Today Our Daily Bread 1 Cor 15 & 2 Cor 2:14

Scripture selections are taken from the Rock Church Daily Bread Reading schedule for each month. “Lena’s Journalin’” are Lena’s comments on the specific passages from her Daily Journal.

1 Corinthians 15

The Resurrection of Christ

1Now let me remind you, dear brothers and sisters,[a] of the Good News I preached to you before. You welcomed it then and still do now, for your faith is built on this wonderful message. 2And it is this Good News that saves you if you firmly believe it--unless, of course, you believed something that was never true in the first place.
3I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me--that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. 4He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the Scriptures said. 5He was seen by Peter[b] and then by the twelve apostles. 6After that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers[c] at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. 7Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. 8Last of all, I saw him, too, long after the others, as though I had been born at the wrong time. 9For I am the least of all the apostles, and I am not worthy to be called an apostle after the way I persecuted the church of God.
10But whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out his special favor on me--and not without results. For I have worked harder than all the other apostles, yet it was not I but God who was working through me by his grace. 11So it makes no difference whether I preach or they preach. The important thing is that you believed what we preached to you.

The Resurrection of the Dead

12But tell me this--since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? 13For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. 14And if Christ was not raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your trust in God is useless. 15And we apostles would all be lying about God, for we have said that God raised Christ from the grave, but that can't be true if there is no resurrection of the dead. 16If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. 17And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless, and you are still under condemnation for your sins. 18In that case, all who have died believing in Christ have perished! 19And if we have hope in Christ only for this life, we are the most miserable people in the world.
20But the fact is that Christ has been raised from the dead. He has become the first of a great harvest of those who will be raised to life again.
21So you see, just as death came into the world through a man, Adam, now the resurrection from the dead has begun through another man, Christ. 22Everyone dies because all of us are related to Adam, the first man. But all who are related to Christ, the other man, will be given new life. 23But there is an order to this resurrection: Christ was raised first; then when Christ comes back, all his people will be raised.
24After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having put down all enemies of every kind.[d] 25For Christ must reign until he humbles all his enemies beneath his feet. 26And the last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For the Scriptures say, "God has given him authority over all things."[e] (Of course, when it says "authority over all things," it does not include God himself, who gave Christ his authority.) 28Then, when he has conquered all things, the Son will present himself to God, so that God, who gave his Son authority over all things, will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere.
29If the dead will not be raised, then what point is there in people being baptized for those who are dead? Why do it unless the dead will someday rise again?
30And why should we ourselves be continually risking our lives, facing death hour by hour? 31For I swear, dear brothers and sisters, I face death daily. This is as certain as my pride in what the Lord Jesus Christ has done in you. 32And what value was there in fighting wild beasts--those men of Ephesus[f]--if there will be no resurrection from the dead? If there is no resurrection,
"Let's feast and get drunk, for tomorrow we die!"[g]
33Don't be fooled by those who say such things, for "bad company corrupts good character." 34Come to your senses and stop sinning. For to your shame I say that some of you don't even know God.

