Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Corinthians 15:12
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
12. how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? ] There were three different schools of thought among those outside the Christian Church which denied the doctrine of the Resurrection from the dead. The first was the materialistic school, represented by the Epicureans among the heathen and by the Sadducees among the Jews. They thought that man would entirely cease to exist after death, and that any other idea was only the result of man’s vanity and his insatiable longing after existence. The second, in which the Stoics were the most prominent body, taught, what amounted to the same thing, the Pantheistic doctrine of the ultimate reabsorption of the soul into the Divinity from which it had sprung, and therefore the final extinction of the individual personality. The third school, of which the disciples of Plato were the chief representatives, while maintaining the eternal personality and immortality of the soul, regarded matter as the cause of all evil, the only barrier between the soul and the Absolute Good, a thing, in fact, essentially and eternally alien to the Divine, and therefore could not conceive of immortality except through the entire freedom of the soul from so malignant and corrupting an influence. Hence the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body was the principal stumbling-block in the way of an early reception of Christianity. It aroused the antagonism of an influential section among the Jews (Act 4:1-2; Act 5:17; Act 23:6-9), and was considered by heathen philosophers inadmissible and absurd (Act 17:32). This doctrine for many centuries has proved the principal hindrance to the progress of Christianity. It produced the numerous Gnostic sects, which were willing to accept the doctrine of eternal life through Christ, so long as it was not encumbered by the necessity of believing in the resurrection of the body. The Manichaeans and their followers maintained for many centuries a conflict with the Christian Church, mainly on this point, and were able for many years to boast of so distinguished a convert as St Augustine, who describes them, after his return to the Church, as holding that “Christ came to deliver not bodies but souls.” De Haer. 46. For information concerning the tenets of the heathen philosophers on this point, the student may consult Archer Butler’s Lectures on Philosophy; for the early Christian heretics, Neander and Gieseler’s Church Histories, and Mansel’s Gnostic Heresies, and for both Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy,
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
Now if Christ … – Paul, having 1Co 15:1-11 stated the direct evidence for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, proceeds here to demonstrate that the dead would rise, by showing how it followed from the fact that the Lord Jesus had risen, and by showing what consequences would follow from denying it. The whole argument is based on the fact that the Lord Jesus had risen. If that was admitted, he shows that it must follow that his people would also rise.
Be preached – The word preached here seems to include the idea of so preaching as to be believed; or so as to demonstrate that he did rise. If this was the doctrine on which the church was based, that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, how could the resurrection of the dead be denied?
How say – How can any say; how can it be maintained?
Some among you – See the introduction to 1 Cor. 15. Who these were is unknown. They may have been some of the philosophic Greeks, who spurned the doctrine of the resurrection (see Act 17:32); or they may have been some followers of Sadducean teachers; or it may be that the Gnostic philosophy had corrupted them. It is most probable, I think, that the denial of the resurrection was the result of reasoning after the manner of the Greeks, and the effect of the introduction of philosophy into the church. This has been the fruitful source of most of the errors which have been introduced into the church.
That there is no resurrection of the dead – That the dead cannot rise. How can it be held that there can be no resurrection, while yet it is admitted that Christ rose? The argument here is twofold:
(1) That Christ rose was one instance of a fact which demonstrated that there had been a resurrection, and of course that it was possible.
(2) That such was the connection between Christ and his people that the admission of this fact involved also the doctrine that all his people would also rise. This argument Paul states at length in the following verses. It was probably held by them that the resurrection was impossible. To all this, Paul answers in accordance with the principles of inductive philosophy as now understood, by demonstrating A fact, and showing that such an event had occurred, and that consequently all the difficulties were met. Facts are unanswerable demonstrations; and when a fact is established, all the obstacles and difficulties in the way must be admitted to be overcome. So philosophers now reason; and Paul, in accordance with these just principles, labored simply to establish the fact that one had been raised, and thus met at once all the objections which could be urged against the doctrine. It would have been most in accordance with the philosophy of the Greeks to have gone into a metaphysical discussion to show that it was not impossible or absurd, and this might have been done. It was most in accordance with the principles of true philosophy, however, to establish the fact at once, and to argue from that, and thus to meet all the difficulties at once. The doctrine of the resurrection, therefore, does not rest on a metaphysical subtilty; it does not depend on human reasoning; it does not depend on analogy; it rests just as the sciences of astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, botany, and natural philosophy do, on well ascertained facts; and it is now a well understood principle of all true science that no difficulty, no obstacle, no metaphysical subtilty; no embarrassment about being able to see how it is, is to be allowed to destroy the conviction in the mind which the facts are suited to produce.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Co 15:12-19
Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection?
If there be no resurrection
1. Our religion is not based upon opinions, but upon facts. Whatever your views may be, is a small matter; what are the facts of the case?
2. When those outside the Church deny the gospel facts, we are not at all astonished; they are unbelievers, and they are acting out their own profession. But when men inside the Church deny the resurrection, then is our soul stirred within us. Pauls argument begins, If there be no resurrection–
I. Christ is not risen. Now–
1. The apostles bore witness that Christ had risen.
2. But, says one, Christ might rise, and yet not His people. Not so, for Christ is one with His people. When Adam sinned, the whole human race fell in him, for they were one with him. In Adam all died. Now, Christ is the second Adam, and all believers are one with Him; and because He rose again, they must rise again; He lives and they shall live also.
II. Apostolic preaching falls (1Co 15:14-15). For–
1. The apostles were false witnesses. When a man bears false witness, he usually has a motive for doing so. What motive had these men? Surely they were the most extraordinary false witnesses who ever lived. What were their morals?
2. If we suppose that they were mistaken about this matter, we must suspect their witness about everything else; and the only logical result is to give up the New Testament altogether.
III. Faith becomes delusion.
1. It is the belief of a lie. Take this home to yourselves: if He did not literally rise, this faith of yours, that gives you comfort, which has renewed you in heart and life, which you believe is leading you home to heaven, must be abandoned; it is fixed on a falsehood.
2. The trial will be too great for faith to endure, since it has for the very keystone of the arch the resurrection of Christ from the dead. If He did not rise, your faith rests on what never happened; and certainly your faith will not bear that trial. When you are sure that the Lord is risen indeed, then you feel that there is something beneath your foot that does not stir.
IV. Ye are yet in your sins. For then–
1. There is no atonement made. Christ died, and by His death obtained the full discharge of all our obligations. But His rising again was the token that He had discharged the whole of the dread liabilities.
2. There is no life for those who are in Christ. If He were still slumbering in the grave, where would have been the life that now makes us joyful, and now makes us aspire after heavenly things?
V. All the pious dead have perished.
1. One phrase must be explained by the previous one; if Christ is not risen, they are yet in their sins. They died, and they told us that they were blood-washed and forgiven; but if Christ rose not from the dead, there is no saint who ever died, who has had any real hope; he has died under a delusion, and he has perished.
2. If Christ be not raised, the godly dead are yet in their sins, and they can never rise; for, if Christ did not rise they cannot.
VI. Our source of joy is gone (1Co 15:19).
1. Believers have given up sensuous joys. If we consider the mirth of the worldling to be no better than the husks of swine, and there be no bread for us, in the fact that Christ rose from the dead, then we are hungry indeed.
2. We have now learned superior things–holiness, communion with God. Now if, after having tasted these superior joys, they all turn out to be nothing, then we are indeed of all men the most miserable.
3. We have had high hopes that have made our hearts leap for joy. We have been transported with the full conviction that our eyes shall see the King in His beauty, etc., and if that be not sure, then are we of all men the most miserable.
Conclusion: Everything hinges upon a fact, and if that is not a fact, it is all up with us.
1. Our eternal hopes do not depend upon our moral condition; for these men in Corinth would not have been better or worse if Christ had not risen from the dead. The reason of your being safe is not the result of what you are, but of what He did.
2. The great hope you have does not hinge even upon your spiritual state. You must be born again; but still, your ultimate hope is not in what you are spiritually, but in what He is.
3. Your being forgiven and saved depends not upon your sincerity and your earnestness. You may be very sincere, and very earnest, and yet be wrong all the while. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
If there be no resurrection, what then?–
The method which the apostle employs is that known as the argument from the absurdity of the contrary supposition. He points out five such absurdities.
I. Christ himself is still dead (1Co 15:13). The suborned report of the Roman guard is true, the Sanhedrin after all is triumphant, ye are worshipping a corpse.
II. The gospel is a delusion (1Co 15:14; 1Co 15:17).
1. Vain is our preaching.
2. Vain also is your faith. Ye have been putting your trust in a myth.
3. Ye are still in your sins. The proof that Jesus is the Saviour lies in His resurrection (Rom 1:4); but if Jesus has not been raised, then He is not the Son of God–you have no Saviour, your fate is still among the unforgiven.
III. The apostles are liars (1Co 15:15). Observe how St. Paul puts his own personal veracity and that of his fellow apostles into direct issue.
IV. The saintly are lost (1Co 15:18). If it is the fact that there can be no resurrection of the dead, then Christian morality is a failure. The Heavenly Father puts no difference between His children and the beasts that perish.
V. The life in Christ is a misery (1Co 15:19.) To profess Christ means self-denial, persecution, martyrdom. Moreover, Christianity awakens within us loftiest aspirations which can never be satisfied in this world. But if there is no resurrection, then we Christians are of all men the most to be pitied. (G. D. Boardman, D.D.)
Supposing Jesus be not raised from the dead, what then?
I. As to the apostles. We are false witnesses–liars, the whole twelve of us. Peter heard Him say, Lovest thou Me? I heard Him ask, Why persecutest thou Me? We have risked our lives for the pleasure of telling a lie which has landed us in poverty and disgrace. What do you take us for? Men now try hard to find some standing-place between the assertion that Jesus was the Christ of God, and positive denial of His claims. They talk of His moral influence; what! the moral influence of an impostor? Jesus claimed a place which no ordinary man can claim without blasphemy. Yet we never accuse Him of blasphemy or madness.
II. As to the disciples.
1. Theirs was an empty faith, and they were yet in their sins. An empty or void faith is one which has no centre, an empty thing like a soap-bubble, a filmy something floating in vacancy. For faith must have a person to whom to cling. Faith towards God will be strong or weak according to our conception of what God is. But if God sent Christ into this world, and then treated Him so as the Crucifixion indicates, what kind of a God is that to trust in? What an appalling mystery that the Creator, whom we call Father, should evolve into being such a soul as that of Jesus, simply to dash it into nothingness! No doubt of this being a devils world then.
2. They were yet in their sins. The idea that Christ lifts us out of our sins, is one of which we cannot make too much. But if man is to die the death of the swine, why may he not live the life of the swine?
III. As to those who have fallen asleep. They are perished. Fallen asleep in Christ! Suggestive word–so full of rest and quietude! But those of whom we thus think are not in this beatific state. If Christ be not risen, they are perished. We cannot believe that. Our loved ones are gone hence. Their going was a loss to us; oh, how great! Where is he? she? The idea of immortality is in my mind. How did it get there? How could it get into a mind not preadapted to receive it? Then this intuition is corroborated by Jesus the Christ. In My Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. Now see, says one, what these sceptics require us to believe: that all those who have shed a sunshine upon earth, and whose affections were so pure and good that they seemed to tell you of eternity, perished utterly as the selfish and impure! You are required to believe that the pure and wise of this world have been wrong, and the selfish and sensual all right. But how can we believe it? The thing is impossible. The resurrection of Jesus the Christ says that they who have fallen asleep are not perished; they are in His keeping to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. Perished! Why, even the material does not perish; it changes, but that is all. Why the spiritual? (Reuen Thomas, D.D.)
The certainty of the resurrection of Christ
The religion founded by Jesus Christ has many teachings in common with other religions of the world; spiritual teachings which concern the relationship of God to man, and moral teachings which concern the relationship of man to his fellow-men. Eminent among the truths thus exclusively proper to Christianity is the truth of the resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is essentially and notably a distinctive Christian truth. Other religions of the world have entertained, with more or less clearness, notions of the immortality of the soul. The ancient religion of Egypt (as we learn from the custom of careful and costly embalming, from the erection of massive sepulchral pyramids, and from the teachings of the Book of the Dead) manifested a consciousness not only of the immortality of the soul, but also of the ultimate re-union of the soul with its revivified body. But none of these ancient teachings are comparable, either in scope or perspicuity or inspiring power, with the Christian revelation concerning the rising from the dead. None of them unfold, as does St. Paul (chap. 15.), the characteristics of the risen body and the risen life. And, what is more important than all else, it is Christianity, and Christianity alone, which has furnished to the world a historic illustration and example of the risen life. No doubt there are many earnest, conscientious persons who find great, sometimes even insuperable, difficulty in accepting the fact of Christs resurrection. It is a fact so wonderful, so awful, so glorious, so altogether unique in majesty and sublimity: it is, moreover, a fact so utterly unlike anything which the world has ever witnessed either before or since; both science and religion are helplessly unable to supply any parallel to it–that multitudes of thoughtful people shrink from accepting, and even utterly reject the fact. Yet, while fully allowing the possibility of honestly doubting, or even denying, the resurrection, still it seems to me that the difficulties of doubt are greater than the difficulties of faith; the difficulties of denial greater than the difficulties of acceptance.
1. For, first of all, it is clear that the course of the world is a course of progress–progress frequently hindered by lapses and retrogressions. It is surely, then, natural–and none the less natural because of the retrogressions of Mohammedanism–to believe that this great law of progress and ascent should apply to religious knowledge and religious conduct and religious aspiration; and that Christianity should contain illuminations brighter and more heavenly than any of the religions which preceded it.
2. The inherent wonder of the resurrection is not greater than the inherent wonder of many every-day occurrences. In itself, and apart from the frequency of its occurrence, a birth is more marvellous than a resurrection; it is more marvellous that a life should begin to be than that its existence should be renewed and prolonged. If resurrections were as frequent as births, births would be considered more marvelous than resurrections.
3. But the non-recurrence of the resurrection, instead of being unreasonable and unnatural, is just the opposite. For why has there been only one resurrection in the long history of mankind? Simply because, during the whole course of that long history, there has been only one Christ. The resurrection was as natural, as necessary, to the Christ, as death is natural and necessary to us. The perfections of His holiness, and the prerogatives of His Sonship, made His corruption impossible and His resurrection a necessity. If the Son of God has, indeed, taken human flesh, then, I ask you, which is the more reasonable and the more credible supposition–to believe that His body never saw corruption, or to believe that His body is dead, eternally dead?
4. This, moreover, is our answer to those who affirm that the resurrection of Christ goes contrary to the laws of nature. For who, we ask, shall say what was the law of nature in the instance of the Christ? If there had been many Christs and only one of them had risen, while all the others had turned to corruption, then we should rightly have deemed that the one resurrection was contrary to the laws of nature operating upon the Christs. But as there has been only one Christ, we have no means of judging what were the laws of nature in His case, except from what actually happened to Him.
5. And what is the alternative of rejecting the resurrection? The alternative is that Christianity is founded on a falsehood; and that Christ and His apostles are deceivers and untrue. (Canon Diggle.)
Terrible conclusions resulting from the denial of two great gospel facts
Conclusions resulting from the denial of–
I. The general resurrection.
1. The non-resurrection of Christ. What is true of the whole is true of all the parts. If no man can rise from the dead, then Christ is still numbered amongst the dead.
2. That departed Christians are no more. Those thousands who accepted Christ, lived according to His teaching, and who quitted this world have perished–can you believe it? Are they quenched in eternal midnight?
3. That there is no mere pitiable condition in this life than that of Christians. It is implied–
(1) That there are men in a pitiable condition on this earth.
(2) That the pitiable condition exists in different degrees.
(3) That the degree of pitiableness is regulated by hope. Man is always hoping, and therefore enduring one of the greatest elements of suffering, viz., disappointment.
(4) That the hope of a Christian if false will make him, of all men, the most to be pitied. The higher the object of our hope, and the more of the soul that goes into it, the more overwhelmingly crushing will be the disappointment. The man who has thrown his whole soul into Christianity, and who reaches a point when he is convinced of its imposture, is at that moment of all men the most miserable.
II. Christs resurrection.
1. That apostolic Christianity is vain.
(1) It is an empty phantom, a worthless fiction. The resurrection of Christ was the foundation stone m the temple of Pauls teaching. Take that stone away, it falls and becomes worthless rubbish.
(2) We are impostors; can you believe this? What motives have we to impose? Either supposition is eternally inadmissible.
2. That the faith of the disciples was vain. What a wreck of faith is involved in the denial of Christs resurrection! Vain is–
(1) Faith in the credibility of historic testimony. On what stronger historical testimony can any fact rest than that of the resurrection of Christ?
(2) Faith in the accuracy of philosophic deduction. The rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman Empire in its first stages, and its subsequent influence throughout, the world, reveal a mass of phenomena which you cannot account for if you deny the resurrection of Christ.
(3) Faith in the moral value of character. Did a nobler character than Christs ever exist? And yet if He rose not then is He an impostor.
(4) Faith in the righteous government of God. If a Being so transcendently excellent as Christ is to be crushed for ever in the grave, then where is the justice of Heaven?
3. That the followers of Christ are still in their sins. But the Christians at Corinth were conscious that they had got out of their sins. Such were some of you, but ye are washed, etc. Consciousness, the highest ultimate argument, protested against Pauls statement that they were still in their sins, hence it goes to verify the fact of the resurrection of Christ. (D Thomas, D.D.)
If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.
If there be no resurrection Christ not risen
Paul refused to consider Christs resurrection as a miracle in the sense of its being exceptional and aside from the usual experience of man. On the contrary, he accepts it as the type to which every man is to be conformed. Precedent in time, exceptional possibly in some of its accidental accompaniments it may be, but nevertheless as truly in the line of human development as birth, and growth, and death. Christ being man must submit to the conditions and experience of men in all essentials, in all that characterises man as human. And therefore, if resurrection be not a normal human experience, Christ has not risen. The time at which resurrection takes place, and the interval elapsing between death and resurrection, Paul makes nothing of. A child may live but three days, but it is not on that account any the less human than if he had lived his threescore years and ten. Similarly the fact of Christs resurrection identifies Him with the human race, while the shortness of the interval elapsing between death and resurrection does not separate Him from man, for in point of fact the interval will be less in the case of many. Both here and elsewhere Paul looks upon Christ as the representative man, the one in whom we can see the ideal of manhood. If any of our own friends should die, and after death should appear to us alive, a strong probability that we too should live through death would inevitably be impressed on our mind. But when Christ rises this probability becomes a certainty, because He is the type of humanity, the representative person. As Paul here says, He is the firstfruits of them that sleep. When the farmer pulls the first ripe ears of wheat and carries them home, it is not for their own sake he values them, but because they are a specimen and sample of the whole crop; and when God raised Christ from the dead, the glory of the event consisted in its being a pledge and specimen of the triumph of mankind over death. (M. Dods, D.D.)
And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.—
Reverse the proposition
I. Preaching is not in vain.
1. It has power.
2. Effects moral miracles.
II. Faith is not in vain. It brings–
1. Comfort.
2. Pardon.
3. Life.
III. Therefore Christ is risen. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
What comes of a dead Christ
We do not prove that an event has happened by showing the advantages of believing that it has. Paul here deals with the results that would follow from the denial of a Resurrection to show, not that it has taken place, but that the belief of it is fundamental to Christianity. With the resurrection of Christ–
I. The whole gospel stands or falls. It is emptied of its contents. There is nothing in it. A dead Christ makes a hollow gospel; a living Christ makes a full one. If the Resurrection goes–
1. The supernatural goes; if the Resurrection remains, the door is opened for the miraculous. We hear that all miracle is impossible. The historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ shatters all such contention. That fact is the key of the position. Like some great fortress standing at the mouth of the pass, as long as it holds out, the storm of war is rolled back; if it yields, all is surrendered.
2. All the peculiarity of Christs nature goes with it. His life is full of claims to a unique position. Is He in the grave still? If so, there is no use in mincing the matter, Jesus Christs talk about Himself was false. But if He has risen, then He is declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.
3. The special character and efficacy of His death goes. If He lies in the tomb, then it is idle to talk of sacrifice for sin; but if He has come forth from the grave, then we have the great Divine attestation to the acceptableness of His expiation. So, if all these things go, what is left is not Christianity: yet a great many think all is left–viz., the beauty of Christs words, the loveliness of His character, His position as our Pattern. Yet, says Paul, if that is all I have to preach, I have nothing but an empty shell to preach.
II. The character of the witnesses stands or falls. The apostle puts his finger upon the real state of the case when he says, This is the question: Are we liars or are we not? He points out, too, the palpable improbability, when he says that, if so, they are false witnesses of God–men believing themselves to be servants of the God of truth, and thinking to advance His kingdom by telling a monstrous falsehood. But the vulgar old theory has been long abandoned, and now the men that least accept the apostles theory are those who abound in compliment to their moral elevation, to the purity and beauty of their religious character. But Paul would have said to them, I do not want your compliments; my business is to tell a plain story. Do you believe me, or do you not? They talk about illusions. Strange illusions that sprung up in a soil that had nothing in it to prepare for them! There was no expectation which might have become parent of the belief. Illusions shared by five hundred people at once! We are shut up to the alternative, either Christ is risen or these noble lives of self-sacrifice and lofty morality are the spawn of a lie.
III. The faith of the Christian stands or falls. Twice the apostle says, according to A.V., Your faith is vain. But the two words are not the same. The first means empty. The second (1Co 15:17) means having no effect. A dead Christ makes–
1. An empty faith. There is nothing for faith to lay hold of. It is like a drowning man grasping a ropes end swinging over the side of the ship which is loose at the other end and gives; or like some poor creature falling down the face of a precipice, and clutching at a tuft of grass, which comes away in his hand. A dead Christ is no object for faith. Faith is empty of contents unless it grasps the risen Lord; and if it lays hold of Him, it is solid and full.
2. A powerless faith. A religion which does not bring conscious deliverance from sin, both as guilt and as tendency, is not worth calling a religion. Unless for the Resurrection, we have no ground of belief in the expiation and sacrifice of the Cross; and unless we have a faith in a Christ that lives to help and quicken and purify us, we shall never really be delivered from the dominion of our sins, nor live a life of purity and of righteousness.
IV. The heaven of Christs servants stands or falls. A dead Christ–
1. Means dead Christians (1Co 15:18). The one thing that makes immortality certain is the fact of Christs resurrection. A living Head means living members; a dead Head means members dead.
2. Makes deluded Christians (1Co 15:19). People say, What a low notion that is! Would it not be better to be a Christian than not if there were no future life? Did not the Stoic philosophers, who said, Virtue is its own reward, reach a higher level than this apostle? I do not think so. Notice, he does not say they are most to be pitied, because of any sorrows or trouble that they have had here, but because the nobler the hope the more tragic its disappointment. And of all the tragedies of life there would be none so great as this, that Christian men cherishing such aspirations should all the while have been clutching a phantom, grasping mists. If we, journeying across the desert, are only cheated by mirage when we think we see the shining battlements of the eternal city, which are nothing but hot air dancing in empty space, surely none are more to be pitied than we. On the other hand, a living Christ turns these hopes into certainties, and makes us, not the most pitiable, but the most blessed of the sons of men. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Consequences of denying the resurrection of Christ
If Christ be not risen, then vain is our faith–
I. In the credibility of historical testimony. If their testimony is not to be taken, history is worth nothing.
II. In the certainty of philosophical deduction. The rapid prevalence of Christianity in the Roman Empire, in its first era, and its subsequent influences throughout the world, present a mass of phenomena, of which you have no philosophic cause, apart from the resurrection of Christ. Deny that, and you find all history teeming with effects of which yon can find no sufficient cause.
III. In the worth of human character Character is the foundation of confidence; and earth never had such a character to inspire human confidence as that of Christ. But if He rose not from the dead, then He is an impostor, and there is no character for us to trust.
IV. In a future state of existence. Whatever probable evidence we may discover of a future state, its power depends on Christs resurrection.
V. In the moral government of God. If a being like Christ is to be smitten and crushed for ever by wickedness, then where is Divine justice?
VI. In the power of moral exhortation. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things, etc. This is the most powerful of all exhortations, yet it is delusion if Christ be not risen. (W. Johnson Fox.)
