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 first appealed to the Corinthians' logic.365Here it becomes clear for the first time in the chapter that some of them were saying that there is no resurrection of the dead. If they were correct, they had neither a past nor a future.
15:12 Belief in the resurrection of the body seems to have been difficult for Greeks to have accepted in other places as well as in Corinth (cf. Acts 17:32; 2 Tim. 2:17). 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 4:8)."366
"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."367
15:13-14 Belief in bodily resurrection is foundational to the Christian faith. If the resurrection of the body is impossible, then the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fiction. If He did not rise, the apostles' preaching rested on a lie, and consequently the Corinthians' faith would have been valueless as well as misplaced.
This is the first in a series of conditional statements that run through verse 19. They are first class conditions in the Greek text, which express the assumption of reality for the sake of the argument. In verse 13 Paul did not express disbelief in the resurrection from the dead. He assumed there is none to make a point. This was also his tactic in verses 14, 16, 17, and 19.
15:15 Moreover the apostles would not just be in error, they would be false witnesses against God. They would be saying something untrue about God, namely that He raised Jesus Christ when He really had not. This would be a serious charge to make against the man who had founded their church and claimed to represent God. Really by denying the resurrection the unbelieving Corinthians were the false witnesses.
15:16-18 Paul repeated his line of thought contained in verses 12-14 in different terms. If Christ was still dead and in the grave, then confidence in Him for salvation is futile.368This means the believer is still dead in his or her sins. He or she is without any hope of forgiveness or eternal life. Christians who had already died would be lost forever, eternally separated from God.
"The denial of their future, that they are destined for resurrection on the basis of Christ's resurrection, has the net effect of a denial of their past, that they have received forgiveness of sins on the basis of Christ's death."369
Paul evidently meant that given the Corinthians' position the believer has no future of any kind. "Perished"probably has this meaning since even though they denied the resurrection they were baptizing for the dead (v. 29). It seems unlikely that they would have done this if they believed that death ended all.
15:19 If the Christian's hope in Christ is just what he or she can expect this side of the grave, that one deserves pity. Of course there are some benefits to trusting Christ as we live here and now (cf. 1 Tim. 4:8). However, we have to place these things in the balance with what we lose in this life for taking a stand for Him (cf. Phil. 3:8; 1 Cor. 4:4-5; 9:25). If we have nothing to hope for the other side of the grave, the Christian life would not be worth living.
To summarize his argument, Paul claimed that if believers have no future, specifically resurrected bodies like Christ's, we have no past or present as well. That is, we have no forgiveness of our sins in the past, and we have no advantage over unbelievers in the present.
"It is a point of very great importance to remember that the Corinthians were not denying the Resurrection of Jesus Christ; what they were denying is the resurrection of the body; and what Paul is insistent upon is that if a man denies the possibility of the resurrection of the body he has thereby denied the possibility of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and has therefore emptied the Christian message of its truth and the Christian life of its reality."370
Paul turned next to show that the resurrection of Christ makes the resurrection of believers both necessary and inevitable. The consequences of this fact are as glorious as the effects of His not being raised are dismal. Those "in Christ"must arise since Christ arose. His resurrection was in the present, but ours will be in the future (i.e., in the eschaton). Christ's resurrection set in motion the defeat of all God's enemies including death. His resurrection demands our resurrection since otherwise death would remain undefeated.
15:20 The argument advances here by connecting the believer with Christ. Christ was the firstfruits of the larger group of those whom God has chosen for salvation. This is the last mention of Christ's resurrection in the argument, but all that follows rests on this fact.
The Jews celebrated Passover on the fourteenth day of the first month on their sacred calendar. Jesus died on the day Jewish fathers slew the Passover lamb, which was a Friday that year. The Jews offered a sacrifice of firstfruits the day after the Sabbath (Saturday) following the Passover (Lev. 23:10-11), namely Sunday. This was the day Jesus arose. Fifty days later on Pentecost they presented another offering of new grain that they also called an offering of firstfruits (Lev. 23:15-17). The firstfruits they offered following the Passover were only the first of the crops that they offered later. Paul saw in this comparison the fact that other believers would rise from the dead just as Jesus Christ did. He used the firstfruits metaphor to assert that the resurrection of believers is absolutely inevitable. God Himself has guaranteed it.
