The Gospel Core

Host: Voices arose in the Corinthian church that denied the doctrine of the resurrection. Greek culture had infiltrated the faith with the idea of the flesh being evil, which in their minds, precluded Christ from having a bodily resurrection.
Host: Welcome to The Bible Study Hour, a radio and Internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. To answer his critics, the Apostle Paul made a proclamation of the essential elements of Christ's resurrection as the core of the Christian faith. Keep listening as Dr. Boice reiterates Paul's simple explanation of the truth given him by the Holy Spirit, and then passed on to the Christians at Corinth. Christ's death, his burial, and his resurrection.
Host: Our study of First Corinthians brings us to the 15th chapter of that book, which, as you know, is the great chapter, the most comprehensive chapter in the New Testament on the resurrection. It stands as the chapter on the resurrection, along with the 11th chapter of Hebrews, which is the great chapter on faith, and the 13th chapter of this same book, which is the great chapter on love. There are many other great chapters in the Bible, of course, but I think of those three together, because at the very end of First Corinthians, Paul says, "These three abide: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love." Well, Hebrews 11 is your great exposition of faith. Resurrection being the essence of the Christian hope, First Corinthians 15 is your great exposition of hope, and then First Corinthians 13 is the exposition of love.
Host: This is not a difficult chapter to outline. We're going to take it in three separate parts, but the chapter itself is not at all difficult to divide into sections. The first portion of it, which is verses 1 through 11, which we're looking at, deals with the truth of the resurrection, its factuality. The second section, found in verses 12 through 34, deals with the importance of the resurrection. One thing to say that something is true, it's quite another thing to show that that true thing is also important, and that's what Paul does. The third section, beginning with verse 35 through verse 49, deals with the resurrection body, and answers some questions that the people in Corinth probably had. And then the final section, beginning with verse 50 and going through the end, deals with the victory, which is ours because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The conclusion is found at the very end.
Host: Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm, let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. In addition to being a great chapter on the resurrection, this is also a rather neat little sermon in miniature, because having given what they always said in the case of Charles Haddon Spurgeon, was a good four-pointer, the Apostle Paul in his conclusion gets back to what he intimated at the beginning. At the very beginning he says that this doctrine of the resurrection is that which was preached to them, which they received, and on which they had taken their stand. So, when he gets to the end, he says, "Therefore, my dear brothers, continue to stand." Now, apparently, this doctrine of the resurrection was being denied by some of the alleged Christians in Corinth. We don't know anything about them. There are some people who have said, "Well, these were probably Sadducees who had become Christians, or pretended to be so."
Host: That's sheer speculation. The only reason a person would suggest that it was people of a background in the Sadducaic tradition is that we know the Sadducees denied the resurrection. So that's sort of an easy mental connection, but there's nothing at all in this chapter, or in the book, or in anything else we know about Corinth, to suggest that that's really the case. It's far more likely to suppose that this was simply an outcropping of what would be very understandable in the thinking of anybody who had been raised in a Greek tradition. Greeks had a certain approach to philosophy, which in one of its most fundamental areas, said that anything that was of the flesh was perishable, and more than that, was evil. And everything that was good was in the realm of the mind or spirit. So, when they thought about salvation, they thought the way you got saved was to get rid of the body, and to live in the realm of the spirit. And the closest approach you could have to salvation in this life was to live in the realm of the mind and deny the body. That gave rise to a number of different heresies.
Host: Because, you see, if the body is evil, and only the spirit is good, then the divine Christ, the Son of God, could not have taken unto himself a human body, because that would be the equivalent of saying that God became evil, or took evil to himself. And so, there was a tendency in Greek thought and Greek Christianity to deny the incarnation in its fullest sense. We see that in other areas. There was a whole movement of heresy in early Christianity known as Gnosticism, that did precisely that. So, I say, it's far more reasonable to think that it was out of this kind of Greek cultural background that the denial of bodily resurrection arose. But whether it was that background, or whether it was because of something else that we don't know anything about, it really doesn't matter, because here, for the benefit of the church in all ages, the Apostle Paul speaks of the resurrection and does so in a comprehensive way, saying in the first instance, that the resurrection is of the essence of Christianity, is part of the core gospel. And that a person denies the resurrection, or fails to understand it at the peril of their own soul.