If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.–
Christs resurrection the ground of belief in our own
Few of us may have seen an Oriental pearl, and still fewer a collection of such gems, but we have no difficulty in believing, when we see one, that such also are the others, whether in the repositories of the wealthy, or even within the shells of the pearl-producing animals living at this moment at the bottom of the eastern seas. We hold in our hands a golden sovereign coined in the royal mint, and from its obvious appearance and properties we infer the facts of its origin and value, and never question, or think of questioning, the statement when made to us, that there are millions of such coins stored up in the cellars of the Bank of England. So, says the apostle, we ought to do with respect to the doctrines of the Resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is not a solitary instance; it is one of a class. It is evident that, if Christ has been raised from the dead, there can be no likeness or congruity between Him and His people, unless in these respects they are assimilated to Him. The stock must be like the sample–the coins in the Treasury to those in circulation–the stars hid, it may be, behind a cloud, similar to that which shines in the clear heavens. (L Cochrane, A.M.)
And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.—
Logical consequences of rejecting Christianity
There are two kinds of doubters: those who wish to doubt, and seek materials to strengthen their unbelief; and those who would be glad to believe, but are perplexed with doubts that they do not cherish. It is impossible to assist the first of these. Their difficulty is not with the head, but with the heart. I shall therefore pursue a line of thought adapted to assist the honest doubter. The text begins, not with an affirmation, but with a question; so I ask, What will follow from the assumption that the gospel of Christ is untrue?
I. That God has never, in any supernatural way, spoken to man.
1. There is no other religion that can be put into competition for a moment with the gospel as having claims to a supernatural origin. Of course, Judaism you would reject; and Mohammedanism, which is a mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and heathenism, in about equal proportions.
2. We come to systems of philosophy. Plato differed from Socrates in a great variety of modes. And what was the relation of Aristotle to Plato? But what is the condition of affairs to-day? A friend, who has been reading nothing but philosophy for twenty years, testified to me that he has not in all his library two works which substantially agree. But upon the assumption that philosophers do agree, how can they be authenticated? Can a system of philosophy span the river that separates us from the future state? Is it possible for a system of philosophy, without instruction from God, to interpret properly the plans of God, involving the whole course of human life and the final adjustments of eternity? And there will be nothing supernatural in it.
3. Now, let us look at it upon the basis of Nature. J.S. Mill logically argued that Nature is a contradictory witness. Look at her on one side, and she seems to say, The Being who made us is good. Look at her on the other side, and she seems to say, He is not good.
II. The most elevating precepts we have are without a Divine sanction. Take, e.g., the Golden Rule. Some say that it can be found outside the Bible, and I will not deny it; but if it is, it is found without a Divine sanction. No man, according to the Scriptures, can love his neighbour as himself unless he first loves God and recognises the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Now take the specific applications of the Golden Rule. If the gospel be not true, the Sermon on the Mount is a purely human production. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Why? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and there is no kingdom of heaven if the gospel be not true.
III. The noblest examples are fictitious. The Book of Job must take its place by the side of Shelleys Queen Mab, as a mere creation of human fancy. The character of Christ is but a rhapsody. Pauls character is entirely inexplicable; and even Peter must be set down as a myth if the gospel be not true.
IV. It is folly to think of pardon for sin. In nature there is no proof, of any kind, of forgiveness. If the gospel is not true, a man cannot incur guilt, and therefore may dismiss the idea that he is guilty. It his conscience says he is, he can say to it, You are a presumptuous usurper. There is no law, and I cannot be guilty. But men cannot do that; they know that they are guilty. But the man who has a sense of guilt, if the Bible be not true, has no power to secure its obliteration from his conscience.
V. There is no regenerative influence. When a man for twenty-five years has tried to keep good resolutions, and has broken them, and has to acknowledge at the end of that time that be has made little progress in purifying his heart, he will do one of two things, according to his temperament: he will sadly relinquish the effort to obtain moral purity, or he will continue on without hope or any inward peace. The gospel of Christ declares that there is a regenerative influence. Now, if the gospel be untrue, there is none such; consequently, to doubt the gospel is to doubt whether there be anything which can possibly make men pure and good.
VI. there is no comfort in trouble. It has been said by a French writer that philosophy conquers past and future evils. Dr. Johnson represents Rasselas as going to hear a philosopher, who taught him how to subdue his passions and to conquer trials without any difficulty. The next day, however, Rasselas found the philosopher tearing his hair and walking up and down in great agony. Why this grief? asked Rasselas. Oh! said the philosopher, my only daughter, the light of my home and comfort of my old age, is dead! But, certainly, said Rasselas, the philosophy which you so eloquently descanted on yesterday comforts you now? Oh, no, cried the philosopher, wringing his bands; what can philosophy say to me now, except to show me that my condition is inevitable and incurable? Rasselas went to Imlac and told him what he had heard, and he replied, They preach like angels, but they live like men. The gospel does offer comfort to every class of afflicted persons, and Tom Moore only told the truth when he said, Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal; or, as I would say, earth has no sorrow that the gospel does not offer to heal. But if the gospel be untrue, all these offers of consolation are baseless.
VII. There is no strength for temptation. How is a man to subdue his passions and propensities? Probably four-fifths of the persons who reject the gospel have sophisticated themselves into the belief that what is natural cannot be wrong. But there are men who reject the gospel that never have done that, and they keep on through life struggling and failing. Now the gospel offers to man several kinds of helps.
1. The commands of Almighty God.
2. Promises for every situation of trial and difficulty.
3. Holy examples of men of like passions with ourselves.
4. The privilege of taking these commands and of strengthening his faith by them at the very throne of grace.
But if the gospel be untrue, every promise and command in the Bible may be thrown aside as a matter without any foundation in fact.
VIII. There is no answer to prayer. A distinguished rationalistic preacher ceased to preach, and a friend asked him why he stepped. Said he, I liked the preaching, and could have got along with it very well as long as I lived; but there was one thing I could not get along with at all, and that was prayer. I did not expect my prayers would be answered, and never believed they would; and to stand up before the congregation and address the Deity as if I really believed that prayer produced a result, seemed to me too much like hypocrisy. No man will long pray who has not a specific promise upon which to rest.
IX. The institution of marriage is imperilled. This cannot be sustained without a religious sanction, and never was in the history of this world. The heaviest strain on human nature is chastity, and it cannot be sustained unless the obligation rests upon a solemn accountability to God, and the human race cannot sustain it without religious sanction after marriage, and never have. Polygamy, on the one hand, and either spiritual or carnal or free love on the other, would certainly spring up, as they have done, to run riot all over the world.
X. You uproot the whole idea of future accountability, and the question of whether a man will live or die becomes a question of logic. What reason is there why a man utterly dissatisfied with life should not commit suicide? Suppose the case of a man wile has lost all his friends, his property, and his reputation? He is too old to begin again. Prove that he ought not to commit suicide. I cannot, unless you give me the gospel. You cannot find an instance of a sane, devoted, intelligent Christian, remitting suicide: but you can produce a hundred instances of irreligious men not insane committing suicide. The reason men are committing suicide, and making such a trifling thing of it, is the spread of infidelity, the spread of doubts as to future accountability.
XI. Everything with regard to a future state of happiness must be remanded to the realm of conjecture. No man can prove a future state in any proper sense of the term. If you could show it to be probable, you could not determine the mode of existence, or the relation between the future and the present life, or get any means whatever to do so. Then, if the gospel be not true, let us face the issue and strike out, In My Fathers house are many mansions. Conclusion: Is it rational to believe that God has given no voice to man? Is it rational to believe that the noblest precepts are without a Divine sanction, etc.? It is not! Rather than believe that, I would believe There is no God! But because I cannot say there is no God, I must say that He has spoken to man; and because I must say that, I must believe that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has a supernatural origin. (J. M. Buckley, D.D.)
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.—
Our lost ones
I. Their character. In Christ.
II. Their condition. Fallen asleep, implying–
1. Rest.
2. Life.
3. Hope.
III. Their doom. Perished–impossible. Then the assumption is false; Christ is risen, and they must also rise. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 12. Now if Christ be preached, c.] Seeing it is true that we have thus preached Christ, and ye have credited this preaching, how say some among you, who have professed to receive this doctrine from us that there is no resurrection of the dead, though we have shown that his resurrection is the proof and pledge of ours? That there was some false teacher, or teachers, among them, who was endeavouring to incorporate Mosaic rites and ceremonies with the Christian doctrines, and even to blend Sadduceeism with the whole, appears pretty evident. To confute this mongrel Christian, and overturn his bad doctrine, the apostle writes this chapter.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
The apostle having laid a good foundation, proving the resurrection of Christ by a plentiful testimony of those who saw him after that he was risen from the dead; and minded them, that this was the doctrine of the gospel, which both they and all the rest of the apostles had with one consent preached to them; he comes to build upon it, and from this, as a main argument, to prove, that there must needs be a resurrection from the dead; and beginneth with a reflection upon some in that church who denied it. Who those were we are not told: some think they were Hymeneus and Philetus, mentioned 2Ti 2:17,18, who held that the resurrection was past; others think he reflects on Cerinthus, who was one of the leaders of those heretics we read of, who after Simon Magus denied the resurrection others think they were some of the Sadducees, of whom we read in the Acts, that they denied the resurrection, or some of the Pharisees, who denied the resurrection of Christians, looking on them as apostates; others think they were some who had been tinctured, at least, with the doctrine of the pagan philosophers. We cannot certainly determine who, but certain it is some there were; and the apostle argues them in this thing to assert absurdly, upon this supposition, that Christ was risen.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
12. ifSeeing that it is anadmitted fact that Christ is announced by us eye-witnesses as havingrisen from the dead, how is it that some of you deny that which is anecessary consequence of Christ’s resurrection, namely, the generalresurrection?
someGentile reasoners(Act 17:32; Act 26:8)who would not believe it because they did not see “how” itcould be (1Co 15:35; 1Co 15:36).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
Now if Christ be preached that he arose from the dead,…. As he was by the Apostle Paul, when at Corinth, and by all the rest of the apostles elsewhere.
How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Who these were is not certain, whether Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose notion this was, were come hither, or any of their disciples; or whether they were some of the followers of Simon Magus and Cerinthus, who denied the resurrection; or rather, whether they were not Jews, and of the sect of the Sadducees, who though they believed in Christ, retained their old principle, that there is no resurrection of the dead, cannot be affirmed: however, it is certain that they were such as were then at Corinth, and went under the Christian name; and it is highly probable were members of the church there; and who not only held this notion privately, but broached it publicly, saying, declaring, affirming, and that openly, before the whole church, what were their opinions and sentiments: it was indeed but some of them, not all that were chargeable with this bad principle, which the apostle asks how, and with what face they could assert, then it had been preached, and so fully proved to them, that Christ was risen from the dead; and if so, then it is out of question that there is a resurrection of the dead; for their notion, as it is here expressed, was not only that there would be no resurrection of the dead, but that there was none, nor had been any: though the apostle’s view is also to prove the future resurrection of the dead, and which is done by proving the resurrection of Christ, for his resurrection involves that of his people; for not only the saints rose in, and with Christ, as their head representatively, and which is the sense of the prophecy in Ho 6:2 but because he is their head, and they are members of him, therefore as sure as he the head is risen, so sure shall the members rise likewise; nor will Christ’s resurrection, in a sense, be perfect, until all the members of his body are risen: for though the resurrection of Christ, personally considered, is perfect, yet not as mystically considered; nor will it till all the saints are raised, of whose resurrection Christ’s is the exemplar and the pledge: their bodies will be raised and fashioned like unto Christ’s, and by virtue of union to him, and as sure as he is risen, for he is the firstfruits of them that slept. Besides, as he became incarnate, obeyed, suffered, not for himself, but for his people, so he rose again on their account, and that they dying might rise also; which if they should not, one end at least of Christ’s resurrection would not be answered: add to this, that the same power that raised Christ from the dead, can raise others, even all the saints; so that if it is allowed that Christ is raised, it need not be thought incredible that all the dead shall be raised; and particularly when it is observed, that Christ is the efficient, procuring, and meritorious cause of the resurrection from the dead, as well as the pattern and earnest of it.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| The Resurrection of Saints. | A. D. 57. |
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: 14 And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. 15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. 16 For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: 17 And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18 Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
Having confirmed the truth of our Saviour’s resurrection, the apostle goes on to refute those among the Corinthians who said there would be none: If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? v. 12. It seems from this passage, and the course of the argument, there were some among the Corinthians who thought the resurrection an impossibility. This was a common sentiment among the heathens. But against this the apostle produces an incontestable fact, namely, the resurrection of Christ; and he goes on to argue against them from the absurdities that must follow from their principle. As,
I. If there be (can be) no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen (v. 13); and again, “If the dead rise not, cannot be raised or recovered to life, then is Christ not raised, v. 16. And yet it was foretold in ancient prophecies that he should rise; and it has been proved by multitudes of eye-witnesses that he had risen. And will you say, will any among you dare to say, that is not, cannot be, which God long ago said should be, and which is now undoubted matter of fact?”
II. It would follow hereupon that the preaching and faith of the gospel would be vain: If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith vain, v. 14. This supposition admitted, would destroy the principal evidence of Christianity; and so, 1. Make preaching vain. “We apostles should be found false witnesses of God; we pretend to be God’s witnesses for truth, and to work miracles by his power in confirmation of it, and are all the while deceivers, liars for God, if in his name, and by power received from him, we go forth, and publish and assert a thing false in fact, and impossible to be true. And does not this make us the vainest men in the world, and our office and ministry the vainest and most useless thing in the world? What end could we propose to ourselves in undertaking this hard and hazardous service, if we knew our religion stood on no better foundation, nay, if we were not well assured of the contrary? What should we preach for? Would not our labour be wholly in vain? We can have no very favourable expectations in this life; and we could have none beyond it. If Christ be not raised, the gospel is a jest; it is chaff and emptiness.” 2. This supposition would make the faith of Christians vain, as well as the labours of ministers: If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins (v. 17), yet under the guilt and condemnation of sin, because it is through his death and sacrifice for sin alone that forgiveness is to be had. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, Eph. i. 7. No remission of sins is to be had but through the shedding of his blood. And had his blood been shed, and his life taken away, without ever being restored, what evidence could we have had that through him we should have justification and eternal life? Had he remained under the power of death, how could he have delivered us from its power? And how vain a thing is faith in him, upon this supposition! He must rise for our justification who was delivered for our sins, or in vain we look for any such benefit by him. There had been no justification nor salvation if Christ had not risen. And must not faith in Christ be vain, and of no signification, if he be still among the dead?
III. Another absurdity following from this supposition is that those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. if there be no resurrection, they cannot rise, and therefore are lost, even those who have died in the Christian faith, and for it. It is plain from this that those among the Corinthians who denied the resurrection meant thereby a state of future retribution, and not merely the revival of the flesh; they took death to be the destruction and extinction of the man, and not merely of the bodily life; for otherwise the apostle could not infer the utter loss of those who slept in Jesus, from the supposition that they would never rise more or that they had no hopes in Christ after life; for they might have hope of happiness for their minds if these survived their bodies, and this would prevent the limiting of their hopes in Christ to this life only. “Upon supposition there is no resurrection in your sense, no after-state and life, then dead Christians are quite lost. How vain a thing were our faith and religion upon this supposition!” And this,
IV. Would infer that Christ’s ministers and servants were of all men most miserable, as having hope in him in this life only (v. 19), which is another absurdity that would follow from asserting no resurrection. Their condition who hope in Christ would be worse than that of other men. Who hope in Christ. Note, All who believe in Christ have hope in him; all who believe in him as a Redeemer hope for redemption and salvation by him; but if there be no resurrection, or state of future recompence (which was intended by those who denied the resurrection at Corinth), their hope in him must be limited to this life: and, if all their hopes in Christ lie within the compass of this life, they are in a much worse condition than the rest of mankind, especially at that time, and under those circumstances, in which the apostles wrote; for then they had no countenance nor protection from the rulers of the world, but were hated and persecuted by all men. Preachers and private Christians therefore had a hard lot if in this life only they had hope in Christ. Better be any thing than a Christian upon these terms; for in this world they are hated, and hunted, and abused, stripped of all worldly comforts and exposed to all manner of sufferings: they fare much harder than other men in this life, and yet have no further nor better hopes. And is it not absurd for one who believes in Christ to admit a principle that involves so absurd an inference? Can that man have faith in Christ who can believe concerning him that he will leave his faithful servants, whether ministers or others, in a worse state than his enemies? Note, It were a gross absurdity in a Christian to admit the supposition of no resurrection or future state. It would leave no hope beyond this world, and would frequently make his condition the worst in the world. Indeed, the Christian is by his religion crucified to this world, and taught to live upon the hope of another. Carnal pleasures are insipid to him in a great degree; and spiritual and heavenly pleasures are those which he affects and pants after. How sad is his case indeed, if he must be dead to worldly pleasures and yet never hope for any better!
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
Is preached (). Personal use of the verb, Christ is preached.
How say some among you? ( ?). The question springs naturally from the proof of the fact of the resurrection of Christ (verses 1-11) and the continual preaching which Paul here assumes by condition of the first class (—). There were sceptics in Corinth, possibly in the church, who denied the resurrection of dead people just as some men today deny that miracles happen or ever did happen. Paul’s answer is the resurrection of Christ as a fact. It all turns on this fact.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
There is no resurrection. Compare Aeschylus : “But who can recall by charms a man’s dark blood shed in death, when once it has fallen to the ground at his feet ? Had this been lawful, Zeus would not have stopped him who knew the right way to restore men from the dead” 127 (” Agamemnon, ” 987 – 992).
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1 ) “Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead “ (ei de christos kerussetai hoti ek nekron egegertai) “Now if it is heralded that Christ has been raised out from among the dead (corpses),” and it had been, and was yet being preached.
2) “how say some among you” (pos legousin en hum in tines) “How do some in the midst of or among you assert.” Are you so skeptical as to call all these witnesses liars?
3) “That there is no resurrection from the dead?” (hoti anastasin nekron ouk estin) “that a resurrection of dead bodies or persons exists not or is not so?” This “no resurrection” philosophy of Greek gnosticism was the same, held by a few, as that of Sadduceeism, Act 23:8. These were the self-esteemed “wise” among them, 1Co 1:20; 1Co 1:26; 1Co 3:19.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
12. But of Christ. He now begins to prove the resurrection of all of us from that of Christ. For a mutual and reciprocal inference holds good on the one side and on the other, both affirmatively and negatively — from Christ to us in this way: If Christ is risen, then we will rise — If Christ is not risen, then we will not rise — from us to Christ on the other hand: If we rise, then Christ is risen — If we do not rise, then neither is Christ risen. The ground-work of the argument to be drawn from Christ to us in the former inference is this: “Christ did not die, or rise again for himself, but for us: hence his resurrection is the foundation. (32) of ours, and what was accomplished in him, must be fulfilled in us also.” In the negative form, on the other hand, it is thus: “Otherwise he would have risen again needlessly and to no purpose, because the fruit of it is to be sought, not in his own person, but in his members.”
Observe the ground-work, on the other hand, of the former inference to be deduced from us to him; for the resurrection is not from nature, and comes from no other quarter than from Christ alone. For in Adam we die, and we recover life only in Christ; hence it follows that his resurrection is the foundation of ours, so that if that is taken away, it cannot stand (33) The ground-work of the negative inference has been already stated; for as he could not have risen again but on our account, his resurrection would be null and void, (34) if it were of no advantage to us.
(32) “ La substance et le fondement de la nostre;” — “The substance and foundation of ours.”
(33) “ Si ce fondement est oste, nostre resurrection ne pourra consister ; ” — “If this foundation is taken away, our resurrection cannot possibly stand.”
(34) Billroth, when quoting the above statement of Calvin, remarks, that “Calvin seems to have deceived himself with the double meaning of the words which he uses — ’ nulla ejus resurrectio foret;’ — these may mean either ‘ ejus resurrectio non est,’ or ‘ ejus resurrectio non est vera resurrectio,’ his resurrection is no real ressurection, and indeed only the latter suits his view of Paul’s argument.” It is justly observed, however, by Dr. Alexander, in his translation of Billroth, that Calvin may be considered to have “used the word nulla here in the sense of our null, void, useless,” his assertion being to this effect — that “if we rise not, then Christ’s resurrection becomes null.” See Biblical Cabinet, volume 23 — Ed.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co. 15:12.Cf. the strain of 1Th. 4:14, or Rom. 8:11. Also see that it is Christ [and not first of all facts about Him] who is the burden and substance of the preaching. Cf. 2Co. 4:5, We preach Christ Jesus, as Lord. Perhaps denying a resurrection in fact, whilst claiming still to believe in it in the (non-natural) sense of 2Ti. 2:18. [Epicureans were practically Materialists; Stoics taught (a Nirvana-like or Pantheist) return of the individual into the Great, Central Being. So they laughed with polite contempt at Athens. A new god and goddess: Jesus and Anastasis (Act. 17:18). Common people believed that death was either extinction of the soul or a worthless shadow life, and this most likely the form of disbelief which would be prevalent in the Church at Corinth. (After all, in this, as in many similar cases, the philosophers only state more explicitly what common people with native shrewdness feel. E.g. the difficulties raised in 1Co. 15:35 are recurrent perpetually amongst plain people who never heard of even the names of the philosophers.) Very important to notice in this discussion how the resurrection of the body is made to stand or fall with the after-life of the man. As in Mar. 12:18 sqq. Christ enlarges the scope of the discussion from one merely concerning the resurrection, to an argument for the immortality of the man in covenant with God, and hence for his body also, as an integral part of his redeemed and covenanted manhood.]
1Co. 15:12.If one, then all.
1Co. 15:13.All, or none at all.
1Co. 15:14.Not this time vain through any fault or failure on their part, but because the very basis of faith and life has been an unreality.
1Co. 15:15.We were chosen to be His witnesses of this very fact (Act. 10:41; Act. 2:32; Act. 3:15; Act. 13:31); it would turn out that we were Gods false witnesses! Of God (second time) is as to God, and what He has done.
1Co. 15:18. In Christ.As Rev. 14:13; 1Th. 4:16. [But not 1Co. 15:14, which is through Jesus, rendering the connection more probable will God bring through Jesus with Him (viz. Jesus).]
1Co. 15:19.Do not connect hoped in Christ. [Cf. for this, 1Jn. 3:3 (no longer ambiguous in R.V.). Yet see Eph. 1:12.] Our whole life is in Christ; our hope is the hope of men who are in Christ. Miserable.In the old sense (cf. miserable sinners in the Anglican Liturgy) to be pitied, or compassionated, unhappy that we are!
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.1Co. 15:12-19
1. Does death end all? Well, answer another question: Did His death end all? A popular illustrated edition of Renans Vie de Jsus has, as its last page, inserted even after the Fin, which closes the text, a woodcut of the Crucified. It is simply and only a crucified peasant, one before whose cross a man might pass with half-contemptuous pity, and cry in modern slang, Poor beggar! Pauvre diable! He is alone as he hangs in the picture; not even the raven of the classical quotation is yet wheeling around the gibbet; the sky behind is cloudy and angry; the head hangs slouched in deaths relaxation; the hair is the uncombed, matted mass of a wretched peasant who for twenty-four hours has been in the hands of enemies. The title of the picture might have been Fin too. The realistic page, the execution of a Jewish fanatic, is the last in Renans book. When He says, It is finished, Renan thinks it is finished too. The Vie de Jsus goes no further. Forsaken, a failure, finished,so He hangs in the illustration. If that were all, if the life of Jesus did end there, what a difference! But is that the end of the story of the Incarnate Son? No. His life did not begin at Bethlehem; nor did it finish at Calvary. Yet such talk as was rife at Corinth, at least in some quarters, could only have one logical consequence, viz. that it did there finish, that Christ, like any other dear or great name of the past, is nothing but a memory.
2. Doubtless a good deal of such talk was the informal, loose, liberal, intellectual theologising on this particular topic, of which the first and last and only specimen was by no means that in Corinth. Some caught up, parrot-fashion, the current novelty of their circle: No intelligent man, you know, believes in any resurrection of literally dead men. Nobody, you know, denies the Resurrection. Oh no; but of course it is agreed that nothing was ever meant but a moral rising again. Awake to righteousness, for example. Or a superficial, natural sharpness, in danger of making that native shrewdness which so generally proves right in common things, the arbiter of judgment in every sort of case which comes under its review, pronounces off-hand: Cannot be, you know! The dead rise again? The dead? Why, look at them! Is not that enough? (1Co. 15:35). Or another of these exceedingly clever, reasonable people, with great wisdom propounds their pet difficulty: Well, you see, our point is here. We cannot see where they are to get a body. What sort of body is conceivable for them? No, no; such a doctrine cannot pass muster with us. Human nature is the same in all ages and Churches and lands. It likes to pose as the philosopher; it likes to be amongst the people not quite so easily satisfied as some folks, you know! And there may have been some in their hearts really half afraid of the doctrine; hardly caring to face the thought of having some day to confront in a restored life the past and its account.
