Christ Our Eschatological Hope: Resurrection in the End

Introductions and prayer

Good morning. It is a great honor for me to stand before you this morning to lead us in the next hour or so of this session, where we will be speaking about our Lord Jesus Christ. We have listened to a number, a good number, of sermons, of workshops, of talk about our Lord Jesus Christ and I have the privilege to lead us now in meditating, not just in hearing about him, but actually seeing him with our eyes. We will not always have Proclaim Conferences on ‘The Whole Christ’. One day we will actually see the whole Christ. How good that would be!

My name is Vincent Kajuma and I am, in true Kenyan fashion, I’ll tell you about my family. I’m married to one wife and we have two daughters, five and two, Lisa and Candy. Unfortunately, I had to leave them back in Mauritius where I serve as a pastor there, in a church called Community Baptist Church. A lovely little church that has been praying for the conference and are praying for you and me even now as we have this session. So, please receive their greetings.

Yeah so, let’s pray and then let’s get into it.

Father, we thank you for giving us your Son. We thank you that we can feast upon him, as we have done for the last three days. And even now Lord, as we fix our attention, as we fix our eyes upon him, and meditate especially on the question of the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. Oh Father, I pray that through your Spirit, you would be in our midst, that, Lord Jesus, you would reveal yourself to us, even more, in the exposition of your Word. Bless us Lord, for we ask in Jesus name. Amen.

Eschatology explained

So, let me ask you to turn with me to 1Corinthians15. 1Corinthians 15. So, I’ve been saying that we are talking about seeing Christ and the return of Christ. But if you maybe knew what the title of this session was, it was ‘The Whole Christ And Our Eschatology’.

But that word “eschatology” is a word that many wise, peace-loving Christians try to avoid, because there are many disagreements amongst Christians. When will Christ come? Will it be before the Rapture? Or after the Rapture? Will he first come bodily and live here and then go back and come again? Will there be a tribulation? Will it be before or after? And so on. And there’s a whole spectrum of views about it, and many fights even about it and much division about it. And so, what happens is that we simply avoid the topic. Yeah?

Those of you who are married, perhaps you know that there are some topics in the family which are important but are best not addressed sometimes, because it is hard to get into it without getting into, without finding, more heat than light. So you sit back and you let it cool a little bit before you bring it up. Or maybe just hope it sorts itself out.

And, as Christians, we have tended to treat eschatology like that. The doctrine of the return of Christ like those hot topics that we’d rather not speak about. And, a danger in that, a problem with that, is that often times then, we do not speak about the return of Our Lord. We speak about Christ; His deity, His humanity, His pre-eminence, His glory, His salvation, His cross, His empty grave, but His return we forget to speak about that.

There is a common Creed, or confession in one line where we speak about Christ, as “Christ died, Christ was raised and Christ will return,” yeah? I actually know it in my mother tongue because my grandmother used to say it a lot. “Christ died, Christ was raised, Christ will return.”

‘Died’, ‘raised’ we know and we preach. ‘Will return’ is controversial. But I think the problem is that we actually truncate our faith. We give ourselves a Christianity that is like ‘two-thirds’. It’s lacking a very important final third to deepen and to make our faith to be full. In fact, the Bible is so bold as to describe our faith in Jesus Christ as our faith in his return. Romans 8:24, which we have just looked at excellently by our brother, Chopo, in the previous session. Romans 8:24. It says, “In this hope we are saved.”

So faith in Christ is described to us as ‘hope.’ Hebrews 9:28, when he speaks about ‘those who will be saved,’ it says that Christ will return. Hebrews 9:28, Christ will return. “…Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.”

That’s a description of a Christian: those who eagerly wait for the return of Jesus Christ. Yes, those who have repented of their sin. Those who acknowledge that ‘I am ruined’ and ‘the Lord Jesus Christ is my life’, Amen! That is faith! But faith is also waiting for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, because we are speaking about a real person. A living person. A person with a plan to come back so that he’s seen and not just believed.