Host: He has some interesting terminology here, that isn't at once apparent in our English translations, but is more so in Greek, and probably in the Hebrew terms that stand behind that. Paul says that he delivered to the Christians in Corinth that which he had formerly received. Those two terms, delivering and receiving, to us just sound like two incidental verbs. But in the language of rabbinics, Jewish theological lore, those two terms were important because they described what was the essential duty of a disciple of a master. A disciple of an older rabbi was to receive from him that which was the wisdom of the rabbis, and then without altering it in any respect, to pass it on to that one who would be his disciple, or those who would become his disciples. The rabbis used to say that a perfect disciple was like a plastered cistern. He loseth not a drop.
Host: And their ideal of knowledge was not what we think of. We think of an educated person being able to think creatively, make up things for themselves, have new ideas. That was not the rabbinic idea at all. The rabbinic idea was that the lore of antiquity was really the wisdom of God. Therefore, the good disciple is one who just absorbed that word for word, memorized it, and then without changing it in the slightest, passed it on. Some years ago, there was a Scandinavian scholar who wrote a book called Memory and Manuscript. And he developed that idea at great length, saying that we really need to take greater weight of that in understanding how we got our gospel traditions. Because, as he pointed out, and is well known to any New Testament scholars today, there has been a tendency in scholarship, especially in Germany, but also spilling over into English language scholarship, to say that these writers of the gospels, and even Paul and the epistles, were essentially creative, and were writing the stories that we find there as literary expressions of that which was essentially a spiritual experience. So much so that the facts they relate don't really bear any relationship to what we would call the facts of history. What they're trying to do is express in tangible terms what was basically an existential experience of the Living Christ. And this man that I'm referring to said, "No, you make a big mistake when you do that."
Host: That might be the way the German scholars themselves would write, but he says, "It's not the way Jews thought. Nobody would pay attention to anybody who was creative." Why, anything that was new was suspect just because it was new. He said the real tradition was to memorize what the master said and then pass it on. And that's, according to his explanation, why we have the teachings of Jesus Christ almost verbally repeated in the various gospels, and have found it so difficult to trace a literary relationship between those parallel accounts. He said, "The reason we have difficulty tracing the literary relationship between the accounts, trying to say which one was first and which was second, is that there is no literary relationship." And the reason all those texts sound so much alike is that the disciples did precisely what any good student of a rabbi would do. And Jesus said something, they memorized it, and then they gave it back. And when they came to write their gospels, that's what they did.
Host: Now, here's Paul using those terms. Paul, remember, is an apostle. Paul is one who has said on many occasions that what he spoke, he spoke not of his own wisdom, but he received it from the Lord. The words which we speak, he says it in the next letter. The words which we speak are not from ourselves, but from the Holy Spirit, who gives them to us. It's a great claim to inspiration. And yet, here's the Apostle Paul, who, as an apostle, certainly has a direct claim to revelation, who could say, "God told me this, and that's why I say it." Nevertheless, in a passage like this where he's talking about the core of the gospel, not in the slightest claiming originality for himself, but saying, "Look, I gave you simply the very thing which I myself had first received, because when I talked with those who had been believers before me, this was what they were talking about, this basic core of the gospel."
Host: And I count it the greatest honor and the greatest privilege in the world as an apostle to take that word for word in all its parts and pass it on to you. That which I have received, I delivered faithfully to you. May I say there's a sense in which that is what all of us do today. It's true. We try to communicate in the language of our times. And in order to keep people's attention, we try to do things a little bit differently. There's a proper sense, I think, in which we try to be creative, or say things in a slightly different way that other people haven't said, but you know, that's that's the minor thing. The important thing is that in our preaching, as we have opportunity to do that, or our teaching, if we're called to be teachers, or simply in our witnessing, our sharing of the gospel with other people, is that we deliver to others that which we first received. We're not trying to create a theology, we're not making up a religion. We're simply delivering to others that which was first delivered to us, and which if we trace it back through history, goes to the Lord Jesus Christ himself.
