1 Corinthians 15

CHAPTER XV

The Eighth Part of the Letter

The Resurrection of the Dead. Chapter 15

The manner in which Paul introduces this subject indicates that no inquiry in regard to it had been addressed to him. It may be possible that the congregation as such had not as yet become disturbed by doubt regarding the doctrine of the resurrection. While the chapter in its entirety is addressed to all the “brethren” (v. 1, 50), we see that the two central parts, which establish the fact and the manner of the resurrection in answer to wrong views, ascribe these views only to certain indefinitely designated persons, “some among you,” v. 12, and “someone” whom Paul calls a “fool,” v. 35, 36. Who these indefinitely designated persons were we have no means of knowing.

We need not ask to which of the four parties (1:12) in Corinth these persons belonged; and we cannot conclude that they belonged to the party of Apollos. The view that they belonged to this party has been arrived at by a process of elimination: since Peter, Paul, and Christ taught the resurrection in so decided a manner, the doubters would not belong to those parties; ergo, they must have belonged to the party of Apollos. But this assumes, on the strength of our ignorance concerning the details of Apollos’ teaching, that he did not teach the resurrection as emphatically as the others who were made heads of parties. This assumption does not agree with Acts 18:27, 28 and with 1 Cor. 16:12. We have no right to think that Apollos was less emphatic in teaching the resurrection than any other Corinthian teacher was. We do not know to what party these doubters belonged, or whether they belonged to any party. Paul does not designate them more definitely.

Nor is it likely that the doubters of the resurrection are identical with the moral liberalists whose ideas Paul refutes in 6:12, etc., and against whom he urges the resurrection in 6:14. For if they doubted the resurrection, how could Paul hope to gain anything by pointing them to the resurrection when he was correcting their loose moral views?

Nor can Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection be traced to certain mediating views of the ancient Jews. We are, on the one hand, pointed to the rationalism of the pagan Greeks, which simply refused to accept the resurrection of the body but held that the body is only an evil (κακόν), or a fetter (δεσμός), or a dungeon, yea, a grave for the soul (σῶμα-σῆμα, “body-tomb”), from which death frees the soul (Orphic teaching and Platonic philosophy). When these Greeks became Christians they readily believed, we are told, the immortality of the soul but balked at the resurrection of the body. We are, on the other hand, informed (very briefly) that according to the popular view the bodies of the dead were thought to arise in their material grossness. Between these two extremes Paul is to steer his course. Yet not independently.

We are told that he belonged to “certain Jewish circles” and adopted their teaching concerning a spiritual or ethereal resurrection body which was eventually received by the soul. Paul is thus thought to be fighting against two errors, the Greek spiritualizing, skeptic view and the gross popular, materialistic view. Into this framework the entire chapter is placed. Such is the origin of Paul’s teaching.

But those “certain Jewish circles” to which Paul is said to belong probably never existed. Paul’s doctrine cannot be traced to any merely human sources. Paul is in agreement with all the other Biblical writers who in one grand chorus proclaim the actual resurrection of the physical body that is deposited in the grave. The bringing forth of this body is the incomprehensible miracle wrought by Almighty God. “I believe in the resurrection of the body” and in no substitute doctrine whether it emanates from “certain Jewish circles” or from another circle.

The structure of this chapter is simple. Verses 1–11 restate the facts of the Christian faith regarding the resurrection of Christ. Verses 12–34 establish the resurrection of the dead. Verses 35–54 answer the question regarding the resurrection body. Verses 55–58 close with a word of triumph and cheer. One fact was in Paul’s favor: those who questioned the resurrection of the dead still believed firmly in the resurrection of Christ.

If they had denied that they would have departed so completely from the historic foundation of faith that Paul would have treated them as apostates. As it is, Paul makes Christ’s resurrection the fulcrum for his presentation of the doctrine that we, too, shall be raised from the dead. Thus the first eleven verses are thetical in form, a restatement of undisputed facts.

I. Christ’s Resurrection, 1–11

1 Corinthians 15:1

1The first sentence is masterly in every respect. It fits the situation exactly. Paul does not begin by naming the subject which he intends to treat and by stating why he comes to do so. He starts with a reminder of the pertinent gospel facts on which the faith of the Corinthians rests. Not until he reaches v. 12 do the Corinthians hear that some men in their midst make this entire discussion necessary. This form of presentation is highly effective for securing the fullest and the most unbiased attention.

Now I remind you, brethren, of the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you received, in which also you stand, through which also you are saved: with what statement I preached the gospel to you if you hold it fast, unless you believed in vain.

Since the gospel itself and those parts of it which are here named by Paul are well known to the Corinthians, the verb γνωρίζω, which ordinarily means, “I make known” to you, has the force: “I remind you of.” The entire sentence is dominated by the term “gospel.” We have the noun “gospel” and the repeated verb εὑαγγελισάμην which means “preached the gospel,” and four relative pronouns which have “gospel” as their antecedent. Now the gospel is the mediate source of salvation. Therefore a sentence such as this, every member of which hinges on the gospel, ought to sound exceedingly sweet to the Corinthians. To be so thoroughly reminded of these gospel facts ought to stimulate their faith although they as yet do not know just why Paul makes the “gospel” ring in their ears. This “gospel” is no indefinite good news but the great news of salvation through the mediation of Christ.

