Life That Can’t Be Killed

Resurrection Sunday

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

April 20, 2025

 

Life That Can’t Be Killed

Happy Easter! He is risen! Let’s turn together to 1 Cor. 15. This is an appropriate chapter to look at on Resurrection Sunday because the whole chapter is about resurrection – first Jesus’ resurrection and then the resurrection of believers. Paul wrote this chapter because some false teachers were preaching that there is no resurrection. When you die you die.

Paul answers this false teaching by reminding the Corinthian church that the resurrection is of first importance to the Christian faith. There is no Christianity without the resurrection.

³ For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures… 1 Cor. 15:3-4

We know that God accepted Jesus’ payment for our sins because God raised him from the dead on the third day. If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead than we’re still dead in our sins.

¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. ¹⁹ If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. 1 Cor. 15:17-19

If Jesus is rotting away in a grave somewhere than our faith is empty, we’re still in our sins. Those who have already died are lost forever and (if there is no resurrection) than those who hope in Christ are the most pitiful people in the world. That’s if there is no resurrection, but Paul simply asserts the truth that rings in our hearts this morning just as clearly as it did that first Easter morning 2000 years ago:

²⁰ But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.1 Cor. 15:20

The firstfruits. In Biblical days it meant the first gathered fruits of a harvest which was dedicated to God in recognition of His faithfulness to provide the remainder of the harvest. Jesus' resurrection is not a stand alone event – it declares that in due season God will bring the remainder of the resurrected harvest – all those who have put their trust in Jesus!

In Jesus we have an unkillable hope! When Christ returns in power and glory, he is going to make us alive just as he is alive. At that point Paul writes, ²⁴ Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. ²⁵ For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ²⁷ For he “has put everything under his feet.” 1 Cor 15:24-27

It's always intrigued me that Paul writes the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Not sin. Not Satan. Death. Jesus’ rein will finally be complete when death is destroyed. But how do you destroy death? Think about that for a moment: how do you destroy death? Death isn’t a being that can be destroyed. Death is the cessation of life. So how do you destroy death? By making it impossible to die. You kill death by giving life that can’t be killed.

One day everyone of us will face death (unless Jesus returns first). But the greater hope that rings in the hearts of Christians is that one day everyone of us will be resurrected! Raised up alive with a life that can’t be killed.

What would you do if you knew that you couldn’t be hurt or killed doing it? Skydive? Climb Mount Everest? If we knew we had an indestructible life it would be more than just not being afraid to die, we’d be free to live! Live a life that is deeper and bigger and freer and richer than anything we experience in this life. Paul then asks, on resurrection day, what will our resurrection bodies be like?

What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. (vv.36-37)

You can’t really see what a seed is going to look like until it dies and gives forth new life. It’s just a plain old seed going in – but then it blossoms into something so different looking than the seed whether it be wheat, barley or an Easter lily.

Our resurrection bodies won’t just be these bodies with a new coat of paint slapped on them. The body that’s laid in the grave is very different from the body that will be raised from the grave. We will be the same person but different. There will be continuity, but there will be change. We will be transformed into something different than anything we have ever seen. Paul lists three differences between our bodies now and our bodies then.

⁴² So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; ⁴³ it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; ⁴⁴ it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. 1 Cor. 15:42-44

1. The body is sown perishable - it is raised imperishable

Perishable is what we know – it’s all around us. Death is around to us and happening in us every minute. Our cells are constantly dying and being replaced. Some cells, like white blood cells, last only a few hours. Other cells last a few weeks. And some cells, like most brain cells, last for a few decades. Death is constantly happening in us, but we don’t feel it right away because regeneration of cells is happening too. But over time death overtakes regeneration as the DNA instructions for cell processes becomes damaged preventing cell division resulting in what Science Focus calls an increasing level of decreptitude. It’s another word for aging. Our bodies are perishable.

But our resurrection bodies won’t have any death taking place in them. The principle of death, decay, and decreptitude will be destroyed so only life will be operating in our minds and bodies.