3. By-and-by (1Co. 15:36 sqq.) Paul deals fully with the objections raised by such sharp, cute people, rather vain of their wisdom, and of their emancipation from old and foolish beliefs. Here he drives home at their Christianity. He gives them credit for being sincerely Christian, so far as they understood it. In 1Co. 15:36 he is bitingly satirical: Yes, you are exceedingly clever, no doubt, to perceive such difficulties. But you are really fools, with all your wisdom. Here he takes the most favourable estimate: They do really care to be Christians; they do really prize their Christian hope; they would be distressed, he is willing to believe, if all ended in vanity and mocking emptiness. Then let them look where they are being led, before they commit themselves to such rash pronouncements. Are they prepared to go all the length of the path into which, with such a light heart and confident, they have begun to enter?
4. No resurrection of dead persons at all? Then take a choice; read the alternative in two directions: All, or none at all. All, or no risen Christ! (1Co. 15:13; 1Co. 15:16). One and all. A risen Christ, and therefore all! If no risen Christ, then all distinctively Christian preaching is folly (1Co. 15:14), or falsehood (1Co. 15:15), whether intentionally so or not. To recast, reconstruct, the Christian scheme, so as to leave out a Risen Christ, is to produce what is not Christianity at all. For what underlies this elimination of His rising again in the proposed scheme of doctrine? Naturalism; which presumes always against the breaking-in of the supernatural, and even the exceptional, upon the natural and ordinary in the worlds course. [Are we then, by assuming this one event, to abandon the entire modern view of the world? (A. Schweizer, quoted by Delitzsch). So soon as I can convince myself of the reality of the resurrection of Christ, this absolute miracle, as Paul seems to declare it, I shatter the modern conception of the word. This breach in the order of nature, which I regard as inviolable, would be an irreparable breach in my system, in my whole world of thought (H. Lang, apud Delitzsch, Expositor, January 1889).] And that is no Christianity which is not full of Gods present-day, active, wise, loving operativeness in His world, especially as incessantly elaborating its Redemption by His Son, Christ. As well, moreover, delete the Cross as the Resurrection, and hope to call the expurgated story the story of Christ. It may be an imitation of the story; like some clever historical novels, making use of known facts, and keeping in many parts fairly parallel with them. But though it may borrow the name, and try to pass as a Gospel, though with differences; it is a different Gospel; another there cannot be (Gal. 1:6-7). The old preaching is vain if this be true. A vexatiously restrictive code of ethics is left, without adequate motive or power, and encumbered with a good deal else besides the Resurrection which is top-hamper, some day to be thrown overboard to lighten the ship.
5. Nor has it only theological consequences. The practical consequences are many and serious. Faith in good testimony is seriously shaken (1Co. 15:15); but of more consequence is it that Faith has been groping after, laying hold of, a shadow, a memory, a name, a vanished Christ. There may have been an offering of the Lamb of God on Calvary, but we have no token by which to differentiate that death from any other crucifixion. The offering may have been accepted, but we have no evidence of the fact. Behind the veil there is for a guilty soul no real, living, interceding High Priest drawing near to God with its burden of sins (1Co. 15:17). Long ago that High Priests body was left to corrupt in its new grave in a garden near Jerusalem. Jesus is no more than the Lazarus now finally dead; He is only living as Paul is still living. The death on the cross may then well have been only the abortive end, unfortunately premature, of a life which might have done much more for its generation if it had been longer spared. But everything distinctive of the Christian hope, everything of a real Atonement on which a guilty conscience may stay itself, is gone. Christ is one of the worlds great namesperhaps the greatest. But in Christ? As well say in Paul?
6. In Christ. It is a restricted life. It has its joys and its compensations, whatever its value, or truth, or falsehood. But it has its restrictions, its sacrifices, its self-denial; it goes entirely against the grain of human nature; it entails heavy penalties, social and other. And if, after all, its eternal compensation is a delusion; if, above all, the guilty soul must pass into eternity without a Saviour and an Atonement, left eternally in the lurch, made ashamed by our hope (Rom. 5:5); then Christians have lived in a fools paradise, and made a fools bargain. In the arena as they are, before a gazing world (1Co. 4:9), they may well expect the laughter of the spectators, unless indeed these accord them pity. They are of all men most pitiable. Nos perituri salutamus. [And this is not much mitigated, ifseeing that the argument of the chapter assumes that no resurrection means no after-life at all, and so no judgment or (perhaps) hellit be the earthly bargain of which account is alone taken by Paul.]
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1Co. 15:19. If of all men most miserable.
I. A few of the facts which this implies.
1. There is misery among men upon earth. Obviously. But remember three things:
(1) Not so great misery as mans sin deserves.
(2) Not so great as mans happiness. Days, weeks, of affliction; years of health and happiness.
(3) Not so great as the good it will ultimately work out. Suffering in perdition works no good; here, under Mediatorial rule, it is disciplinary and corrective.
2. Misery amongst men exists in different degrees.Some are most miserable. Calm and sunshine in one lot; storm and darkness in another. One knows nothing of sickness or poverty; another nothing of health and sufficiency. Some followed by consequences of sin, lashed by guilty conscience; some sin and suffer nothing; some have the Christian peace. A day is coming when eternal justice must balance the accounts, for earths inequalities.
3. The degree of misery is sometimes regulated by hope.Hope directed to right objects, and rightly founded, will bear a man up under all the ills of life, make him calm in the tempest and valiant in the fight; will give him such a grasp on the future as will prevent him from sinking under the present. It will be a firm anchor, holding his ship securely amidst the tumultuous billows of his stormy life. Yet does not all disappointment grow out of hope? What is disappointment but a hope lost? And this, but a kind of life lost? Loss of hope is hell.
4. The hope of a Christian, if false, will make him of all men most miserable.These words must not be taken to teach:
(1) That apart from the resurrection of Christ man has no [kind or measure of] evidence of a future state. It is said that the Emperor Frederick III., hearing of the death of a very wicked man, who had lived in prosperity, without having had at any time his health or fortune impaired, and died at the age of ninety-three, said, See here a proof of another life. So whispers the rational instinct of all.
(2) That, on the supposition that there is no future life, the practice of virtue here would place man in a worse condition than vice. Virtue, as embodied in Christianity, would give a man considerable advantage even in this world. Ways of pleasantness, etc.
(3) That, apart from a future state, a godly life is not binding on man. So long as man and his Maker exist in relation to each other, so long his obligation to love Him with all his heart, etc., must continue. What, then, do they mean? [The writer then greatly limits the truth of the text to the Apostle and his evangelical contemporaries. (But query this?) Also (he says) remember that he supposes the disappointed to survive the discovery of the delusion. Else existence would terminate in, or the next moment after, the discovery of the delusion, and there would be no misery at all. (Query, this over subtle?)] The misery of a tremendous disappointment. [Is not the usual, superficial view truer, that it is that present loss and unhappiness which to the outside world seems in varying degree always to be the price of being a Christian? The game not worth the candle.]
II. Several things will tend to aggravate this disappointment.
1. The hold which the blighted hope had obtained over the whole soul. Solomon speaks of the loss of a hope as the giving up of the ghost. His idea was that the dissolution of a soul from hope was as terrible and distressing as the dissolution of soul from body. Imagine the case of a man who had thrown his whole being into Christianity, who had allowed its doctrines to absorb his thoughts, its precepts to rule his life, its promises to fire his aspirations, and who sanctified all the comforts, advantages, and honours of this life for its sake, being met at the moment when his hopes were at their zenith, and when his death was at hand, with the conviction that all was a delusion; and you have a man of all men most miserable.
2. The deception which this blighted hope prompted [Query, led?] its subjects to practise.False witnesses of God. The deception of a hearty and practical believer in Christianity is earnest. If he believes in the leading subjects contained in the Gospel, he must become an enthusiastic propagandist; the desire to make men believe as he does becomes the dominant passion. His deception is systematic, not an occasional attempt, a spasmodic effort, a desultory endeavour; it is the organised purpose of his life. It is influential. No system has proved itself more victoriously aggressive. By it these workers turned the world upside down. To think, then, that not only themselves had been the victims of delusion, but had helped to make others such, would intensify the disappointment, and render them most miserable.
3. The destitution in which the departure of the hope would leave the soul.Christianity makes a most radical change in a man: what he once loved he loathes, what he once sought he shuns, once valued now despises, what seemed gain to him counts loss. On the discovery of the delusion, he would be left with tastes and desires for which there was no pleasure correspondent. Nothing in the old to meet the new proclivities, and the new has melted away into thin air.
Conclusion.Add these things together, and thenmost miserable. Thank God all this only hypothetic. But now Is Christ risen, etc.Adapted from Homilist New Series, 4:61.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1Co. 15:14. Reverse the Proposition.
I. Preaching is not in vain.It has power. It effects moral miracles.
II. Faith is not vain.It brings comfort, pardon, life. Therefore
III. Christ is risen.[J. L.]
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Butlers Comments
SECTION 2
Its Holiness (1Co. 15:12-34)
12 Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; 14if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied.
20 But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall we be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 24Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom of God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says, All things are put in subjection under him, it is plain that he is excepted who put all things under him. 28When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things under him, that God may be everything to every one.
29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? 30Why am I in peril every hour? 31I protest, brethren, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! 32What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 33Do not be deceived: Bad company ruins good morals. 34Come to your right mind, and sin no more. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
1Co. 15:12-19 Cleanses From Defilement: Paul asks, If I am preaching Christ as raised from the dead, what do some of you expect to gain by saying there is no resurrection for believers? He proceeds to answer his own rhetorical question by saying, in essence, You cant have the hope if you dont have the history! If Christ was not raised from the dead, then hoping in him for anything else is vain. If Christ is not raised, and if there is no resurrection for those who trust in Christ, then the whole Christian religion is in vain.
First, apostolic preaching would be vain if there is no resurrection. All Christian preaching for two hundred centuries would be vain if Christ is not historically, actually, factually raised from the dead. Why, then, do men who do not believe the historical resurrection of Christ preach the Christian religion? For money (Jesus predicted there would be hirelings, Joh. 10:10-13; Paul predicted there would be some from among the Christian religion who would exploit it, Act. 20:29-30); for position or famethere are those who love the praise of men more than the praise of God. There are some who do not want the moral implications which the historical resurrection of Jesus would force upon them, but they want the Christian religion to try to soften by euphemistic (but useless) verbiage the cruel, stark, reality of injustices never to be righted, of tribulations and sacrifices never to be repaid or vindicated, to soften the utter defeat of human death. An existential philosopher said, and without the resurrection he is correct, Life is never more absurd than at the grave. But, hallelujah, because of the fact of the resurrection life is never absurd!
Second, all faith would be void without the resurrection. Faith in God, Christ, the Bible, faith that truth is better than falsehood, faith that goodness and love is to be preferred over evil and hate, faith in today and tomorrow, faith that life is worth livingall is useless if there is no life beyond the grave, no heaven, no eternity, no truth, no God. The apostles were false witnesses, the most despicable charlatans or ignorant dupes who ever lived, if the resurrection of Christ is not historically valid. But are we to believe they have gotten by with such a monstrous hoax, having duped millions of the best minds for almost two millenniums? Could what their testimony produced for all these centuries have been produced by the cruelest, most preposterous lie ever perpetrated upon the human race?
Third, and most crucial, if Christ has not been raised, those who have believed in him are not forgiventhey are still in their sins. The cross, the vicarious, substitutionary atonement of Christs death, is invalid without the resurrection. The only hope we have that Christ did what he promised to do by the cross is his resurrection (see 2Co. 1:20; 1Pe. 1:3-5; Luk. 24:44-48). If Christs promise of atonement for mans sin is not validated by his resurrection from the dead, he is simply another crucified Jew, and his death has not as much efficacy to atone for my sins as an animal sacrifice. Study the sermons of the apostles and evangelists in the book of Acts. They did not wait until the annual Easter services to proclaim the resurrection. They never preached the death of Christ without preaching his resurrection! Too much modern preaching is depending upon the sentimentalism aroused by portraying the shocking violence of Jesus death. The mental decisiveness brought about by the persuading evidence of the resurrection, without which there is no true conversion, is seldom made the focus of either edificatory or evangelistic proclamation. If we are going to restore the church of the New Testament, we must restore the gospel of the New Testament!
If Christ is not raised, then those who have fallen asleep (died) have perished. Are we to believe that all the millions of Christians who have poured out their lives upon the altars of love, usefulness and goodness have perished and will not be raised from the dead? That includes some of my very dear ones, and yours! Will faith, and love, and goodness perish, and wickedness, falsehood and dissolution win, after all? Is there no wiping out of defilement? No forgiveness of sin? No vindication of faith? Without the resurrection there is none!
If a mans hope in Christ and his teachings is to be restricted to this life on earth only, he is, of all men, most pitiful. The word eleeinoteroi, from the Greek word eleos (mercy, pity), is translated in the KJV as miserable. It means, to be pitied. If this life is all there is, Christians are pitiful fools to be hoping in Christ. They would be better off to abandon the teachings of Jesus which insist on counting others better than self, or turning the other cheek, or not pleasing oneself, but pleasing ones neighbor, for his good, or giving up ones liberty and rights for the sake of others. If this life is all there is, people would be better off following Buddha or Mohammed, or Darwin or Marx, or no one! Certainly, if there is no resurrection, and Christ is not who he claims he is, and this is all the life there is, those who still maintain allegiance to the Christian faith are either putting us on or self-deceived, living in a dream world of their own creation; see Special Study entitled, On Cloud Nine.
1Co. 15:20-28 Conquers Dissolution: This is not the only life there is! Christ has, in fact, been raised from the dead. He is the firstfruit of resurrection from the dead. The Bible record documents the fact that there were persons resurrected from death, chronologically, before Jesus. In fact, Jesus raised three people (Jairus daughter; the widows son at Nain; and Lazarus) before his own resurrection took place. But Paul is not speaking chronologically here, unless he is denoting the uniqueness of Christs resurrection over those preceding his. All others resurrected from death died again. Their bodies have suffered the same decay and dissolution all other human bodies suffer. But when Jesus rose from the grave, he did not die again. He ascended, after forty days, to heaven in the body which came out of the tomb. The apostles were eye witnesses to this ascension (Act. 1:9-11). From heaven Jesus has appeared to some (Paul, John). But Pauls figure of speech firstfruit (Gr. aparche, akin to aparchomai which means, to make a beginning) is from Old Testament times. In the Law of Moses the first portion of the harvest was to be given to the Lord as an indication the worshiper understood that all the harvest was, in reality, the Lords (Deu. 26:2-11). Whatever firstfruit was, the rest of the harvest was. Christs resurrection was firstfruit of all the dead. Adam was, because of his sin, firstfruit of the death of humanity; Christ was, because of his sinlessness, firstfruit of the resurrection of humanity. All mankind dies bodily because of Adams sin; all mankind is to be resurrected bodily because of Christs victory over sin. That is all Paul is saying here. He is not teaching original sin and total depravity, and he is not teaching universal salvation. All creation, man and matter, belongs to God. He will resurrect it all. Temporarily, God has subjected all his creation to futility, hoping it will hope, and one day be set free from its bondage to decay (Rom. 8:18-25). But only those who trust Christ as their firstfruit will be adopted as sons. All of dead humanity will be resurrected, but only those who have trusted Christ will be given eternal life; those who have not trusted Christ will be imprisoned forever in torment (see Joh. 5:25-28; Luk. 16:19-31; Rev. 14:9-13; Rev. 20:11-15; Rev. 21:1-27; Rev. 22:1-5).
Each in his own order does not mean there are going to be two or three increments to the resurrection of humanity, separated by time. Paul clears up any misunderstanding about that in his epistle to the Thessalonians (1Th. 4:13-18; 1Th. 5:1-3). When Jesus comes again to resurrect humanity, it will be one complete, final resurrection. No segment of humanity, physically alive or dead, will precede the other. Paul uses the Greek word tagmati in 1Co. 15:23 and it is translated order. Tagma is a Greek military term meaning a rank, a company, a group. Paul explains what he means by order in the last half of 1Co. 15:23. Christs resurrection ranks first and is firstfruitthen, at his second coming, the second ranking resurrection of the whole harvest of humanity, including those who belong to him. It is rank of resurrection emphasized, not chronology, to prove there will be a second rank because there was a first.
At Christs coming is the end. The KJV italicizes the word cometh in 1Co. 15:24, indicating it is a supplied word. And that is more to be desired than the RSV translation which is: Then comes the end. . . . The Greek text is: eita to telos, literally, then, the end. Christs second coming and the end are simultaneous. Gods redemptive program will find its telos, its goal, its completion, when Jesus comes to resurrect all the dead. Then will come to an end this world and all its powers. There will be no more pretending powers, no more powers temporarily granted by God to human beings. God alone will exercise sovereignty. All others will be willing servants, or banished, incarcerated enemies. In the meantime the Son reigns until he has established all that God has spoken by the mouths of his prophets (see Act. 3:17-26), both Old and New Testament prophets. The Bible clearly teaches that no human being is going to know when Christ is coming back (see our comments, The Gospel of Luke, College Press Publishing Company, pp. 467519). How long Christ will take to put all his enemies under his feet, and who those enemies are, we do not know. But the fact of his resurrection makes it certain that day will come (see Act. 17:30-31). The last enemy is death (cf. Rev. 20:9-15). Death will be abolished (Gr. katargeitai, destroyed)it will not exist anymore.
God has subjected this world and all creation to the Son (Christ) (Joh. 5:19-29) in order that the Son might carry out his redemptive and mediatorial work. This work began with his incarnation and continues through his high priesthood (cf. the book of Hebrews). But when the Son finishes this work and returns to consummate redemption and judgment, there will be no more need for mediation. The person of Son will be the person of eternal Father, that God may be everything to every one.
1Co. 15:29-34 Conserves Decency: Only by the power of faith in the resurrection will man be able to preserve moral goodness. Only those who hope to be welcomed to heaven and become as Jesus is will have the power to desire holiness (1Jn. 3:1-3).
The discussion of the purifying power of the hope of resurrection is begun by questioning the Corinthians on their reason for having been baptized. The RSV translates: Otherwise what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? The Greek preposition, huper, may be translated either on behalf of or with reference to. In the light of the context, and the following evidence, we believe the second translation is the correct one. The Corinthian Christians were being asked, If the dead are not actually raised, why are people still becoming Christians and being baptized with reference to the resurrection from the dead?
Some commentators think this verse (1Co. 15:29) is a reference to an ancient practice among Christians where the living is baptized as a proxy on behalf of someone who has already died. Such a ritual is practiced in modern times by a large religious sect. The context is clear that Paul is focusing on the foolishness of engaging in any rite or activity that pretends faith in a bodily resurrection which the pretender disbelieved. Second, there is no documented practice such as this among Christians of the first century. It would be unlikely that only Paul would mention, in only this one place, such a radical practice if it were settled doctrine. Third, the most natural understanding of Pauls question would be to associate it with the initial baptism of a Christian believer. A fundamental rule of hermeneutics is to always interpret a passage according to its most natural meaning. Baptism is the action of a believer which confirms his trust in the vicarious death of Christ and the vicarious resurrection of Christ to new life (see Rom. 6:3-5; Gal. 3:26-27; Col. 2:12-13). In faithfulness to Christs command to be baptized, the believer receives the forgiveness of sins (cf. Act. 22:16; Act. 2:38; 1Pe. 3:21). If Christ is not raised, and there is no resurrection for those who believe in Christ, baptism as to form and purpose is meaningless. What is the point in being baptized (immersed) in reference to being dead in sin if there is no resurrection? Fourth, the Bible teaches that each man is responsible for his own faith and obedience to Christ (cf. Eze. 18:1-24; Eze. 33:1-20; Luk. 16:19-31; 2Ki. 14:6; Deu. 24:16; Jer. 31:30; Mat. 16:27; Rom. 2:6; Rev. 20:12). The Roman Catholic Church teaches that works of proxy may be done by the living for the dead (masses for the dead, prayers for the dead, etc.), but such teaching has no basis in scripture and is rejected by all evangelical Christendom. It is absurd to think that the spiritual, moral choices of one human being would be accepted by God as willingly made by another human being when the second person made no such choices. Fifth, there is only one mediator between God and man, and that mediator is Jesus Christ (1Ti. 2:5). Only he could accomplish a redemptive deed vicariously (for someone else). To think that this passage teaches the possibility of one human being baptized by proxy for another human being, dead or alive, is to fly in the face of the exclusive mediatorship of Jesus Christ. Sixth, to take 1Co. 15:29 to refer to vicarious baptism being practiced at Corinth but stating that Paul would not have approved of it, is dodging the issue of all five propositions above. To think the practice was going on and that Paul would not renounce such a crucial contradiction of apostolic revelation is naive. Baptism by proxy strikes at the very heart of the gospel: . . . you will die in your sins unless you believe that I am he (Joh. 8:24); . . . but unless you repent you will all likewise perish . . . (Luk. 13:3-4). Had proxy-baptism been a practice at Corinth, Paul would have devoted more than two questions to the issue! If proxy-baptism was widely practiced in the first century church, why is there total silence about it in the writings of the apostle John (Johns Gospel, his epistles, and Revelation, were all written near the end of the first century, circa. 95100 A.D.)?
Already in Pauls day, Christians were being arrested for sedition against the Roman empire and thrown into arenas to be slaughtered by wild beasts. The fourth seal opened in the Revelation written by the apostle John predicts the fact that great numbers of human beings would be killed by wild beasts of the earth in the struggle between Christs church and the Roman empire (Rev. 6:7-8). Paul now says (1Co. 15:30-32), If there is no resurrection from death, why do I allow myself to be imperiled almost every hour of my life? Some circumstances of life Paul could not control, of course, but those threats, persecutions and murderous attacks upon his person because he was a Christian missionary (cf. 2Co. 1:8-10; 2Co. 4:11; 2Co. 11:23-29) he could have foregone by simply renouncing Christ and the resurrection. Did Paul fight with beasts? This may be simply a figurative expression describing his struggles with beastly human beings when he was at Ephesus (cf. Act. 19:23-30). Had Paul literally fought with beasts in the Roman arena it is probable that he would have listed the experience in 2Co. 11:23-29. It would not be unusual to speak of the enemies of God as beasts. The prophet Daniel did; John the apostle did (Revelation). John even categorizes all idolatrous heathen who worshiped the Roman emperor as those with the mark of the beast.
The only logical alternative to believing the bodily resurrection and practicing Biblical Christianity is hedonism. The religious person who repudiates the historicity of Christs bodily resurrection but advocates (and is even willing to endure suffering for) trying to practice the teachings of Jesus is a fool! He is either a gullible moron or a masochist! Paul is scrupulously honest in saying, If the dead are not raised, Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die (1Co. 15:32).
The bodily resurrection from death is the absolutely crucial doctrine of Christian faith. Christian theology, Christian evangelism, and Christian ethics are vain without it. Liberal Christian theology repudiates the bodily resurrection. As a result liberalism is insipid, powerless and useless (see Special Studies, On Cloud Nine, and The Existential/Neo-Orthodox Philosophy of History). Frighteningly, even some evangelical Christianity (the existential-feelings-first kind) dismisses the critical necessity of the bodily resurrection in its proclamation and practice. One of the new Christian songs is a classic example. In a popular song by Andrae Crouch, entitled, If Heaven Never Was Promised to Me, these are the lyrics:
You may ask me why I serve the Lord, Is it just for heavens gain, Or to walk those mighty streets of gold and to hear the angels sing? Is it just to drink from the fountain That never shall run dry, Or just to live forever and ever In that sweet old by and by?
But if heaven never was promised to me, Neither Gods promise to live eternally, Its been worth just having the Lord in my life, Livin in a world of darkness, He brought me the light.
If there were never any streets of gold, Neither a land where well never grow old; Its been worth just having the Lord in my life, Livin in a world of darkness, He brought me the light.
