As the Apostle Paul lays forth his case for the resurrection he gives his readers two options—truth or absurdity. He had given up too much, been through too much, and suffered too much to give the opposition an inch. Either his ministry is a sham and he’s promoting a lie or the resurrection is a fact and Christianity is true. There’s no middle ground, no third option; one must decide, it’s either truth or absurdity.

It was Justin Martyr who said, “But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Savior on the same day rose from the dead” (First Apology 67). The light that shined in the darkness of the first creation day was a foreshadowing of the resurrection of Christ. The light burst forth that dark tomb, and to this day overtakes the darkness of men’s hearts, bringing salvation to all those who look to Him.

The Apostle Paul had an encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road, and he was never the same again. The one who once gave everything for the Law and his Jewish traditions, ended up giving everything for His Lord and Savior. No task was too great, and no opposition was too strong to hold him back. His eyes were on the prize until the end, and his ministry labors could be summed up in one statement: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

The Apostle Paul lays forth in 1 Corinthians Ch. 15 what one may call a logical firehose. One commentator put it this way: “It contains a connected, and labored, and unanswerable argument for the main truth of Christianity…and therefore is worthy of the deepest attention of all.” There was perhaps no man more passionate for the gospel than the Apostle Paul and it comes out in his teaching in 1 Corinthians Ch. 15.

One of the words used in the New Testament for worry is merimna. The word means to be divided in parts. An anxious mind is a divided mind, overly distracted by the things of this world. Anxiety can take on many forms and no one is immune to it. Yet with the power of the Holy Spirit in us and the guidance given to us in Scripture, we can say like the Apostle Paul “We overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.”

The Greek word for grace “charis” is used 157 times in the New Testament. The Apostle Peter exhorts us to stand firm in it and to grow in it until Christ returns. As beautiful as grace is, the Scriptures inform us it can be abused. The book of Jude tells us ungodly men turn the grace of God into licentiousness. Yet, for those who believe in Christ, grace saves, sustains, keeps, and empowers one to do the will of God no matter what comes their way in life.

As the Apostle Paul brings to a close the longest section in the New Testament on spiritual gifts, he wants to make sure the Corinthian church thoroughly understands what proper edification, maturity, and order in the church looks like. In his closing remarks he shares this sobering warning: “But if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized.” Paul’s teaching was from the Lord, and he wanted all who heard him to realize that fact.

Jesus said in Mark 8:36, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and forfeit his soul?”

A life of majoring on the minors can lead to success in this world, but futility in the end. The Corinthian church was in many ways going down that path. They had so much backwards, but yet again, the Apostle Paul like a loving father with his children is ready and willing to walk them through what majoring on the majors looks like.