Host: And so we say, "Don't believe this because it's new. We say, rather, believe this because it's true. This is what happened, and this is what Christians down through all the ages have believed." Now, in these verses, Paul puts it in the simplest of terms. I guess if Paul was not writing a letter, if instead Paul was preaching a sermon and he had an opportunity to expound on these things, there's more that might have been said. If you want the core of the gospel, if you want it trimmed down to its basic necessities, that's what you find here. Some New Testament scholars call this the kerygma. It's a Greek word, it means proclamation. The essential elements of the proclamation, the gospel itself. You find this kind of outline at different places in the word of God, but here it is in Paul's terms. "What I received, I passed on to you." Is of first importance. That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that's the first thing. That he was buried, that's point number two. And then three, that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures.
Host: I say, there's a lot more that could be said. For one thing, he doesn't say anything about the person of Christ. He's assuming that. When he speaks of Christ dying for our sins, being buried, and being raised the third day from the dead, he's talking about the Christ who was the Son of God, the one who became flesh for us. So, the whole doctrine of the person of Christ is assumed, and the doctrine of God is assumed. Because when he says he's raised from the dead, it's God the Father who raised his son, he's assuming all of that. He says, "You see, this is the gospel, the core of the gospel, which concerns the work of Christ." And when you talk about the work of Christ, he says, "These are the areas in which it focuses." That Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures. That he was buried. And that he rose again from the dead, according to the scriptures. Now, it's important that he said, in talking about that first point, even as briefly as he does, that he died for our sins. Because, you see, it's quite a different thing from saying merely that Christ died.
Host: If he had said merely that Christ died, somebody could very well reply, "Well, so what? Everybody dies." And that's true. Christ died. Paul himself in time died. We will also die unless the Lord returns first. But you see, when he says he died for our sins, he puts that in a different category altogether. Because, well, you and I might die for a variety of reasons. We might die simply because we're ill and failing. We might die in a heroic fashion on behalf of somebody else. We might die as a martyr for some noble cause. And yet, he doesn't say that Jesus died in any of those ways. He said he died for our sins. That means at our place, vicariously. Not for his own sins, but for ours. And moreover, that he did that according to the scriptures. This is the kind of thing that if Paul had time to expound on, he could have begun as Jesus himself did, on occasions, by going back to the very earliest books of the Old Testament and tracing this principle of substitutionary atonement through. This is the great message of salvation that you find from the beginning of Revelation to the end of Malachi.
Host: Namely, that we, because of our deliberate choices and our sin, have brought the wrath of God upon ourselves and are under condemnation. We deserve to perish for our sin. But God, out of his great love for us, sent the Lord Jesus Christ, his own Son, the holy one, to die not for his own sins, because he had none, but to die in our place. And if Jesus is not who he claimed to be and did not do that, then there is no hope for any of us. Because if you look at your own heart, you know that you have no right to be blessed by God. That you have been given gifts which you have misused, and you have been created in a relationship to God, which you have violated. And if you look at your own heart and answer honestly, you know that what you deserve is God's banishment and wrath, now and in the life to come.
Host: You see, God didn't let it go with that. God sent his son, and moreover, God began to prepare the way for the coming of his son by explaining what Jesus was going to do. And so you find that throughout the Old Testament, and then he came, and he did it. And then in the New Testament, you find again and again the explanation of what he has done. Paul says, "When you talk about the gospel, core, that's where you begin. That Jesus died for our sins, according to the scriptures." He says, "Secondly, that he was buried." Now, he doesn't say he was buried according to the scriptures. I'm not sure why unless perhaps he really couldn't think of a text in the Old Testament that said he was buried. I suppose you can read that into some text, but I can't think of one either that says exactly that. Well, then you say, "What's the importance of mentioning this?" Well, it's important in view of what he's going to say next. He's going to talk about the resurrection. And so when he says that Jesus died and was buried, this is a way of saying, and he was really dead.
Host: You see, people have tried to deny that, because when the Christians went out, as they did, to proclaim the resurrection, one of the obvious explanations of what had happened is that Jesus really hadn't died. Other explanations as well, but people have said, "Well, he swooned on the cross. People thought he was dead. And then when he was placed in the tomb and it was cool there, he revived. And when he emerged from the tomb, his disciples saw him and said, 'Ah, he's been raised from the dead.'" And so, there was a kind of explanation of these things. Paul says, "No, you see, he was really dead, and he was buried. And he laid in that tomb for days." So, when we talk about a resurrection, we're not talking about an illusion. And we're not even talking about a resurrection of the spirit, because, of course, the spirit of Christ didn't die in any sense. No, he says, "We're talking about a real resurrection, which is the resurrection of the body." And that's what he says in the third place.
