Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern.  (18) For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ:  (19) whose end  is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame – who set their mind on earthly things.   (20) For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, (21) who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.

4:1  Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved.

The Apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Philippians while in prison, probably in Rome.  This letter is a letter of joy and it is clear that Paul felt that he would soon be a free man. However,  in the verses we study today, Paul is concerned with the conduct of the Philippians – in the early church there was no code of conduct.  Paul invites them to imitate him –  he knew how to live with integrity.  He warns that there were false apostles and false teachers and while the people could not see Jesus but they could see Paul and compare him to the false teachers.   The Apostle makes his behaviour a standard of a new life in Christ.  Paul also encourages the Philippians to watch those who followed the pattern of his life.  I am reminded here of the saying in Alcoholics Anonymous:  “stick with the winners.”

Paul is concerned with enemies of the cross of Christ – those openly hostile and a hindrance to the spread of the gospel.  This warning was against those who professed to be Christians but lived as citizens of this world.  Paul declares that the end of these people is destruction.  By declaring this terrible outcome Paul is saying that such people will suffer total ruin – utter and hopeless loss.  Their existence would end in a destruction which would consist of the loss of eternal life – a separation from God with no possibility of a bridge between the sinner and God.  Their god is their body and temporal pleasures.  Their highest good is to satisfy themselves against God and the inner conviction of their own consciences.  Their glory is their shame and they think it freedom but are slaves to lusts.  They are insensitive to shame which is not a feeling but an experience and they sin against God.  The consciousness of these men is so dulled that they find delight in their sins and they love what they should hate, hate what they should love.  Such men make the standards of the world their standards.

Paul’s point is that we are to be citizens of heaven, not citizens of earth.  Christianity centers on Jesus Christ, and deeds are evidence of what men truly believe.  These men set their minds and the mind set is on the flesh and hostile to God. 

We are born again by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and become citizens of a heavenly kingdom and are given an entirely new set of standards by which to conduct our lives and function as citizens of the kingdom of heaven.  We need to live in such a way that others will see we are different.  Our bodies will be transformed – no more death, disease, sorrow, but an inward spiritual transformation in which we are delivered finally and forever from sin.    Eternal truths do exist and are not limited by time and sensibility.  Paul made it clear that there is an eternal destiny for the body and we have a responsibility as to how to use the body.

Paul turns from the “enemies of the cross” to believers.  He weeps over the one but is filled with joy at the other and contemplates their coming glory.  We have been bought at a price and he commands us to stand firm – persevere – press on toward the goal for the prize.

Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  (16) For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.  (17) And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!  (18) Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.  (19) If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.  (20) But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

The Apostle Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthians to correct the early Christians there and to clarify and remind them of the foundational doctrines he had taught them.   Paul wrote the first 11 verses of Chapter 15 to establish  direct evidence of the resurrection of Jesus by citing Scripture and remind his readers of eyewitnesses to the resurrected Christ:  Jesus appeared to Peter and to a gathering of more than 500 people – many of whom were still alive; to James , the half brother of Jesus; to the disciples and also to Paul.  Now, the Apostle Paul proceeds to argue that because Jesus had risen, it must follow that His people would also rise from the dead.  If it is impossible and absurd that the dead will rise, it is impossible and absurd to think that Christ has risen.   If there is a denial that Christ has risen then there is a denial if Christianity altogether.

Paul follows this by saying that if Christ were not raised up His followers are unpardoned sinners.  If Christ was not raised up He was an imposter and our hopes of forgiveness are  in vain.    If the resurrection of Christ were not true, all Christians who had died had failed of salvation and had been destroyed – their bodies lie in graves and will turn to dust and their souls are destroyed.   All are delusional with their hopes in vain.  This unbelief strikes at the heart of our convictions of what is right and true.  And we of all men are to be pitied.

But now is Christ risen and of this Paul is certain. He has presented irrefutable testimony of the resurrection of Jesus and he, Paul, has seen the risen Christ.   Christ is not merely the first in the order of resurrection but first of the risen of all the dead.

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,  (2) by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.

(3) For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (4)  and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, (5) and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.  (6)  After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.  (7) After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.  (8) Then last of all He was seen by me also as by one born out of due time.

