You know that superstition that the news of deaths always comes in threes? I have experienced that this week. And each of the three was completely unexpected. I knew each individual; some better than others. And each one has left other people that I know and love reeling in shock and grief. The individuals who passed ranged in age from 74 to just a child.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Of all the various theological battles that the Apostle Paul fought in the pages of the New Testament, none seem more foreign and puzzling to me than what is recorded in 1 Corinthians 15. There he actually is going up against “fellow believers” who apparently do not believe in the resurrection of the dead.<\/p>\n\n\n
These people are part of the church but seem to believe that there is nothing after death. When someone physically dies, that’s it. That’s the end of their existence.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
But apparently this was a fairly common belief in Jewish circles. And apparently, Jesus’s teachings about eternal life struck a lot of people in his day as being fairly novel.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Paul breaks out his famous logic to argue that the believer who doesn’t buy into resurrection, is no believer at all:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.<\/p>\n\n\n
17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.<\/p>\n\n\n
18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.<\/p>\n\n\n
19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.<\/p>\n\n\n
Exactly! There are too many occasions in this life that are unbearably tragic if this is all there is to existence!\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Paul correctly points out that “if the dead are not raised,” we might as well adopt the attitude of “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
The hope of RESURRECTION, though, changes everything.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You know that superstition that the news of deaths always comes in threes? I have experienced that this week. And each of the three was completely unexpected. I knew each individual; some better than others. And each one has left other people that I know and love reeling in shock and grief. The individuals who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5236,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5235\/revisions\/5236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}