The Resurrection Body

35But someone may ask, "How will the dead be raised? What kind of bodies will they have?" 36What a foolish question! When you put a seed into the ground, it doesn't grow into a plant unless it dies first. 37And what you put in the ground is not the plant that will grow, but only a dry little seed of wheat or whatever it is you are planting. 38Then God gives it a new body--just the kind he wants it to have. A different kind of plant grows from each kind of seed. 39And just as there are different kinds of seeds and plants, so also there are different kinds of flesh--whether of humans, animals, birds, or fish.
40There are bodies in the heavens, and there are bodies on earth. The glory of the heavenly bodies is different from the beauty of the earthly bodies. 41The sun has one kind of glory, while the moon and stars each have another kind. And even the stars differ from each other in their beauty and brightness.
42It is the same way for the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies, which die and decay, will be different when they are resurrected, for they will never die. 43Our bodies now disappoint us, but when they are raised, they will be full of glory. They are weak now, but when they are raised, they will be full of power. 44They are natural human bodies now, but when they are raised, they will be spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, so also there are spiritual bodies.
45The Scriptures tell us, "The first man, Adam, became a living person."[h] But the last Adam--that is, Christ--is a life-giving Spirit. 46What came first was the natural body, then the spiritual body comes later. 47Adam, the first man, was made from the dust of the earth, while Christ, the second man, came from heaven. 48Every human being has an earthly body just like Adam's, but our heavenly bodies will be just like Christ's. 49Just as we are now like Adam, the man of the earth, so we will someday be like Christ, the man from heaven.
50What I am saying, dear brothers and sisters, is that flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God. These perishable bodies of ours are not able to live forever.
51But let me tell you a wonderful secret God has revealed to us. Not all of us will die, but we will all be transformed. 52It will happen in a moment, in the blinking of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, the Christians who have died[i] will be raised with transformed bodies. And then we who are living will be transformed so that we will never die. 53For our perishable earthly bodies must be transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die.
54When this happens--when our perishable earthly bodies have been transformed into heavenly bodies that will never die--then at last the Scriptures will come true:
"Death is swallowed up in victory.[j]
55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?"[k]
56For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 57How we thank God, who gives us victory over sin and death through Jesus Christ our Lord!
58So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and steady, always enthusiastic about the Lord's work, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.


Footnotes:
1 Corinthians 15:1 Greek brothers; also in 15:31, 50, 58.
1 Corinthians 15:5 Greek Cephas.
1 Corinthians 15:6 Greek the brothers.
1 Corinthians 15:24 Greek every ruler and every authority and power.
1 Corinthians 15:27 Ps 8:6.
1 Corinthians 15:32 Greek fighting wild beasts in Ephesus.
1 Corinthians 15:32 Isa 22:13.
1 Corinthians 15:45 Gen 2:7.
1 Corinthians 15:52 Greek the dead.
1 Corinthians 15:54 Isa 25:8.
1 Corinthians 15:55 Hos 13:14.

~Lena’s Journalin’~
If the law gives sin its power, I wonder what grace does? No wonder satan causes religious people to try to enforce laws that they themselves do not anf of course cannot keep without grace. Satan would rather we are under a powerful stronghold of sin, then it will take a tremendous amount of grace to be freed from its grip on us.
Whenever people say how big a problem is, and they are playing a “oh magnify my problem with me” game, I take myself into the realm of the impossible and I begin to magnify God in my mind. I usually say something like, “God is a great big God.”
Satan wants us to forget how “big” God is. When we magnify his evil works, God is not the highest or the biggest in our lives, He’s not magnificent anymore, in our thinking, satan’s evil thoughts have taken God’s royal throne in our minds and instead of possibilities, we see everything as impossible.
Paul is dealing with this very thing right now in this passage. If we do not continually magnify Our Father God Most High deception will be able to come in and if we entertain his words to us rather than God the Father’s words to us, we are listening to lying deceiving spirits. When we listen to them they start to have an instant audience with us, they’ve taken us captive and now abide with us. This is a dangerous place, because we serve a jealous God who won’t give His plce to another. If we choose to give His place to others, He leaves, he is unwelcomed, he will not dwell with another. Do you see what happens oh so subtly? Where God made his abode, now satan resides, in our minds. Do you know why the scripture says, “we have the mind of Christ”? because our minds belong to God, we are God’s temple, His holy dwelling place, reserved for His spirit to speak continually with us, but he has to be the One and ONLY. If He’s not that, he’s not there, unless the strongman is bound and kicked out, for good. It is a commandment- …Him ONLY shall we serve! He will not share His place even in our minds with others.
It got so bad here that the devil was trying to get a bunch of the believers together to nullify a doctrine of their new church! They witnessed the resurrection of Jesus. They put the puzzle pieces together to figure out what God had just done. I think satan figured out what God had done too and he has always been a recruiter, he loves miserable company and so wants to take as many converts to his doom as possible, in that he wins against God once again. Ok, so Jesus died and rose, satan was not a part of that deliberated action, he can try his best to nullify it now, by causing us as believers in Christ to choose to believe his lies rather than believe in Christ!
Think awhile on these things…..
(daily repetitive verse)
2 Corinthians 2:14
Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.