15:21-22 The apostle also drew a lesson from two uniquely representative men, Adam and Christ. Adam was the first man in the old creation, and, like him, all of his sons die physically. Christ is the first man in the new creation, and, like Him, all of His sons will live physically (cf. Rom. 5:12-19). Obviously Paul was referring to believers only as sons of Christ. Both Adam and Jesus were men. Therefore our resurrection will be a human resurrection, not some "spiritual"type of resurrection. Physical resurrection is as inevitable for the son of Jesus Christ as physical death is for the son of Adam.
15:23 The word translated "order"or "turn"is a military one used of ranks of soldiers (tagma). Paul's idea was that Christ was the first rank and experienced resurrection. Christians are in a different rank and will experience resurrection together at a different time, namely at the Lord's coming (Gr. parousia, lit. appearing, i.e., at the Rapture). The apostle did not go on to give a complete explanation of the various resurrections here. There will be other ranks of people who will rise at other times: Tribulation saints, Old Testament believers, the unsaved, etc. His point here was that the resurrection of Christians is just as certain to take place as the fact that Christ's already took place. He did not mean that our resurrection will be of a different type than Christ's (i.e., "spiritual"rather than physical).
15:24-26 The end refers to the end of the present heavens and earth in view of what Paul said about it here. This will come more than 1, 000 years after the Rapture. Then Christ, who will have been reigning over His earthly millennial kingdom, will turn over that reign to His Father. Christ's abolishing all other rule, authority, and power will take place when He subdues the rebels that rise up against Him at the end of the Millennium (Rev. 20:7-10). He will also defeat death, and from then on no one will die. The saved will enter the new heavens and new earth to enjoy bliss with God forever while the lost will suffer everlasting torment (Matt. 25:46; Rev. 20:11-21:1).
"Many see evidence of the millennium in Paul's discourse on resurrection (1 Co 15, esp. vv. 20-28)."371
". . . it is not only possible but probable that Paul understood this final triumph to take place during the millennial reign of Christ. To sum up the principal evidence, Paul's use of epeita(after that') and eita(then') in 1 Corinthians 15:23-24, the syntax of 15:24-25, and the parallel use of Psalms 8 and 110 in 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 1 and 2 all point to the understanding that when Paul mentioned a kingdom and reign in 15:24-25, he referred to the reign of Christ on this earth following His return and prior to the eternal state, a time that Revelation 20:4-6 calls the thousand years.'"372
Even though Jesus triumphed over death in his resurrection, believers still die. Therefore we mustexperience resurrection because we are in Christ and because only then will the final enemy, death, be subdued. Only then will God become all in all.
15:27 Paul saw Jesus Christ as the person who fulfilled the prophecy recorded in Psalm 8:7.373In the psalm the ruler in view is man, but He will be the Man who regained for humanity all that Adam lost (cf. Ps. 110:1). Of course, God Himself will not be under the rule of the Son of God. He is the One who will finally bring all things into subjection to Christ.
15:28 Finally God will be the head of everything (cf. Rom. 11:36). The earthly millennial kingdom will end and everything will merge into the eternal kingdom of God (cf. Isa. 9:7; Luke 1:33).374Christ will be submissive to His Father forever. This is the central passage that affirms the eternal functional (not ontological) subordination of the Son to the Father (cf. 3:22-23; 11:3; John 17:24; Eph. 3:21; Phil. 2:9-11).375The Resurrection set in motion a chain of events that will ultimately culminate in the death of death. Then God will resume being what He was before creation, "all in all."
"The meaning seems to be that there will no longer be need of a Mediator: all relations between Creator and creatures, between Father and offspring, will be direct."376
In this pericope Paul traced the career of Christ from His resurrection to His final exaltation, which will occur at the end of the present heavens and earth. Undoubtedly he intended his readers to identify with the Savior since he had taught them that believers reproduce the experiences of their Lord as they reproduce His attitudes and actions. In view of what lies ahead, how foolish it would be to deny the resurrection of the body. This passage clarifies the true significance of Easter.
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
