Paul began by reaffirming their commonly held belief: Jesus Christ was raised from the dead. In this section the apostle stressed the objective reality of both Jesus Christ's death and resurrection.
15:1 The Corinthians and all Christians have their standing in Christ as a result of the gospel message.
15:2 Paul did not entertain the possibility that his readers could lose their salvation by abandoning the gospel he had preached to them. The NIV translation captures his thought well. Their denial of the Resurrection might indicate that some of them had not really believed the gospel.
15:3 As with the events of the Lord's Supper (11:23) Paul had heard of the Lord Jesus' death, burial, resurrection, and post-resurrection appearances and had then passed this information along to others. Elsewhere he wrote that he had not received the gospel from other people but directly from the Lord (Gal. 1:11). Probably some aspects of it came to him one way and others another. He apparently received the essence of the gospel on the Damascus road and learned more details from other sources.
"He received the facts from the Apostles and others; the import of the facts was made known to him by Christ (Gal. i. 12)."360
Three facts are primary concerning Jesus' death. He died, He died for people's sins, and He died as the Scriptures revealed He would. These facts received constant reaffirmation in the early preaching of the church (cf. Acts 3:13-18; 8:32-35).
"People are wicked and sinful; they do not know God. But Christ died for our sins,' not only to forgive but also to free people from their sins. Hence Paul's extreme agitation at the Corinthians' sinfulness, because they are thereby persisting in the very sins from which God in Christ has saved them. This, after all, is what most of the letter is about."361
"Since Judaism did not interpret this passage messianically, at least not in terms of a personal Messiah, and since there is no immediate connection between the death of Jesus and the idea that his death was for our sins,' it is fair to say that whoever made that connection is the founder of Christianity.' All the evidence points to Jesus himself, especially at the Last Supper with his interpretation of his death in the language of Isa. 53 as for you' (see on 11:23-25)."362
15:4 Burial emphasizes the finality of the Messiah's death (cf. Acts 2:29) and attests the reality of His resurrection (cf. Acts 13:29-30).
The perfect tense and passive voice of the Greek verb translated "was raised"implies that since God raised Him He is still alive. The third day was Sunday. Friday, the day of the crucifixion, was the first day, and Saturday was the second. The phrase "according to the Scriptures"probably describes the Resurrection alone in view of the structure of the sentence (cf. Lev. 23:10-14; Ps. 16:10-11; 17:15-24; Isa. 53:10b; Hos. 6:2).
"Though the resurrection is part of the gospel message, it is not part of the saving work of Christ on the cross. The resurrection is stated as proof of the efficacy of Christ's death. Having accomplished redemption by His death, Jesus Christ was raised because of our justification' (Rom. 4:25). The fact that Jesus Christ is alive is part of the Christian's good news, but individuals are saved by His death, not by His resurrection."363
15:5 Peter was, of course, the leader of the disciples. Perhaps Paul referred to the Lord's special appearance to Peter (Luke 24:34) because some in the Corinthian church revered Peter (1:12) as well as because he was the key disciple. "The twelve"refers to the 12 disciples even though only 11 of them were alive when the Lord appeared to them. This was a way of referring to that particular group of Jesus' followers during His earthly ministry (Matt. 10:1).
15:6 This is the only record of this particular appearance in the New Testament. That Jesus appeared to so many people at one time is evidence that His resurrection body was not a spirit. Many people testified that they had seen Him on this single occasion. Since the Resurrection took place about 23 years before Paul wrote this epistle, it is reasonable that the majority of this group of witnesses was still alive. Any skeptical Corinthians could check with them.
15:7 This James was most likely the half-brother of Jesus. He became the leader of the Jerusalem church.
The apostles as a group included Matthias who was not one of the 12 original disciples. This probably refers to a collective appearance to all the apostles.
15:8 Paul regarded the Lord's appearance to him on the Damascus road as an equivalent post-resurrection appearance and the Lord's last one. The apostle may have referred to himself as he did (lit. as if to an abortion) not because his apostleship came to him prematurely. The Lord appointed him some time after the others. He probably did so because compared with the backgrounds and appointments of the other apostles Paul's were unusual.
"Since this is such an unusual term of deprecation, and since it occurs with the article, theabortion,' it has often been suggested that the Corinthians themselves have used the term to describe Paul, as one who because of his personal weaknesses is something of a freak' in comparison with other apostles, especially Apollos and Peter. Others have suggested that the term is a play on Paul's name--Paulus, the little one.' Hence they dismissed him as a dwarf.' This has the advantage of helping to explain the unusual digression' in vv. 9-10, where he in fact allows that he is least' of all the apostles; nonetheless God's grace worked the more abundantly in his behalf.
"In any case, whether it originated with them, which seems altogether likely, or with Paul himself in a sudden outburst of self-disparagement, it seems hardly possible to understand this usage except as a term that describes him vis-à-vis the Corinthians' own view of apostleship."364
Paul stressed the appearances of the risen Christ (vv. 5-9) because they prove that His resurrection was not to a form of "spiritual"(i.e., noncorporeal) existence. Just as His body died and was buried so it was raised and many witnesses saw it, often many witnesses at one time.
15:9 The apostle probably used their view of him as a "freak"to comment on his view of himself in this verse and the next one. Evidently Paul felt himself the least worthy to be an apostle. He did not regard his apostleship inferior to that of the other apostles, however. The reason for his feeling this way was the fact that while the other apostles were building up the church he was tearing it down.
15:10 Paul's apostolic calling was a gracious gift from God. The giving of God's grace proves vein when it does not elicit the appropriate response of loving service. Paul responded to God's unusually great grace to him by offering back unusually great service to God. However, he did not view his service as self-generated but the product of God's continual supply of grace to him. God saved Paul by grace, and Paul served God by God's grace.
15:11 Paul and the other apostles all believed and preached the same gospel. Paul did not proclaim a different message from what Peter, James, and the others did. This commonly agreed on message is what the Corinthians had believed when those who had ministered in Corinth had preached to them. By denying the resurrection the Corinthians were following neither Apollos, nor Cephas, nor Christ. They were pursuing a theology of their own.
The point of this section of verses was to present the gospel message, including the account of Jesus Christ's resurrection, as what many reliable eyewitnesses saw and all the apostles preached. Paul did this to stress that Jesus Christ's resurrection, which most of the Corinthians accepted, had objective reality, not to prove that He rose from the dead. Even though Paul had a different background from the other apostles, he heralded the same message they did. Consequently his original readers did not need to fear that what they had heard from him was some cultic perversion of the truth. It was the true gospel, and they should continue to believe it.
