The women had watched everything. They had stood at a distance on Friday afternoon and seen Him die. They had followed Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus to the garden and seen where the body was laid, wrapped quickly in linen with myrrh and aloes because the Sabbath was about to begin. Luke tells us that they “beheld the sepulchre, and how his body was laid” (Luke 23:55). They wanted to remember the exact place. They were planning to come back.
Then they went home and prepared spices and ointments. Picture the work. Grinding, measuring, mixing fragrant oils by lamplight in a house where nobody was speaking much. It was the last act of love they could offer Him, and they did it carefully. Then they rested on the Sabbath, because the law required it, through what must have been the longest day of their lives.
Before dawn on the first day of the week they set out. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and others with them. The jars were heavy. The streets were dark. And as they walked, they talked about a practical problem. Mark records it: “Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?” (Mark 16:3). They had no plan for the stone. They only knew that love required them to try.
Notice what they were expecting. They were coming to honour a corpse. Whatever courage and devotion brought them out that morning, they were not hurrying to celebrate a resurrection. They had spices for a body they assumed would stay exactly where they had left it.
Luke tells us what they found:
Now upon the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they came unto the sepulchre, bringing the spices which they had prepared, and certain others with them. And they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre. And they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus. And it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments: And as they were afraid, and bowed down their faces to the earth, they said unto them, Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen: remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. And they remembered his words.
“Why seek ye the living among the dead?” Their question had been about access to a tomb. The answer was about a living Lord. And they had to do something before they could understand what they were seeing: they had to remember. Jesus had told them this would happen. “And they remembered his words.”
The resurrection still interrupts our plans. It still forces us to reconsider the boundaries we have drawn around the gospel. Jesus is far more than a great teacher whose wisdom outlived Him. He is the crucified and risen Lord, and we receive forgiveness, pray, work, grieve and face death in relation to a Person who is alive.
If Christ be not raised
Some members of the church in Corinth had begun to say that there was no resurrection of the dead. They probably did not deny that Jesus had survived death in some spiritual sense. Many in the Greek world thought of the body as a prison and found the idea of bodily resurrection embarrassing, even absurd. Paul responds by following their position all the way to its end:
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
Look at the chain of consequences. If the dead are not raised, then Christ is not raised. If Christ is not raised, the preaching of the apostles is empty, and they are liars who have misrepresented God. Faith is futile. Believers are still in their sins. Those who have died trusting Christ have simply perished. And Christians, of all people, are the most to be pitied, because they have staked everything on a hope that does not exist.
That is a remarkable thing for an apostle to write. Paul does not say that faith would still be valuable as an inspiring story, or a helpful moral framework, or a source of comfort for hard days. He says that without the resurrection, the whole thing collapses. Christianity stands or falls on something that happened in a garden outside Jerusalem.
That is why Paul, a few verses earlier, lists witnesses. Peter. The twelve. “Above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present” (1 Corinthians 15:6). In other words: many of them are still alive, go and ask them. Then James. Then all the apostles. Then Paul himself. Paul is using the language of public testimony to an event, the kind of evidence that can be checked.
We need to keep that weight in our preaching. It is possible to speak about the resurrection only as a symbol of inner renewal, a way of saying that hope survives tragedy, while quietly discarding the historical claim. Paul will not allow it. The apostles proclaimed something God had done. Their explanation of its meaning rests on the truth of the event.
PunchlineThis also gives faith somewhere firm to stand. There are days when worship comes easily, and days when grief makes every sentence difficult. The resurrection of Christ is not renewed by our enthusiasm or cancelled by our exhaustion. It happened. It remains.
Raised for our justification
Why does Paul say that if Christ is not raised, “ye are yet in your sins”? Surely it was His death that dealt with sin. Paul answers that question in Romans:
Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; But for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.
“Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.” The cross and the empty tomb belong together. He was handed over to death because of our sins. He was raised because the work of dealing with them had been accepted.
Think of it this way. On Friday afternoon Jesus cried, “It is finished,” and then He died. How would anyone know that His offering had been accepted by the Father? A man executed as a criminal, buried in a borrowed tomb, might have been just one more failed teacher whom Rome had silenced. Death looked like the verdict.
The resurrection overturned that verdict. Paul says that Jesus was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4). On Sunday morning the Father answered the cross. He raised the Son, and in doing so He announced to heaven and earth that the sacrifice was sufficient and the Sacrificed One was who He claimed to be.
That is why a dead Saviour could not justify anyone. If Jesus had stayed in the grave, the sin He carried would have had the last word over Him. Because He rose, we know that sin’s claim was fully met. The believer’s justification does not hang on a hope that the payment might have been enough. It hangs on the Father’s public answer, written in an empty tomb.
Paul adds that righteousness “shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Notice the object of faith. We believe on the God who raised Jesus. Christian faith is trust in a God who brings the dead to life, which is exactly the kind of God a sinner needs.
It was not possible that death should hold Him
Seven weeks after the resurrection, Peter stood up in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. His whole sermon turns on the empty tomb. Speaking of Jesus, he says: “Whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it” (Acts 2:24).