(9) For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  (10) But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God which was with me.  (11) Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

The Apostle Paul founded the Church in Corinth and he is writing to them to correct reports of strife and dissension.   Chapter 15 of this first letter to the Corinthians is devoted entirely to the doctrine of the resurrection without which Christianity would be little more than wishful thinking.

In the ancient world there were many views of death.  The Sadducees denied life after death; many believed the body was the source of our weakness and sin – the Greeks thought immortality was a spiritual concept and there was no place for the resurrection of the physical body –  matter is evil.  There was nothing in the Greek background of the Gentile that said there was a resurrection of the dead.  They in general believed in the immortality of the soul but not of the body.  The resurrection of Christ is the central truth that the Apostle Paul preached  and the personal experience of transformation culminating in resurrection was not easily accepted in Corinth.

Paul repeats that he has received the gospel and has preached that gospel to the Corinthians – that the Corinthians have received what Paul has received.  He is emphasizing that no man has invented the gospel or discovered it for himself.  Paul says that he has received this from Christ.  This same gospel on which they stand is thus the foundation and certainty that there is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  Christ died an atoning death and was buried and rose from the dead.  Paul does not want to introduce new truth but wants to remind the Corinthians of the doctrine of death of Christ and the resurrection.  Without this truth there is no religion.  Our salvation depends on this.

Paul writes that this essential truth of the resurrection is historically supported by the Scriptures and by the fact that the risen Christ was seen first by Cephas (Peter) and then by over 500 witnesses – many of whom are alive and some even known by the Corinthians – and also James, the half brother of Christ.  And then, Christ was seen by Paul.

The design here is to affirm the doctrines of the great undeniable and fundamental truths of Christianity which are essential to salvation.  My personal favorite, C.S. Lewis pointed out in his talk titled “The Grand Miracle” that “…the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again,, bringing nature up with him.  It is precisely one great miracle.  If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.”

But earnestly desire the best gifts.  And yet I show you a more excellent way.  (13:1)  Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or clanging cymbal.  (2) And though i have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  (3) And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

(4) Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; (5)  does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;  (6) does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;  (7) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

(8) Love never fails.  But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away.  (9) For we know in part and we prophesy in part.  (10)  But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

(11)  When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when i became a man, I put away childish things.  (12) For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

(13) And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The Apostle Paul wrote this first letter to the Corinthians as an occasional letter – in response to news that the Church in Corinth was rife with dissension, jealousy and envy.  Paul had written earlier in this letter that the gifts of the Holy Spirit received by the Corinthians were meant to be used for each other and the glory of God. Instead, these gifts were such a source of such contention that the unity of the Church was almost destroyed.  Paul wrote to correct abuses and in in Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians he addresses the spirit and manner in which the Corinthian Christians must observe to please God.  This chapter on the superiority of love may be the most quoted chapter of Scripture in the New Testament.

Love is permanent in contrast with the gift of prophecy, tongues and knowledge.  These all will cease to exist because they will not be needed.  We will have perfect knowledge and understanding.  Without a “heart” of love we are worth no more to God than the sounds of a brass trumpet or the inharmonious sound of a cymbal.   Prophecy and knowledge and faith all must spring from love for God and man or they are worthless and we are nothing.  The things described by the Apostle Paul are the gifts which were in the highest repute not only to the Jews but also amount the Christians and Gentiles.  Paul says that these gifts, without love, are of no use to the man who has and enjoys them..   He follows with a description of the love God recommends.

Love never fails as it is our bridge to God Who never fails.  It supports all graces and is essential to our religious and social life.  Hope shall be answered;, prophecies shall be rendered useless; tongues unnecessary and human knowledge useless.  We know in part – we know so little of earthly things and even less of heavenly things – how deficient we would be without love.

Our future state of blessedness is as far beyond any perfection we can attain in this life as our initial state of being a child and then reaching  maturity .  In our present state we see only as through a glass darkly.  (In ancient times people would see images of themselves through a reflector made of polished metal – an obscure image.)  But, in the eternal unseen world we will see face to face – and be seen.  We now know only in part but God’s great design has length, breadth and heights that we cannot know or imagine in our present imperfect state.

So, we have faith, hope and charity,  We have faith to keep us walking with God; hope that we can expect future blessedness and endure.  Both of these are necessary and useful but the fulfilling of the law is love.  God is love and by love we resemble Him.  Faith and hope respect ourselves but love takes in God and man.  Love remains through eternity.