Host: That Jesus died for our sins, according to the scripture, that he was buried, and that he rose again from the dead on the third day, according to the scriptures. I think in that respect of the conversation the Lord himself had with those two Emmaus disciples, who were on their way back home after the resurrection, they had been there in Jerusalem at the time of the crucifixion, and because of the restrictions for travel in the Sabbath, which in this particular year included the Passover Sabbath, followed by the regular Sabbath on Saturday. They were still there, and were there on the morning of the resurrection, and heard, as they themselves confessed to Jesus, as they were walking on the way, reports that he had been raised from the dead. Because they said, "Certain of our women went to the tomb, and they came back saying that they'd seen a vision of angels, who had said that he was risen." And yet, so far was this idea of a resurrection from their minds that they didn't even go out to the tomb to investigate. They said, "Oh, that's nice. That's nice." They went on packing, and when they were ready, they started out for home. Emmaus, it was some miles away. And Jesus appeared along the way and began to teach them from the scriptures.
Host: I think it's interesting that he didn't say, "Hey, guys, it's me, Jesus. Look, it's me." After all, to Thomas later he said, "Look, here are my hands, here are the nail prints. You want to put your finger into the hole in my hands, you want to thrust your hand into my side. I'm here." That's the empirical test, do it if that's what you want. He didn't do that with these Emmaus disciples. Rather, we're told that beginning with Moses and the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures, the things that concerned himself. How it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and be raised again. That's a comprehensive term. In Hebrew, there's a word that's used to describe the whole of the Old Testament, what we call the Old Testament. It's the word Tanakh. And the T sound, the letter in that, stands for the Torah, which is the law. The law of Moses. And then the N stands for the Nevi'im, the prophets, the prophetic books, which is not quite what we think of by the prophetic books, but it's a second major block of the Old Testament. And then finally the K stands for the Ketuvim, which is the writings.
Host: And so in that verse in Luke 24, it says that Jesus began with Moses and the prophets and expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that concerned himself. That's a way of saying he went through every portion of the Old Testament. Began with the law, and he talked about the prophets, and he referred to the writings, and he said, "In all of them it teaches that it was necessary that Christ die and rise again from the dead on the third day." And that's all that Paul is saying. He says, "When you talk about the gospel, the core gospel, remember, that the gospel is this, that Jesus died for our sins. That he was buried, and that he rose again." Now, at that point, I suppose, someone would say, "Well, it makes very nice philosophy, this teaching about a dying and rising savior. It's the kind of thing that you might find a parallel to in some of the mystery religions of the Greek world. It's all very nice, very nice philosophy. But you know, it really didn't happen." And the reason we know it really didn't happen is that resurrections don't happen. We just don't see that sort of thing today.
Host: What Paul says, as he continues this exposition of the gospel core, is that this great fact of the resurrection, that Jesus rose from the dead on the third day, is well attested historically. Many evidences for it, he says, and chiefly among these evidences are the fact that he appeared to Peter, and then to the 12. After that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. I've appreciated the writings of Charles Hodge on First Corinthians. I think of all the commentaries that I've looked at, this is the one that I've found most helpful. And at this point, Hodge really has a very wise paragraph, as he speaks about the historical evidences for the resurrection. I want to read it, it goes like this: He's speaking of us now.
Host: We are so constituted that we cannot refuse assent to the testimony of good men to a fact fairly within their knowledge. To render such testimony irresistible, it is necessary, number one, that the fact to be proved should be of a nature to admit of being certainly known. Number two, that adequate opportunity be afforded to the witnesses to ascertain its nature and to be satisfied of its veracity. Number three, that the witnesses be of sound mind and discretion. Number four, that they be men of integrity. If these conditions be fulfilled, human testimony establishes the truth of a fact beyond reasonable doubt. If, however, in addition to these grounds of confidence, the witnesses give their testimony at the expense of great personal sacrifice, or confirm it with their blood, if, moreover, the occurrence of the fact in question had been predicted centuries before it came to pass, if it had produced effects not otherwise to be accounted for, effects extending to all ages and nations. If the system of doctrine with which that fact is connected, so as to be implied in it, commends itself as true to the reason and conscience of men, and if God confirms not only the testimony of the original witnesses to the fact, but also the truth of the doctrines of that which that fact is the necessary basis by the demonstration of his spirit, then it is insanity and wickedness to doubt it.