We believe on him now but then we will see him. One Pastor, Mark Dever, says that, ‘This is the age of the ear, but soon comes the age of the eye’. And we’ve got to speak about the ‘age of the eye,’ because that is the very character of our hope.

So I want to use the whole chapter of 1Corinthians 15 to kind of focus our meditation on this hope that I am speaking about. Now, 1Corinthians 15 is not a chapter on the return of Christ directly, it’s a chapter on the resurrection of the dead. But, when Paul addresses the resurrection of the dead, he brings in his theology, his understanding about Christ and he applies it to this church on the resurrection of the dead.

So what we’ll do is that, as we go on, we’ll actually be seeing Paul’s beliefs about Jesus and about his return and he’ll be applying that on the resurrection. So just watch out for that. We are going to go on and we are going to gather a lot by the way as we go on.

True belief

So, from 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Paul reminds this church of the Gospel that he preached to them: 1Corinthians 15:1-2,

“This is the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—(unless this) unless you believed in vain.”

Not to mean that you believe, but your belief doesn’t bear fruit, but to mean that ‘the belief itself was not a true belief.’ But, because the belief that you have is a true belief, you’ve not believed in vain. So there’s no true believing that ends up in vain. It is vain, it is a vain faith that cannot save. It says, “This is the gospel. This is what you believed which you did not believe in vain.” And from 1Corinthians 15:5, he will go on to, to describe one important element of this belief. So, 1Corinthians 15:3-8, first he says,

“For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

So, Paul is stressing the appearance of Jesus Christ, because he wants you to believe that, when we speak about the death, the resurrection and the return of Jesus Christ, we are not… it’s not just about beliefs. We are not just hoping it is true and, and staking our lives upon it. It is actually a fact! So, you can go, you can go talk to Cephas, you can go talk to James. There are 500 people, most of whom are still alive, for you to know that the Lord, after he died, actually appeared. He was actually raised from the dead. We are talking about a man, a real man, a true man, a living man with hands and feet that appeared to people, and people recognized him after he died and after he rose again. He appeared to many. This is the Christ that Paul preached to them.

Jesus’ resurrection

Pastors, as you preach to people about Jesus Christ, you are not just preaching an idea. This is an idea. This is how you can be saved. What if your sins could be placed on someone and that someone’s righteousness could be placed on you? You’re not giving just a concept about an exchange, you are declaring a man, you’re declaring a risen man who actually walked after he was raised from the dead. So, Christianity is grounded in fact. It is grounded in history. That is why, we are, we are happy to debate the history about Christ. So nobody is really fighting about the history. We’re not asking you to just trust it is true, we are saying it is true for a fact. What we are asking you to believe is that that death, which is true, was a death for sin. It is the theology about the history that we are pressing upon you.

Believe that he died, (he did die, you don’t have to believe that, he did die,) but what we are asking you to trust God about is that that death was your death, in union with Christ, so that you can consider yourself having already died for sin and there is no more condemnation left for you because Christ took it upon himself, consumed it and it consumed him. And then he was saying that he rose from the dead. That is a fact. Talk to these hundreds of people, Paul is saying.

What I’m asking you to believe is that that resurrection is your resurrection. Trust the promises of God. Trust the gospel that is asking you that, through faith, you can participate in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So, this is grounded in fact and this is the gospel we are presenting because it is true of Jesus’ death and resurrection, therefore it can be true of you. Death and resurrection. Paul will go on, 1Corinthians 15:12-19. This is where he now downloads his Christology, his theology, about Jesus Christ. It’s like he’s talking, you know that Psalm which says, “As I mused, the fire burned.” Yeah? As you talk about something that is close to your heart, and the more you talk about it, the more passionate you get, hey? That’s what’s happening to Paul here. He’s going on and now he gets very passionate and now begins to bring questions upon them, begins to force arguments upon them. 1Corinthians 15:12,

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?”

