Deep study
Why the bodily rising of Jesus is the hinge of the gospel and the hope of all who are His
If Christ has not been raised, Paul says, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). But He has been raised - bodily, in history - and that single event is the hinge on which the whole gospel turns and the ground of every Christian hope.
The tomb was empty and the body that came out of it was real: Jesus ate fish before the disciples and told a doubting Thomas to touch His wounds, saying a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have (Luke 24:39). Yet it was no mere return to ordinary life. Lazarus was resuscitated and died again; Jesus was resurrected to an indestructible, glorified life that death can never touch. First-century Jews expected a resurrection of all the righteous at the end of the age. In Jesus, that end-time resurrection breaks into the middle of history, ahead of schedule, in one Man.
Paul hands on what he calls a matter of first importance, an early creed he received and delivered: Christ died for our sins, was buried, was raised on the third day, and appeared - to Peter, the Twelve, then to more than five hundred at once, most still living and able to be questioned (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). The cowardly disciples became fearless martyrs. And strikingly, the first witnesses were women, whose testimony carried little legal weight in that culture - exactly the detail no one inventing a story would have chosen, and so a quiet mark of its truthfulness.
Paul reaches for a harvest image: Christ has been raised as the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Corinthians 15:20). The firstfruits were the first sheaf brought in, the pledge and sample of the whole harvest to follow. Jesus' resurrection is therefore not an isolated marvel but the prototype and guarantee of ours. The new creation has already begun - in His risen body - and all who are united to Him are swept up into it, raised with Him to walk in newness of life even now (Romans 6:4).
The resurrection is the Father's verdict on the cross. Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification (Romans 4:25) - the empty tomb is the receipt proving the debt was paid in full. By it He was declared to be the Son of God in power (Romans 1:4). Death, the last enemy, is swallowed up in victory: O death, where is your sting? (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). The powers that held us are disarmed, and the risen Christ holds the keys of death and Hades (Revelation 1:18).
What is sown perishable is raised imperishable; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body (1 Corinthians 15:42-44). 'Spiritual' does not mean immaterial - it means a body fully animated and governed by the Spirit, like the Lord's own glorious body, into which He will transform ours (Philippians 3:21). The Christian hope is not escape from the body but the redemption of it. This is why we grieve differently, suffer with courage, and treat the body as good: what God made, Christ redeemed, and the Spirit will raise.