Not possible. Death had held every human being who had ever lived. It held Abraham and Moses and David. But when it closed its grip on Jesus, it found itself holding the Author of life, a man without sin, over whom it had no rightful claim. The grave could not keep Him.
Peter then quotes a psalm of David about the Holy One not seeing corruption, and points out that David’s tomb is still there in Jerusalem with David in it. The psalm must have been about someone else. And then he reaches his conclusion:
This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended into the heavens: but he saith himself, The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, Until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.
Follow the movement. God raised Jesus. The apostles are witnesses. The risen Jesus has been exalted to the right hand of God. From there He has received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father and poured Him out, which is the very thing the crowd is seeing and hearing that morning. Therefore Israel should know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, the one they crucified, “both Lord and Christ.”
The resurrection is the hinge on which that whole argument swings. Without it, Jesus is a crucified rabbi. With it, He is the enthroned Lord, and the gift of the Spirit is the evidence that He is reigning. The Pentecost experience of the church is the overflow of an empty tomb.
The book of Acts keeps this emphasis all the way through. The authorities were “grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (Acts 4:2). And “with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all” (Acts 4:33). The resurrection stood at the centre of their message.
The firstfruits of the harvest
After following the dark logic of a world without resurrection, Paul turns with a burst of joy:
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Every Israelite farmer understood that picture. When the harvest began, the first sheaf of grain was brought to the priest, who would “wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it” (Leviticus 23:11). The firstfruits were a pledge. They were the first of the harvest, and they guaranteed that the rest of the field was coming in.
Many readers have noticed that this offering was presented on the day after the Sabbath, during the season of Passover. Jesus rose on the first day of the week, the morning after the Sabbath, in that same season. Whether or not Paul had that timing in mind, the image fits wonderfully. Christ’s resurrection is the first sheaf. It is unique in its place and authority. Yet it is also the beginning of a harvest, and the guarantee that “they that are Christ’s at his coming” will follow.
Paul sets this within the story of all humanity. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” Adam’s disobedience brought death to the whole race that came from him. Christ’s resurrection brings life to the new humanity that belongs to Him. Two heads, two humanities, two destinies.
This gives real dignity to the human body. Christian hope is not that we will one day escape our bodies and float forever as disembodied spirits. It is that the God who raised Jesus will raise us. Paul says that Christ “shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). And “he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11).
We can therefore care for bodies without thinking such care is less spiritual than prayer. Food for the hungry, rest for the exhausted, medical attention for the sick, protection for the vulnerable and dignity for the dying all matter to a people who believe in resurrection. The Lord who raises the dead gives us reason to honour bodily life even while we wait for its final transformation.
Death has lost its sting
Paul ends his great chapter by looking forward to the day the harvest is complete:
So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
“Death is swallowed up in victory.” Paul is quoting Isaiah, and then he echoes the prophet Hosea, who had heard God say, “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction” (Hosea 13:14). Paul turns it into a taunt. “O death, where is thy sting?”
He explains what the sting was. “The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.” Death was terrible because it led a sinner into the presence of a holy God with his guilt still on him, condemned by a law he had broken. But Christ has dealt with sin, and His resurrection proves it. The sting has been drawn. Death remains an enemy. Paul calls it “The last enemy that shall be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). But for the believer it is an enemy that has already lost the war.
Hebrews says that Christ came to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:15). Many people live under exactly that bondage. In our cities, fear of death wears many faces: the dread of a night journey on a dangerous highway, the anxiety in a hospital corridor, the panic at a strange noise outside the gate, the terror some feel toward curses and threats from people who claim spiritual power. The risen Christ says to every one of them what He said to John on Patmos: “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18).
The keys are in His hand. Not in the hand of a witch doctor, an enemy or an accident.
That does not make believers careless. Freedom from the fear of death is not permission to drive recklessly, ignore a doctor’s advice or stay in a dangerous situation out of bravado. It is the freedom to make sensible decisions without being ruled by terror, and to live generously instead of defensively. A person who is no longer enslaved by fear of death can afford to love.
NuggetDeath still comes, but it no longer has the last word. The keys of death and the grave are in the hand of a risen Saviour.
Hope at the graveside
Paul wrote to the young church at Thessalonica, where some believers had died and others were grieving and confused. He said: “But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).
Notice that Paul does not tell them not to sorrow. He tells them not to sorrow as others which have no hope. Christian grief is still grief. It is simply grief with a future.
A woman I will call Mama Titi buried her husband after forty-one years of marriage. At the wake-keeping her small granddaughter climbed onto her lap, looked at her tear-stained face and asked, “Grandma, if Grandpa is with Jesus, why are you crying?” Some well-meaning relative might have hurried to tell the child that strong Christians do not cry. Mama Titi did not. She held the girl close and said, “I am crying because I miss him, and I loved being with him. But I am not crying the way people cry when they think it is finished. Jesus came out of His grave, and one day He will bring Grandpa out of his.” The truth made room for both the sorrow and the hope.
That is exactly what Paul does. He ends that passage by saying, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thessalonians 4:18). Comfort is something believers give while grief is still present. We do not have to wait until a bereaved person has stopped crying before the promise of resurrection becomes relevant. And comfort is something given to one another. If you are grieving, let others carry you. If you are supporting someone who grieves, offer your presence before your explanations, and do not place a timetable on their tears.