How can the dead not be raised from the dead if Christ has been raised from the dead? In other words, the resurrection of Christ is an evidence that the dead will be raised. The resurrection of Lazarus, for example, was not the same kind of resurrection as the resurrection of Christ. The reason that he calls them and says the resurrection of Jesus is the evidence that we will be raised is that Jesus’s resurrection is the, is a final resurrection. It’s the type of resurrection that tells you about the final resurrection. He is the first of the final to be raised. And because he has been raised, the rest of us will also be raised.

All of us, believers and unbelievers, there will be a final resurrection because a moment from the final resurrection has been brought to the present in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A moment from the final resurrection has been brought to the present in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I don’t know if you owe someone any money, but if you owe someone some money and it’s a lot of money and you are not able to pay it all at once you say, “I will pay you in installments, right? I’ll pay you a small bit, then after elections I will pay you, I’ll pay you a small bit, you know, and then after the new budget is announced, you know, I’ll pay you a small bit.” But you pay them in installment. But the reason why you paid the first amount is because you want them to believe that you will pay the whole thing, isn’t it? So because I’m paying you this, you can trust me that I’m committed to paying the rest of it, isn’t it?

So, the resurrection of Jesus is like that first payment: Because God has raised up Jesus Christ, because Jesus has that new resurrection body, then we know that a resurrection is coming, because we’ve seen the first installment of the resurrection in the installment of Jesus Christ.

Four main ideas

Now Paul is about to present this. So that thing I’ve just said, where the resurrection of Jesus is the first installment, is the rest of the argument of the book and it is so crucial. We cannot have time to plow it all and to bring it all out, so we’ll just look at four main ideas, four main things from that passage and then we will leave it there.

So, 1: There’s are a correlation between Adam and Jesus. There’s a correlation, or let me say, between Jesus and Adam. There’s a correlation between Jesus and Adam.

2: We’ll see that there is a connection between Jesus and the new creation.

There’s a correlation between Adam and Christ. There’s a connection between Jesus and the new creation.

3: We’ll see that there’s a transformation promise to the new creation.

And then, 4: We’ll see a presentation of the new creation.

So a correlation, a connection, a transformation, a presentation. I tried to find words that begin with one letter, didn’t work, so at least they all end with “tion,” right? Good enough, good enough. It’s a good try! But just to kind of help us, to map our journey as we go on in meditating on the return and the reality of our resurrected Lord.

Correlation between Jesus and Adam.

So first of all: a correlation. After Paul has argued that the fact that Christ is raised means that there will be a resurrection. 1Corinthians 15:20 he says, “in fact” But in fact. Now when he says “in fact,” he’s not, he’s not a Kenyan. As Kenyans, we say “in fact” when we mean… we say “in fact” or “actually” but we are actually saying it to hold your attention. Yeah, we say, “Actually, I was very mad. In fact, I took a stick”! Yeah, it’s kind of how we speak.

And at times, when you’re reading Scripture and you read “in fact,” you think he’s saying “in fact” the way we say it. He doesn’t. He’s saying, “in actual fact,” as a reality, for sure. This is fact and not non-fact.

“But in fact (in truth) Christ has been raised from the dead, (he is) the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1 Corinthians 15:20)

Christ is the first fruit;

So earlier on, I gave you a financial, monetary illustration, but the illustration that Scripture uses is a Biblical illustration. And, by the way, just as pastors, if your mind works the way my mind does, I just come up with illustrations and ways to relate things, on my feet. It comes easily for me. But that can actually be dangerous in our teaching, because it is quite safe and quite helpful to use the illustrations that Scripture already uses so that the memory that people have of the truth is utilizing the illustration that the Scriptures have. And the reason is that, is that the illustration that Scripture gives are usually very deliberate and very connected. So, there’s a reason why the illustration here is first fruits and not down-payment, which is what I used earlier, which is used in Ephesians 1.