Host: All these considerations occur in proof of the resurrection of Christ and render it the best authenticated event in the history of the world. I don't think that that is an overstatement. I think that's precisely a statement of the facts, and that to which the Apostle Paul himself here alludes. Now, if we talk about the evidences for the resurrection, there are many, many more than the apostle gives himself here. We could talk about the accounts of the resurrection, which is how we learn of it. That is, the accounts in the gospels and in such chapters of the word of God as First Corinthians 15. I've sometimes talked about this at length, showing that since you have parallel accounts, since they agree basically, that there's only a variety of ways to explain them and a limited number of ways at that. You can say that these accounts were made up. And if you say they were made up, that is invented stories, they were either made up in collusion, as the men got together and said, "Let's make up a story about the resurrection." And so they worked out the details and wrote it down. Or they were made up separately.
Host: Here was Matthew, made his up, and Mark made his up, and Luke and John and so on. It's been pointed out quite consistently that they can't have been made up in collusion, because if they were, you wouldn't find the kind of minor disagreements you do. Things like the number of women at the tomb. Now you can work that out, and many people have. You can explain why one would say one thing and one would say another, but that's not the kind of thing that you'd allow to stand in your narrative if you were making it up together with somebody else. You'd say, "Look, we have to settle this. How many women were there that came to the tomb? Was it one or three or four, what was it?" And then when you make your decision, that's what you put into your books. These minor discrepancies are there. So, they weren't made up in collusion. But on the other hand, they weren't made up separately either, because in all of the basic facts, the various accounts are in agreement. Well, what is the explanation then if they weren't made up in collusion and they weren't made up separately? The only possibility that's left is that they weren't made up at all.
Host: And what you really have here is the account of eyewitnesses testifying from their somewhat limited perspective of what they actually knew to be the case. We can talk as well about the changed character of the disciples. Before the resurrection, they were fearful, scattering, timid men. Emmaus disciples were going home, Peter was denying his Lord. None of them had any courage. And yet, a short time after this alleged resurrection, you find these same cowardly disciples standing up in Jerusalem in the presence of the very men who had killed their master, saying that they were guilty of his blood and proclaiming the resurrection. What accounts for that? The only thing that can account for that is an actual resurrection. You have the change of the day of worship from Saturday, the Jewish day of worship, to Sunday, the Christian day of worship. Only a resurrection on Sunday would account for that. Otherwise, the change is too radical. That just isn't something that would have happened historically, unless there was a cause such as the resurrection to explain it. And so on, there are many other various explanations and proofs.
Host: But what Paul talks about here are the eyewitnesses. You say, "Well, why doesn't Paul mention the other things?" The reason, quite obviously, is that writing at the time he did, the period of history in which he was writing, it wasn't necessary to mention the other things. Because, what can be better than an eyewitness? And especially, if you can talk about 500 of them who all saw the same thing at once. Paul says, "Look, if you doubt this, all you have to do is talk to people who were there." Because when you begin to talk about those who he appeared to, there was Peter and the 12 and 500 at one time, and James, and all the apostles, and then finally me, to whom he appeared at the very end. I think it's interesting that although Paul's concern in this chapter is to talk about the resurrection, and he does. Nevertheless, that when he gets to this point and mentions the fact that Jesus Christ appeared to him, last of all, as he says, is one abnormally born. Paul's mind immediately, now being on his own experience, thinks of the grace of God to give such a revelation and entrust such a gospel to a person like himself.
Host: Before he met the Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul was the exact opposite of the kind of man we find him to be here. The Apostle Paul was a proud man. The Apostle Paul had come from centuries of Jewish tradition, and he believed, and believed rightly, apart from the grace of God and the gospel, that if anybody had any right to stand before God and be proud of himself, that is to hold his head high in the day of the final judgment, it was he, Paul. Because when he looked back over the circumstances of his life, he could declare, as he does in the third chapter of Philippians, that he was born a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He was an Israelite of the tribe of Benjamin, circumcised on the eighth day. And then, in addition to all of those things that he had inherited, there was the fact that he was a Pharisee, the strictest sect of the Jews. That he was zealous on the Pharisaic cause, which he had demonstrated by persecuting the church. And as far as the righteousness that was in the law, by the Pharisaic interpretation of that law, he stood before God blameless.