Dear reader, this may have a lovely tune, it may have soul, it may have the beat, and pragmatically, it may draw crowds of people to a religious concert, but its lyrics deny the very cardinal, focal, fundamental issue Paul addresses in 1Co. 15:1-58! If heaven never was promised to you, neither Gods promise to live eternally, then you are, of all men, most to be pitied if you are practicing the Christian gospel. You should eat and drink, for tomorrow you will die and perish, if there is no resurrection and no heaven. If my hope is just having the Lord in my life here, in this existence, I am a fool for thinking I walk in light!
If there is no bodily resurrection and heaven, we should be writing Christian songs with lyrics like these:
a.
Brief and powerless is mans life; on him and on his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its rentless way; for man condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that enoble his little days. . . .
Bertrand Russell
b.
Life has become in that total perspective which is philosophy, a fitful pullulation of human insects on the earth, a planetary eczema that may soon be cured; nothing is certain in it except defeat and deatha sleep from which, it seems, there is no awakening. . . .
Will Durant
c.
In spite of all my desperation to a brave looking optimism, I perceive that now the universe is bored with him (man), is turning a hard face to him, and I see him being carried less and less intelligently and more and more rapidly, suffering as every ill-adapted creature must suffer in gross and detail, along the stream of fate to degradation, suffering and death.
H.G. Wells
1Co. 15:33-34 confirm our comments on 1Co. 15:12-19. The moral muscle of the gospel rests ultimately in the preaching of the historicity of the bodily resurrection. Paul quotes the Greek poet, Meander. The KJV translates it, . . . evil communications corrupt good manners. The RSV translates it, . . . Bad company ruins good morals. The Greek word homiliai, is the word from which the English words homiletics and homily come. The word is most often used to mean, communication, conversation, discourse, talk. Certainly in this context Paul is talking about some of the Corinthian Christians who were saying that there is no resurrection. Evil preaching and teaching corrupts good morals. And teaching that there is no bodily resurrection is evil teaching. The entire second epistle of Peter is a treatise on the fact that false teaching about the Lord Jesus and his deity is the source of the corruption of morality. When Paul wrote good morals, he did not use the most common Greek word for good which is agathos; he used the word chresta. Chresta means good in the sense of that which is right because it produces goodpractical or useful goodness. The word chresta is used by Matthew in recording Jesus great invitation, . . . for my yoke is easy (chresta, usefully-good) (Mat. 11:30). Paul says in 1Co. 15:33, evil, anti-resurrection, preaching is morally impractical. Liberalism is not only philosophically dishonest, it is ethically useless. It is worse than that, it is ethically corrupting! The fundamental cause of human immorality is the repudiation of the gospel factsspecifically, the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is the essence of Pauls statement in 1Co. 15:33-34. Anyone who aspires to search for, defend, and lead mankind to the truth must surrender to this! Philosophers, scientists, educators, preachers, lawyers, politicians and artists are under obligation to learn, believe and proclaim the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ as the source of all morality and goodness. Paul called the philosophers at Athens to moral conversion and repentance by the power of the resurrection of Jesus (see Act. 17:30-31).
To sin, in light of the historicity of the resurrection, is insane. Essentially that is what Paul meant by his statement, Come to your right mind, and sin no more. The Greek word Paul uses is eknepsate, is literally, sober up. He is using it here to exhort the Corinthians to shake off the seductive moral stupor into which they have fallen by believing those who are saying there is no resurrection. False teaching about the resurrection has confounded their mental abilities like drunkenness confounds the brain. They are not thinking right (Gr. dikaios, rightly, correctly, truly). First, they are philosophic schizoprenics. They are not facing reality. They are repudiating the resurrection and at the same time pretending the Christian faith is valuable. Second, since the resurrection is true, as Paul has logically demonstrated, no matter how much they deny it they are going to face the judgment of God in the next life and to sin in light of this is insanity! Paul has appealed to incontrovertible evidence and irrefutable logic throughout this treatise on the resurrection. Now he commands (Gr. eknepsate is in the imperative mood) the Corinthians to start thinking as they should. Faulty thinking is a sin! Christians are not permitted the insanity of deliberately ignoring facts (see Joh. 8:31-32; Joh. 8:43; Joh. 8:45-47; 2Th. 2:9-12; 2Pe. 3:5). Christians must constantly guard against the tendency to subvert clear, logical thinking by the selfish desire to follow feelings and urges of the flesh. Christians are continually urged by the scriptures to set their minds on Gods word (Rom. 8:5-8; Col. 3:1-4; and Peter urges Christians to gird up or put-to-work their minds 1Pe. 1:13). To choose to be a Christian is to choose to apply ones mental processes in conformity to the sovereign word of God. To choose to be a Christian is to allow ones every thought to be brought into captivity to obedience of Christ (2Co. 10:3-4). To choose to be a Christian is to choose to see nothing any more from a human point of view but through the perspective of Christs constraining love (2Co. 5:14-21). There is only one hope for changing mens morals into that classified good (useful) by God, and that is to persuade them to believe the bodily resurrection. For shame to you I am speaking says Paul (literally, in Greek). They were listening to some of those within the congregation who were saying there is no resurrection. Paul is apparently pointing to the anti-resurrectionists when he says, some are ignorant of God. Denial of the resurrection, especially by those posing to be Christians, is worse than a shame, it is a tragedy, a spiritual catastrophe!
Appleburys Comments
The Resurrection of the Dead (1234)
Text
1Co. 15:12-34. Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised: 14 and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. 15 Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised: 17 and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. 18 Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
20 But now hath Christ been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them that are asleep. 21 For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; then they that are Christs, at his coming. 24 Then cometh the end, when he shall deliver up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25 For he must reign, till he hath put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy that shall be abolished is death. 27 For, He put all things in subjection under his feet. But when he saith, All things are put in subjection, it is evident that he is excepted who did subject all things unto him. 28 And when all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subjected to him that did subject all things unto him, that God may be all in all.
29 Else what shall they do that are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? 30 why do we also stand in jeopardy every hour? 31 I protest by that glorying in you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. 32 If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what doth it profit me? If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. 33 Be not deceived: Evil companionships corrupt good morals. 34 Awake to soberness righteously, and sin not; for some have no knowledge of God: I speak this to move you to shame.
Commentary
How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?The glaring inconsistency of the Corinthians was too much for the logical mind of the apostle Paul! He had preached Christ crucified and raised from the dead. He had accepted this basic proposition of Christianity on his way to Damascus. The Corinthians had accepted it when they became Christians. How could they deny it now? Greek philosophers had long held the view that escape from the body at death was the goal of life, the escape from slavery. The resurrection of the body was foreign to their thinking. But the Corinthians had believed the evidence of Christs resurrection as Paul preached it. Were they carelessly slipping back into their former views of the matter or had they just failed to really think through to the logical conclusion of Pauls proposition? Except ye believed in vain seems to suggest the latter.
The Sadducees said that there is no resurrection, but it is doubtful that their influence had reached to the Corinthians. See Act. 23:8 and Mat. 22:23-33.
If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised.There is no escaping Pauls logic; but were the Corinthians prepared to accept the consequences of denying the resurrection of Christ? That meant that the glorious gospel of salvation and hope was without foundation in fact, and there was no basis for their faith. More than that, the apostles were found to be false witnesses of God, saying that He raised Christ from the dead, which, if there is no resurrection, is not true. To put it another way, if dead people are not raised, neither has Christ been raised (16). That means that your faith is without foundation and you are still in your sins. Were they willing to accept the consequences of denying the gospel which Paul preached? The thoughtChrist is not raisedwas completely unacceptable to Paul, for he had seen the risen Lord on the Damascus road. Repetition at this point in the argument shows how important this issue was in establishing the fact of the resurrection of the dead. If the Corinthians were right and the apostles were wrong, then those who died believing in Christ had perished.
we are of all men most pitiable.This is the last in the list of tragic results of denying that Christ has been raised. What is the antecedent of we? Is Paul saying that Christians, assuming there is no resurrection, are more pitiable than others? Are not Christians in this life blessed beyond others? They have, if they are willing to accept it, the peace that passeth understanding to guard their hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:6-7). They may not, in some cases, have as much in material possession as some others, but they know that life does not consist in the abundance of things which man possesses (Luk. 12:15).
It is possible that Paul is speaking of the apostles. But why would they be more pitiable than all if there is no resurrection? The answer may be found in Pauls own words in 1Co. 4:9-13. The apostles were men doomed to die; they were a spectacle to the world and to angels. They were fools for Christs sake; they were weak; they were held in disrepute. They suffered hunger and thirst; they were poorly clad; they were buffeted and without homes; they labored with their hands rather than being supported with the dignity accorded other teachers. They were reviled, persecuted, and slandered; they became the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things.
All this, they suffered because they believed that God had raised Christ from the dead, and they looked in hope to the coming of the Lord.
the firstfruits of them that are asleep.The fact of Christs resurrection guarantees the resurrection of the dead. In Old Testament times the first portion of the harvest was given to the Lord as an indication that all the harvest was in reality His. Whatever firstfruits was the rest was. Christ who died was raised from the dead; His resurrection was like firstfruits in that all the dead must be raised.
For since by man came death.Physical death is the penalty for the transgression of Gods law in the Garden by Adam. The resurrection which cancels the penalty of death comes through man also, that is, Christ, for as in Adam all die, all shall be made alive in Christ. What happens after the resurrection is another matter. Jesus said, Marvel not at this: for the hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of judgment (Joh. 5:28-29).
they that are Christs at his coming.For Pauls own comment, see 1Th. 4:13-18.
deliver up the kingdom of God.Those who have accepted the rule of Christ by faith and obedience to His gospel and have remained faithful to Him until death are all to be presented to the Father in the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2Pe. 1:11). The apostle was anticipating this when he wrote in the beginning of the epistle that they were to wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall confirm you unto the end, that ye may be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ (1Co. 1:7-8). In that eternal kingdom there will be the throne of God and of the Lamb (Rev. 22:1).
For he must reign.The angel promised that He was to reign on the throne of His father David (Luk. 1:32). The writer of Hebrews declares that, when He had made purification for sins He assumed the seat of authority as King at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Heb. 1:3). Peter declared that the promise to David was fulfilled when Christ arose and ascended to the right hand of the Father, for David ascended not into the heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, till I make thine enemies the footstool of thy feet (Act. 2:29-35). Now Paul declares that the last enemy to be abolished is death. In it all, the Son is subject to God.
Else what shall they do who are baptized for the dead?The problem in this text is: What is meant by for the dead? It cannot mean that Christians were getting themselves baptized on behalf of some friend or relative who had died without being baptized into Christ. Although such a thing was done much later, there is no good evidence that it was being done in the time of the apostles. Paul wrote this epistle to correct errors that had crept into the thinking and conduct of the church. It is strange that he would not label this an error if the Corinthians were actually practicing vicarious baptism. Baptism was a personal act for the one who believed and repented of his sins (Mar. 16:15-16; Act. 2:38). One might go through a form of immersion and pretend that it was for some dead friend, but that one could in no way fulfill the requirements of faith and repentance for another.
The preposition which is translated for in this verse is also translated for in verse three where it evidently means concerning or because of. In Rom. 9:27 it is translated concerning and in Joh. 1:30 of. John the Baptist had spoken about Jesus who he said was the Lamb of God. The basic meaning of the preposition is over and its resultant meaning is concerning or with reference to. There are other meanings also, but our problem is to determine which fits the context, being careful not to read into obscure passages such as this one meanings that are contrary to what is taught on the subject of baptism in the plain passages.
This text suggests that there was something in the act of baptism that had to do with the resurrection of the dead, for baptism is both a burial and a resurrection (Rom. 6:4). But if there is no resurrection, it is meaningless to go through a burial and a resurrection in the act of being baptized into Christ. Some object that this is reading too much into the text, but the whole chapter concerns the resurrection of the dead, and in the next verse Paul asks, If the dead are not raised at all, why then are they baptized for them? If there is no resurrection, baptism as to form and purpose is meaningless.
Some think that the verse means baptism for the purpose of pleasing some friend or relative who had died. While such a motive would not necessarily invalidate ones baptism, it is not likely that the language of the text has this meaning.
why do we stand in jeopardy every hour?Why should Paul and others face the constant danger of losing their lives if there is no resurrection? The act of baptism suggests that there is a resurrection; but if there isnt, there is no point in suffering needlessly in this life. Why suffer here if there is no hope of life beyond the grave where there will be no pain nor death nor suffering? Paul said, I die daily, but it was a needless risk if there is no resurrection.
I fought with beasts at Ephesus.This is another reference to the jeopardy which he faced. There was no point to it if there is no resurrection. Some assume that the fighting with wild beasts is to be regarded as figurative for the struggle he had with the vicious men who opposed him at Ephesus. It is true that men can be like wild beasts when they decided to destroy someone who disturbs their conscience. There is no record in Acts of any literal battle with beasts in which Paul was engaged. But this does not prove that he didnt have such an experience. It is argued also that since he was a Roman he could not have been subjected to such treatment, but authorities didnt always ask about such issues. See Act. 16:37. But whether he did or did not face real beasts, his life was in real danger and there was no point to it if there is no such thing as a resurrection from the dead. Therefore he says, If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.
Evil companionships.The Corinthians were being deceived by associates who did not hold the truth of the gospel. Paul urges them to wake up and stop being deceived by those who have no knowledge of God. Intelligent people should be ashamed of being deceived when the facts of the gospel had been so clearly presented to them with the evidence that definitely established the resurrection of Christ.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(12) If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead.Better, is being preached. It has been proved as a matter of historical fact that a man has risen from the dead; it is therefore illogical to say that there is no resurrection of the dead.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
2. A denial of the resurrection is a denial of the resurrection of Christ, and so a repudiation of the Christian faith, 12-19.
12. If how say This draws out the issue.
Some Who or what were these some? Though with the Sadducees they denied the resurrection of the dead, and probably also the existence of spirit, the opposition between Sadducees and Christians renders it improbable that these deniers belonged to that sect. They may have been converts from among the followers of the Athenian philosophers, especially the Epicureans, who dismissed Paul so promptly for preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Indeed, the summit of the Acrocorinthus was almost in sight of Athens; and this epistle, addressed not only to Corinth but to the Churches of Achaia, doubtless included Athens. Nevertheless the some appear, from the objections of theirs answered by St. Paul, to have rejected the resurrection on account of their holding the oriental Gnostic doctrine of the essential impurity of matter. See note on Act 8:9.
Resurrection The resurrection is, in the New Testament, designated by two words, each designating precisely the same event, but from a different standpoint; 1. ‘ , to raise, transitively; where the divine power is the agent; 2. , (noun ,) to rise up; where the person rising is the agent. In this chapter the former word is used at 1Co 15:4; 1Co 15:12-15 ; 1Co 15:15; 1Co 15:15-16; 1Co 15:16-17; 1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:29 ; 1Co 15:32; 1Co 15:35; 1Co 15:42-43; 1Co 15:43-44; the latter at 1Co 15:12-13; 1Co 15:20; 1Co 15:42 ; 1Co 15:52. Both words are applied to the resurrection of Christ, and to the resurrection of the general dead indiscriminately. The former is uniformly held as the essential model of the other.
He rose from the dead Literally, that he has been raised from deads. See our note on Luk 20:35, where the difference between a resurrection of the dead, a resurrection from the dead, and a resurrection from deads, ( dead being Greek plural and without the article,) is shown. This is a very important distinction, which no commentator has clearly noticed. Here it is a resurrection from deads or dead ones, Christ himself being included in the dead ones from whom he is raised; the being raised from one’s own dead self being included in the word.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised.’
Some of the Corinthians were declaring that there was no resurrection of the body from among the dead, as though such a thing could not be. Paul counters by pointing out that Christ has risen from the dead in bodily form, and is still alive (perfect tense – has been raised and is still raised). Thus their basic premise is wrong. Then he reverses the argument. If there is no resurrection from the dead then Christ has not been raised, and therefore the Gospel they preach as defined in 1Co 15:2-4 is a vanity which is not true, and the witnesses, Peter, James the Lord’s brother, all the Apostles and the covenant community, are all found to be liars. Furthermore as their own faith is dependent on that Gospel they too are still in their sins because their belief too is false and useless, and those who have died in Christ are not merely sleeping but have perished.
‘But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised.’ Some see this as simply saying that if, dogmatically speaking, there can be no resurrection from the dead, Christ cannot have been raised. Others take it further and add that Paul means that the resurrection of the dead as a coming reality and the resurrection of Christ go together. If one occurred then the other will occur. Thus if Christ has risen, the resurrection of the dead is guaranteed.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The Necessity of Christ’s Resurrection In 1Co 15:12-28 Paul explains the necessity of the resurrection of Christ Jesus. His resurrection was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins (1Co 15:12-19) and for our future resurrection and redemption (1Co 15:20-28).
Outline Here is a proposed outline:
1. For the Forgiveness of Our Sins 1Co 15:12-19
2. For Future Redemption (Order of the Resurrection) 1Co 15:20-28
1Co 15:12-19 The Necessity of Christ’s Resurrection for the Forgiveness of Our Sins 1Co 15:12-19 explains that the resurrection of Christ was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins. Thus, this passage of Scripture gives the negative consequences of what would happen if there were no resurrection:
1. Vs. 13 – Christ has not risen.
2. Vs. 14 – Our preaching and our faith is in vain.
3. Vs. 15 – We are false witnesses.
4. Vs. 16 – Christ has not risen. (a repeat of verse 13)
5. Vs. 17 – We are yet in our sins and our faith is worthless.
6. Vs. 18 – Those fallen asleep have perished.
7. Vs. 19 – We, of all men, are most miserable.
1Co 15:12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
1Co 15:12
1Co 15:1, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;”
1Co 15:11, “Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed.”
1Co 15:14 “and your faith is also vain” – Comments – That is, your faith in Jesus Christ is worthless.
1Co 15:17 “ye are yet in your sins” – Comments – If Christ has not been raised, then there has been no forgiveness of sins.
1Co 15:18 Scripture References – Note other verses that refer to the sleep of the saints:
1Co 11:30, “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep .”
1Co 15:51, “Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep , but we shall all be changed,”
1Th 4:14, “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.”
1Th 5:10, “Who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep , we should live together with him.”
1Co 15:20-28 The Necessity of Christ’s Resurrection for Our Future Redemption: The Order of the Resurrection In 1Co 15:12-19 Paul explains how the resurrection of Christ was necessary for the atonement of man’s sins. In 1Co 15:20-28 Paul explains how the resurrection of Christ was necessary for man’s future redemption. This passage of Scripture reveals the order of the resurrection:
a) Christ, the Firstfruits (1Co 15:20-23 b)
b) The Church 1Co 15:23 c
c) The Kingdom Established 1Co 15:24-25
d) Death Destroyed 1Co 15:26
e) Christ Restored to His Glory 1Co 15:27-28
1Co 15:20 “But now is Christ risen from the dead” – Comments – Paul begins a dramatic change by referring to what God has already done. He begins to build a case for the resurrection. We see this same strategy used in Rom 3:21, as Paul explains the Gospel.
Rom 3:21, “ But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets;”
1Co 15:20 “and become the firstfruits of them that slept” Comments – There are a number of different offerings that are given in the Scriptures: the tithe, the burnt offerings, grain offerings, peace offerings, sin offerings, guilt offerings, and first fruits offerings. God cannot tithe because the tithe is ten percent of the profit earned on something from man’s labours, and God has entered into rest. He cannot offer the Levitical offerings because He is sinless. However, God can give a firstfruits offerings. He is the first giver of all things. He prepared an offering from the foundation of the world (Rev 13:8); therefore, the offering of His Son Jesus Christ for man’s sins (Joh 3:16) is a first fruit offering (1Co 15:20).
Rev 13:8, “And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.”
Joh 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
1Co 15:21 “by man came also the resurrection of the dead” – Comments – The resurrection of the dead has already begun. Jesus is the first one to be raised from the dead. We are next.
1Co 15:28 Scripture References – There are other Scriptures that refer to Jesus being subject to the Father:
Joh 14:28, “Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.”
1Co 3:23, “And ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.”
1Co 11:3, “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God.”
Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures
The resurrection of Christ basic for the Christian’s faith:
v. 12. Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
v. 13. But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen;
v. 14. and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
v. 15. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
v. 16. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised;
v. 17. and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins.
v. 18. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
v. 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. All the Corinthians had to admit that in the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ (as in all other doctrines of the Christian faith) the apostles taught in perfect harmony. Christ was preached as having been raised from the dead, and that historical fact they accepted as the truth. At the same time, however, there were some in their midst that held there was no such thing as a resurrection of dead men. It was a most peculiar contradiction, but one which had not entered their consciousness as such. Such a sweeping denial by the side of the calm acceptance of the great historical fact of Christ’s resurrection was so strange as to cause an outcry of displeased surprise on the part of the apostle.
Forthwith he proceeds to enlighten them by a double argument, showing that, if their position was right, Christian doctrine must be false, and faith must be useless. What follows from the position which these brethren in Corinth took? If the bodily resurrection of the dead is an impossibility, neither is Christ risen; the idea of a risen, living Christ is then absurd, for the denial of a bodily resurrection must strike Christ as well as all the other dead, since He died as a true man. Another result: If Christ, however, be not raised, vain then is also our proclamation, vain also your faith. This would be the second consequence of the denial: If the fact of Christ’s resurrection would be given up, in line with the first argument, then the testimony of the resurrection must be discredited as well; and the message being untrue, it follows that faith which is based upon a false representation has no basis, it is hollow, ineffectual, useless. Did any of the Corinthians care to maintain that the Gospel with all its glorious effects was a delusion? And what would be the result so far as the character, the veracity, of the apostles was concerned? But we should be found, discovered, set forth in shame, as lying witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up, if the contention as to the absurdity of bodily resurrection will hold good. If any person says of God that He has done something which, as a matter of fact, He did not do, although able to do so, then he gives false testimony against God. It would follow that the apostles were not only deluded fools, but tricksters and imposters as well. That is the one result if one will insist upon denying the resurrection of the body.
The apostle now restates the contention of the misguided Corinthian Christians in order to show a second inevitable consequence of that position, namely, that the entire fabric of Christian faith and life is unreal and a mockery. He starts out once more with the statement that, if there is no bodily resurrection, the fact of Christ’s resurrection cannot be upheld. What follows? If Christ is not raised, your faith is useless, vain, without beneficial results, a delusion. And since that faith is essentially trust in the forgiveness of sins made possible by the work of Christ and sealed by His resurrection, it follows that you are yet in your sins; the atonement is a mockery. And so far as those are concerned that fell asleep in Jesus, trusting in His perfect redemption, they died in a vain hope; instead of obtaining the blessedness of a perfect salvation in the presence of God, their fate is that of perdition. “If Christ did not rise for our justification, then those whose death seemed but a blessed sleep to a happy awaking in fellowship with their living and glorified Redeemer, so far from having been received into eternal life, were doomed still to abide under the wretched dominion of death. ” And to drive home the truth which he wishes to impress upon the Corinthians, the apostle adds: If in this life only we are hopers in Christ, if all hope for the future is vain and a foolish delusion, if there is no forgiveness of sins, no hope of a future inheritance in heaven, then indeed we Christians are of all men most in need of pity. For to insist upon a hope that has no basis, that can never be realized, and for such a hope to deny all material good, that would give the unbelievers a right to consider us weak-minded fools that are to be pitied for their miserable delusion. The argument of Paul is all the more effective as it practically forced every true Christian in the Corinthian congregation to draw the inference: I know that my faith is not a futile trust; the Christian doctrine is not based upon a delusion; I am sure of the forgiveness of my sins as assured to me in the Gospel; the apostles must be true witnesses; Christ is risen from the dead; there must be a resurrection of the body.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
1Co 15:12. How say some among you? &c. This may well be understood of the head of the contrary faction, and some of his disciples. First, because St. Paul introduces this confutation by asserting his mission, which these his opposers would bring in question. Secondly, because he is so careful to let the Corinthians see that he maintains not the doctrine of the resurrection in opposition to these their new leaders, it being the doctrine which he had preached to them at their first conversion, before any false Apostle appeared among them, and misled them about the resurrection. Their false Apostle was a Jew, and in all appearance judaized; may he not also be suspected of Sadduceism?For it is plain that he did, with all his might, oppose St. Paul, which must proceed from some very great difference in opinion at the bottom, as there are no footsteps of any personal provocation.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
1Co 15:12 . In what a contrast, however, with this preaching stands the assertion of certain persons among you that, etc. ! has the main emphasis in the protasis; hence its positio.