Over here, it is first fruit, because fruits come from trees, isn’t it? They don’t…well they’re in the supermarket but they come from trees and then they go to the supermarket. And trees come from the ground, right? And then they grow and then they get fruits. And when you have farmed, or when you have a whole farm of mangoes, oftentimes some mangoes will tend to ripen, to mature and ripen faster and earlier before other mangoes do, isn’t it? When you go and you harvest about five of them and you taste them and you find them to be very, very sweet and juicy you know that the rest of the harvest is going to taste the same, isn’t it?

You can judge about the rest of the harvest from the first fruits that you’ve tasted, isn’t it? These are the first that come from the ground and they tell you what the rest of the harvest is going to look like. That’s the picture here: Christ is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. He is the initial taste, and what Christ is like, those who follow after Christ will look like. 1 Corinthians 15:21,

For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. (I’m using the ESV.) For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. By a man, by one man. Who is that one man? Who’s the first one man by whom came death? Adam, right? For as by one man came death, by one man… (Which man? Christ) …has come also the resurrection from the dead.

So friends, there are only two men here: by one man comes death; by another man comes the resurrection from the dead. So, look at Christ as the first fruit.

So, if you remember in Genesis 1 and 2, where we are given the creation story of Adam and Eve, we are told that God first of all created and then, out of the ground, out of the ground, he formed a man. Remember that? Genesis 2:7-9. Let’s go there because of how important it is. Genesis 2:7-9,

“Then the Lord Yahweh, the Lord God formed the man of dust.” That’s an interesting description – the man of dust. We will see that in Corinthians. “The Lord formed the man of dust…” (Genesis 2:7) From what? From what? From the ground, yeah? This man comes out of the ground.

“…and the LORD breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. Genesis 2:9, “And out of the ground (again) the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food…” So the first one to come out of the ground is Adam. The first fruits from the ground, in Genesis 2, is Adam. Adam is formed from the ground and then life is breathed into him. Adam is of the same substance as the ground, but with the life of God breathed into him. It is the same nature. The ontology of Adam, if you like, and the ontology of the creation in Genesis 2 is the same thing. Adam, the ground.

As Adam is the first fruit from the ground of the old creation, Christ as well is the first fruit of the ground of the new creation, you follow? So whatever the ontology of the resurrected body of Jesus Christ, whatever it is like, he is another Adam formed from another ground.

And you can learn about that new ground from the new Adam the way you learn about this ground, this old ground, from the first Adam. Follow the argument? So Paul is about to argue for the reality of a new heaven and a new earth, because the first man who comes out of that ground has already come out from it. And you know it is sure and it is coming because the Adam of that ground has already been formed out of the ground. You follow the argument? You follow, yeah?

With Adam comes death for himself and all his people and the creation itself. When Adam sins in Genesis 3, the Lord gives a series of curses. In Genesis 3:17, when the Lord is cursing Adam the Lord says, “cursed are you” and so on and then he says, “cursed is (the what?) the ground.” The ground from which Adam came.

There’s a correlation between Adam and the ground from which he came, so that the curse brought upon Adam becomes a curse brought upon the ground itself. Because of Adam’s sin, the ground is going to bear thorns and thistles because the head of the (new), of the creation Adam, the first Adam, has sinned, he takes creation on with him.

Think of Adam as a man with “mkokoteni,” You know a “mkokoteni?” “Mkokoteni?” I see there are people in the room who might not know what that is. It is a cart, not a cat, a cart. And oftentimes so it’s, it’s like a very large thing you use to carry things. It has wheels. And the man who pushes it will usually get underneath it and ( huh, now here I am bringing another non-biblical illustration!) and that man will be pushing that “mkokoteni”. So because he’s in it and because he’s holding it, if he goes left, it goes left with him. If he wants to take it there, he goes to that corner and he pushes it with him.

And so, think about Adam as that man and think about the “mkokoteni” and the things in it as this whole creation. And so when Adam went into sin, he brought everything else into sin with him. He brought you and me and the whole creation into sin with him.

And in the same way, when the new Adam goes into eternal life, he brings everybody and everything else that is in him, with him into that eternal life. As with Adam came death for himself and us and creation, in the same way with the new Adam comes life for himself, for us and for the whole creation.

