Notice the stark contrast between two perspectives, both found in the Bible. The first describes what reality would be like if there was no God who redemptively intervened in human affairs:
Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity. What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever. I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
Eccl. 1:1-4, 14
The second is an exhortation based on the historical truth that God has in fact intervened in human affairs in profoundly redemption fashion:
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
1 Cor. 15:58
What makes the difference between the despairing perspective of the Preacher (“all is vanity”), and the hopeful perspective of the Apostle (“your labor is not in vain”)? The answer is the historically grounded resurrection of Jesus Christ.
1 Corinthians 15 is unparalleled in its exposition and application of the bodily resurrection of Christ. It begins with a declaration of the facts of the gospel of the resurrection (15:1-4) and ends with an exhortation based upon the reality of that gospel (15:58). Everything in between is centered on the certainty and implications of that historic, bodily resurrection.
The scriptures never portray the resurrection as some fantasy, as “Christ rising in our hearts” or some other type of religious feeling. Rather, the apostle Paul supports his contentions with three sober, historical facts: Christ’s death, Christ’s burial, Christ’s appearances, each of which we will briefly explore in subsequent posts.
What further identifies 1 Corinthians 15 as the “anti-Ecclesiastes” is that it is more than some argument for “life after death.” Rather, the resurrection is about the transformation of bodily existence from corruption to incorruptibility. What was lost in Eden is restored in Paradise. Thus, the bodily resurrection of Christ is the crux issue of Christianity, and therefore central to the gospel itself, and therefore the antidote to the despair of life’s apparent vanity.
“For [the apostles] the gospel without the resurrection was not merely a gospel without its final chapter. It was not a gospel at all.”
A.M. Ramsay