] expression of astonishment; how is yet possible, that ; 1Co 14:7 ; 1Co 14:16 ; Rom 3:6 ; Rom 6:2 ; Rom 8:32 ; Rom 10:14 ; Gal 2:14 The logical justice of the astonishment rests on this, that the assertion, “there is no resurrection of dead persons,” denies also per consequentiam the resurrection of Christ. 1Co 15:13 .
] quidam, quos nominare nolo . See Hermann, ad Viger. p. 731, also Schoemann, ad Is. p. 250. See, besides, introduction to the chapter. is simply in your church , without any emphasis of contradistinction to non-Christians (Krauss).
] does not take place , there is not. Comp. Eph 6:9 ; Mat 22:23 ; Act 23:8 . Comp. also Plato, Phaed. p. 71 E: , Aesch. Eum 639: .
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? (13) But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: (14) And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. (15) Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. (16) For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: (17) And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. (18) Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. (19) If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
It appears very plain, from what the Apostle hath here said, that there were some among the Corinthians who denied the resurrection of the dead, for Paul saith, how say some among you, that there is no resurrection of the dead? So that it was not the men of Corinth; among the heathens of that city, neither of the Jews who might be living there, or the Sadducees of that place; but, evidently, some who professed a general belief in Christ, and mingled with the Lord’s people, which constituted what was called the Church at Corinth. Reader! pause over it, and remark, how very early heresies sprung up in the Church, to disturb its peace. We read of many in the Apostolic writings, 2Ti_1:15; 2Ti_2:17-18 ; 1Jn 2:18-19 ; Jud 1:18Jud 1:18 .
What a beautiful chain of reasoning the Apostle makes use of, by way of preparing the minds of the Corinthians for the full and cordial reception of this glorious and foundation-article of our most holy faith. He adopts a well-known figure in rhetoric, of admitting what a man knows to be wrong, in order the more fully to prove from it, what a man knows to be right; and then by a climax riseth to the complete conviction of the truth, from shewing the folly of the opposite principles. The Corinthians were all well assured, by the most incontestible matter of fact, that Christ himself had arisen from the dead. This doctrine was uniformly preached among them, and as cordially believed. But, notwithstanding this, though the resurrection of Christ necessarily involved in it, the fullest assurance of the certain resurrection of his members, as the greater includes the less, and as the Head, the body; yet there were some, who, though they believed in the one, doubted the other.
The Apostle begins, therefore, with, taking the objection of those unbelievers upon their own ground, If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen. The thing being admitted as impossible in one instance, implies an impossibility in the other. For Christ arose as a public head of his body the Church. And, therefore, the resurrection of the dead must bring up with it the resurrection of all his members. His is the exemplar of all that is to follow. His resurrection became an earnest of theirs. The very object of his resurrection became a proof and pledge of it. For he died in a public capacity for his people. And he arose in the same public capacity for them. The great object of his incarnation, sufferings, obedience, death, and resurrection, formed but one and the same complete act in reference to them. So that if one link in the chain be lost, the whole is lost. And, if Christ be not risen, all preaching is vain, and there can be no faith in Christ, but what is alike vain!
Neither is this all. For, worse consequences, if possible, arise. In the supposition, that Christ be not risen, those who were specially chosen to be the witnesses of his resurrection, become false witnesses: yea, false witnesses of God! For they assert what is not then true, that God raised him from the dead, and exalted him as a Prince and a Savior at his right hand on the majesty on high. And, yet he did not raise him, neither was Christ justified in the Spirit; if so be he arose not as the Head of his body the Church, and God brought him not from the dead, as the Great Shepherd of his sheep, through the blood of the everlasting Covenant! Reader! before you proceed further, pray turn to those sweet Scriptures, Rom 1:4 ; 1Co 6:14 ; 1Ti 3:16 ; Heb 13:20 ; Rev 1:17-18Rev 1:17-18 .
And to sum up the whole in this negative way of arguing, if, saith the Apostle, Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ, that is, died triumphantly in Christ, in full assurance of rising again in Him, and by Him, at the last day, are sunk to rise no more. And, in this case, all our high hopes of immortality and glory, in the presence of God and, the Lamb, are done away forever.
Reader! pause over the solemn statement, as here drawn up by the Apostle, on the supposition of the possibility, that there was no resurrection of the dead. And, although you know from an infallible Teacher, and by infallible teaching, which can be liable to no error, that all the reasoning here used, and worked up to such an height, begins from false premises, and, consequently, could end but in false conclusions; yet learn from it, what God the Holy Ghost plainly intended from it, for the greater joy and comfort of his whole Church and people; how truly blessed it is to have such a chain, as we have, of impregnable evidences to the truth of the resurrection of Jesus, and accompanied with all its blissful consequences to ourselves, that our faith might not be founded in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Ver. 12. No resurrection ] More than that of regeneration, Mat 19:28 , that estate of the gospel called a new heaven and a new earth, 2Pe 3:13 , the world to come, Heb 2:5 , that resurrection already past, 2Ti 2:18 , that first resurrection, Rev 20:5 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
12 19 .] On the fact of Christ’s Resurrection, announced in his preaching, and confessed in their belief, he grounds ( negatively ) the truth of the general Resurrection: If the latter be not to happen, neither has the former happened: and he urges the results of such a disproof of Christ’s Resurrection .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
12 .] introduces the argument for the resurrection, by referring to its denial among a portion of the Corinthian church.
belongs to the whole question, and is opposed to . and . . of the foregoing verse.
The position of before the verb gives it the leading emphasis, as an example of that which is denied by some among you: But if CHRIST is preached [not subjunctive, be preached : he is arguing from a matter of fact, not from a mere hypothesis] that He is risen from the dead (if an instance of such resurrection is a fact announced in our preaching), how say some among you (how comes it to pass that some say) that a resurrection of the dead does not exist ( . as 1Co 15:13 )? If the species be conceded , how is it that some among you deny the genus ?
] It is an interesting question, WHO these were ; and one which can only be answered by the indications which the argument in this chapter furnishes. (1) Were they Sadducees ? If so, the Apostle would hardly have begun his argument with the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus. And yet we must remember that he is arguing not with the deniers , but with those who being as yet sound, were liable to be misled by them. But the opposition between Sadduceism and Christianity was so complete, that we have little reason to think that any leaven of the Sadducees ever found its way into the church. (2) Were they Epicureans ? Probably not, for two reasons: ( ) the Epicurean maxim, “Let us eat and drink,” &c., is represented as a legitimate consequence ) of adopting their denial of the resurrection, not as an accompaniment of, much less as the ground of it: and ( ) had the Epicurean element entered to any extent into the Corinthian church, we certainly should have had more notice of its exceedingly antichristian tenets. It is possible that the deniers may have been, or been in danger of being, corrupted by mixture with Epicureans without , from the warning of 1Co 15:33 . (3) Were they Jews ? If not Sadducees, hardly Jews at all, or Judaizers: a strong tenet of Pharisaism was this very one of the Resurrection, see Act 23:6 ; and we know of no tendency of Essenism which should produce such a denial. (4) They must then have been Gentile believers , inheriting the unwillingness of the Greek mind to receive that of which a full account could not be given, see 1Co 15:35-36 ; and probably of a philosophical and cavilling turn. Meyer argues, from the antimaterialistic turn of the Apostle’s counter-arguments, 1Co 15:35 ff., that the objections were antimaterialistic also: De W. infers the very opposite, which certainly seems to me more probable.
No trace whatever is found in the argument of an allegorizing character in the opponents, as was that of Hymenus and Philetus, who maintained that the resurrection was past already, 2Ti 2:17-18 , as Olsh. after Grot. supposes.
Whether the Apostle regarded the resurrection of the body as inseparably bound up with a future existence of the soul, does not very clearly appear in this chapter. From the use of the word , 1Co 15:18 , which must refer, not to annihilation, but to perdition , it would seem that he admitted an independent existence of the soul; as also from Phi 1:23 . But from 1Co 15:32 , , . , , it would seem that the Apostle regarded the denial of the resurrection as involving that of the future state and judgment.
On the question, to which of the (supposed) Corinthian parties the opponents belonged, I have nothing to say, not recognizing the divisions into the Pauline, Apollonian, Petrine, and Christine parties as having any historical foundation; see note on ch. 1Co 1:12 .
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Co 15:12-19 . 51. IF CHRIST IS NOT RISEN? Paul has intrenched his own position; he advances to demolish that of his opponents. His negative demonstration, taking the form of a destructive hypothetical syllogism, has two branches: he deduces ( a ), in 1Co 15:13-15 , from the (supposed) non-existence of the fact of resurrection, the falsity of the faith ( ) accorded to it, and of the witnesses attesting it; ( b ), in 1Co 15:17-19 , from the non-existence of the fact, the unreality of the effects derived from it ( ). Are the sceptics at Cor [2296] prepared to affirm that the App. are liars? and that the new life and hopes of their fellow-Christians are an illusion? In arguing these two points, P. presses on the impugners twice over (1Co 15:13 ; 1Co 15:16 ), that their general denial logically and in principle excludes Christ’s resurrection.
[2296] Corinth, Corinthian or Corinthians.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
1Co 15:12 . contrasts with the affirmation of all Christians (1Co 15:11 ) the contradictory dogma of . For their sake P. made the rehearsal of 1Co 15:1 ff. “But if Christ is preached, (to wit) that He is raised from the dead” not “it is preached that Christ, etc.”: the preaching of Christ is the preaching of His resurrection ; and (see 1Co 1:23 f., 1Co 2:2 ) are, both of them, predicates inseparable from ( cf. Rom 4:24 f., Rom 8:34 , 1Co 10:9 , 2Co 5:15 ; Act 17:18 , 1Pe 3:18 ; 1Pe 3:21 , etc.). For the pf. , see 1Co 15:4 . If this is so, “how (is it that) amongst you some say?” a crying contradiction, that Christ is preached as risen and is so believed by the readers, and yet some of them say, , “There is no (such thing as a) resurrection of dead (men)!” ( cf. the modern dogma, “Miracles never happen”), a sweeping denial of anything of the kind. The doctrine of the Sadducees (Act 23:8 ); cf. , for the Greeks, out of countless parls., schylus, Eumen ., 639 . The deniers are “some” (not many), quidam, quos nominare nolo (Mr [2297] : cf. 2Co 10:2 , etc., Gal 1:7 ): “were they the ‘few wise men’ of 1Co 1:26 ?” (Ed [2298] ). Their maxim belonged to the current “wisdom of this age” (1Co 1:20 , 1Co 3:19 f.). , of surprised expostulation, as in Gal 2:14 ; for the emphasis on , cf. Joh 14:9 , ;
[2297] Meyer’s Critical and Exegetical Commentary (Eng. Trans.).
[2298] T. C. Edwards’ Commentary on the First Ep. to the Corinthians . 2
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 1Co 15:12-19
12Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised; 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. 15Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; 17and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
1Co 15:12 “if” This is a first class conditional sentence, which implies Christ was being preached (cf. 1Co 15:11).
“how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead” The source of this denial of the resurrection probably had its origin in Greek philosophy (i.e., Gnosticism, see glossary), which thought the physical body was the source of evil. It is textually uncertain whether they were denying the resurrection of Christ or the resurrection of all believers. This was not a unique problem in the early church (cf. 2Ti 2:18).
1Co 15:13 “if” This is another first class conditional. It is often called by grammarians a ” simple” or “logical” condition (cf. 1Co 15:13-17; 1Co 15:19). Obviously in this verse Paul is using it to heighten his literary argument and not asserting that Christ has not been raised! But the logic in these next few verses is powerful. If Christ has not been raised then:
1. there is no resurrection at all, 1Co 15:13; 1Co 15:16
2. our preaching is vain, 1Co 15:14
3. your faith is vain, 1Co 15:14
4. they are false witnesses, 1Co 15:15
5. your faith is worthless, 1Co 15:17
6. you are still in your sins, 1Co 15:17
7. those who have died have gone, 1Co 15:18
8. we are of all men most to be pitied, 1Co 15:19
This theological issue of the resurrection of Christ is no minor issue! He is alive or Christianity is a lie! This is a watershed doctrine!
1Co 15:14; 1Co 15:17 “vain. . .worthless” These two different terms imply empty and fruitless. Without the resurrection the claims of the gospel message have no effect!
1Co 15:19 “if we have hoped in Christ in this life only” This is a first class conditional sentence. Paul is making the point that if Christ was not raised we only have hope (periphrastic perfect active) in this life because there is no afterlife-if Christ has not been raised!
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
from the dead. Greek. ek nekron. App-139.
among. App-104.
resurrection. Greek. anastasis. App-178.
the dead. No art. App-139.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
12-19.] On the fact of Christs Resurrection, announced in his preaching, and confessed in their belief, he grounds (negatively) the truth of the general Resurrection:-If the latter be not to happen, neither has the former happened:-and he urges the results of such a disproof of Christs Resurrection.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
1Co 15:12. ) if [since], an affirmative particle.-, how) The connection between the resurrection of Christ from the dead and the resurrection of the dead was extremely manifest to Paul. Those, indeed, who held a resurrection in general as a thing impossible, could not believe even in the resurrection of Christ.-) some, no doubt, of the Gentiles, Act 17:32.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
1Co 15:12
1Co 15:12
Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead,-The resurrection of Christ was the vital truth in their faith. It had been preached and believed by all Christians. On it their acceptance of Christ turned. It was the foundation stone of their faith. To deny this was to deny the faith and become an infidel.
how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?-Since all admit that Christ was raised from the dead, how can it be that there can be no resurrection? It was probably held by some that resurrection was impossible. To which Paul answered by demonstrating a fact, and showing that such an event had occurred, and that consequently all the difficulties were met. Facts are unanswerable demonstrations; and when a fact is established, all obstacles and difficulties in the way must be admitted to be overcome. He had established the fact that one had been raised, and thus met at once all the objections which could be arrayed against the doctrine.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Christs Resurrection Assures Ours
1Co 15:12-28
The argument here goes to show, first, that our resurrection is intimately connected with Christs. There must be such a thing, because he, as the representative of humanity, arose from the dead, in a human body which, though more ethereal in its texture, was easily recognizable by those who had known Him previously. Mary was recalled by the well-known intonations of her Masters voice. Thomas was compelled to believe, in spite of his protestations to the contrary. In fact, all of our Lords friends were convinced against themselves. They credited the tidings of the risen Lord as idle tales. Therefore, says the Apostle, it is far easier to admit that man will rise than to face the difficulties of a still buried Christ, a vain faith, a vain gospel, and a false testimony from so many accredited witnesses.
What a burst of music breaks forth in 1Co 15:20-28! The first fruit sheaf is the forerunner and specimen of all the harvest. In Christ the whole Church was presented to God, and we may judge of the whole by Him. Note the divine order in 1Co 15:23 : first, Christ; then, His own; lastly, the end, when death itself shall be destroyed, all enemies conquered, and the kingdom of an emancipated universe finally handed back by the Mediator to the Father.
Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary
Christs Resurrection, The Pledge Of Ours
1Co 15:12-20
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. (vv. 12-20)
In these verses the Holy Spirit develops for us and vigorously defends one of the great fundamental truths of Christian testimony. As we have noticed already, there were some in the Corinthian assembly who were raising questions as to the bodily resurrection of the saints. I do not suppose that they thought for one moment that people cease to exist when they die. One can hardly think of any real Christian believing that, but they doubtless thought, being influenced largely by the pagan philosophies with which they were familiar before their conversion, that the spirit lived on in another world, but as far as the body was concerned, when death came and it was laid away in the tomb, that was the end of it. They never expected to meet their loved ones again in physical form or to take again a material body. The apostle meets that as a definite error and shows what serious consequences such a view would necessarily involve. He asks, If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? This is the very foundation of Christianity. Everywhere the apostles went they preached Jesus and the resurrection. Our faith rests upon that.
The two great truths that Scripture teaches are that He was delivered up to death because of our sins, and that He was raised again as the token of God the Fathers satisfaction in the work that His Son accomplished. Thus as the risen One He ever lives, to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him (Heb 7:25). Some today have fallen into a similar error and teach that our Lord Jesus Christ never came out of the grave in His material body. They admit His existence in spirit, but deny His physical resurrection. But the great evidence that was given to the Christians of the earliest days that the Lord Jesus had actually settled the sin question, that redemption was completed, was the fact that He came out of the tomb in the very body that had gone into it, though changed in a most wonderful way. Nevertheless His was a real human body, and we know that it bore in the palms of the hands the print of the nails. There was still the mark where the Roman spear had pierced His side, and if I read my Bible correctly, I believe the raised body of the Lord Jesus will bear those marks for all eternity. In this it will differ from the bodies of all the saints.
I do not think there is any reason to believe that those who have been martyred for Christs sake will bear any evidence of suffering in their bodies; there will be no scar, neither spot nor blemish, nor any such thing. Our bodies will be absolutely perfect when raised and glorified. Why then should the body of our Lord Jesus bear those scars that speak of His sufferings and of His passion? Because these will be the visible evidences for all to contemplate throughout the ages to come that the very same Jesus who died for our sins upon the cross has been raised in the power of an endless life. The apostle John had a vision of heaven long years after the ascension of our Lord, and when he described the glorious central throne and other thrones surrounding it, he said, I beheld, and lo, in the midst of the throne and of the [living] ones, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain (Rev 5:6). That is, the glorified body of the Lord Jesus Christ had upon it the evidences that He was the One who had once been slain, who had been sacrificed on Calvary for our redemption. One of our poets has written:
I shall know Him, I shall know Him,
As redeemed by His side I shall stand,
I shall know Him, I shall know Him,
By the print of the nails in His hand.
Yes, He lives in heaven in the very body in which He once walked this earth, but that body is now changed and glorified. Christian testimony begins with this, and if one is seeking the way of life, if he inquires, What must I do to be saved? the answer comes in unmistakable clearness, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved (Rom 10:9 RV). Therefore, we have no right to think of any man as a Christian who denies the physical resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. What if Christ be not raised? Some say, If He is living in heaven, is that not sufficient? No! If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. If our Lord Jesus Christ did not come forth triumphant from that tomb, then we have no gospel to preach to lost men. If the body of Jesus still sleeps in the tomb, then you and I are absolutely hopeless, there is no salvation for us. The fact that He rose from the dead is the proof that the offering-up of Himself upon the cross satisfied the claims of divine righteousness, and met every requirement of infinite holiness. God Himself raised Him from the dead in token of His satisfaction in His work, and now sets Him forth a Prince and a Savior. This was the message the apostles preached.
Paul says, We preach Christ crucified, and that should be true of every one of us. But that was not all that he preached, for he preached Christ raised from the dead and Christ exalted to Gods right hand, for he says: Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
Somebody may ask, Why do you say that if Christ be not risen there is no way of knowing that redemption is an accomplished fact? You see, when our Lord was here on earth, He told His disciples that He was going to die. The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many (Mat 20:28). But He also told them, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again (Luk 24:7). If that last statement of the Lord Jesus Christ has never been fulfilled, then He stands convicted of false testimony. He either was Himself deluded in thinking that He was the Savior, the Redeemer who was to die for sinners and rise again, or else He was a deliberate deceiver. It is His resurrection, the fulfillment of His own prediction, that proves that He was the sacrifice for sin which He proclaimed Himself to be. Thank God, that testimony is true. We saw previously how God gave abundant witness to the resurrection of His beloved Son, how more than five hundred saw Him after He rose from the dead, and we remember the statement made by Horace Bushnell, The resurrection of Jesus Christ is absolutely the best attested fact in ancient history. You cannot think of any other incident in ancient history that has anything like the number of witnesses to its truth as we have to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.
My sins nailed Him to the cross. He, the sinless One, took my place and died under the judgment of God, but after the sin question was settled, after He had poured out His life, having died for us, three days were permitted to elapse to prove the reality of His death, then God brought Him back from the dead to declare His acceptance of the work of His Son. The resurrection is the testimony that God is satisfied and now can open His arms in love to every poor sinner in all the world and proclaim a full, free and eternal salvation for all who believe, through the work that His Son has accomplished.
If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. The only way that I know that my sins are gone is because He who made Himself responsible for them, who died for them, now sits enthroned at Gods right hand, and there are no sins on Him there.
I have often tried to illustrate it thus: Let my two hands speak of two persons. Let my left hand speak of my blessed Lord Jesus Christ and my right hand speak of myself, a sinful man. My Bible has a red cover; we will let it speak of my crimson sins, of my scarlet guilt, and as this red-covered Book lies on this right hand, let it be a picture of myself with those crimson sins all resting upon my soul. What am I going to do about it? I cannot cleanse my own heart. If I wash myself with snow water and make [myself] never so clean, says Job, yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me (Job 9:30-31). I cannot cleanse my heart, I cannot put away my sins. But see, here is the blessed Lord Jesus Christ, illustrated by this left hand of mine. There is no scarlet Book resting upon that hand because He was the sinless One, He knew no sin of thought or word or deed, He was absolutely the Holy One. But in grace He went to that cross of shame and was nailed upon the tree on Calvarys hill, and when He hung there, Jehovah laid on him the iniquity of us all. I transfer this red Book to the hand that represents Jesus. That crimson load that rested on me was transferred to Him when He hung on the cross, for then He was bearing the load of our sins. That explains the darkness that enwrapped His soul, the cry of anguish, My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
The Holy One who knew no sin,
God made Him sin for us;
The Saviour died our souls to win,
Upon the shameful cross.
Having borne sins judgment He descended to the grave and lay there for three days and three nights. During that interval no one in all the world knew whether His work was satisfactory, no one knew whether He had really settled the sin question. We thought, said the troubled disciples, that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel (Luk 24:21). They had no way of knowing whether it was true or not until, when the first day of the week came, He rose in triumph from the grave, and broke the bands of death asunder and now that hand, which represents Christ, has no red load upon it, for I have hidden that which stands for that load in this desk. There are no sins upon the risen Christ, for He has left them all behind in His open grave and has ascended to Gods right hand without them. The Irishman was right when he said, What a wonderful salvation! If anybody will have to be kept out of heaven because of my sins, it will have to be Jesus; but, blessed be God, they cannot keep Him out, He is there already. The resurrection is the proof that God is satisfied. I am not now in my sins, I know that Christ has put them all away, His resurrection tells me that since I have put my trust in Him I shall never again have to face that question.
The apostle concludes this section with these words, If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If Jesus has never been raised from the dead, then we are in a hopeless state, those who have trusted in Him are trusting in a bruised reed, we who are counting solely upon this risen Lord and upon the work He did have believed in vain. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men, not exactly, most miserable-for I suppose there are other very miserable men living for the Devil-but what he really says, I believe, is, We are of all men most to be pitied, for we have staked everything on the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because of our faith in Him we have given up the world and its pleasures and follies, we have become strangers and pilgrims in this scene, and now if there is no risen Christ, if this is all a mistake, we are going to lose both worlds. We gladly gave up this world because we thought we saw another above our heads, but that is only a dream, a fantasy, if Christ be not risen, and so we are of all men most to be pitied. The unconverted man can at least enjoy this present world, but the converted man says, There is nothing here for my heart, it has been won by that One who has gone over yonder, and for His names sake I have surrendered the things that other men live for down here. But what a blunder, what a mistake, if Christ be not risen! I am simply following a will-o-th-wisp that will land me at last in darkness and despair.
However, the apostle does not close this section with any such dreary suggestion. He says, But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept. There is no question about it. We know that He who died has been raised again. He Himself said, I lay down my life that I may take it again. He was put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit. The God of peacebrought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep (Heb 13:20). Christ is risen, and His resurrection is the earnest of ours. He has become the firstfruits of them that slept. Every Israelite understood that figure. The days of planting and the days of cultivation had gone by, the summer was ending, the harvest days just beginning, and the Israelite went out in his field and saw a fast ripening sheaf. He plucked it and presented it to the Lord in the temple or at the tabernacle gate as the firstfruits, the earnest of the coming harvest, and by-and-by when a few more days or weeks had gone by, he went back to that field and the ripened grain was everywhere, but the great harvest was like the sheaf of the firstfruits, it was the same in character, and so our Lord Jesus is the firstfruits of resurrection, the firstfruits of them that slept. By-and-by will come the day when all His own will be called forth from the tombs. That will be the glorious harvest and in that day every other one will be like the firstfruits. We shall be like Him, our blessed, glorious Lord; we too shall have resurrection bodies, we too shall be forever triumphant over death, and throughout an eternity of bliss we shall glorify the One who has redeemed us to Himself.