That’s what he says in 1Corinthians 15:22-23,

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.”

But it is a guarantee because Christ has entered into that place. Are you here? Are you in Adam? Are you in Christ? Friends, you are a fruit that rose out of the ground of this earth, but shall you be a fruit that rises out of the ground of the new heavens and the new earth, of the earth to come? Through faith alone, do you belong in Christ? When you come and you believe in Jesus Christ, when you rest your hope in him, you are put inside the new cart and where the cart driver goes, there the cart and all its contents go.

I am saved because Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead. I will enter heaven because Jesus Christ has entered heaven. I will defeat death because Jesus Christ has defeated death. Death is not exciting but Jesus has gone in for me and I go in after him. The idea is of Jesus Christ as a head and I as his body and where the head has gone, the body will go. If the head has made it through the body must make it through, because the whole Christ will make it through. Amen? Correlation between Adam and Christ.

Correlation between Jesus and the new creation

Number 2: connection, which we’ve already looked at, between Adam and the old creation and Christ and the new creation. Paul will go on from 1Corinthians 15:24 to speak about what Christ will do at his coming. He says, 1Corinthians 15:24,

“Then comes the end, (that is when Christ comes and) then he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. (Why?) Because Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

So if the head has gone in, if the God who has performed the new creation and is bringing out the new Adam out – head first as it were – why is it that we’ve not yet, that all of us have not yet been resurrected in our new resurrection bodies? Paul says Christ must first reign. Christ must first take on the throne of authority. Christ must right now be in heaven. He has to. The reason he hasn’t come is because he has to sit in heaven still.

“…until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (1 Corinthians 15:25-26)

Okay, so Christ has to destroy all his enemies, the enemies that are at work, and the last of them is death, because God has put all things in subjection under his feet. So all things are under the feet of Jesus Christ already and Jesus is reigning over all things, but Jesus has enemies that he must crush and defeat, including death, for him to bring a completion of his work on all things.

Now that’s not an easy thought, but remember our “mkokoteni” guy? Remember him with all of creation on his cart? And he gets to a point and there’s a barrier, so what he has to do is that he himself has to go in first and remove the barrier, and then get his “mkokoteni”, get his cart and go in with that thing.

So Christ is defeating his enemies, not for himself, but for us. Death has to be defeated. We are still in this body of death, holding us down and Christ has to defeat death for him to liberate us into the new creation as we are about to see. This is something that we saw clearly from our brother Dan Gachuki when he looked at Colossians 1:18. And in Colossians 1, Paul speaks about the reconciliation of all things to God. The things that Christ is is over the things that Christ turns over that he rules that as the first Adam he is the first one over, Christ reconciles them to God – and that’s all things.

Psalm 8 is a good illustration of this. Remember Psalm 8 – “Who is man that you are mindful of him?” Remember that? You have placed him above all creation. You’ve given him dominion above all creation. Ideally, that is speaking about Adam himself as the one who has dominion. “Let us make man. Let him have dominion over all created things.” (Genesis 1:27-30) That is Adam. But in Hebrews 2 – I don’t know if it’s Paul who wrote it but let’s say it’s Paul for now. Paul takes up Psalm 8, but he doesn’t apply to Adam; he applies it to the second Adam. Look with me at Psalm 8.

So, if you pastors would preach about the return of Christ more often, this would have been a very easy talk to give because we would all have already just known these verses already. So I blame you brothers and myself. Hebrews 2:5. There’s a quotation there. “What is man that you’re mindful of him?” in Hebrews 5:6 but Hebrews 5:5 says, “… it was not to angels that God subjected the world to come, of which we are speaking.”

Oh, “subjected the world to come.” So just as the old world as this world was subjected to Adam and Adam took it down the fall, the world to come has been subjected to the second Adam. He’s also the head over the new creation and so, Hebrews 2:6-8,

“It has been testified somewhere,
what is man, that you are mindful of him,
or the son of man, that you care for him?
You made him for a little while lower than the angels;
you have crowned him with glory and honor,
putting everything in subjection under his feet.”