A day has been appointed
When Paul preached in Athens, he stood before the council of the Areopagus, among philosophers who had heard every idea under the sun. Luke tells us that some of them thought he was proclaiming foreign gods “because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18). Some scholars suggest that his hearers may even have mistaken the Greek word for resurrection, anastasis, for the name of a goddess. Paul spoke of the Creator, of His nearness to every human being, and of the foolishness of idols. Then he came to the point:
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men , in that he hath raised him from the dead.
The resurrection is more than good news for believers. It is God’s public notice to the whole world. A day has been fixed. A Judge has been appointed. And the proof that this Judge is real, and that the day is coming, is that God has raised Him from the dead. “Whereof he hath given assurance unto all men.”
That is why the call goes out to “all men every where to repent.” The risen Jesus is not only the Saviour who receives sinners. He is the Lord before whom every life will one day be laid open. The same empty tomb that comforts the believer warns the careless.
The reaction in Athens was mixed. “When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked: and others said, We will hear thee again of this matter” (Acts 17:32). And a few believed. That is often how it goes. When you speak about the resurrection, some will laugh. Some will want to think about it. Some will believe. Our task is to tell it truthfully, without embarrassment, and to leave the results with God.
Living as resurrection people
The resurrection does not only secure the future. It changes the present. Peter blesses God who “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). A living hope. The hope of a believer is alive because the One it rests on is alive. It can be tested, and Peter goes straight on to speak of believers who are “in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Peter 1:6). But it cannot be killed, because its foundation has already come through death and out the other side.
In an earlier teaching we looked at how believers are united with Christ in His death and resurrection, raised to walk in newness of life. That union is real, and it means the old patterns of sin no longer have the right to master you. But resurrection life does not make growth unnecessary. A newborn baby is fully alive and still has to learn to walk. New life makes growth possible. The Spirit then teaches us, patiently, to live as people who belong to a risen Lord.
Perhaps the present season has shrunk your horizon to almost nothing. A setback can reduce life to the next bill, the next result, the next difficult conversation. Attend to those things faithfully. But let the risen Lord enlarge your view. The future of those who belong to Him is greater than the trouble now demanding their attention.
Paul ends his resurrection chapter not with a vision of heaven but with a word about Monday morning: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58). Therefore. Because Christ is risen, nothing done for Him is wasted. You can love someone who cannot repay you. You can keep a promise that has become costly. You can teach a Sunday school class of seven restless children, care for an ageing parent, or tell the truth in a meeting where lying would be easier. Death will not erase any of it.
Let us go back to the garden.
The women ran from the tomb with their hearts pounding. Luke says they told the apostles, and “their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not” (Luke 24:11). That would not last. Within hours Peter had seen the empty grave clothes for himself. By evening the risen Lord had appeared to Simon, to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and then to the gathered company in Jerusalem. Mary Magdalene had already heard Him say her name in the garden and had turned to cry, “Rabboni.”
PunchlineAnd the spices? We are never told what happened to them. The jars that had taken so much love to prepare, the ointments mixed by lamplight in a grieving house, were never needed. Nobody anointed that body. It was not there to be anointed.
I wonder what you are carrying spices for. Perhaps it is a marriage you have quietly decided is dead. Perhaps it is a calling you buried years ago. Perhaps it is your own future, which you have already wrapped in linen and laid in a tomb of disappointment. Perhaps it is a person you love whose grave you have visited, and whose hope you find hard to hold.
Hear the question the angels asked. Why seek ye the living among the dead? Jesus is not where they laid Him. He is risen, as He said. The resurrection changed everything, and it can change the way you walk into tomorrow morning. Put down the spices. Remember His words. Go and tell someone.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Paul says that if Christ is not raised, our faith is vain. Why is the resurrection so essential, and not just an encouraging addition to the cross?
- What does it mean to you that Jesus “was raised again for our justification”?
- How does the image of Christ as the firstfruits shape the way you think about your own body and the bodies of others?
- Where does the fear of death, in any of its forms, still have a hold on you? What would it look like to bring that fear to the One who holds the keys?
- What “spices” are you carrying for something you have assumed is permanently dead?
This Week
Read 1 Corinthians 15 in full on the first day of this week, aloud if you can. On each of the following days, take one section (verses 1-11, 12-19, 20-28, 35-49, 50-58) and write down one thing it tells you about the risen Christ and one thing it tells you about your future. At the end of the week, take one practical step of the “labour” Paul mentions in verse 58: an act of love, faithfulness or witness you have been putting off because it felt pointless.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, You are alive. You were delivered for my offences and raised again for my justification, and I thank You that the Father’s answer to the cross is written in an empty tomb. Thank You that death could not hold You, that You are the firstfruits of those who sleep, and that You hold the keys of death and the grave. Free me from every fear of death that has kept me in bondage. Teach me to grieve with hope and to comfort others with Your promises. Show me where I have been carrying spices for what You can still raise. Make me stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in Your work, because my labour in You is not in vain. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.