Fuente: Commentaries on the New Testament and Prophets
if: 1Co 15:4
how: 1Co 15:13-19, Act 26:8, 2Th 2:17
Reciprocal: Mat 13:27 – whence Mat 22:23 – which Luk 20:27 – the Sadducees Joh 2:19 – I will Joh 5:19 – for Joh 14:9 – how Act 2:24 – God Act 4:2 – preached Act 10:40 – General Act 24:15 – that Rom 9:19 – Thou 1Co 3:10 – and another 1Co 15:2 – keep in memory 2Co 11:29 – and I burn Col 1:28 – Whom 1Th 4:14 – if we 2Ti 2:18 – that
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
1Co 15:12. Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised (see on 1Co 15:4) from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Our apostle having asserted and proved the resurrection of Christ by ocular demonstration, by a plentiful testimony of those who saw him after he was risen, and withal informed them that this was the doctrine of the gospel which both he and the rest of the apostles had with one consent preached to them, he from hence infers the certainty and necessity of our resurrection. And because some of the church of Corinth were tainted with the wicked opinion of the Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection; therefore to strangle this monstrous opinion amongst the Corinthians in the birth, he shows the absurdity of it in these verses before us.
His first argument runs thus: If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ the head is not risen; for if the head be risen, he will certainly raise up his members. Christ’s resurrection is the cause, the pattern, and archetype of ours: he did not only raise his body from the grave, but his church with him. For indeed Christ is not perfectly risen, till all his members are risen with him, and raised like him. True it is, that Christ’s personal resurrection was perfect when he arose; and it is as true, that all believers arose representatively when Christ arose. But till all believers arise personally, the resurrection of Christ has not received its utmost perfection.
His next work is to prove the certainty of Christ’s resurrection, from the manifold absurdities which would follow upon the denial of it; as namely, first, if Christ be not risen, then the apostle’s preaching was vain, and their belief of it was vain also. Our preaching is vain; that is, we who in our preaching have so strongly asserted Christ’s resurrection as an infallible argument of the divinity of his person and doctrine, have taught you a vain and idle dream. And your faith in Christ, as risen from the dead, is no better than a fancy, vain also; seeing the object of it faileth, Christ as risen from the dead.
2. If Christ be not risen, then we are found false witnesses of God: that is, then St. Paul himself, and the other apostles, had given a false testimony of God to the world, in affirming that God the Father had raised up Christ his Son from the dead: which he did not do, if there be no resurrection of the dead. To be false witnesses for men, is a sin of no common guilt; but to belie God, and be false witnesses for God, is a sin of aggravated guilt, which the holy apostle could not be supposed to be guilty of.
Again, 3. If Christ be not raised form the dead, then we are yet in our sins; that is, under the guilt of our sins, and liable to condemnation for our sins: we are not justified and absolved from them, unless Christ has expiated the guilt of them; and this he has not done if he be not risen, but remains himself under the power of death; for he was raised again for our justification.
Farther, 4. If Christ be not risen, then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished; that is, the dead saints in general, and the holy martyrs and sufferers for Christ, in particular, who are fallen asleep, are perished utterly, and lost finally, if there be no resurrection: martyrs will then be great losers, and martyrdom great folly.
Lastly, Then Christians are of all men most miserable. As if the apostle had said, As those martyrs were arrant fools, and perished as such, who laid down their lives for Christ, if they have no hopes of a resurrection, when they shall take them up again; so we Christians that survive are the wretchedest creatures upon earth, who undergo all the sufferings and hardships of this life; and deny ourselves many comforts and advantages which we might enjoy.
If after this mortal life we have no hope, who would care to do well, or who would fear to do ill? Were this believed, none would live so fleshly and sensual a life as those that do not believe the resurrection of the flesh; and none would be so miserable in this life as the holy, self-denying Christian, had he not a hope after death of a glorious resurrection.
Learn hence, That true Christians would be more unhappy than any other men, if their happiness were confined to this life only: we are of all men most miserable. We Christians are more miserable than other mortals; and we apostles and ministers more miserable than other Christians, who like beacons upon the tops of mountains, stand open continually to all storms and tempests raised against us by men and devils.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
An Empty Hope Without A Resurrected Lord
Since the Corinthian brethren had accepted the fact of Christ’s resurrection, as supported by the verses we studied in the last lesson, the apostle wondered why some were saying there was not a resurrection? Anyone denying the general resurrection, had to deny that Jesus was raised ( 1Co 15:12-13 ; 1Th 4:13-14 ).
If Jesus was not raised, the preaching of the apostles was in vain. Too, the faith of all who believed that preaching stood on a worthless foundation ( Mat 12:39-40 ; Rom 1:4 ). In fact, Paul said their faith was vain, which literally means empty or void. If the dead are not raised, then Christ was not raised. If Christ was not raised, then the apostles had lied about what God had done. They would have been falsely accusing God of doing something he never did ( 1Co 15:14-15 ; Act 2:32 ; Act 17:30-31 ).
Paul reemphasized the most important part of the argument, which is found in verse 13, by saying Christ cannot be risen if the dead cannot be raised! Without a general resurrection, the faith of those in the Corinthian church was vain and they were still in sin ( Rom 4:25 ; Rom 6:23 ). Anyone who had already died in the midst of such an empty belief was damned. The apostles had only experienced persecution and death because of their teaching about Jesus as a resurrected Lord. In such a pitiable state, they surely would have abandoned their belief if they had have known it had no support ( 1Co 15:16-19 ).
Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books
Conclusions regarding the passage. 1Co 15:12-28.
On this passage we find four principal views:
1. Some, like Reuss, think that it applies throughout only to believers, and that it contains absolutely nothing in regard to unbelievers, because in the context Paul deals only with the development of true life.
2. Weiss and R. Schmidt go further. According to them, Paul holds absolutely no resurrection of the unbelieving. The latter, according to Paul, remain, without returning to life, in the gloomy existence of Hades.
3. Grimm holds, on the contrary, a universal resurrection, which will open up to all men, without exception, participation in eternal felicity.
4. Meyer thinks that our passage contains the idea of a universal resurrection, embracing unbelievers as well as believers.
This last viewpoint appears to me the only admissible one. The opinion of Reuss can hardly give an adequate explanation of 1Co 15:26; for the complete victory over death announced in this verse can only be found in a resurrection which will extend to all the victims of death without exception. This same passage seems to me also incompatible with the opinion of Weiss, notwithstanding the efforts this critic makes to harmonize it with the expressions of the apostle ( 99, note 4). 1Co 15:26 has no meaning unless it adds to the idea of 1Co 15:23 that of universal resurrection. Besides, we have the express words of Paul, Act 24:15 : Having hope in God, which they (the Jews) also share, that there will be a resurrection of the dead, of the just and of the unjust. Luke knew St. Paul sufficiently to avoid attributing to him on this point a declaration which would have been contrary to his view.
As to Grimm’s opinion, we have spoken of it already in connection with 1Co 15:22. We merely add here the words of Reuss regarding this view: Neither Paul nor any member of the primitive Church dreamed of it.
It must therefore be admitted with Meyer and the majority of the commentators, that Paul teaches a resurrection to life, and a resurrection to condemnation, agreeably to the Lord’s express declaration Joh 5:28-29, and to the delineation Rev 20:12-14. Return to the fulness of personal existence by the resurrection of the body is the necessary condition of judgment in the case of both.
Does St. Paul distinguish two epochs of resurrection?
Reuss, Weiss, and many others do not think that Paul distinguishes a first resurrection, that of believers, at the Advent, from a second general, and later, resurrection. 1Co 15:23 is sufficiently explained, according to Weiss, if it is supposed that Paul meant to anticipate this objection: Why, since Christ is raised, is no dead believer yet raised? The answer, according to Weiss, is: Each in his order; Christ first; the others afterwards, only at the time of His Advent. But is this contrast between Christ and believers sufficient to explain naturally the term , each, of 1Co 15:23? Besides, it is impossible to find, either in this passage or in any other part of the New Testament, the least trace of an objection like that which Weiss here imagines. In the passage 1Th 4:13 seq., Paul is not answering the objection: Why are our dead not raised? but the question: Why do we, believers, die before the Lord’s return?
Reuss and Weiss also allege that the Advent being, according to the whole of the New Testament, the signal of the end of things, there would not be between this event and the giving up of the kingdom to the Father the interval needed for a new act of resurrection. But we have seen, on the contrary, that Paul distinctly separates the Advent from the end (the giving up of the kingdom to the Father). Then the end, says he, when He shall give up the kingdom, when He shall have put down (or after having put down) His enemies… This putting down is an action which requires some time; now this action is, on the one hand, the consequence of the Advent, and, on the other, the condition of the end. It is therefore posterior to the one, anterior to the other. And if the victory over death is to take place in this period, and to mark its close, if moreover, as we have seen, it can only be found in universal resurrection, the distinction between two resurrections, that of believers and that of human beings in general, in Paul’s mind, can no longer be contested. The same conclusion follows clearly from Php 3:11, which can only apply to universal resurrection.
Moreover, there is nothing so wonderful in this idea of two resurrections in Paul’s writings. There are two sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke which prove that He taught exactly to the same effect, Luk 14:14 : Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just; this expression has no meaning unless it is contrasted with another resurrection, that of the unjust, Luk 20:35 : They who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection (literally: that) from the dead. This expression contrasts the first resurrection (that of the just from the dead) with the resurrection of the dead generally. Finally, we find the same distinction in the Apocalypse, Rev 20:6 : Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection!
Finally, let us compare the principal parallel passages in the New Testament on the subject treated in this section:
1. In 1Co 15:51 of our chapter there is described the resurrection of believers of which 1Co 15:23 speaks. Only an important circumstance is added, of which no mention is made here: the transfiguration of believers who are living at the time of the Advent. The apostle had no occasion to mention this detail in our passage. It is obvious how prudently the argument e silentio must be used in criticism.
2. 1Th 4:13-17. At the time of the Advent the dead in Christ risewhich implies that the rest do not rise,and living believers are carried to meet the returning Lordwhich implies a bodily transformation effected in them, precisely that which is expressly mentioned 1Co 15:51. There is therefore entire harmony between our passage and that of Thessalonians. The Advent will be accompanied by the resurrection of believers, and of believers only.
3. Php 2:9-11. Mention is made of the supreme elevation of the Messiah terminating in the universal homage rendered to His kingship throughout all the domains of heaven and earth, and places under the earth. This homage corresponds to the universal submission spoken of in 1Co 15:27 of our passage.
4. Revelation 20-21. Meyer, Grimm, and others hold that this passage is irreconcilable with ours. Let us see. The Advent was described at the end of the preceding chapter, from Rev 19:11. What takes place after this event?
Satan is cast into prison for a thousand years; then, being set free, he makes a last attempt to overthrow the work of God by destroying the community of the saints; after which he is finally judged and goes into the lake of fire to rejoin the Beast and the False Prophet who had been cast into it at the time of the Advent (Rev 19:20).
Does not this whole representation exactly correspond to what St. Paul called, in 1Co 15:24, the putting down of hostile powers, which takes place during the reign of Christ inaugurated by the Advent?
At the time of the Advent the saints, the martyrs, and all those in general who refused to take part in the work of the Beast, rise again, and thrones of judgment are given them (Rev 19:20).
This is the resurrection of believers mentioned in our 1Co 15:23. It is objected that only those martyrs and believers are mentioned who have overcome the test of the kingdom of Antichrist, and not those who have struggled and conquered during the whole course of the history of the Church. It is forgotten that from the New Testament point of view this last crisis is very near to the apostolic times. It is the last hour, says John (1Jn 2:18). The mystery of iniquity doth already work, says Paul, speaking of the work of the Man of Sin. The believers of the eighteen centuries which have followed are therefore implicitly included in those who are mentioned in the Apocalyptic description, as they are in our 1Co 15:23. Let us add, as an interesting parallel, what Paul said 1Co 6:2 of the judgment of the world and even of angels by the saints. The reign of Christ and of the Church of the risen is a time of judgment in Paul as well as in the Apocalypse.
At the end of the thousand years the resurrection and the last judgment take place; and death is cast into the lake of fire ( ). Here we have the most exact parallel to our 1Co 15:26, where death is destroyed, and destroyed as the last enemy.
The new heaven and the new earth replace the work of the first creation; the tabernacle of God ( ) comes down among men; God dwells with them, their God.
Had John meant to give a commentary on the last words of our 1Co 15:28 : And God shall be all in all, could he have done better?
And it is between these two representations that there are said to be insoluble contradictions! There are in each only one or two features which more particularly distinguish it from the other; in that of Paul: the giving up of the kingdom to the Father; in that of the Apocalypse: the indication of the duration of a thousand years as the interval between the Advent and the end, and the setting in relief of a last attempt on the part of Satan, at the end of the Messianic reign of Jesus, which leads to his final perdition. These special features only serve to demonstrate the originality and independence of the two conceptions.
5. If, finally, we consider the sayings of Jesus relative to His future Advent, it is evident that the Master’s coming described in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25), in that of the pounds (Luke 19), and in the parable of the virgins, refers to the Advent by which the Messianic kingdom will be inaugurated. The same is true of the prophecies relative to the preliminary division which on His return takes place within His Church, Luk 17:22-37, and in which some are taken, others left. These sayings refer to the Advent, when, according to Paul, those who are in Christ shall alone be raised (1Co 15:23). It is no less clear that in the great description of the final and universal judgment (Mat 25:31), we find ourselves face to face with an entirely different scene. Here it is not the members of the Church who are called to give account of the use of the gifts which they have received; it is all nations ( , all the Gentiles) who appear before the judgment-seat. As Edwards says: In Mat 25:31 a transition is unquestionably made from the resurrection of saints which takes place at the coming of Christ to the general judgment which takes place after that event. The , but when the Son of man shall come, seems therefore to denote a final coming, posterior to the Advent.
This doctrine of the apostle is not to be regarded as an importation into the gospel of his former Pharisaism. I believe it is impossible to cite a passage of Jewish theology really like that of our Epistle or the parallel passage of the Apocalypse (see Schrer, Geschichte des jdischen Volkes, 1886, 29).
There is a real harmony, therefore, between the different eschatological passages of the New Testament. Ewald himself pronounces on the central point of the question, when he says: Though Paul does not expressly mention the Millennium of Revelation 20, he yet places, between the preceding period and the end of that which follows, a sufficiently long interval filled with many various and considerable events. If this harmony is not recognised by Meyer, it is the consequence of his false interpretation of 1Co 15:23-24. It is, besides, perfectly legitimate to complete, as we have done, the one of these representations by details taken from the other, since we are obliged to do something similar with the various passages of St. Paul himself. Thus in 1Co 15:50-51 of our chapter he supplies the fact of the transformation of those Christians who shall be alive at the Advent, of which he says nothing in our passage, and in 1Th 4:15-17 he supplies the fact of their being caught up into the air, of which no mention is made in the two passages of our chapter.
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
12. But if Christ is preached that He is risen from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection from the dead?
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
1Co 15:12-19. How, in face of this preaching, can any Christian say there is no resurrection? If a resurrection of the dead is out of the question this involves a denial that Christ has been raised. This fact, however, stands fast for both parties. They have been convinced by the historical evidence, and on that conviction their Christianity rests. This exception disproves their universal negative. If Christ has not risen, the apostolic preaching, the readers faith, are alike a delusion. Worse still, they are found out as having told falsehoods about God (Pauls only alternatives are truthfulness and conscious deception, he knows nothing of hallucinations) in saying that He had raised Christ, which He could not have done if there is no resurrection. What terrible consequences follow! their faith empty, their sins unforgiven, those who have died as Christians perished! If in this life they had only hope (mg.) in Christ and nothing more, they were more pitiable than any. He does not mean that they would be objects of pity as having surrendered the solid substance of worldly advantage to grasp the shadow of future blessedness. It was pitiable that their life should be based on a fundamental delusion. Moreover, the guarantee for justification and power for a holy life disappeared with the resurrection of Christ.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
SECTION 28 SINCE CHRIST HAS RISEN, HIS PEOPLE WILL RISE CH. 15:12-34
But if Christ is preached, that He is risen from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of dead men? But if there is no resurrection of dead men, not even Christ is risen. And if Christ is not risen, empty then is our preached word, empty also your faith. And we are found to be also false witnesses of God, because we have borne witnesses against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, we should infer, if dead men are not raised, For if dead men are not raised, not even Christ is risen. And if Christ is not risen, vain is your faith; you are still in your sins.
We infer then that they also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we are only men who in this life have hope in Christ, more pitiable than all men are we.
But now Christ is risen from the dead, a firstfruit of the sleeping ones. For since through man is Death, also through man there is Resurrection of dead ones. For just as in Adam all die so also in the Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order. As firstfruit, Christ; then they that are Christ’s, at His coming. Then the end, when He gives up the Kingdom to the God and Father, when He shall have brought to nought all principality and all authority and power. For it must needs be that He reign as king till when He have put all the enemies under His feet. As a last enemy, Death is brought to nought. For, all things He has made subject under His feet. But whenever He shall say that all things are made subject, it is evident that it is with the exception of Him who made all things subject to Him. And, when all things have been made subject to Him, then also the Son will be made subject to Him who made all things subject to Him; that God may be all things in all.
Else what will they do who are being baptized on behalf of the dead ones? If, to speak generally, dead men are not raised why are they being baptized on their behalf? Why do we also incur danger every hour? Day by day I am dying; as witness, the exultation about you, brothers, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord. If with human aim I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what is the gain to me? If dead men do not rise, Let us eat and let us drink: for to-morrow we die. (Isa 22:13.) Be not deceived. Bad companionships corrupt good dispositions. Rouse up righteously: and do not sin. For, ignorance of God some have. To awaken shame, to you I speak.
By a question Paul now reveals his reason for stating the facts of 27, viz. that at Corinth some were saying that there is no resurrection of dead men. The precise intention and ground of this last assertion are discussed at the end of 28 and of DIV. VII. In 1Co 15:12-17 Paul refutes it by developing the facts of 27 and then refuting a necessary, though not expressly asserted, consequence of it. viz. that Christ has not risen: in 1Co 15:13-34 he refutes a second and avowed inference from the same chief error, viz. that there is no life beyond death. Thus, by refuting two necessary logical consequences, Paul overthrows the error itself. And in 29 he dispels a misconception on which in part the chief error rests.
1Co 15:12-13. Preached; takes up the same word in 1Co 15:11, which recapitulates 1Co 15:3-10. Paul does not assume here that Christ is actually risen, but merely that this is proclaimed, as described above. From this proclamation and its results he will prove the fact of the resurrection. Christ is preached. To proclaim that He rose is to proclaim HIM as Prince and Saviour. [The conspicuous perfects in 1Co 15:12-14; 1Co 15:16-17; 1Co 15:20 call attention to the abiding effect of Christ’s resurrection.]
How say etc.: question of astonishment, like 1Co 6:1. The present tense implies that they continued to spread their opinions.
Some among you: evidently church-members. Yet instead of requiring their expulsion as in 1Co 5:4 f, Paul reasons earnestly with them.
That the inference neither is Christ risen is stated, and in 1Co 15:16 repeated, without proof but with perfect confidence, implies that it was unmistakably involved in the assertion there is no resurrection of dead men. Consequently, this assertion must be taken as denying in the widest sense that a departed spirit can return to the body. For, in a narrower sense we might deny that a body dissolved in the grace can rise without denying that He rose Whose flesh saw no corruption. But the argument implies that no such limited denial was intended by the men referred to here.
1Co 15:14-17. Proof, from the facts of 27 summed up in 1Co 15:11, that the concluding words of 1Co 15:13 are false. Our preached-word (developed in 1Co 15:15) takes up we preached in 1Co 15:11 : your faith (developed in 1Co 15:17) takes up you believed. Both the word preached by Paul and the assurance with which the Corinthians received it would, if Christ had not risen, be empty, i.e. destitute of reality. Of these two assertions, the former is developed in 1Co 15:15. If Christ be not risen, the apostles are found out to be acting under false pretences and giving false testimony even about God.
Because we etc.; proves this, and carries it a step further. Since God has done all that is wise and good, to say that He has done what He has not done, is to bear witness against God.
Whom He did not raise not even Christ is risen: forceful repetition of the argument of 1Co 15:13.
1Co 15:17. Develops empty also is your faith in 1Co 15:14. For a belief which is empty, i.e. destitute of reality, must also be vain, i.e. barren of results.
In your sins: your former sins, as the element in which you still live and walk. Cp. Eph 2:2; Joh 8:24. This is better than to expound under the penalty of sin. For Paul evidently supposes that, without further disproof from him, these words will be at once contradicted by his reader’s inner consciousness, which would testify that they are no longer committing their own former sins. To the same conscious victory over sin he appeals in Rom 8:13 f. His readers knew well that they were no longer in their former bondage to sin.
Consequently, their faith was not without result. And, if so, it could not be empty credulity; nor could the men whose word they had believed with results so good be false witnesses against God. Yet these men had proclaimed as an essential element of the Gospel that Christ had risen. Therefore, the inward deliverance from sin enjoyed by the Corinthians was itself a proof that Christ had risen. Notice that here, as in Rom 6:17 ff; Eph 2:2 f, Paul assumes that all men have been sinners; and with great confidence and courtesy assumes that his readers have been saved from sin.
That Paul took so much pains to prove the first link of the argument of 1Co 15:13, viz. that Christ has risen, and no pains at all to prove the second link, viz. that His resurrection disproves the assertion that there is no resurrection, shows that the second point was so clear that it would be admitted at once, whereas the former might be doubted. But, that no mention is made of denial that Christ had risen, suggests that, though some at Corinth had denied the resurrection in a sense which, as they could hardly fail to see, excluded the resurrection of Christ, yet they had not thought fit to express their denial to its logical issue. Notice that Paul does not speak directly to the deniers, but to the members generally whom he wishes to protect against error taught in their midst, and with whom he reasons from spiritual facts of their own inner life.
1Co 15:18. Another inference, in addition to that of 1Co 15:13, logically involved in the assertion that there is no resurrection. The mere statement of this inference proves it to be false; and thus disproves the statement which involves it. If the dead are not raised, then not only are you in your sins but also they who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
Fallen-asleep: frequent metaphor of death, 1Co 7:39; 1Co 11:30; 1Th 4:13 ff; Mat 27:52; Joh 11:11; Act 7:60; Act 13:36; 1Ki 11:43; 2Ma 12:45. So Homer, Iliad bk. xi. 241: He fell down and slept a sleep of brass. It is specially suitable here: for we expect sleepers to awake. The metaphor is suggested so naturally by the appearance of the dead that it is utterly unfair to infer from it that they are unconscious. See 2Co 5:8. But they are at rest.
Fallen-asleep; directs attention to the event of death.
Perished: hopelessly ruined. Same word as destroyed, and lost: see Review of DIV. VII. and note under Rom 2:24. If dead men do not rise, and if consequently our hope of eternal happiness depends upon our surviving till Christ comes, then our departed brethren have lost their share in that happiness, and have thus lost everything and lost themselves. That this is absolutely impossible, Paul leaves his readers to judge. For it could not be conceived that they who had lived in Christ and gone down to the grave trusting in Him, whose very death had been an evident victory over death, had by the hand of death been separated from Him.
Grammatically we might connect 1Co 15:18 with the foregoing words, and take it as proof that we are not still in our sins. But to a Christian man this needs no proof. And, as expounded above, 1Co 15:18 is a complete and additional argument in support of the main thesis of 28, viz. that there is a resurrection of the dead. A similarly abrupt argument in support of this thesis, we find in 1Co 15:29.
1Co 15:19. An argument supplementary to the last. It implies that some who denied the resurrection were, or might be, nevertheless looking forward with hope to the coming of Christ and to the endless happiness He will bring. Now, if dead men be not raised, i.e. if they who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished, the realization of these hopes depends upon our surviving till Christ comes. And, if so, we and all our hopes are at the mercy of death: for they may be overturned at any moment by its approach. Our hopes, like worldly hopes, depend upon continuance in this life.
We are only men who in this life have hope of Christ. If so, men like Paul, whose life was one long peril of death, are in a position most pitiable: and their conduct in braving such perils (1Co 15:30) is inexplicable. For hopes most glorious hang upon a thread most slender.
The correctness of the foregoing exposition is confirmed by an important coincidence in 1Th 4:13 ff, where we learn that similar doubts existed at Thessalonica.
1Co 15:20. Triumphant assertion that Christ is risen, prompted by a deep consciousness how far from true were the suppositions involved in a denial of it; followed by an assertion that His resurrection is a pledge of ours.
