James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
1 Corinthians 15:19
THE ARGUMENT OF COMMON SENSE
‘If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.’
Let me seek to show to any one who has any heart-love for the Lord Who died for him, how, when we begin to doubt as to the reality of the Lord’s Resurrection, we are verily approaching the state of those of whom the text speaks; and, if doubt passes into disbelief, must be of all men most miserable and most pitiable.
I. Is not this certainly true, that if we cannot feel sure that we have been redeemed from the powers of sin and death, our lot in this world must be the saddest conceivable? To feel sin within us and around us and blighting every effort for good, chilling every hope, thwarting every endeavour, and not also to feel that there is some countervailing influence, is to dwell within the very gates of despair.
II. If the Redeemer had not risen the power of sin must be deemed to have prevailed even over Him Who came to save us from it. Else why was its penalty, after having been endured for our sakes, not plainly shown to have had no enduring power on the Saviour of the world? If our dear Lord had not risen as He rose, with His own veritable body, with the wounds on His blessed hands and feet and side, I see not how the edge of such an argument could be turned, nor how any doubting soul could be brought to feel any real confidence whatever in its own Redemption! Redemption! and no token or trace of victory in the divinely appointed procedure by which Redemption was to be secured. Our dear Lord might doubtless have taken again His body even as He took it, but if no eye of man had beheld it, nor hand of man had touched it, where could have been the assurance to mankind either that Redemption had been won for us, and that death had been swallowed up in victory?
III. What is our highest and holiest hope—the most blessed hope of which our nature is susceptible? The answer may be easily given, and given, in part, in the words of an Apostle. The holiest hope that the heart of redeemed man can entertain is to behold the glorified face and form of Him Who rose this day, and having beheld it, to be for ever with Him. But how can we presume to entertain such a hope if we have any doubts as to that Lord’s bodily Resurrection? Is not this Resurrection of the body that which forms, so to speak, the link, the eternal link, between us and Him? If He had left His body where believing men had laid it, and that dear body had never been vivified and glorified, what really rational hope could we entertain of that union and communion in which Holy Scripture permits us, and even encourages us, to look for in our Redeemer’s kingdom? How could we sit down with Him at the marriage feast of the Lamb? How could we drink with Him the new fruit of the vine in the mystic union to which He Himself vouchsafed, while on earth, to allude, unless there was something, some element of glorified corporeity, in common, to such an extent as the finite can have aught in common with the infinite, between us and Him? His body must have risen; His body must have been borne ‘through all the heavens’ to where it now is, at the right hand of God, for such thoughts as Scripture permits us to entertain to be thinkable and intelligible. There is the deepest ground for thinking that the reality of the union of the Redeemer with His own through the ages of eternity depends more, perhaps far more, on the whole circumstances of the Lord’s Resurrection as it is revealed to us in the Gospels, than has yet been distinctly set forth even in the best meditative theology.
—Bishop Ellicott.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE DESTRUCTION OF HOPE
The Apostle calls his people to consider what life would be, and still more what death would be, if this hope of a Resurrection through Jesus were taken away.
I. What would it be for us to know that all was over for us when the last gasping breath left our dying lips, and our eyes closed for ever in an eternal death? Could we bear the idea of losing our separate being for ever? We know that the particles which make up our fleshly bodies will go back to earth and air, whence they were taken, will grow, it may be, once more in the blades of grass, and wave in the leaves of trees, and go on in the endless round in which this lower creation moves; but could we bear to think that would be all, and that there would be nothing left of this living, thinking I, which had loved and suffered, learned and striven? Could it be that we had learned so many lessons from the Holy Spirit of God—had begun by degrees to submit our lower and animal nature to the higher and spiritual, and so drawn near to the Cause and Maker of all—and that then all our hopes and longings, all our aspirations for what is noble and what is good—all our progress upwards towards the Throne of God, should be crushed into nothingness in an instant, as the grasp of our hand can crush a butterfly! That is what would be our lot without the good hope of Resurrection through the Gospel.
II. Or what would it be to bid an eternal farewell to all we had loved and cared for, and to know that we should see them no more, nor they us; and that each of us was to sink into a blank nothingness, apart and away from the other! Yet that would be the lot of every loving and trustful soul without the hope of a Future Life, brought to us by the Gospel of Jesus. This hope and prospect of another life is therefore the first consequence of the Incarnation of God the Son, the great light which has lightened the darkness of human life—the very corner-stone of the Christian Faith. It is the special truth which we are taught by Eastertide, and therefore Easter is the Queen of Festivals, the great joy and crown of the Christian Year. It is the most precious of gifts—is the gift of immortality.
III. Immortal life with Jesus and in the image of Jesus is the crown of blessings.—Then only are we fit to enjoy everlasting life: then only are we strong enough to bear the burden of unnumbered ages of existence. We must lean on the idea of “the Eternal Years” of God, and so we shall be braced up to endure the life that lies before us—and more, to enter into it and dwell in its glory with happiness and joy.
Illustration
‘There is a heathen story which tells that once a man asked for this gift— not to die; and it was granted to him by the Fates. He was to live on for ever. But he had forgotten to ask that his youth and health and strength might last for ever also: and so he lived on till age and its infirmities and weakness were weighing him down, and his life grew to be a weariness and a burden to him. Existence (for it could hardly be called life) was one long torment to him; and then he wished to die. He wished to die, and could not. He had asked for a thing which lie was totally unfit to enjoy, but he had to take the consequences of it when it was once given. It was a curse to him, not a blessing.’