1 Corinthians 15:54–58 – “With Time” – Satoru Nakanishi
Discussion Questions:
Recommended reading: Surprised by Hope; Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church written by N.T. Wright.
1. How does your view on the future influence your life in the present?
2. Do you have hope in your future? If so, where does your hope come from?
3. Why does the Bible stress the importance of the resurrection?
4. What does the resurrection of the believers mean to you?
5. Many teachers of the Bible (such as N.T. Wright and J.I. Packer…also in the Apostles’ Creed) see bodily resurrection of the dead in God’s new creation as the crucial aspect of our eternal hope. How does it challenge the common worldview? How does it shape your hope in the future…and your life in the present?
For Paul, the bodily resurrection does not leave us saying, “So that’s all right; we shall go, at the last, to join Jesus in a nonbodily, Platonic heaven,” but, “So, then since the person you are and the world God has made will be gloriously reaffirmed in God’s eventual future, you must be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.” Belief in the bodily resurrection includes the belief that what is done in the present in the body, by the power of the Spirit, will be reaffirmed in the eventual future, in ways at which we can presently only guess. (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope, page 156)
Presby 