Victory over death

It was a delight to welcome Peter Head to St Peter's on Sunday.
When I was an undergraduate, he really helped me to get to grips with Matthew's gospel, Hebrews and 2 Peter. Though he's just a few months older than me, he's also been a great role model, combining sound Bible interpretation with godliness and practical application.

Peter also introduced me to papyrus. He took a group of us from Oak Hill College to Kew Gardens to meet Nigel Hepper (right), then an Assistant Keeper of the Herbarium at Kew and an expert in Bible plants. In one of the huge glasshouses, we chopped down papyrus plants, cut them into strips and bashed them into sheets of papyrus (left). I've still got mine, and it's still in good condition 18 years later - though I doubt it'll last 2000+ years like the NT manuscripts!

Since then, I've gone on to study a couple of manuscripts in some detail, and Pete wrote one of those studies up and it was published as, 'Re-inking the Pen: Evidence from P.Oxy657 (P13) Concerning Unintentional Scribal Errors', in New Testament Studies (43.3 1997). I'm hoping that my latest study on punctuation in P66 will be published sometime soon (with some help from one of Peter's colleagues). Now I know all this sounds really geeky, but I've had some great convesations with both Christians and non-Christians about the reliability of the NT and the resurrection as a result. It's also increased my own confidence in the trustworthiness of the NT, and so helped my preaching.


Anyway, back to 1 Corinthians 15 & Peter's sermon on Sunday morning. He reminded us that we will be transformed when Jesus returns and gives us resurrection bodies. These weak and perishable bodies will become glorious and imperishable.
On that day, when Jesus returns, death will be finally defeated, in fulfilment of Isaiah 25:8, 'Death has been swallowed up in victory'. Then there will be, 'no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order [will have] passed away' (Rev 21:4). Everything will be always new (Rev 21:5).
In a sense that victory is future - for the time-being, we do still die - but we do enjoy freedom from the fear of death now because we know that the victory over death as the punishment for our sin is assured by the resurrection of Jesus. So Paul says, 'Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ'.
But this great hope must, if it's real, result in present transformation. If we're standing firm in the hope of the resurrection, then we're bound to give ourselves fully to the work of the Lord. And yet... and yet it's true that so many who profess to believe in the resurrection really don't give themselves fully to His work. Why not? Surely it's because they don't believe the final part of v58 - they don't know that our labour in the Lord is not in vain. They think that giving time, effort & money to gospel ministry is time, effort & money wasted. They think that they'd be better off spending their resources on the perishable things of this world.

Please God, give us all a real understanding of what it means to labour fully for you, the confidence to release our resources for the gospel, and to know that this labour is not in vain.