This is just telling you guys that the king of the new creation is the second Adam. It is the Lord Jesus Christ himself.

Death is not part of the “all things”, but death, as the thing that Adam brought upon all things, must be defeated. Christ must reign until he delivers all of creation from the grasp of death. The Lord will purify creation from the grasp of death. He will, as it were, put it through a fire.

Transformation promised

That language of fire that you see in Scripture a lot, that this creation must go through fire, is beautiful language. It is not scary language for believers. Remember we are not going anywhere that Christ hasn’t gone. We follow Christ. The body is not going anywhere where the head has not gone through. And the new creation is also not going anywhere where the King of the new creation, the first fruit, has not gone. So, Christ, we and creation. That idea of being purified through fire is the idea of transformation. The idea of transformation. There is a purging, there is a refining through fire that happens. The prophets speak about the new creation, they speak about the reconciliation between God and the remnant as the work of the refining fire.

And the idea there is this: when you have gold and the gold is filled with impurities and you want it to be pure gold, you pass it through (what?) fire. And what the fire does is that the fire consumes and refines the gold and anything that can be burnt is burnt up, and anything that cannot be burnt passes through and remains pure, because all impurities have been consumed. That same idea is what happens to us. Our transfer, our transformation, our resurrection when we are raised, it will be as though we’ve been passed through fire and everything that is perishable becomes perishable and is consumed, and what comes out of the fire is what is pure and clean and blameless. But the same thing that Paul speaks about in 1Corinthians 4, when he speaks about those who will pass, will be saved but as through fire, because all the things they had did not have Christ – it was perishable stuff but they will still be saved. That same thing in 2Peter is said of the world. Peter speaks about this creation, the elements passing through fire, that’s the same idea. This old creation being transformed, being refined, being passed through fire and being made pure. So, the new creation is a refining, a transformation of this creation. What happened to the old body of Christ before it was resurrected in a new body, is what happens to our bodies and what happens to our world. It is transformed and it is made new with Adam, with the second Adam, as the head under whom everything is subjected.

Friends, what will I look like when I am transformed?

I know my wife will find it easier to love me when I’m transformed. I will not be a petty guy. I will not be envious of the success of my friends. I will not have wrath and bitterness and anger and clamor. I won’t have to put on kindness, I will already have put on kindness. I will be very easy to love.

And the same is true of you: when you are transformed, when you’ve been purified and made pure, when you are resurrected in your new being, when God is done with you, what will you look like? When sin is removed from you, when the effects of sin, when your heart is made pure, when God has refined and transformed you.

C.S Lewis says that the dullest, the dullest, the most dull, most uninteresting person that you can talk to, may one day be a creature which – if you saw it now – you would be strongly tempted to worship.

The new creation, the recreation of all things, this purging that you are talking about is so thorough and it elevates so much, that if you see someone as they will be when God is done with them, you might be tempted to worship them, because they’ll be so transformed. It will be so good. It will be so so good words cannot express it. But God is calling us to think about it, to meditate about it, to wait upon it, to long for it, to want to not be who we are now.

Paul says in 2Corinthians 5:2-5, while we are in these bodies, we groan, longing to be clothed with imperishability, longing for this perishable body to be overcome by the imperishable body that the Lord will give to us when he transforms us. We groan for it. Friends, are we groaning? Do we have a redeemer apathy? You know that word “apathy” – “A’ – without, “pathos”, without feeling or without emotion. In Kenya we speak about voter apathy, yeah? When people don’t want to show up to vote because they are jaded. They are bored. they are just… it’s enough. They are, they’re tired about it and so they don’t think about it anymore. Whoever wins, it’s fine. It’s fine. I’m apathetic about it. Do we have that about the return of our Lord? Have we forgotten to groan, to wait, to eagerly long, for the appearing are we frustrated that people are here trying to explain things trying to fit big Ideas into little words and oh I pray for the day when we will just see the Lord Jesus Christ. I groan to be unclothed – I groan to be clothed with a new nature.

