The following Scriptural Rerun, although not a part of our current Apostolic Faith SERIES, will provide additional context for our look at the Gospel of John written about five years before the Elder's Epistles.
READ any post linked below from our 2020 SERIES from the Gospel of John
Scriptural exposition in the context of A.D. 85-90,
19 March AD2020 Churches ordered closed..while during recent months:
some sought to stream the stage of worship
some sent seeker-friendly scripture into our homes
some church communities disintegrated while others diminished & distanced (like our 2020 remote office meetings complete with slides).
To review the Gospel of John, simply click on any link in the outline below& it will open in a new window.
Roger – author of A.D. 2020 series on the Gospel ‘Good NEWS’ of John
I hope you were blessed by the secure links to reliable sites for further study of Scripture, as well as insight into the 1st century church of John’s Gospel (written ~A.D.- 90).
IN THE BEGINNING was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
ALL THINGS came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of
MANKIND.
And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
The Book of the Prologue
John’s Prologue [1:1-18], from which the Apostle next proceeds to the testimony of John the Baptist and the Messiah’s calling of the Twelve, states many important theological themes & along with his Epilogue [21:1-25 {linked below}] provides additional depth of purpose of John’s Gospel.
‘My Father’s House – John 2“You must be born again.I am the Messiah – John 4Before Abraham was, I AM John 11“..and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal.also love one another-John 13Jesus prays – John 17Jesus answered him – John 19:11 Jesus said:
Gospel of John
“Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! – John 1:29b
As Jesus passed by, He saw a man who had been blind from birth. – John 9:1
Are you greater than our father Abraham who died? And the prophets died. Who do you claim to be?” – John 8:53
“But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep.
My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me;
and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. – John 10:26-28
Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise from the dead.”
.. “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.
Hear all the unrelenting bad news of yesterday or today or any future year in the Common Era of these last days.
For followers of Jesus, His death diminished life’s hope in eternal life;
that is, until the GOOD NEWS of the Lord’s resurrection reached the eyes and ears and touch of His dearly beloved friends.
John and the Disciples witnessed the Lord Jesus in His Risen Flesh several times after His resurrection, as had hundreds of other disciples also seen their risen Christ!
but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.
And when He had said this, He showed them both His hands and His side. The disciples then rejoiced when they saw the Lord.
John 20:20
Their sorrow had turned into joy and so must ours; for in Christ Jesus his disciples of every generation have eternal life through His sacrifice for our sins. This is our Gospel, John’s Good News to those who would believe.
John’s Epilogue
John 20:30 Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book.
But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
John 20:21 CSB
Go in Peace and Believe
I pray that the Lord has blessed you through the Gospel of John in A.D. 2020 and now I might add, the Good NEWS of John by God’s grace continuing these last days in 2023 of the Common Era ..
May our Lord Jesus Christ
draw you into His grace,
giving you new hope of Eternal Life in the remaining years of our Common Era of 2023 and beyond if it is God's will,in the Name of the Father and the Son Christ JESUS, Who IS and Was and will judge all things when the Lord returns, and the Holy Spirit who sustains saved sinners in these last days.
AMEN.
The FACTS established, now the Apostle to the Gentiles must convince believing Corinthians influenced by cultural ‘scientists of Promethean logic‘ about the truth of the nature of the resurrection of the dead.
How can worshippers of myths — a myriad of made-up gods and goddesses — purport LOGIC as truth?
How can we present the resurrection of the dead as truth rather than myth (upon which Greek religion tenuously stands)?
This is Paul’s cultural challenge — and ours.
Resurrection is Key to the Gospel
Even Jerusalem’s Sadducees denied the truth and evidence of the resurrection.
Certainly many Greek worshippers of pagan gods held philosophies allowing the evil of the body to coexistence with a soul (hopefully) worthy of heaven.
Paul had encountered such opposition in Athens just before he arrived in Corinth to preach.
Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked...
Note that this mocking at mention of the resurrection is similar to that in Jerusalem at the time many Jews received the Holy Spirit.
They believe these things, but hate them; and they also hate God.
WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF P.291
Is it not so? Hasn’t this hatred of God also been your experience simply at the mention of Jesus Christ?
Pagan ridicule of the resurrection provides false evidence to their Promethean proofs justifying the sins their flesh-indulged minds.
This was the challenge of the Apostle Paul in A.D. 55, as it is ours in this Common Era of indulgent inclusion.
IF Christ is risen..
Paul has established the indisputable facts of the bodily death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now he continues in his key logic of the gospel of resurrection of the body and spirit.
1 Corinthians 15: –
“.. this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
1 COR 15:11b BSB
: RESURRECTION IS: CERTAIN (15:1-34)
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,
how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Paul now addresses those believing doubters of the resurrection influenced by the surrounding pagan culture.
The Apostle follows a step-by-step logical argument:
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
1 Cor 15:13 ESV
These logical Greek Corinthians hear the argument of the Pharisee (Saul of Tarsus) refuting the unbelieving Sadducees.
— AND Paul has just presented the FACTS and evidence that Christ was raised from the grave after His crucifixion.
And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.
1 Cor 15:14 ESV
SO — You are a follower of The Way – a saint of your local church…
WHY THEN did we preach Christ to you and your fellow saints?
Is your faith in a myth just vanity?
And Paul continues rhetorically challenging the veracity of his own preaching of the Christ and Jesus' resurrection from DEATH on a Roman cross in Judea.
The apostle of this gospel self-convicts in this alternative scenario concluding:
We are even found to be misrepresenting God,
because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised.
1 Cor 15:15 ESV
Heresy!
What is the Apostle’s proposition?
YOU — Corinthians — (and YOU, Common Era questioners) — must judge the TRUTH of the RESURRECTION of the dead based on the FACTS & EVIDENCE that the Lord Jesus Christ was the first man raised from death for your sins.
