What Happens After We Die? What the Resurrection of Jesus Means for Your Future
Pastor Kirt Anderson opens 1 Corinthians 15, the oldest written record of the resurrection, to make a careful and compelling case that the risen Christ is an objective, historical reality and not simply a spiritual feeling. Drawing on the Apostle Paul’s dramatic transformation from a violent persecutor of Christians to one of history’s most prolific preachers of the gospel, Pastor Kirt shows why the resurrection is the hinge on which everything in the Christian faith turns. If Christ truly rose from the dead in a real, bodily way, then death is not the final word for anyone who puts their trust in him.
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Is the Resurrection of Jesus a Real, Historical Event or Just a Spiritual Idea?
Pastor Kirt pointed out a significant translation issue in some modern versions of 1 Corinthians 15. Where the Greek text says Christ “appeared,” some translations render it as “people saw him,” and Pastor Kirt argues that distinction matters enormously. If something appears, it is happening outside of you, an objective reality. If you simply “see” something, it could be internal, subjective, even imagined.
Paul’s own story is part of the evidence. He was not a grieving follower hoping for a sign. He was a highly educated, deeply zealous man who was actively hunting down Christians and possibly delivering them to their deaths. The risen Christ appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, and it turned his life completely around. That kind of reversal, in that kind of person, is not easy to dismiss.
What Does It Mean That Jesus Rose with a Real Body?
Pastor Kirt addressed the Corinthian church’s struggle with the idea of a physical resurrection, rooted in a Greek philosophical tradition that viewed the body as evil and the soul as the only thing worth saving. Against that view, Paul insists that Jesus rose bodily, and went out of his way after the resurrection to say “touch me” and to eat with his disciples. The body of Jesus was not left behind. It was transformed.
Pastor Kirt described this as a “glorified body,” a real physical continuity that is nevertheless entirely new. He used the image of a seed: the seed goes into the ground, it dies, and what comes up is something far greater than the seed itself. The seed and the plant are connected, but the plant is something you could not have predicted just by looking at the seed.
What Does the Resurrection Mean for People Who Have Already Died?
This is where Pastor Kirt got personal. He recalled standing at the open casket of a sixteen-year-old boy with bright red curly hair and freckles, a young pastor with almost nothing adequate to say to a devastated family. He turned to Paul’s words from Romans: “If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” And then to Paul’s words about the mystery: “We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.”
The resurrection also has a scope larger than individuals. Pastor Kirt connected Paul’s argument to the idea that all of creation is waiting for the full completion of God’s redemptive work. It is not just that believers will be transformed. It is that the entire created order will one day be remade according to God’s original design. The first morning of the resurrection, Pastor Kirt said, was the first day of that new creation.
Scripture Focus
Primary Anchor Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-19 (Revised Standard Version)
“Now I would remind you, brethren, in what terms I preached to you the gospel, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are saved, if you hold it fast, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”
Additional References:
- Romans 8:31-32 (quoted in the pastoral story of the grieving family)
- Revelation 6:9 (saints under the altar)
- Romans 8:19 (all creation awaits the transformation of the children of God)
