Assurance of the Believer’s Resurrection – 1 Corinthians 15:24-28

How can we be assured in our hope of the resurrection? In this portion of Apostle Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, God points us to the end times to see the unassailable hope of eternal life through Jesus’s resurrection.

Eschatology- the doctrine of the end times- is not a simple topic. Even the greatest theologians of the church differed in their viewpoints of future events. Our church stands behind the view of premillennialism, in which Jesus will come prior to the Millennial Kingdom. We are currently in the Church Age. Jesus will one day descend from heaven, and all believers- dead or alive- will be caught up, together with Christ in the clouds. (1Thess 4:16-17) This will be the end of the Church Age, and the beginning of the Tribulation, which serves to fulfill the Abrahamic and Davidic covenants for the Gentiles and the Jews. The Tribulation will end with Jesus’ Second Coming, when He will bind Satan for a thousand years during His Millennial Kingdom. At the end a thousand years, Jesus will release Satan for a little while, and then there will be the Judgment before the Great White Throne. Satan and all his demons will be thrown into hell, along with anyone whose name is not written in the book of life. God will then create a new heaven and a new earth, with a new Jerusalem. (Rev 20, 21)

The end times will be the consummation of God’s work. As we think about the future, we can be assured that our resurrection is guaranteed because Jesus will bring it to completion. He will hand over the kingdom to God the Father- the kingdom, referring to the people He has redeemed and conquered by His saving grace. (Matt 3:2) Jesus will abolish every evil rule, authority and power- all the demons and Satan, against whom we stood and wrestled with in their evil day. Jesus will carry out His work as our Almighty Mediator, putting a final end to all the evil schemes of Satan. (Eph 6:12)

And finally, Death will be dead. (v.26) There is nothing more sobering than death. Death has no discernment of age or circumstances; it is the end to which every man’s path leads. Everyone is an inevitable victim to Death- that is, everyone except the Lord Jesus Christ. Death is God’s servant, and though its sting was disarmed by Jesus’s death and resurrection, it will be squashed altogether when Jesus throws it into the lake of fire. (Rev 20:14) This is our conviction: Jesus’s resurrection was His victory over sin and death. Because of Christ, the believer’s resurrection is guaranteed with unspeakable hope and glory.