Host: Paul said, "You see, in those days, I held my head high and I said, 'God should be proud to have such a man as me on earth doing his business.'" And then he met Jesus Christ and he realized that when he thought he was most doing the work of God, he was actually opposing it. He was fighting Jesus himself, the Son of God, the savior. And he recognized what a sinful man he was. And there is never a point in his writings where he begins to talk about what God did in his life, that he doesn't in some way, as he does here, express now the utmost humility of character. We find Paul saying, "Because I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. And yet, it's by the grace of God that I am what I am." That's what the gospel core leads us to.
Host: You don't think in terms of the Lord Jesus Christ dying for your sin, being buried, and then being raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, to declare in a public way that God has accepted his sacrifice on your behalf. You don't begin with that core of the gospel, then you're like Paul before his conversion. You say, "Well, I guess the way you get by is by doing as many good things as you can. God has to take note of that, of course he does." So, you have that kind of religious pride that has been one of the curses of human history. When you recognize that your sin was such a terrible thing in the sight of God that God himself in the person of his son had to come and die for you. God submitting to the death of the cross for you. When you realize that, then you're humbled before him and you can say, "It is only by the grace of God that I am what I am." That's what people need to hear today. People have a great way of putting it off today, and the way they put it off today is to relativize truth, so that although we claim that this is true, they say, "Well, that's just true for you."
Host: Doesn't necessarily have to mean anything to me. I do what pleases me, you do what pleases you, it's all right. It's one of the devil's triumphs. That he has so relativized truth that the truth claims of Christianity can be heard by people and shrugged off as if it doesn't make any difference whether a thing is true or not. But I said the only answer I know is that we keep stating these claims. We keep pressing them home again and again. By the grace of God, truth is such a thing that it does tend to work its way into the human heart and demand a response. It did in Christ's day. Jesus spoke the truth and people wanted to dismiss it, but he continued to speak it. And they were faced with that great crisis, whether they were to hear the truth as it came from the lips of him who was the truth itself and submit to it, confessing their sins and believing on him as their savior, or else setting their face against that truth and opposing him and his claims and fighting him necessarily unto the death.
Host: Paul had the same thing. That's the experience of Paul in his day. And that is essentially what we face today. That's what you face today, if you've not yet come to terms with gospel teaching. Christianity says, "This is not merely a philosophy." This is truth. This is historical truth. Jesus, the Son of God, died on the cross for your sin. And he was buried and he rose again from the dead on the third day, and there were many witnesses of these things. You have to come to terms with that. Is that true? If that's true, then Jesus is who he claimed to be, and he is your Lord, and you must submit to him. If it's not true, then you have to dismiss that. And the great challenge of life is to dismiss a claim like that. I don't think you can. I think it's far better to bow the knee to Christ and accept him on his terms and enter into the joy of his salvation. Let us pray.
Host: Father, we thank you for the gospel. We know, because we know our own hearts, and we see it all about us, that it's hard to accept, but we're thankful that it's not complex. It's certainly easy enough to understand. We would ask that you'd give grace. Just as you gave grace to the Apostle Paul, and grant that no one will be able to shrug the truth claims of Christianity aside and go on in his or her own way to an eternity apart from Jesus. But rather that they might come to terms with this and bow their head and their heart before him and find that glorious salvation about which the saints in all ages have spoken. For we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
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Host: Dr. Boice's impact reached far beyond the pulpit. Our Bible teacher was a prolific author and articulate spokesman for the reformed faith around the world. Audio and print materials from Dr. Boice's events, broadcast and writing ministries are available at reformedresources.org. That's reformedresources.org. I'm Mark Daniels. Thanks for joining us. While the Apostle Paul previously proclaimed the essential elements of Christ's resurrection, he now turns to the consequences of denying the core belief of the Christian faith as he progresses in his letter to the Corinthians. Join Dr. James Boice as he explores the four devastating aftereffects of disbelief in the resurrection of our Lord. That's next time on The Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.