But now: as in 1Co 12:18 : as things actually are.
First-fruit: Rom 8:23; Rom 16:5 : the first-ripe ears, which are a pledge and a part of the coming harvest. Cp. Col 1:18; Rev 1:5; and, in Appendix A, the Epistle of Clement, ch. 24.
1Co 15:21. Justifies the expression first-fruit, by explaining the connection therein implied between Christ’s resurrection and ours.
Through man, death: explained in Rom 5:12.
Through; denotes constantly Christ’s relation to us and our salvation. See under Rom 1:5. The conspicuous repetition through man also through man, embodies an important principle. God has linked men together so closely that each one receives good and ill through his fellows. This abiding relation revealed itself first in the father of our race, through whom comes death to all. And, that this relation might be a channel not only of ill but of surpassing good, Christ became man and made His humanity a channel of life to all who receive Him.
1Co 15:22. Explains and develops 1Co 15:21, thus continuing the justification of 1Co 15:20 b. The whole race and its fortunes were so wrapped in the one father of the race that the punishment inflicted upon him falls upon us: and all of us die because Adam died. We die now in virtue of our relation to one who died long ago.
So also etc.: triumphant parallel.
In Christ: in virtue of our relation to Christ. Since never once are unbelievers said to be in any sense in Christ, since the future state of the lost is never once called life, and since in the foregoing (firstfruit of the sleeping ones) and following (they that are Christ’s) verses Paul limits his view to believers, we must understand the words all all in this limitation. Only within these limits is 1Co 15:43 true. See note under Rom 5:18. That made-alive is perhaps sometimes used in the simple sense of restore to natural life, does not weaken this proof. For all men on earth are said to be alive: but never those who are dead and lost. [Hence the absence of , a word conspicuous in Rom 5:12; Rom 5:18, which refer (Rom 5:14) to the whole race.] It is true that all men die in Adam. But in this chapter Paul thinks only of believers. Similarly, he leaves out of sight, as not affecting the argument, those who survive till Christ comes. In consequence of his readers’ relation to Adam, every one of them will be laid in the grave: in consequence of their relation to Christ they will all be raised from the grave.
This doctrine rests, as do all the great doctrines of the Gospel (see under Rom 3:22, and Dissertation i. 3) simply and only on the authoritative word of God. That both good and bad will rise from the dust of death, was revealed to Daniel (Dan 12:2) in his last prophetic vision. It was solemnly announced by Christ, Joh 5:28 : and the resurrection of believers is announced by Paul to the Thessalonicans in the word of the Lord, 1Th 4:15. The abundant teaching of the New Testament makes us absolutely certain that it was taught by Christ. Our belief of it rests therefore upon the sufficient authority of Him Who will judge the world. Therefore, to deny the general resurrection, is to dispute this authority and thus practically to deny that God raised Christ from the dead. Consequently, we believe that we shall rise because we believe that He rose. And the connecting link between these beliefs is the express word of Christ. But to this express teaching Paul does not refer in this chapter. For he is dealing with an objection so sweeping that it includes a denial that Christ has risen. Perhaps also Paul knew that this objection to the resurrection of believers was really a covert attack on the resurrection of Christ.
1Co 15:23-28. The words will be made alive open to Paul’s gaze a vision of the future consummation he now describes. In doing so he traces further the relation between the resurrection of Christ and our own resurrection; and thus supports his assumption in 1Co 15:20 that the one is a pledge of the other.
1Co 15:23. Each in his own order: found twice word for word in the Epistle of Clement, chs. 37, 41; in reference to military array, and to church order. In the order in which the army of the redeemed marches forth from the gates of death each one keeps the place appropriate to his rank, i.e. the Captain marches first and His followers afterwards.
They that are Christ’s: 1Co 3:23; Gal 5:24 : evidently the saved, including those of the Old Testament and of the heathen world. These last, Christ claims expressly in Joh 10:16, Other sheep I have; and declares that they shall be brought into the One flock. Cp. Rom 2:26. That we are Christ’s, confirms the teaching that Christ’s resurrection is a pledge of ours.
At His coming: 1Th 2:19; 1Th 3:13; 1Th 4:15. It gives vividness to the picture by pointing to its most conspicuous feature, the visible return of Christ. This verse does not contradict Joh 5:28 f, viz. that good and bad men will rise together. For throughout 1 Corinthians 15, (cp. 1Co 15:43) Paul speaks only of the saved. Here, without denying that all the dead will rise at the same time, he says that Christ’s people will rise later than Himself; as in 1Th 4:16 that dead believers will rise before the living ones are caught up to Christ. Rev 20:4
refers only to the martyrs, who for Christ’s sake went down into the grave before their time, and who will have the honor of rising before the rest of the people of God.
1Co 15:24. The end: of the redemptive reign of Christ, as suggested by the words immediately following, and proved by the emphatic and prolonged reference in 1Co 15:25-28 to the end of Christ’s reign and to His submission to the Father. It is the completion of the age,
Mat 13:39; Mat 24:3; Mat 28:20. Meyer’s exposition, that the end is the resurrection of the unjust, cannot be allowed. For this, not being referred to in the whole chapter, would require specific mention. The word each in 1Co 15:23 does not necessarily imply more than two orders, i.e. Christ and His people. Of a third order, viz. the unsaved, not a word is said.
Gives up: as though Paul, in prophetic vision, saw Christ giving up the Kingdom.
When He gives up; expounds the end. After raising His people from death and thus completing their deliverance, Christ solemnly presents His finished work to the Father, the work which the Father gave Him to do: and this presentation will be the last act, the end, of His redemptive reign.
The God and Father: of Christ and of us. He is the Supreme Ruler of the universe and the Loving Parent of the whole family of heaven.
Brought to nought: same word in 1Co 2:6; Rom 3:3.
Principality, authority, power: Eph 1:21; Eph 3:10; Eph 6:12; Col 1:16; Col 2:10; Col 2:15; Tit 3:1 : evidently hostile powers (enemies, 1Co 15:25) human and superhuman. To the men of Paul’s day the hostile human powers were a terrible reality: the hostile spiritual powers are terrible now. Principality, suggests the first rank; authority, control over others; power, ability to produce results. The rank, as the most conspicuous feature, is mentioned first: from this flow the authority and power. 1Co 15:24 b suggests that till these exalted adversaries are overthrown the Son cannot give up the kingdom to God.
1Co 15:25. Proof that the giving up of the kingdom will be preceded by the overthrow of all hostile powers, by an appeal to a necessity resting on the immovable purpose of God as revealed in ancient prophecy.
Must-needs: same word in Mat 16:21; Mat 17:10; Mat 24:6; Mat 26:54; Luk 24:7; Luk 24:26; Luk 24:44; Joh 3:14; Joh 20:9; Act 1:16; Act 3:21; Act 17:3, etc.
Reign-as-king: in contrast to give up the kingdom.
He have put etc.: viz. Christ. For nothing suggests a change of subject.
All the enemies: of him and us. This is an almost exact quotation of Psa 110:1. The similar quotations in Mat 22:44; Mar 12:36; Luk 20:42; Act 2:34; Heb 1:13, prove how familiar it was to the early church, as a prophecy about Christ, from the lips of David. And to Christ, Psalms 110 certainly refers. For it speaks of One who is both David’s king and a priest of an order of Aaron. Now this prophecy declares that on the right hand of God Christ shall sit, ruling among His enemies, until their power shall be utterly destroyed. Therefore, not till then can He give up to God His redemptive reign. For not till then will His redemptive work be complete, or this prophecy fulfilled.
1Co 15:26. This simple assertion unfolds a truth implied in the just quoted prophecy.
Is-brought-to-nought; portrays the overthrow of death as though now taking place. All the enemies in 1Co 15:25 certainly includes death. For death silences lips which once gave praise to Christ, and binds hands which gladly did His bidding. And, if an enemy, death must, according to the prophecy, be conquered. To Paul’s eye of faith the conquest is already taking place. And when this foe is conquered, all are conquered. It is therefore the last enemy.
1Co 15:27 a. Another proof, viz. an exact quotation of Psa 8:6 (quoted also in Heb 2:6,) that death is set aside. In the creative purpose of God, the entire universe was put under man’s power. By man’s sin this has been reversed: and man is now in some sense at the mercy of material forces over which he was originally destined to rule. But the purpose of the Creator cannot in the end be set aside. It will be accomplished through Christ; who became man that He might claim its accomplishment, and recover for Himself and for His brethren their lost rule over the universe.
And, therefore, until all things are put under the feet of Christ and of His people, His work will not be complete. Now, of all forces in the world, material and spiritual, least under the control of man is death. Before that dread conqueror all men bow. Therefore, the original creative purpose of God, which Christ came to accomplish, implies the overthrow of death.
He has put etc.: probably God, as in the passage quoted, and in Eph 1:22. For in 1Co 15:27 b God is said to put all things under Christ. But Paul is not careful to specify this: for it is a victory equally of the Father and the Son. Cp. Php 3:21. It is, however, better to attribute the victory to the Son in 1Co 15:25 and to the Father in 1Co 15:27, because of the prominence given to each in each of these verses respectively.
Both Psa 110:1 and Psa 8:6 are virtually proofs that the people of God will rise from the dead. Cp. Php 3:21. For their death is death’s victory over them, and in some sense over Christ, whose they are. As long as their bodies are in the grave the temple of God is a prey to corruption; and their souls are exiles from the world which God created to be their dwelling and their throne. Now this thwarting of the purpose of God cannot be for ever. The grave must give up its prey: and man clothed once more in a body, human though glorified, must reign over a renewed world. And all this will be Christ’s work, and a result of His resurrection. Thus, from ancient prophecy, Paul has made good his assertion that Christ is risen as a first-fruit of the sleeping ones.
1Co 15:27 b. After justifying when He have brought to nought etc., Paul now develops when He gives up etc., in 1Co 15:24. Thus, as usual, he rises from the Son to the Father. And, in doing so, he strengthens, as we shall see, the argument involved in 1Co 15:25 ff that Christ’s people will rise.
When He shall say: when God shall declare that the ancient prophecy is now accomplished, and that all things are at length put under the dominion of man as represented in, and united with, Christ. [The Greek perfect, are-made subject, directs our attention to the abiding effect of God’s subjecting all things to Christ.]
It is evident etc.: conspicuous declaration that when the universe will bow to Christ there will be One who will not bow, one exception to the universal homage. This is evident from the words Thou has put, (as quoted by Paul, He has put,) which are solemnly and conspicuously repeated at the end of 1Co 15:27, and which imply that the subjection of all things to Christ is a work, not of Christ, but of One other than He.
1Co 15:28. Having thus prepared the way, Paul now states in another form what he has already stated in 1Co 15:24, viz. that in the moment of His supreme triumph the Son will bow to the Father.
Will-be-made-subject: a suitable expression; for the Son’s submission, though embraced willingly and cordially by Him, does not originate in His will, but is obedience to the law of His own eternal existence and corresponds with His essential relation to the Father. This verse suggests that Christ will then become subject to the Father in a sense in which He is not now; and in this it is confirmed by 1Co 15:24 a. We are also told that the Son will be made subject to the Father in order that God may be all things in all. This suggests that the Son’s submission is needful for the complete restoration (cp. Col 1:20) of the universe to its right relation to the Father. All things in all persons, probably: i.e. in the inner subjective life of each one, God is to fill up the whole place and be recognized as the one source of all we have and are, the one ruler directing our entire conduct, and the one aim of our entire activity. Cp. Col 3:11.
The bearing of these last words on the final destiny of those who die unsaved, I hope to discuss elsewhere. That Paul does not say all men, (as in Rom 5:12; Rom 5:18,) and does not refer in 1 Corinthians 15 to those who die without Christ, warns us not to assume that this purpose embraces them.
In this view of the mysterious words of 1Co 15:24; 1Co 15:28 touching the relation of the Eternal Son to the Eternal Father, rather than speak, the expositor would prefer to bow in silent adoration. But what God has spoken we cannot forbear to re-echo. These verses teach the absolute and eternal submission of the Son to the Father. And, even when receiving the homage of the Son, the Father is spoken of by Paul, not as we should say God the Father as distinguished from God the Son, but simply as God. And to Him the Son bows with the express purpose that thus the Father may be everything in the eyes and thought of all His servants. This absolute subordination of the Son has been already clearly marked in 1Co 3:23 and 1Co 8:6; and is recognized throughout the New Testament. But its most complete expression is in this verse.
That from the moment of His final triumph the Son will bow to the Father in a sense in which he does not now, must be expounded in harmony with Luk 1:33, Of His kingdom there will be no end; and with Rev 11:15, The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and His Christ’s: and He will reign for ever and ever. In this latter passage the united reign of the Father and Son is described by the remarkable words, He will reign. Perhaps the following imperfect human comparison may help to harmonize these apparently contradictory assertions. Conceive a king who never leaves his palace, but commits all public acts of royalty to his son, who performs them in the name, and at the bidding, and according to the will, of his father, whose will his son always approves. Such a son we might call a sharer of his father’s throne; and, in another sense, the sole ruler of his father’s realm. Conceive now that a province is in rebellion, and that, to bring it into submission, the king invests his son, for the time of rebellion with full royal authority. The son begins in person the war against the rebels; but before its completion he returns to the capital in which his father reigns and directs thence the way until order is completely restored. Even in the presence of his father he exercises the full regal authority given to him for the suppression of the revolt. While the rebellion lasts he seems to be an independent ruler; though really ruling only at the bidding, and to work to the will, and restore the authority, of his father. But, when order is restored, the son gives back to the father this delegated royalty: and even the apparent independence of the son’s rule ceases. Henceforth the father reigns with undisputed sway.
The difference between the special authority delegated to the Son for the suppression of the revolt and afterwards laid down and the abiding authority of the Son as the Father’s representative, I cannot define. Probably it is connected with the fact that in consequence of sin the Son did what the Father never did, viz. became man and died. May it not be that in consequence of this he exercises now an authority which is specially His own, and which will continue only for a time?
In 1Co 15:25-27 a we found an argument for the resurrection of the people of God. Of this argument Paul has now shown the full force by setting it in the light of that day when Christ will give up to the Father His finished work. For that work cannot be pronounced complete while bodies which were once the temple of God are still held fast by the grave and while the spirits of the saved are still exiles from the world which was created to be their home.
1Co 15:29. Another argument against the teaching (1Co 15:12) that there is no rising up of dead men. Since it deals with the chief topic of 28, we need not suppose any special reference to the foregoing words. The force of this argument, we cannot now reproduce with certainty. For, not only is it directed against an error unknown to us except through Paul’s refutation, but it rests upon a custom also unknown. We may provisionally accept the hypothesis that the opponents referred to taught that there is no life beyond the grave and that the hope of immortality rests upon the hope of surviving the coming of Christ. See end of 28. And we can only guess at a custom in the Corinthian church which might be described by the words being baptized on behalf of the dead ones, and to which Paul could point as a witness against the teaching he combats.
Chrysostom tells us in his homily on this passage that the followers of the heretic Marcion, when a catechumen dies among them, hide a living man under the bed of the dead one, and come to the dead man and ask whether he wishes to receive baptism. Then, when he answers nothing, the hidden man says from beneath, instead of him, that he wishes to be baptized. And so they baptize him instead of the deceased. Epiphanius says (Heresies xxviii. 7) that the followers of Cerinthus baptized others in the name of those who died without baptism, lest when they rose in the resurrection they should be punished for not having received baptism. Now we can well conceive that this custom, which lingered only in small sects, was a perversion, both in practice and doctrine, of an innocent and appropriate custom existing at Corinth in Paul’s day. We may suppose that, for those who died in faith but not yet baptized, others, either baptized members or catechumens, received the rite, perhaps in some cases at the request of the dying man, as a testimony to the church of his faith; that thus he might have, though dead, a name and a place in the church. If death-bed baptism were not practiced in the apostles’ days, (and we have no proof that it was,) this custom of vicarious baptism might easily arise; and would naturally fall into disuse as death-bed baptism became common. Such a custom might easily be described, without supposing any spiritual benefit to the dead man from the rite, as being baptized on behalf of the dead ones. For the rite was performed to supply an omission on their part; and sometimes at their request. And it would be a strong testimony on the part of the dying man, of those who took part in the rite, and of those who approved it, that a happy life beyond death awaits those who died in Christ. For if, as some (1Co 15:12) said, a place in the future kingdom of God depends on surviving to His coming, the dead believer’s faith is made vain, and himself destroyed, by his death. For one who has thus failed by the failure of his earthly life surely no sacred rite would be performed. Such a rite might easily degenerate into the foolish form ridiculed by Chrysostom, and into the false teaching mentioned by Epiphanius. But in itself it would be innocent and appropriate; and might be mentioned by Paul without disapproval. If it was sanctioned by the church at Corinth generally, Paul’s argument would be an appeal to the faith of the whole church, as against a minority probably small.
Else; introduces a reductio ad absurdum, as in 1Co 5:10; 1Co 7:14. In thought Paul sees men receiving the rite, being baptized on behalf of the dead ones; and asks what they are going to do, what result they will obtain. He gives force to his question by repeating it.
If dead men are not raised, states in full what is implied in else.
To-speak-generally declares (cp. 1Co 5:1) that the words following state a universal truth. Paul asks why men go so far as to be baptized for dead men if these do not rise. No reason can be given. For, as Paul and his readers assume, (see review of DIV. VII.,) if dead men do not rise there is no life beyond death. Consequently, the dead are lost. And their faith has been vain: for by death they have been (1Co 15:18) separated from Christ. But, if so, to commemorate their faith by receiving baptism for them, is absurd. Thus the custom in question, sanctioned probably by the whole church, attests the faith of the church that their departed brethren are safe and that the dead in Christ will rise. Similarly, Cicero appeals (Tusculan Disputations bk. i. 12) to funeral rites as proof of the general belief of mankind that there is a life beyond the grave.
[Canon Evans, in the Speaker’s Commentary, denies to any meaning more definite than that conveyed by ; giving to these words practically the same sense. But this is very unlikely, especially as in the N. T. we never find the local sense of with genitive. He confuses the matter by combating in the same breath the wholly different meanings on behalf of and instead of. This latter sense, I believe, in the N.T. the word never has. But it is always associated with the idea of assistance or benefit or furtherance, an idea suitably conveyed by the rendering on behalf of, cognate with help. This idea distinguishes the prepositions. In the N.T. the mental bending over is never mere contemplation and nothing more, but has always reference to benefit or furtherance.
This ever-present idea accounts for the much greater frequency of this preposition with persons than with things or abstract of this preposition with persons than with things or abstract terms. But even with these last the same idea is easily traceable. So in 1Co 15:3; where Canon Evans has no right to impute inconsistency to Meyer, who renders on account of our sins, i.e. in order to atone for them. For Christ thus renders us infinite benefit, by saving us from our sins. (So we sometimes say Do my cough good, to denote relief from it.) In Rom 4:24 our sins are differently represented, viz. as a motive ( with acc.) prompting God to surrender His Son. The idea of assisting and promoting is prominent in 2Co 12:15, on behalf of your souls, i.e. to save them; 2Co 12:19, of your edification; 2Co 1:6, of your exhortation and salvation; 1Th 3:2, of your faith, i.e. to strengthen and widen it; Rom 1:5, of the Name of Christ, i.e. to make it honorably known; Joh 11:4, of the glory of God explained by the following words. Hence we have thanks on behalf of (2Co 1:11) benefited persons, or of (1Co 10:30) benefits received: and hope (2Co 1:6) for benefits to come. Paul’s boasting on behalf of his readers (2Co 7:4; 2Co 7:14) is represented as a tribute of honor to them. In Phm 1:13 Paul courteously suggests that by caring for him in prison at Rome, Onesimus would carry out the wishes of Philemon. And in 2Co 13:8 is itself a sufficient contrast to . The constancy of this idea compels us to interpret 1Co 15:29 as meaning that in some way the persons referred to rendered service to, or carried out the wishes of, the dead ones on whose behalf they were baptized.
Canon Evans, following Chrysostom and the Greek Fathers, supposes that , on behalf of the dead ones, means , on behalf of resurrection of dead ones; and that in baptism express confession was made of the resurrection of the dead. If Paul meant this, these very words would have been the most appropriate, and a very crushing, mode of stating it. The repetition on behalf of the dead ones, of them, makes very conspicuous the persons in whose interest, in contrast to those upon whom, the rite was performed. Whereas, practically, the exposition before us makes these identical. For, the hope of resurrection was primarily a hope that the baptized will themselves rise. Moreover, as thus expounded, this would be an appeal to the whole church: for all had been baptized. The third person suggests that Paul refers only to a part of the church. Lastly if there had been, as Chrysostom says, an express confession at baptism of belief in the resurrection, it is not likely that those who denied it would retain their place in the community of the baptized. For their denial would be an explicit disavowal of their baptism.
The exposition of the Greek Fathers does not seem to me to account for, and justify, Paul’s words. My own exposition is, in the absence of historic proof, simply a suggestion which would account easily for all the facts of the case. Among these last must be counted the customs ridiculed by Chrysostom and Epiphanius. For they must have had an origin. And it is much more likely that heretics would pervert an existing custom than invent a new one. If the custom in question was suggested by the words before us, this would only prove that, in the mind of Greek-speaking Christians of the second century, the words were not fairly accounted for by the existing and ordinary rite of baptism. And this I now say. Certainly the many-sided and far reaching heresy of Marcion cannot be said to have been founded on this text!
The exposition I have given is slightly modified from one found in Ambrosiaster. Tertullian twice (Against Marcion bk. v. 10, and On Resurrection ch. 48) quotes this verse; but does not expound it.
1Co 15:30-31. Why do we also: in contrast to why are they also baptized etc., introducing a new appeal, viz. to the conduct of Paul and his colleagues, in proof of life beyond death. He thus appeals to the respect for himself, which, he knows, still lives, in spite of a factious minority, in the hearts of his readers.
We; cannot be exactly defined. It simply indicates that what Paul says applies to others besides himself. Cp. Rom 1:5. If there be no resurrection of the dead, and therefore no life beyond death, Paul’s exposure of himself to peril is infinite folly. For he thus risks in the same moment both the present life and the life to come. If eternal happiness depends upon living till Christ comes, then deadly peril must above all things be avoided.
Every hour: vivid picture of the apostle’s constant danger. Cp. Rom 8:36. This danger, 1Co 15:31 depicts in still darker colors.
I-am-dying: same as we are always being given up to death, in 2Co 4:11. Not that each day he actually dies, but that the process of death is ever going on; as though every day the executioner were already at work putting him to death. In proof of this he appeals to his own exultation (see under Rom 2:17) about the Corinthians. The very joy and gratitude evoked by his thought of them recalls the peril he has endured for their salvation.
Which I have: as though his exultation about them were an enrichment to himself.
In Christ Jesus: only in the inner spiritual life which he lives in contact with his Master Christ, does Paul exult above the Corinthians. Notice the force of this appeal to the heart of his brethren. In spite of many defects, they are precious to him. As he stands before his Master, the thought of them gives him joy. And this joy reminds him, and will remind them, of the peril with which it has been purchased.
1Co 15:32 a. Another question parallel to, and supporting, that of 1Co 15:30.
With human aim: taking as a standard of conduct men with their purposes and practices. Same words in 1Co 9:8; 1Co 3:3; Rom 3:5; Gal 3:15. If Paul had ever been cast into the arena to fight with actual wild beasts, his deliverance must have been little less than a miracle; and so terrible an event would not have been omitted in 2Co 11:23 ff. We therefore infer, as would his readers unless they knew he had actually fought in the arena, that these words describe deadly enemies encountered during Paul’s long sojourn at Ephesus. They are a terrible picture of the perils which culminated in the uproar of Act 19:23. He was surrounded by men thirsting for his blood, men against whose fury he was as powerless to defend himself as were the captives thrown to lions in the amphitheater. Cp. Tit 1:12; 2Ti 4:17. So Polycarp, (Ep. to the Romans ch. v.,) after speaking of being literally thrown to wild beasts, says: From Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and by sea, night and day, being bound to ten leopards, i.e. a band of soldiers. Also Ep. to the Smyrnans ch. iv.: Guard against the wild beasts in human form. Notice the climax, incur danger, die, and the most terrible kind of death, hopeless conflict with lions or panthers. Paul asks If my voluntary exposure to this deadly peril be from the worldly motives common to men, what is the worldly gain for which I look? No such gain can be conceived. Consequently, his self-exposure was not from worldly motives. In other words, it was a proof that he believed in a life beyond death. And, that this belief was correct, the admiration which his heroism evoked bore strong testimony. The force of the argument that unless there be a life beyond death moral heroism has often no reward has been felt in all countries and ages.