Like Jesus, we will be raised imperishable. That's the difference between Jesus and Lazarus. Lazarus died and was raised, but as soon as he was raised he started perishing again and eventually he died again. Jesus rose never to die again, and that is how our resurrected bodies will be. No decay, no disease, no death. For all eternity our resurrected bodies will remain strong, vibrant and alive. We will be raised imperishable.

2. The body is sown in dishonor and weakness- it is raised in glory and power

That word, dishonor, can be translated humiliation. There is a humiliation to our physical bodies, especially when we are at our weakest. When we’re young and healthy we may not feel the humiliation of physical weakness because we are comparatively strong, but it’s only a matter of time before our inherent weakness and humiliation reveals itself. Those whose bodies know disease or accident live daily with that weakness.

Joni Earickson Tada became a quadriplegic from a diving accident in the 1960's. For over 60 years she has been unable to move anything below her neck. She writes this:

I still can hardly believe it. I with shriveled, bent fingers, atrophied muscles, gnarled knees, and no feeling from the shoulders down, will one day have a new body, light, bright, and clothed in righteousness - powerful and dazzling. Can you imagine the hope this gives someone spinal-cord injured like me? Or someone who is cerebral palsied, brain-injured, or who has multiple sclerosis?...No other religion, no other philosophy promises new bodies, hearts, and minds. Only in the gospel of Christ do hurting people find such incredible hope.

One day she was speaking to a class of mentally handicapped Christians and they thought it was great when she said that one day she would one day get a new body. They erupted in cheers when she said, "and you're going to get new minds."

What a hope the believer has! One day our tired, weak, bodies will replace glory for humiliation and power for weakness.

3. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body

God created us to be physical beings. When a believer dies, their spirit is instantly with the Lord. Paul writes in 2 Cor. 5:8 that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. But while that interim period will be wonderful, we will long to be reunited with our bodies. What a joy it will be when the person who died a quadriplegic or twisted by cerebral palsy is reunited with a new and healthy body at the resurrection!! What child-like happiness when the elderly man or woman whose body has been overcome by the years and is unable even to get out of bed, finds new legs, new strength, new youth coursing through their resurrected bodies!

When Paul says we will be raised a spiritual body, he doesn't mean that the resurrection is going to make us unphysical or non-material beings. Jesus was physical after he was raised. He built fires and ate food and people could touch him. He was spiritual…and physical. We will be the same person we are now…and at the same time transformed into something different than what we are now.

In our resurrected bodies we’ll have all our memories and personality and identity but without all the fallenness – we will be us without the arrogance, pride, insecurity, fear, laziness, bipolar disorders, anger, quirkiness - leaving us unguarded and free, loving and able to receive love openly and freely. We will be who we are now, only transformed.

Our resurrected bodies will be different than the bodies we die in. We’ll be like Jesus!

Paul ends this chapter on a victorious note! Our flesh and blood bodies couldn't handle the eternal kingdom of God. We simply don't have the capacity to handle the eternalness of it, or the glory of it, or the perfection of it, in these temporary, fallen, bodies.

As flesh and blood we don't have the capacity to inherit the kingdom of God…but we will! Because there's a mystery Paul lets us in on. We won't all sleep (die) - there will be some who are alive when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom on earth, but in that moment all those who believe in Jesus, whether alive at his coming or lying in a grave, all will be changed, transformed, into our resurrection bodies at his coming. The graves will open and those who died in Christ will be raised imperishable and those who are alive will metamorphose into their glorified bodies so that all perishable bodies put on imperishable and all mortal bodies put on immortality. And in that tsunami of eternal, resurrection life, death is going to be swallowed up by life. Death will have no power over our resurrected bodies.

All of this because Jesus removed the sting of death, which is sin, at the cross. What power does sin have over me if Jesus paid for all my sin and I have been completely forgiven? God has given us victory in life through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Therefore, Paul says, be what you are in Christ: steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. The hope of the resurrection doesn't leave us just sitting around waiting for that day. It doesn't disengage us from this fallen world. It doesn't make us "so heavenly minded that we're of no earthly good." It inspires and motivates us to work for Christ, live for Christ, and risk for Christ, spending our energy, skills, money, and time for Christ knowing that in Christ, our investment won't return empty.

Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. 1 Cor. 15:58