The Resurrection as the Only Answer

Today's Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:14 — "And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain."

1 Corinthians 15:20 — "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."

John 11:25-26 — "Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?'"

The Big Idea

For nine days we have walked through arguments, laments, and the cross. Today we reach the place where Christianity stops arguing and points at something that happened: on a Sunday morning, the tomb was empty. The Christian answer to suffering is not finally an explanation. It is an event — and if the event is real, suffering does not get the last word over anything you love.

Reflection

Everything hangs on a Sunday morning

Paul, the sharpest mind in the early church, did something no philosopher would dare. He staked the entire faith on one checkable claim. 1 Corinthians 15:14 — "And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain." He goes further: 1 Corinthians 15:19 — "If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."

Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say, "Even if it isn't true, the values are still beautiful." He says: if the tomb was not empty, close the churches and pity the Christians. No backup plan, no soft landing. Tim Keller pressed this exact point on modern readers:

"If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead." — Tim Keller, The Reason for God

And Paul does not float the claim — he documents it. 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 — "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." That last phrase is Paul saying, in effect: go ask them. He is writing about twenty-five years after the event, naming living witnesses by the hundreds. This is not how legends talk. It is how testimony talks.

Why does this matter for suffering? Because explanations can be debated forever, but an event either happened or it did not. Think of a student waiting on exam results. No pep talk changes anything; the posted score changes everything. Christianity's response to the problem of evil is not a better pep talk. It is a posted result: 1 Corinthians 15:20 — "But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."

Firstfruits — the first ripe fruit of a whole harvest

That word firstfruits is doing enormous work. In Israel's farms, the firstfruits were the first ripe sheaf brought in from the field — proof that the rest of the harvest was coming. Paul is saying: what happened to Jesus' body on Easter morning is not a one-off miracle. It is the first installment of what God intends to do with the whole creation, including the bodies of everyone who belongs to him.

N.T. Wright has spent a career insisting that Christians not shrink this hope:

"Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven." — N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

The hope is not escape from the world God made. It is the world God made, healed. The body that got cancer will be raised. The creation that groans will be set free. C.S. Lewis described the breach Jesus made in death's wall:

"He has forced open a door that has been locked since the death of the first man. He has met, fought, and beaten the King of Death. Everything is different because He has done so." — C.S. Lewis, Miracles

A door forced open stays open. Picture the difference between a door that is shut and one that has been broken off its hinges. Death, for the Christian, is the second kind — still a doorway, still dark to walk through, but permanently incapable of locking anyone in. That is why Paul can taunt the oldest enemy in the human story: 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 — "'Death is swallowed up in victory.' 'O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?'" Around the year 400, John Chrysostom turned that taunt into an Easter sermon that churches still read aloud every year:

"Christ is risen, and thou art overthrown. Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen. Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice. Christ is risen, and life reigns. Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave." — John Chrysostom, Paschal Homily

Sixteen centuries later, the church is still shouting it. You do not keep shouting over an idea. You shout over a victory.

A body, not a metaphor

Be careful here, because our culture quietly swaps the resurrection for something smaller — "his spirit lived on," "the disciples kept his memory alive." The New Testament will not allow it. The risen Jesus eats fish. He invites inspection. John 20:27 — "Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.'"

Notice that Jesus does not scold Thomas for wanting evidence. He holds out his hands. The answer to the hardest doubter in the room was not an argument but wounds — real ones, in a real body, alive. And notice what the wounds mean: the resurrection did not erase the crucifixion. The risen Christ is forever the crucified Christ. Your suffering, likewise, will not be deleted from your story — it will be transformed in it, the way scars on a risen body become testimony instead of torment.

The novelist John Updike, of all people, wrote a poem warning the church never to soften any of this:

"Make no mistake: if He rose at all / it was as His body; / if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules / reknit, the amino acids rekindle, / the Church will fall." — John Updike, 'Seven Stanzas at Easter'

Either the molecules reknit or they did not. John Stott, one of the most careful evangelical teachers of the last century, said it plainly:

"Christianity is in its very essence a resurrection religion. The concept of resurrection lies at its heart. If you remove it, Christianity is destroyed." — John Stott, The Contemporary Christian

And this is precisely the comfort. A "spiritual" resurrection could not help the mother at the graveside; a bodily one can. The same body that suffered is the body that was raised and glorified — which means the bodies we have buried are not gone forever but sown, like seed, waiting for harvest.

What the empty tomb does for sufferers

Now, honestly: what does the resurrection not do? It does not explain why God allowed your particular grief. It is not a tidy theodicy — a word that just means an argument defending God's goodness in the face of evil. If you come to the empty tomb demanding the explanation, you will leave without one.

Compare the alternatives, though. A world without God owes you no explanation either — and it offers no repair. In that world, suffering simply happens, death wins every game in the end, and the most honest thing to say at a graveside is nothing. Christianity cannot tell you why this happened to you. But it can tell you what happens next — and for a grieving person, the second question turns out to matter more.

What it does is greater. It breaks suffering's grip. It tells you that death, the engine behind every other loss, has already been beaten from the inside. It tells you that your grief is real but not final — that the last chapter of your story is not the diagnosis, the accident, or the grave. Wright again:

"The message of Easter is that God's new world has been unveiled in Jesus Christ and that you're now invited to belong to it." — N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

This is why Paul, a man beaten and shipwrecked and finally executed, could write Romans 8:18 — "For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us." Notice the word consider — the same kind of word James used. Paul has done the math. He is not calling the sufferings small; he watched friends die and carried scars. He is calling the glory enormous — so heavy that, on the scales, even crushing sorrow rises.

And the gospel turn is this: you do not earn any of it. Jesus stood outside a tomb and made the claim and the offer in the same breath — John 11:25-26 — "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live... Do you believe this?" Not achieve this. Believe this. He did the dying; he did the rising; he holds the open door. Our part is to take his hand and walk through.

So Paul ends the great resurrection chapter not with philosophy but with marching orders for ordinary, grieving, hopeful people: 1 Corinthians 15:58 — "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." That therefore is the whole Christian life in one word. Because the tomb is empty, keep going. Because the door is broken off its hinges, nothing offered to Christ is wasted — not your work, not your waiting, and not one of your tears.

Going Deeper

Sometime today, read 1 Corinthians 15 in one sitting — the whole chapter. As you read, keep one specific loss in mind: a person, a health, a hope. Every time Paul says "raised" or "imperishable," silently set your loss next to the word. Then say verse 58 out loud over it: "in the Lord your labor is not in vain." That is not positive thinking. It is the verdict of an empty tomb.