1Co 15:32 b. In contrast to his own conduct which is reckless folly if there be no resurrection, Paul now depicts conduct which a denial of the resurrection would justify. And, to reveal the gross impropriety of such conduct, he puts it in the form of advice. If this teaching be true, it would be right for me to advise you to enjoy the present: for the present is all we have to enjoy. And the readers would recognize in the words Let us eat we die an exact quotation of Isa 22:13, a description of conduct in Jerusalem which, the prophet declares will be punished with death. That the teaching Paul combats is utterly destructive of a heroism which claims our admiration, and that it prompts to conduct condemned by both man’s moral instinct and by the Scriptures, proves the teaching to be untrue.
1Co 15:33-34. Be not deceived: in a similar connection, 1Co 6:9. The solemn earnestness of these words suggests that some at Corinth actually accepted, though perhaps unconsciously, the foregoing practical and immoral inference from this false teaching.
Excellent dispositions, bad companionships corrupt: a line of poetry found in the surviving fragments of the Athenian comic dramatist Meander, who died B.C. 291. Paul rebukes the immoral inferences from the false teaching at Corinth by quoting the words of a pagan. He thus confirms the voice of God (in Isa 22:13) by the general moral sense of man. Whether he had read the comedies of Meander, or only quoted this line, as many quote Shakespeare now, from hearsay, we cannot determine. An important coincidence is found in Act 17:28, where a similar quotation is attributed to Paul. So Tit 1:12.
Bad companionships: intercourse from time to time with bad men. He refers probably, as 1Co 15:32 suggests, to those who denied the resurrection.
Rouse-up: as though overcome by sleep or intoxication. Same word in Joe 1:5, Rouse up, drunken ones. Like be not deceived, it is an appeal to the whole church, whose spiritual sense had become stupefied.
Righteously: in a manner corresponding with the principles of right.
Sin not: result of rousing thus.
For some etc.; justifies the exhortation by pointing to the need for it.
Some: evidently church-members. Otherwise the mention of them would not put the church to shame.
Ignorance of God: interesting coincidence with Mat 22:29. It leads both to a denial of the resurrection and to practical immorality.
Arouse righteously is parallel to be not deceived; ignorance of God etc., to bad companionships. Paul wishes his readers not to be deceived: and then, fearing that deception has already begun, he urges them to arouse from its influence. The men against whom he warns are bad company; because they know not God.
To awaken shame: that they have such men in their midst. This suggests that they ought to be expelled from the church.
The earnestness of 1Co 15:33-34 implies that the denial of the resurrection was already producing immoral results. There were men in the church whose presence was a shame to it, because they knew not God. Paul therefore exhorts his readers sharply to arouse from stupor and avoid sin, and warns them that bad company injures even the well-disposed. The immoral maxim in 1Co 15:32 suggests that the false teachers were bad men. And Paul’s concluding rebuke implies that they ought to be no longer in the church. He does not command their expulsion; but leaves this to the Christian sense of the community.
SECTION 28 presents special difficulties. Like all refutations, it can be understood only by understanding first the teaching refuted: but this is known to us only through the arguments we are now seeking to understand. We will therefore attempt to gather from 28 itself all indications about the false teaching it combats: and we will then build up in our own words its various arguments.
We notice that, although Paul proves at great length that Christ has risen, he simply asserts, and asserts twice, with perfect confidence but without proof, that Christ has risen. From this we infer with certainty that the denial at Corinth was an absolute denial of the possibility of bodily life for those who have died. For, a denial merely based on the dissolution of the body would not cover the case of Christ. The argument of 29 suggests that some denied the resurrection because our present bodies are unsuitable to the future life. That Paul contents himself with simply asserting that the Corinthian denial involves a denial that Christ has risen, suggests that this logical consequence must have been so clear that it could not escape the deniers themselves; and that, at least in their hearts, they were prepared to accept it. But Paul’s silence about any express denial that Christ had risen suggests that this consequence had not been formally stated. That Paul meets the denial by arguments of which some do not prove expressly that the dead will rise, implies that both he and the false teachers held that without resurrection there can be no abiding life beyond death. With this agrees Luk 20:37, where Christ disproves the Sadducean denial of the resurrection by proving that the dead servants of God still live. Contrast the Phaedo of Plato and the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, where life beyond death is strongly asserted but no hint given of resurrection. Paul and his readers evidently assumed that for beings consisting of spirit and body and created to dwell on earth there could be no abiding future life without a return to earth and a reclothing of the spirit in a human though glorified body. That Paul does not speak expressly of denial of life beyond death, but only of denial of the resurrection, suggests that the former denial was based upon the latter, in some cases probably upon the essential unsuitability of our present bodies for a future life. The assertion that dead men cannot rise, and that therefore there is no life beyond death, Paul meets in 28 by proving that Christ has risen and by direct proofs that there is a future life; and by showing in 29 that future bodily life does not imply bodies exactly like we now wear. Probably many Corinthians believed, as did some Greeks in Plato’s day, (see quotation in Review of DIV. VII.,) that at the moment of death the spirit ceases to be.
Since the deniers of the resurrection were members of a Christian church, we must suppose that, just as the Sadducees of Luk 20:27 were followers of Moses, so they believed in part the Gospel of Christ. We may conceive that they believed that God accepts as righteous through the death of Christ all who believe and gives to them His Holy Spirit, and that Christ will return to judge the world and to receive His people into glory; but that, since resurrection is inconceivable, our hope of glory depends upon surviving to the coming of Christ. Thus they had (1Co 15:19) hope in Christ, but a hope contingent on present bodily life. That these were their views is made probable by 1Th 4:13 ff, where we find similar views prevalent in another Gentile church. In this latter case, however, the doubts about the resurrection of dead believers did not involve (see 1Co 15:14) doubt that Christ had risen: nor had it led to immoral consequences. It was honest doubt, producing sorrow; not confident and outspoken denial, as at Corinth.
That the denial we are studying was perilous to morals, suggests that in the deniers even the expectation of Christ’s coming had lost power. For this expectation was itself a sufficient motive for sobriety; and is so used in 1Th 5:4 ff. Probably, they were Christians only in name.
In disproof of teaching which clearly involves a denial that Christ has risen, Paul expounds the significance of the facts, historical and spiritual, stated in 27. He and others had asserted that Christ has risen: and their preaching had been the means of saving many at Corinth from the dominion of their former sins. If Christ had not risen, their testimony was a lie against God. And it could not be conceived that a lie would save men from their sins. Again, the Corinthian denial involves, as all admitted, a denial of life beyond death. Therefore, if true, it implies that those who have died trusting in Christ have, by their peaceful and heroic death, lost all; and that the men who cherish hopes of endless glory, hopes liable to be at any moment destroyed for ever by the hand of death, are indeed to be pitied. Since death is evidently an enemy to the Christian, it is destined by ancient prophecy to be trampled under the feet of Christ. And till this enemy is compelled to give up its prey the Son cannot present to the Father His finished work. The church at Corinth has itself condemned this error, by favoring the vicarious baptism of those who have died unbaptized. And the perils to which the apostle daily and willingly exposes himself are a loud expression of his own belief. In absolute contrast to these perils, a denial of the resurrection would justify immoral maxims condemned both by the Old Testament and by heathen writers. In view of this, Paul bids his readers examine whether the presence in their midst of deniers of the resurrection is not already producing immoral results.
Fuente: Beet’s Commentary on Selected Books of the New Testament
15:12 {3} Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
(3) The first argument to prove that there is a resurrection from the dead: Christ is risen again, therefore the dead will rise again.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
2. The certainty of resurrection 15:12-34
In the preceding paragraph Paul firmly established that the gospel the Corinthians had believed contained the fact that God had raised Jesus Christ bodily, along with other equally crucial facts. Next he proceeded to show the consequences of rejecting belief in the resurrection of the body.
"Paul uses reductio ad absurdum: if there is no resurrection (i.e., of believers in the future), then Jesus did not rise (1Co 15:12-13), a point on which he dwells at length (1Co 15:12-19, where Paul provides rhetorical emphasis through a series of seven if-then statements)." [Note: Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, p. 126.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
The negative alternative 15:12-19
Paul first appealed to the Corinthians’ logic. In this form of logic, called modus tollens, Paul’s argument was that since Christ was raised there is a resurrection of believers. That Paul had believers in view, rather than all people, seems clear in that he was discussing the hope of believers. Other passages teach the resurrection of other groups of people, even all others (e.g., Dan 12:2; Rev 20:4-5; Rev 20:12; et al.). Here it becomes clear for the first time in the chapter that some of the Corinthians were saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. If they were correct, Christ did not arise, and they had neither a past nor a future.
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Belief in the resurrection of the body seems to have been difficult for Greeks to accept in other places as well as in Corinth (cf. Act 17:32; 2Ti 2:17-18). Evidently some of the Corinthian Christians were having second thoughts about this doctrine.
"These deniers apparently believe that those who are truly ’spiritual’ (in the Corinthians’ sense) are already ’reigning with Christ’ in glory (see 1Co 4:8)." [Note: Furnish, p. 74.]
"On the whole the Greek did believe in the immortality of the soul, but the Greek would never have dreamed of believing in the resurrection of the body." [Note: Barclay, The Letter . . ., p. 156.]
Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)
Chapter 23
CONSEQUENCES OF DENYING RESURRECTION
IN endeavoring to restore among the Corinthians the belief in the resurrection of the body, Paul shows the fundamental place occupied in the Christian creed by the resurrection of Christ, and what attestation His resurrection had received. He further exhibits certain consequences which flow from denial of the Resurrection. These consequences are (1) that if there is no resurrection of the body, then Christ is not risen, and that, therefore, (2) the Apostles who witnessed to that resurrection are false witnesses; (3) that those who had already died believing in Christ, had perished, and that our hope in Christ must be confined to this life; (4) that baptism for the dead is a vain folly if the dead rise not.
To the statement and discussion of these consequences Paul devotes a large part of this chapter, from verse 12 to verse 34 (1Co 15:12-34). Let us take the least important consequence first.
1. “If the dead rise not at all, what shall they do who are baptised for the dead?” (1Co 15:29)-an inquiry of which the Corinthians no doubt felt the full force, but which is rather lost upon us because we do not know what it means. Some have thought that as baptism is sometimes used in Scripture as equivalent to immersion in a sea of troubles, Paul means to ask, “What shall they do, what hope have they, who are plunged in grief for the friends they have lost?” Some think it refers to those who have been baptised with Christs baptism, that is to say, have suffered martyrdom and so entered into the Church of the dead. Others again think, that to be baptised “for the dead” means no more than ordinary baptism, in which the believer looks forward to the resurrection from the dead. The primitive form of baptism brought death and the resurrection vividly before the believers mind, and confirmed his hope in the resurrection, which hope was vain if there is no resurrection.
The plain meaning of the words, however, seems to point to a vicarious baptism, in which a living friend received baptism as a proxy for a person who had died without baptism. Of such a custom there is historical trace. Even before the Christian era, among the Jews, when a man died in a state of ceremonial defilement it was customary for a friend of the deceased to perform in his stead the washings and other rites which the dead man would have performed had he recovered. A similar practice prevailed to some small extent among the primitive Christians, although it was never admitted as a valid rite by the Church Catholic. Then, as now, it sometimes happened that on the approach of death the thoughts of unbelieving persons were strongly turned towards the Christian faith, but before baptism could be administered death cut down the intending Christian. Baptism was generally postponed until youth or even middle life was passed, in order that a large number of sins might be washed away in baptism, or that fewer might stain the soul after it. But naturally miscalculations sometimes occurred, and sudden death anticipated a long-delayed baptism. In such cases the friends of the deceased derived consolation from vicarious baptism. Some one who was persuaded of the faith of the departed answered for him and was baptised in his stead.
If Paul meant to say, On the supposition that death ends all, what is the use of anyone being baptised as proxy for a dead friend? he could not have used words more expressive of his meaning than when he says, “If the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptised for the dead?” The only difficulty is, that Paul might thus seem to draw an argument for a fundamental doctrine of Christianity from a foolish and unjustifiable practical. Is it possible that a man of such sagacity can have sanctioned or countenanced so absurd a superstition? But his alluding to this custom, in the way he here does, scarcely implies that he approved of it. He rather differentiates himself from those who practised the rite. “What shall they do who are baptised for the dead?”-referring, probably, to some of the Corinthians themselves. In any case, the point of the argument is obvious. To be baptised for those who had died without baptism, and whose future was supposed thereby to be jeopardised, had at least a show of friendliness and reason; to be baptised for those who had already passed out of existence was of course, on the face of it, absurd.
2. The second consequence which flows from the denial of the resurrection is, that Pauls own life is a mistake. “Why stand we in jeopardy every hour? What advantageth it me to risk death daily, and to suffer daily, if the dead rise not?” If there is no resurrection, he says, my whole life is a folly. No day passes but I am in danger of death at the hands either of an infuriated mob or a mistaken magistrate. I am in constant jeopardy, in perils by land and sea, in perils of robbers, in nakedness, in fasting; all these dangers I gladly encounter because I believe in the resurrection. But “if in this life only we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable.” We lose both this life and that which we thought was to come.
Pauls meaning is plain. By the hope of a life beyond, he had been induced to undergo the greatest privations in this life. He had been exposed to countless dangers and indignities. Although a Roman citizen, he had been cast into the arena to contend with wild beasts: there was no risk he had not run, no hardship he had not endured. But in all he was sustained by the assurance that there remained for him a rest and an inheritance in a future life. Remove this assurance and you remove the assumption on which his conduct is wholly built. If there is no future life either to win or to lose, then the Epicurean motto may take the place of Christs promises, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
It may indeed be said that even if there be no life to come, this life is best spent in the service of man, however full of hazard and hardship that service be. That is quite true; and had Paul believed this life was all, he might still have chosen to spend it, not on sensual indulgence, but in striving to win men to something better. But in that case there would have been no deception and no disappointment. In point of fact, however, Paul believed in a life to come, and it was because he believed in that life he gave himself to the work of winning men to Christ regardless of his own pains and losses. And what he says is that if he is mistaken, then all these pains and losses have been gratuitous, and that his whole life has proceeded on a mistake. The life to which he sought to win, and for which he sought to prepare men, does not exist.
Besides, it must be acknowledged that the mass of men do sink in a merely sensual or earthly life if the hope of immortality is removed, and that Paul did not require to be very guarded in his statement of this truth. In fact, the words “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die” were taken from the history of his own nation. When Jerusalem was beseiged by the Babylonians and no escape seemed possible, the people gave themselves up to recklessness and despair and sensual indulgence, saying, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Similar instances of the recklessness produced by the near approach of death may very readily be culled from the history of shipwrecks, of pestilences, and of besieged cities. In the old Jewish book, the Book of Wisdom, it finds a very beautiful expression, the following words being put into the mouth of those who knew not that man is immortal: “Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of man is no remedy; neither was any man ever known to return from the grave: for we are all born at an adventure; and shall be afterwards as though we had never been; for the breath of our nostrils is as smoke, and a little spark is the moving of our heart, which, being extinguished, our bodies will be burnt to ashes, and our spirit vanish as the soft air: and our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall hold our works in remembrance, and our life shall pass away like the trace of a cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist that is driven away with the beams of the sun, and overcome with the heat thereof Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us speedily use the creatures like as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass by us; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered, let none of us go without his share of voluptuousness; let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place, for this is our portion, and our lot is this.”
It is obvious therefore that this is the conclusion which the mass of mankind draw from a disbelief in immortality. Convince men that this life is all, that death is final extinction, and they will eagerly drain this life of all the pleasure it can yield. We may say that there are some men to whom virtue is the greatest pleasure; we may say that to all the denial of appetite and self-indulgence is a more genuine pleasure than the gratification of it; we may say that virtue is its own reward, and that irrespective of the future it is right to live now spiritually and not sensually, for God and not for self; we may say that the judgments of conscience are pronounced without any regard to future consequences, and that the highest and best life for man is a life in conformity to conscience and in fellowship with God, whether such life is to be long or short, temporal or eternal. And this is true, but how are we to get men to accept it? Teach men to believe in a future life and you strengthen every moral sentiment and every Godward aspiration by revealing the true dignity of human nature. Make men feel that they are immortal beings, that this life, so far from being all, is the mere entrance and first step to existence; make men feel that there is open to them an endless moral progress, and you give them some encouragement to lay the foundations of this progress in a self-denying and virtuous life in this world. Take away this belief, encourage men to think of themselves as worthless little creatures that come into being for a few years and are blotted out again forever, and you destroy one mainspring of right action in men. It is not that men do noble deeds for the sake of reward: the hope of reward is scarcely a perceptible influence in the best of men, or indeed in any men; but in all men trained as we are, there is an indefinite consciousness that, being immortal creatures, we are made for higher ends than those of this life, and have prospects of enjoyments which should make us independent of the grosser pleasures of the present bodily condition.
Apparently the Corinthians themselves had argued that morality was quite independent of a belief in immortality. For Paul goes on: “Be not deceived: you cannot, however much you think so, you cannot hear such theories without having your moral convictions undermined and your tone lowered.” This he conveys to them in a common quotation from a heathen poet-“Evil communications corrupt good manners”; that is to say, false opinions have a natural tendency to produce unsatisfactory and immoral conduct. To keep company with those whose conversation is frivolous or cynical, or charged with dangerous or false views of things, has a natural tendency to lead us to a style of conduct we should not otherwise have fallen into. Men do not always recognise this; they need the warning, “Be not deceived.” The beginnings of conduct are so hidden from our observation, our lives are formed by influences so imperceptible, what we hear sinks so insidiously into the mind and mingles so insensibly with our motives, that we can never say what we have heard without moral contamination. No doubt it is possible to hold the most erroneous opinions and yet to keep the life pure; but they are strong and guileless spirits who can preserve a high moral tone while they have lost faith in those truths which mainly nourish the moral nature of the mass of men. And many have found to their surprise and grief that opinions which they fancied they might very well hold and yet live a high and holy life, have somehow sapped their moral defences against temptation and paved the way for shameful falls. We cannot always prevent doubts, even about the most fundamental truths, from entering our minds, but we can always refuse to welcome such doubts, or to be proud of them; we can always be resolved to treat sacred things in a reverent and not in a flippant spirit, and we can always aim at least at an honest and eager seeking for the truth.
3. But the most serious consequence which results if there be no resurrection of the dead, is that in that case Christ is not risen. “If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.” For Paul refused to consider the resurrection of Christ as a miracle in the sense of its being exceptional and aside from the usual experience of man. On the contrary, he accepts it as the type to which every man is to be conformed. Precedent in time, exceptional possibly in some of its accidental accompaniments, the resurrection of Christ may be, but nevertheless as truly in the line of human development as birth, and growth, and death: Christ, being man, must submit to the conditions and experience of men in all essentials, in all that characterises man as human. And, therefore, if resurrection be not a normal human experience, Christ has not risen. The time at which resurrection takes place, and the interval elapsing between death and resurrection, Paul makes nothing of. A child may live but three days, but he is not on that account any the less human than if he had lived his threescore years and ten. Similarly the fact of Christs resurrection identifies Him with the human race, while the shortness of the interval elapsing between death and resurrection does not separate Him from man, for in point of fact the interval will be less in the case of many.
Both here and elsewhere Paul looks upon Christ as the representative man, the one in whom we can see the ideal of manhood. If any of our own friends should veritably die, and after death should appear to us alive, and should prove his identity by remaining with us for a time, by showing an interest in the very things which had previously occupied his thought, and by taking practical steps to secure the fulfilment of his purposes, a strong probability that we too should live through death would inevitably be impressed on our mind. But when Christ rises from the dead this probability becomes a certainty because He is the type of humanity, the representative person. As Paul here says, “He is the firstfruits of them that sleep.” His resurrection is the sample and pledge of ours. When the farmer pulls the first ripe ears of wheat and carries them home, it is not for their own sake he values them, but because they are a specimen and sample of the whole crop; and when God raised Christ from the dead, the glory of the event consisted in its being a pledge and specimen of the triumph of mankind over death. “If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him.”
And yet while Paul distinctly holds that resurrection is a normal human experience, he also implies that but for the interposition of Christ that experience might have been lost to men. It is in Christ that men are made alive after and through death. As Adam is the source of physical life that ends in death, so Christ is the source of spiritual life that never dies. “By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” Adams severance from God and preference of what was physical, brought man under the powers of the physical world: Christ by perfect adhesion to God, and constant conquest of all physical allurements, won life eternal for Himself and for those who have His Spirit. As a man of genius and wisdom will by his occupation of a throne enlarge mens ideas of what a king is, and bring many blessings to his subjects, so Christ by living a human life enlarged it to its utmost dimensions, compelling it to express His ideas of life, and winning for those who follow Him entrance into a larger and higher condition. Resurrection is here represented, not as an experience which men would have enjoyed had Christ never appeared on earth, nor as an experience opened to men by Gods sovereign good will, but as an experience in some way brought by Christ within human reach. “By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” That is to say, all who are by physical derivation truly united to Adam, incur the death which by sinning he introduced into human experience; and similarly, all who by spiritual affinity are in Christ enjoy the new life which triumphs over death, and which He won. Adam was not the only man who died, but the firstfruits of a rich harvest; and so, Christ is not alone in resurrection, but is become the firstfruits of them that sleep. According to Pauls theology, the conduct of a man, the sin of Adam, carried in it disastrous consequences to all connected with him: but equally fruitful in consequences were the human life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The death of Adam was the first stroke of that funeral knell that has ceaselessly sounded through all generations: but the resurrection of Christ was equally the pledge and earnest that the same experience would be enjoyed by all “that are Christs.”
Paul is carried on from the thought of the resurrection of “them that are Christs,” to the thought of the consummation of all things which this great event introduces and signalises. This exhibition of the triumph over death is the signal that all other enemies are now defeated. “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death”; and this being destroyed, all Christs followers being now gathered in and having entered on their eternal condition, the work of Christ so far as this world is concerned is over. Having reunited men to God, His work is done. The provisional government administered by Him having accomplished its work of bringing men into perfect harmony with the Supreme Will, it gives place to the immediate and direct government of God. What is implied in this it is impossible to say. A condition in which sin shall have no place and in which there shall be no need of means of reconciliation, a condition in which the work of Christ shall be no longer needed and in which God shall be all in all, pervading with His presence every soul and as welcome and natural as the air or the sunlight, -that is a condition not easy to be imagined. Neither can we readily imagine what Christ Himself shall be and do when the term of His mediatorial administration is finished and God is all in all.
One idea conspicuous in this brief and pregnant passage is that Christ came to subdue all the enemies of mankind, and that He will continue His work until His purpose is accomplished. He alone has taken a perfectly comprehensive view of the obstacles to human happiness and progress, and He has set Himself to remove these. He alone has penetrated to the root of all human evil and misery, and has given Himself to the task of emancipating men from all evil, of restoring men to their true life, and of abolishing forever the miseries which have so largely characterised mans history. Slowly, indeed, and unseen, does His work proceed; slowly, because the work is for eternity, and because only gradually can moral and spiritual evils be removed. “It is by no breath, turn of eye, wave of hand, salvation joins issue with death,” but by actual and sustained moral conflict, by real sacrifice and persistent choice of good, by long trial and development of individual character, by the slow growth of nations and the interaction of social and religious influences, by the leavening of all that is human with the spirit of Christ, that is, with self-devotement in practical life to the good of men. All this is too great and too real to be other than slow. The tide of moral progress in the world has often seemed to turn. Even now, when the leaven has been working for so long, how doubtful often seems the issue, how concerned even Christian people are about the merest superficialities and how little labouring to put down in Christs name the common enemies. Can anyone who looks at things as they are find it easy to believe in the final extinction of evil? Whither tend the prevalent vices, the empty-souled love of pleasure and demand for excitement, the unyielding, brazen-faced selfishness of the principles of business if not of the men who engage in it, the diligent propagation of error, the oppression of the rich and the greed and sensuality that poverty induces? One needs to be reminded that these things are the enemies, not only of good men, but of. Christ, and that by Gods will He is to defeat them. One needs to be reminded also that to see this victory accomplished and to have had no share in it will be the sorest humiliation and the most painful reflection to every generous mind. However slight be our power, let us strike such blow as we can at the common enemies which must be destroyed ere the great consummation is reached.