Paul turned from Christ's career to the Christian's experience to argue ad hominemfor the resurrection.377The Corinthians' actions, and his, bordered on absurdity if the dead will not rise. This paragraph is something of a digression, and the main argument resumes in verse 35.
15:29 This verse probably refers to proxy baptism, the custom of undergoing baptism for someone who died before he or she could experience baptism.378Evidently the Corinthians were practicing this for people who became Christians on their deathbeds or under other conditions that made it difficult or impossible for them to undergo baptism in water. Paul's mention of the custom is not necessarily an endorsement of it. On the other hand, he did not specifically condemn it either.
Whether he approved of it or not, the Corinthian believers were evidently doing it. Paul used this practice to argue for the reality of resurrection. His point was that if there is no physical resurrection it is foolish to undergo baptism for someone who had died because in that case they are dead and gone forever.379Suppose, on the other hand, there is a resurrection. When God will raise those baptized by proxy, they would not suffer shame for failure to undergo baptism while they were alive. Those who had not benefited from proxy baptism would suffer embarrassment.
The Corinthians may have carried proxy baptism over into the church from pagan religions. That is a distinct possibility since we have seen that they had done this with other pagan practices. There is nothing in Scripture that encourages this practice, though some have interpreted this verse as an encouragement. Some Christian groups that believe water baptism contributes to a person's salvation advocate it. Today the Mormons do. However the mention of a practice in Scripture does not always constitute endorsement of it. We have seen this in chapters 8-11 especially.
15:30 If there is no resurrection, why did Paul endure so many hardships and dangers in his ministry? The apostle's sacrifices do not prove there will be a resurrection, but they do show that he believed there would be one. He willingly faced death daily because he believed God would raise him and that his resurrected body would continue beyond the grave.
15:31 Paul backed up this assertion with a kind of oath. He said he faced death daily just as he boasted about the Corinthians. In this epistle Paul was quite critical of his readers. Probably he meant that he boasted in their very existence as Christians rather than that he boasted to other churches about their behavior.
15:32 One example of facing death occurred in Ephesus where Paul was when he wrote this epistle. His fight with "wild beasts"was not with wild animals. This expression describes his conflict with very hostile human adversaries. The phrase kata anthropon("from human motives"or "for . . . human reasons,"lit. according to man) identifies Paul's words as figurative language. Furthermore Roman citizens did not participate in hand to hand combat with animals in the arenas.380Perhaps Demetrius and or Alexander were Paul's antagonists (Acts 19:24-41; 2 Tim. 4:14).
Paul quoted Isaiah 22:13 to prove his point (cf. Eccles. 2:24; 9:7-10). If there is no resurrection we may as well live only for the present.
15:33 This quotation, contained in a comedy by Menander titled Thais, but perhaps dating back to Euripides,381had become proverbial. The Greeks generally recognized it as encapsulating a wise thought. Therefore Paul used it to warn his readers that if they kept company with people who denied the resurrection their character would eventually suffer.
15:34 The Corinthians needed to think correctly. Rather than living for the present, as their pagan neighbors were undoubtedly encouraging them to do, they needed to stop sinning and fulfill their present purpose, namely propagating the gospel. It was a shame that they had neighbors who still had no knowledge of God since they had much knowledge of God (1:5; 8:1).
"Since salvation finally has to do with being known by and knowing God (13:12), what makes the Corinthians' persisting in sin so culpable is that it keeps others from the knowledge of God (15:34).382
It may be that Paul was also using irony to refer to the "spiritual"viewpoint of the Corinthians. The appearance of "knowledge"here again raises that possibility since, as we have seen, "knowledge"was a Corinthian fascination. Paul had also spoken something to their "shame"earlier (cf. 6:5). If he meant to be ironic, the apostle was probably putting down those responsible for taking the church in the dangerous direction that it had gone. He would have meant that his readers should sober up and stop sinning because some of them did not have the truth, which was to their shame.
These ad hominemarguments do not prove beyond doubt that God will raise the bodies of people from the dead, but they support Paul's stronger logical arguments in the preceding section (vv. 12-34). They show that Christians generally and the apostle in particular believed in the Resurrection deeply. It affected the way they lived, as it should.383
