1 Corinthians 15:1-11

The evidence for the gospel, 15:5-11.

When we refer to evidence for the gospel this passage has two things in mind.  There is objective evidence and subjective evidence.  And the aspect of the gospel that calls for evidence is the resurrection of Christ.  There was no denying that He was crucified along with two others.  But the question was, did His death satisfy God’s just demands as payment for our penalty?  The answer to that question is bound up in His resurrection.  Only one of the three crucified that day was alive three days later.  Actually, only One in all of history was alive three days after He was positively declared to be dead and buried in a tomb.

·        Objective evidence for the gospel, 15:5-8.

The objective answer according to Scripture involves witnesses who saw Christ alive after His death.  And we might argue from silence, there were no witnesses that ever produced a dead body after the reports of His resurrection began to surface.  As Paul wrote these words, approximately thirty years after the event, most of these people were still alive.  Anyone who doubted Jesus’ resurrection could easily prove or disprove it.  If you were to take the Bible as simply a record of history (and it is so much more than that) this evidence for Christ’s resurrection would be quite formidable.  Many people saw Him alive.  And if He was alive after He was dead then we have said something about Christ that demands the attention of any serious, sane person on planet earth. 

·        Subjective evidence for the gospel, 15:9-11.

We use the word subjective here to refer to the changed life of the Apostle Paul and the way that it attests to the resurrection of Christ.  Paul had seen Christ apparently by being taken into His presence in heaven (2 Cor. 12:1-4), something that people might question.  But Paul’s proof is bound up in what God’s grace produced in and through him.  This one who persecuted the church of God became a powerful servant of God, one who declared fervently the gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ.  This could only be explained by the fact that this denier of the resurrection came to affirm the resurrection of Christ because he had been an eye-witness of the risen Lord.

But we should say, in another sense, that this argument from the changed life is actually an objective argument.  This is not something that Paul could have done on his own.  By the grace of God, Paul says, he was changed.  He labored more abundantly than all the apostles, yet only because of the grace of god which was with me.  As we noted back in 15:1-2 Paul had not believed in vain.  Here he says, His grace toward me was not in vain.  This is the proof of Christ’s resurrection that God will produce yet today in the believer. 

Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead … make you complete in every good work to do His will (Heb. 13:20-21).