Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the third installment of our “Re:series.” In this series, we are learning about the significance of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead by studying 1 Corinthians 15.

Our theme verse for this series is 1 Corinthians 15:17, which says, “Unless Christ was raised to life, your faith is useless, and you are still living in your sins.” (CEV)

So far we’ve learned that Jesus’ death and resurrection reveals how far God will go for us. And last week we explored how Jesus’ resurrection resets our lives. It gives us the second chance that we all need because we messed up our first chance.

Today our theme is restore. Our focus text is 1 Corinthians 15:9-10. Jesus’ resurrection isn’t mentioned specifically in these two verses, but we’ve got to understand them in the larger context of the entire chapter. Everything we are learning from 1 Corinthians 15 hinges on the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So even though our verses don’t specifically talk about the resurrection, we need to know that Paul wrote them in the context of the resurrection. In other words, he wrote these verses with the resurrection in mind.

Let’s dig into our text. Paul writes, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10a, NIV)

If you were reading through 1 Corinthians, it might be pretty easy to breeze right past these couple of verses. But today as we focus in on them, we’re going to see just how significant they are. They tell us a lot about the restoring power of the resurrection.

The first thing we see is that Jesus’ resurrection restores a life that has been wrecked. Look at what Paul wrote about his own past.

He said, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:9, NIV)

The apostles were the people that God chose to launch his church and to write down his Word. Paul is counted as one of the apostles, but he didn’t have a very “apostlelike” beginning because he had persecuted the church.

In Acts 22, Paul himself admitted, “I persecuted the followers of this Way to their death, arresting both men and women and throwing them into prison...” (Acts 22:4, NIV)

Paul’s mission was to arrest as many Christians as possible. Anyone who followed the “Way,” which was a reference for Christianity, was fair game. A lot of times Paul didn’t stop at imprisoning them. He actually preferred them dead. Paul was a serial killer.

Doesn’t quite sound like the makings of a man who would become the greatest missionary in history and who would write most of the New Testament. Common sense would tell us that Paul would be the least likely person in the world for God to use in his work.

But this is the power of the resurrection. It restores a life that has been wrecked.

One of the privileges of my job is that I get to learn a lot of people’s life stories. And I know that we have a lot of people that have personally experienced the restoring power of Jesus’ resurrection. A lot of you are walking, talking proof that the restorative power of the resurrection still works.

In our church family today, we have recovering alcoholics. People with a criminal record. Former drug addicts. We have people who have committed sexual sin, people who have overcome hatred and animosity, people who have struggled through depression, people who have overcome the dysfunctionality of their families, people who once aggressively denied the very existence of God.

It’s likely that you don’t know who these specific people are, but I’m telling you that they’re here. They’re here as a testament that God has the power to restore a life that has been wrecked.

When I was a kid, my dad bought an old, piece-of-junk boat and fixed it up. I wasn’t much help, but I did what I could as a kid. I loved helping him and watching this boat slowly transform into something beautiful.

One of the worst parts of the boat was the old Evinrude outboard motor that he bought. This thing hadn’t been run in years. It had sat in a garage for so long that mice had actually built a nest inside the motor’s housing. It definitely would have been easier to buy a new motor, but instead we set out to work on this one. And I’ll never forget the first time we fired up that motor and starting cruising across Lake Waynoka. This boat that had been a piece-of-junk, an absolute wreck, was moving full speed ahead to our favorite fishing spot.

Because of the work that was done, this boat was brought back to life. And because of the work of the resurrection, we can be brought back to life as well. Jesus’ resurrection from the dead means life restored. But it wasn’t just his own life that was restored when he rose from the dead. Because Jesus came back to life anew, it gives us a new life. It mends what has been broken. It strengthens what has become weak. And it restores what has been wrecked.

For some of us, we need to remember how far we’ve come. Not that you have it all together because you don’t. But you need to be thankful for all the restoring work that God has done in your life. It wasn’t that long ago that your life was a complete broken, messed up wreck. You worship a God that pulled you out of that pit and gave you a new life. Even when you stumble and mess things up today, it’s a reminder of how God continues to restore your life every step of the way.

For others of us, we’re still living in the middle of the mess. Life is still one big wreck. But what you need to realize is that there’s no wrecked life that God can’t restore. Look at Paul. God turned a murderer into a missionary. He turned a persecutor into a preacher. If God could restore Jesus’ life after he died on the cross, if he could restore the life of an oppressor and a murderer like Paul, then he can restore your life as well.

“But, you don’t understand what I’ve done. You don’t know the secrets I brought with me this morning.” Doesn’t matter. Nothing that has happened, nothing you have done is beyond the restorative power of God. Jesus’ resurrection restores a life that has been wrecked.

Let’s go back and hit our main text again. Paul writes, “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10a, NIV)

Paul wrote this book of the Bible as a letter to the church in the city of Corinth. Many believers in Corinth were skeptical of Paul. Really, who could blame them? They didn’t want to accept Paul or the fact that he was an apostle. His past was pretty nasty and they just didn’t have time for an apostle like that.

Paul addresses that in our text. He admits that he has a very checkered past. In fact, he calls himself “the least of the apostles.” He admits that he was a persecutor and a murderer. Essentially, Paul tells the Corinthians, “Look, I know what you’re saying about me and you’re right. I do have an ugly past. I don’t deserve to be an apostle. I don’t deserve to be accepted by God at all.”

But then he says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am…” By the grace of God, Paul could be accepted by God. He could even be an apostle for God. The resurrection of Jesus had restored his life and now he was seeking to restore his relationship with the Corinthian believers.

In this snapshot from 1 Corinthians 15, we see that Jesus’ resurrection restores a relationship that has been shattered.

Broken relationships aren’t a rare thing in our world. They’re everywhere.

