature of the murmuring and grumbling, the whining and complaining, was bound up with a profound dissatisfaction of God. Once again, all the way back in Genesis 3, we find a repetition. That is to say, you make your own rules, you become your own god, you decide your own destiny, you don’t trust, you don’t delight in God or his sovereign care or ask him for guidance.

How could it be any other way? We’ve already seen the God of the Old Testament can’t be bartered with. You can’t offer him something and make a trade.

Jesus on that cross by his death provided the means by which we have new birth. By his death, we have life. By his crucifixion on a pole, we begin eternal life. The new birth is grounded in Jesus’ death and resurrection.