“I look death in the face practically every day I live. Do you think I’d do this if I wasn’t convinced of your resurrection and mine as guaranteed by the resurrected Messiah Jesus? Do you think I was just trying to act heroic when I fought the wild beasts at Ephesus, hoping it wouldn’t be the end of me? Not on your life! It’s resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection, that undergirds what I do and say, the way I live. If there’s no resurrection, “We eat, we drink, the next day we die,” and that’s all there is to it.” (1 Corinthians 15:31–32, The Message)
How concisely Paul gets to the important point here. All that we do, say, and claim stems from the resurrection of Jesus Christ. No resurrection? No salvation. We are still in our sins. What drove Paul from early in the morning until late at night; what allowed him to endure persecutions, shipwreck, beatings, and wild beasts, was that fact that Christ was raised from the dead and so Paul was not working in vain, nor wasting his life.
Whatever God has called us to do in this life, it must be grounded in the same fact in which Paul's life was grounded: resurrection. Otherwise, eat, drink, and be happy, for tomorrow you shall die (and rot).
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