Why do I make the bold point that this would be HERESY?
Other translations provide a more pointed translation of the Greek that may help us understand the seriousness of Paul's alternative false proposition.
NOW Paul continues in the only logical conclusion: :
But now [at this very moment] is Christ risen from the dead
1 Corinthians 15:20a – KJV [def. Gk. νυνί]
The Apostle here is emphatic in his belief proclaimed in his closing.
“But in fact..,” “At this very moment..,” “And now..,
Christ hath risen out of the dead,” read just a few English translations of Paul’s logical Greek argument.
Then Paul proclaims the benefits of Christ’s resurrection applied to the death of those in Christ.
Christ’s resurrection + the firstfruits
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep…
.. Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.
1 Cor 15:20,23b ESV
Between Paul’s representation of the resurrection of Christ and resurrections of ‘those who belong to Christ’ — (faithful saints of the Church redeemed in Him) — the Apostle points back once more to original sin and the source of death replacing eternal life with God.
IN THE BEGINNING…
For as in Adam all die…
Paul proclaims:
But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.
For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
IN THE BEGINNING God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void…
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed… But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it:
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Genesis 1-2 KJV excerpts
IN ADAM… ALL DIE.
IN ABRAHAM & JACOB.. ALL DIE.
IN MOSES ALL DIE
and IN DAVID… ALL DIE!
in Christ all will be made alive. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ, the firstfruits; afterward, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
Moreover — and as a matter of fact, the Apostle continues — here are the facts of the Gospel of the resurrection and Christ once more (for your logical Greek reasoning).
Letters & NEWS
As we have read in the Apostle’s first epistle to the Corinthian saints, letters are personal and recall a connection of love between Paul and those in Corinth.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—
.. I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree..
And the Apostle establishes his own authority in Christ — the head of the Church who died for sinners.
Though I am free of obligation to anyone, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews.
Yet Paul’s pathos and personal connection to the Corinthians appeals to all who love the Lord — Jew and Greek and Romans who worship as saints of one Church — this one in first century Corinth.
The Parthenon
Logic
Recall from our previous look at Paul’s personal letter that even though a remnant of Jews live in Corinth (and the smaller ancient city of Athens), the culture of his audience is Greek.
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand..
1 Corinthians 15:1 ESV
Before we list Paul’s FACTS for believers, let’s examine this Greek culture of logic in the light of truth cast upon the temples of many mythical gods and goddesses of Corinth.
Truths revealed to our minds
The following quoted in part from WARRANTED CHRISTIAN BELIEF PP290-294
What more is there to faith than belief?
What distinguishes the Christian believer from the demons?
——
“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
Hasn’t this hatred of God also been your experience at simply the mention of Jesus Christ?
Perhaps they also hope against hope that these things aren’t really so..
in a self-deceived way..
the problem here is not merely cognitive..
but.. Promethean..
ibid.
Cultural ‘science‘ of Promethean Logic
COVID-masked Prometheus statue at Rockefeller Center NYC, US as seen on the News
Prometheus, in Greek religion, one of the Titans, the supreme trickster, and a god of fire. His intellectual side was emphasized by the apparent meaning of his name, Forethinker. In common belief he developed into a master craftsman, and in this connection he was associated with fire and the creation of mortals.
WE must think to the AD 55 Corinthian culture, as well as our own Common Era challenges of preaching the Good News of Jesus Christ, in these ‘Promethean‘ terms of logic —scientific facts of the world masked as NEWS.
The demons, no doubt, are theistsand also believe of God that he exists; because they do not trust and love God and do not make his purposes their own.
ibid. p.294
Heretics — those who hate God — contend against Christ.
Gospel Good News
NOW, after stating that everything must be done in order, the Apostle Paul begins with the facts of the resurrection. AND note that he presents these FACTS as ‘of first importance.’
Facts:
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance:
ὅτι Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν Christ (christos) -- not simply JESUS or Lord or some other designation of His Person or earthly position.
The Apostle Paul makes “CHRIST” christos — central to his FACTS to the Corinthians, using this Messianic designation (in Greek) over sixty times in this epistle.
AND Paul’s protos point reminds us that CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS
(the Person of Jesus)Christ ἀποθνῄσκω died [apothnēskō] (as all men and women do)
-- AN INDISPUTABLE FACT --
Then Christ’s apostle to the gentiles reminds:
ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν
hyper egō hamartia
for our sins
Christ’s apostle continues logically with a REASON (remember, these are Greeks seeking wisdom in this) for this indisputable fact that Jesus died on a Cross (some twenty years before this).
And in his logical support of why Christ – the Messiah of the Jews – would do this, the Apostle cites God’s Holy written word:
Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
to James (Jesus’ half-brother)
then to all the apostles.
the Apostle Paul
Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
In the Apostle’s ‘reminder’ written to the believing saints of the church in Corinth, Paul begins with just the facts — provides witnesses — and now preaches once more what many had proclaimed in person.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.
On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.
Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians 15:10-11 ESV
SINCE ~AD 33 — and for all these years of our Lord since — MANY WITNESSES of One Lord — have Preached and Proclaimed
Jesus Christ crucified for our sins, buried, and raised from the dead — appearing, in fact, to many witnesses.
and (when we preached)
— you believed!
But the Apostle is NOT FINISHED with this all-important proclamation of the Good FACTS of the Resurrection.
NEXT, Paul will continue with the certainty of the resurrection of the dead.. and you must consider what this will mean to your own faith and mortal life.
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![“He who loves his [fn]life loses it, and he who hates his [fn]life in this world will keep it to life eternal.](https://talkofjesus.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/triumphal-entry.jpg)