In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been inundated with information about this feud between Donald Trump and Rosie O’Donnell. These two have volleyed insults back-and-forth and their spat has somehow become national news. News channels and websites are taking polls like, “Who do you think is going to win the argument?” “Who do you think is right?” I haven’t seen my personal choice in any of these polls, though. “Who just doesn’t care?” That’s the box I would check.

We don’t have to look at celebrities to find broken relationships. We don’t need to look any further than our own lives.

That division between you and your parents. That person you don’t speak to anymore. That former friend who hurt you and you’ll never forget it. That person that you wounded who will never forgive you.

And it doesn’t stop there. Did you know that, statistically, Christians get divorced just as often as non-Christians?

Shattered relationships are not a foreign concept in our lives. They’re a far-too-common occurrence.

In our text, Paul writes that it is only by the grace of God that he could be a believer and an apostle. It was only grace that restored his life and now he is seeking grace to restore his relationship with the Corinthians.

The death and resurrection of Jesus restores our lives, too. It gives us a reset, a second-chance, like we talked about last week. But here’s the thing about these second-chances that God gives us. He expects us to pass them on to others. And that can be the most difficult thing we’ve ever been called to do.

Corrie Ten Boom was a woman who had been imprisoned in the infamous Nazi concentration camp known as Ravensbruck. In one of the cruelest moments of her time in that camp, she watched her own sister die. Due to a clerical error, Corrie was released from Ravensbruck one week before all women her age were killed. After the war, Corrie Ten Boom spoke in a church in Munich. She spoke about God’s forgiveness. Afterward, to her horror, she was approached by one of the former Nazi guards from Ravensbruck. She tells the story like this:

The man approached me and said, “How good it is to know that, as you say, all our sins are at the bottom of the sea!”

And I, who had spoken so glibly of forgiveness, fumbled in my pocketbook rather than take that man’s hand. He would not remember me, of course—how could he remember one prisoner among thousands of women?

But I remembered him and the leather crop swinging from his belt. It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with one of my captors and my blood seemed to freeze.

‘You mentioned Ravensbruck in your talk,’ he was saying. ‘I was a guard there.’ No, he did not remember me.

‘But since that time,’ he went on, ‘I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well.’ Again the hand came out. ‘Will you forgive me?’

And I stood there—I, whose sins had every day to be forgiven—and could not. Betsie had died in that place—could he erase her slow, terrible death simply for the asking?

It could not have been many seconds that he stood there, hand held out, but to me it seemed hours as I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do.

For I had to do it—I knew that. The message that God forgives has a prior condition: that we forgive…

I knew it not only as a commandment of God, but as a daily experience. Since the end of the war, I had had a home in Holland for victims of Nazi brutality. Those who were able to forgive their former enemies were able also to return to the outside world and rebuild their lives, no matter what the physical scars. Those who nursed bitterness remained invalids. It was as simple and as horrible as that.

And still I stood there with the coldness clutching my heart. But forgiveness is not an emotion—I knew that, too. Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart. ‘Jesus, help me!’ I prayed silently. ‘I can lift my hand. I can do that much. You supply the feeling.’

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, and sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

‘I forgive you, brother!’ I cried. ‘With all my heart.’

For a long moment we grasped each other’s hands, the former guard and the former prisoner. I had never known God’s love so intensely as I did, then.

(Boom, Ten, Corrie and John Scherrill. The Hiding Place. London: Bantam, 1984.)

When God restores our lives, he also restores our relationships, if we allow him to do so. There is nothing fun about forgiveness. Nothing neat, or tidy, or easy. But it is absolutely necessary.

In Matthew 6, Jesus tells us, “If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.” (Matthew 6:14, NLT)

That’s the blunt, gut-level truth of God. The power of Jesus’ cross and empty tomb is the power to restore our lives. And it is the power to restore our relationships. It is by grace that we are forgiven, and it is by grace that we are commanded to forgive.

For some of us, it’s time. It’s time to stop hanging onto the past. It’s time to stop holding the grudge. It’s time to sincerely apologize for what you’ve done. It’s time to forgive someone for what they’ve done to you. It’s time to restore the relationship. If you are in Christ, then God has restored your life. But your relationship with God will be a dead end if you’re not willing to work to restore your relationships with others.

I wish Jesus had included some conditions in this command. I wish he would have said, “Forgive someone as long as they didn’t hurt you too badly.” “Forgive if it feels right.” But he didn’t say any of that. He simply said, “Forgive.”

The resurrection of Christ restores our lives. It renews our connection to God, it gives us new hope, it offers us peace, it secures our salvation. It changes everything about our lives, including our relationships. When God sets out to change, to restore, our lives, he leaves no stone unturned. We’re not allowed to keep some things tucked away in a corner that are outside his purview or influence. And that includes holding grudges, seeking revenge, and withholding forgiveness. If you’ve been forgiven by God, then not forgiving someone is simply not an option.

God is in the restoration business. By the death and resurrection of his Son, he restores lives that have been wrecked. And if that is ringing all to true for you this morning, it’s time to turn to him. Your life may be a wreck right now, but God is a restorer. When Jesus died, it communicated that you are worth the sacrifice. When he rose again, it communicated that new life is now available. A new life. A restored life. That’s what God is offering you today.

And because of this restored life, God’s call is for you to restore the connections, the relationships, in your life. If you’re serious about following his will, he will empower you to forgive. But you’ve got to make the decision. Are you willing to lay aside your hard feelings, your hatred, your anger, your revenge, your unforgiveness? Are you ready to finally begin to restore that broken relationship?

As we said earlier, it’s time.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: 1 Corinthians 15, Corrie Ten Boom, forgiveness, mistakes, relationships, restoration, restore, resurrection