Friends, are you tired of your sin? You can kill it. You can work hard. You can install applications on your phone. You can keep repenting to your wife. You can confess to a group of people. You can make vows to yourself. You can pray and fast and seek God to deliver you. And all of that is good and the Bible recommends that we do that, but there’s a groaning, there’s a waiting, there’s a, there’s a finish line that God wants us to be longing for.

Finally, 1Corinthians 15. We’ve seen that transformation that he speaks about. Paul himself, the way in which he longs for this transformation, he says if, he says why are we…

“Otherwise, (1Corinthians 15:29) what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?”

Which might mean, now I say “might” because I’m not sure. There are strong views and it’s just not a clear text, but it might mean this: when we get baptized when we become believers, we join the body of believers, and even those who are already dead. We say, “Now I’ve joined the number of Augustine and that dear Christian brother that we just buried recently and Calvin and Luther and so on.” We join their ranks by being baptized and we say that now we share in a certain life with them. There’s a life that Calvin, though dead, has or Augustine, though dead, has. That I, though alive, but in Christ also have. I’m alive in him. I’m alive in Christ in where that new life is. So I’m baptized to join them.

That might be what he means there. I think it’s what he means there. 1Corinthians 15:30, “But why are we in danger every hour?” Why do I risk my life? Why am I (as Chopo was describing) rejoicing when I’m persecuted? Because there is a resurrection.

Young people, how are you living your life? Are you living like someone who will be raised or are you living like this is the only life you have? And if I don’t spend it and live it out, it’s all I got. What are you living like? Someone who knows that I will soon be raised in a new body and I can spend this body I have very deliberately because it is not all that I get. It doesn’t matter if I spend it in London or in Nairobi or in Port Louis in Mauritius or in South Sudan. It doesn’t matter how I die because this is not the only life I have.

That is the argument that Paul is saying. He’s saying, “Why am I fighting with beasts? Why do I die every day?” 1Corinthians 15:32, “Why do I subject myself to death? Why do I deny life every day, if there’s no resurrection?” But because there is, I live as such, because I know that this is not all I got. I’ll spend it, man, because I’m getting another soon. I’m meant to spend it like I know that is not all there is. Amen.

So, young people, we can be so selfish with our lives. We can live as all you have and, by the way, whether you cling to it or not, it’s just, it still slips away. One day you look at the mirror and you see some lines over here and you go like, “Oops! It’s coming!” And soon enough, guys, the hair gets white and soon enough your back can’t stand straight enough and soon enough, we are pouring soil over your body.

And the Lord is saying that because you believe in a resurrection, live today as such. There is a transformation.

Presentation of the new creation

Lastly, Paul says, Paul asks, how are the dead raised?

So remember where we began, with Adam coming out of the ground God bringing him out of the ground. And Adam is like the old creation and the new Adam also brought out of the ground with a new body that is like the new ground to come, remember that? I’m not getting any nod so…okay.

God creates the world in the Garden of Eden and out of the ground God forms man, right? And Paul is saying that there’s a new creation, a new earth and out of the new earth, God has formed a man, another Adam whose name is Jesus Christ. And because Jesus is alive in a resurrected body, we know there is a new creation that is coming of which Jesus is of that kind, you follow?

And in the next section, all the way to 1Corinthians 15:49, Paul seeks to argue that if there is a Jesus and if his body has been transformed, then transformation will actually come for us and for creation. That’s what he’s saying. In fact, he goes as far as saying that the old creation was tentative. Look with me at 1Corinthians 15:42-44,

“…What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. (This body that we have is perishable, even the body that Adam had was perishable, what will be raised is imperishable.) It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; (See – nature. so not sinful, natural. It’s sown a natural body) it is raised a spiritual body.”

When you say spiritual, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any form because it is a body. The word “spiritual” means of the spirit: it is a body that has been worked upon thoroughly, that fire that purifies it and unites with it is the Holy Spirit, and when the body comes out it is one with the fire. It is a fiery body. it is a spiritual body. In fact, the body of Christ has been so united to the Holy Spirit, so united to the Holy Spirit, that in verse 45 he says the last Adam at the end became a life-giving spirit. When you read your New Testament you’re going to find there’s almost a confusion between the resurrected Christ and the Holy Spirit – they are so one. The body of Christ is so transformed by the Holy Spirit that the Lord is a life-giving Spirit. 2Corinthians 3 says the Lord is the Spirit. But your body as well will be so worked upon by the Holy Spirit that it is called a spiritual body. It’s a body of the Holy Spirit.

When will this happen? 1Corinthians 15:50-52,

“I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed (Verse 52. Tell your neighbor: in a moment) in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye…”

It’s coming, guys. It’s coming. It’s coming. This world will not remain as it is: no more war, no more tears, no sorrow, no sin, no depression, no tiredness of body, no arthritis, no temperamental quirks that you struggle with and you just have to live with, none of that. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, and you’re being told that God wants you to be waiting for it. God wants you to be groaning, longing for it to come. Let’s not give up eschatology to debates about the millennium. It’s about the return of our Lord. It’s about the return of our Lord. 1 Corinthians 15:22,

“…at the blast of the trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”

The dead will be raised and we shall be changed. When we long for the return of Christ, we are longing for Adam to be brought out of the ground and us with him and creation with him. We are longing for our man in the “mkokoteni” to go in and bring his “mkokoteni” in. He shows up, he shows up with his staff, shows up with Vincent, shows up with you, and the new creation. It all comes with the coming of Jesus Christ.

Christ our hope

1John 3:2 – I’m just going to mention some verses because we don’t have time to go into all that – 1st John 3:2 is abundantly clear. He says,

“Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.”

Revelation 22:12-13. Same idea. He says,

“Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay each one for what he has done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last….”

I’m bringing my record, I’m bringing everything that I have with me when I come. The appearing of Christ is the moment of all transformation. What we breathe for, what we long for, what we thirst for, as a deer pants for the water, is for his return and the return of everything else with him.

It is all wrapped up in Jesus Christ: every blessing, every relationship, every end of war, every healing, every reunion with your loved dead ones, every full harvest, every answer to every doubt, every song, every health, every loosened tongue, every mental wellness, every light, every freshness, every truth, every beauty – it is all in Jesus Christ.

When he comes, he will bring it with us. It is all in his body. The character of all things is the character of the resurrected body of Jesus Christ. And when he appears, all things transformed and reconciled to God appear with him. It feels theological. It feels, “Okay, okay. I see, I see, I see.” But the more you read your Bible, the more you’ll see that all things beginning to appear. The more you’ll begin to see in Ephesians how God has united all things in Christ. And you’re thinking, “What is that all things?” It is all things. All things has the character of the resurrected Christ. One day the Lord will come. One day the Lord will come and we will be as he is. As the Lord Jesus is reconciled to God in his earthly body, all things have been reconciled to God – all things – we included. My reconciliation to God is not from my repentance. God has accepted Christ and I am accepted. God has loved Christ and I am loved. Christ has been restored and I am restored and all creation with me. Romans 8 says creation moans and groans, longing for the revelation of the sons of God, longing for your transformation, your resurrection and creation as well shall be restored. It moans and groans for that and we ourselves groan together.

Long for Christ’s return

So I end by asking us to long for the return, asking us to groan for the return, asking us to see sin in us, in the world and long for the clothing of all these things, with the transforming work of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s pray. Lord, it is not, there’s not enough time or not enough ability that we have to describe what we are yet to see, but you call us to see it in Jesus Christ. Oh Lord, you are our hope for all things, You are our hope for the restoration of all things.

Forgive us, Lord, for our apathy. Forgive us for perhaps laying aside thoughts about your coming. And we ask, our Lord, that you preserve us to that day, to that day when this life will feel like a blip, like a bad dream that we have woken up from. Allow us Lord to see that day, for the glory of your name and for our joy. In Jesus’ name we pray, amen.