The first two relative clauses have verbs in the aorist which state historical facts. They recall the fact that Paul preached this gospel to the Corinthians when he first came to them, and that the Corinthians received this gospel when he brought it to them. The entire story of Paul’s first visit to Corinth is thus recalled to the minds of Paul’s readers. The last two relative clauses deal with the present, and the tenses of the verbs used are durative: “in which also you continue to stand—through which also you are in course of being saved.” The perfect ἑστήκατε is always used with a present meaning. Standing means established and continuing firm in faith as a tree stands when it is well rooted.

The verb σώζειν signifies to deliver or rescue and to place into a position of security, soundness, and joy. The three καί, “also,” in the last three relative clauses are cumulative. Upon the first past fact a second is laid, and upon these two past facts two additional present facts are laid, the entire four are great and delightful. Thus a few strokes sketch the entire blessed story of the Corinthians until the moment of Paul’s writing.

1 Corinthians 15:2

2However, neither the gospel in general as gospel, nor the connection of the Corinthians with this gospel, is the point of this reminder which Paul is stating for the Corinthians. All of this is only the preamble to Paul’s reminder. Its real point appears in the indirect question: “with what statement I preached the gospel to you.” Paul wants to remind the Corinthians of the λόγος, the particular “statement,” which he used when he brought the gospel to them. The emphasis is on τίνιλόγῳ and not on εὑαγγελισάμην, which is a mere repetition of this verb. What Paul wants the Corinthians to consider is the particular λόγος or statement in which he embodied the vital substance of the gospel for the Corinthians.

We do not accept those explanations which have λόγος mean intention or manner: “with what intention I preached the gospel to you”; or “in what manner.” Nor does λόγος mean “formulation,” for in the following verses Paul does not present a formulation but only the facts which he originally preached to the Corinthians as the heart of the gospel. These facts are Christ’s death for our sins, his burial, and his resurrection on the third day, v. 3, 4. These facts constitute the “statement” which Paul used in preaching the gospel. The dative τίνιλόγῳ is one of means: “by means of what statement” I preached, etc. Whether Paul used some fixed formula in presenting this “statement” of the facts indicated or used no formula, is unimportant in this connection. All that Paul preached in Corinth, no matter concerning what part of the gospel, centered in his “statement” of the facts of the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ. Without this “statement” all else would have been empty and without saving power.

This helps us to establish the construction of the indirect question. Both R. 425 and B.-D. 478 point out the fact that it is impossible to draw the indirect question into the conditional εἰκατέχετε as the A. V. translates: “If ye keep in memory what I preached unto you.” To amend the text itself by cancelling the εἰ of the conditional clause and thus securing a new sentence in which κατέχετε governs the indirect question (B.-D.), is too radical to merit attention. The idea of R. 738 that τίνι is an equivalent of the ordinary relative because if an indirect question were to be introduced at this place it would come with a jolt, overlooks the fact that Paul needs this very indirect question—it is the climax of his entire sentence. The construction is simply: γνωρίζω … τίνιλόγῳκτλ., “I remind you … by means of what statement I preached the gospel to you.” The R. V. has the correct construction although it translates “in what words,” plural, which is not accurate enough.

“If you hold it fast,” namely this statement of the gospel, merely raises the question, not as a doubt on Paul’s part, but as an intimation to the Corinthians to examine themselves on this point. With this condition of reality Paul on his part assumes, and for the entire purpose of his presentation must assume, that the Corinthians do continue to hold fast (of course, not in their memories merely but also in their hearts by faith) what he once preached to them, i.e., the gospel and in particular the statement which embodied the heart of that gospel. Paul thus says: “I take it that you do hold this fast.”

Paul sees but one possibility in keeping with which he could assume that the Corinthians no longer hold fast what he preached to them: “unless you believed in vain,” ἐπιστεύσατε, an ingressive aorist, pointing to the time when the Corinthians first “came to believe.” The adverb εἰκῆ, “in vain,” means “at random,” i.e., so that your believing led you nowhere, brought you nothing. In the case of a real believer such an assumption is an impossible idea. True faith always brings salvation and a thousand blessed effects connected with this salvation. Regarding the pleonastic ἐκτὸςεἰμή see 14:5.

This opening sentence is so masterly because its positive half, up to and including the indirect question, is so formulated as to elicit from the Corinthians a decided and an enthusiastic “yea,” while its negative half, the condition and the exception, are so formulated as to elicit an equally determined “nay” in regard to even the possibility suggested. This “yea” and this “nay” mutually support each other and coalesce in the unit idea of full certainty. The interpretation that Paul strikes a balance between the two and leaves the issue in doubt as far as the Corinthians are concerned, whether they still abide by the “yea” or after all now tend toward the “nay,” is unacceptable. The very opposite is the fact. Doubly supported, once by a “yea” on the part of the Corinthians, and again by a “nay,” Paul proceeds.

1 Corinthians 15:3

3He now restates to the Corinthians the λόγος which embodies the very heart of the gospel which he had preached to them, which they unquestionably hold fast to this day, knowing that their faith is not in vain. “For” is to be taken in this sense. For I delivered to you in the first place what also I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was entombed, and that he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Paul goes back to the time when he first preached in Corinth. At that time “I delivered to you” this λόγος. The phrase ἐνπρώτοις is practically an adverb, “firstly,” “in the first place,” since it was most important in all his preaching. From the verb παρέδωκα we see what apostolic “tradition,” παράδοσις, means, and why it was so termed; it was the teaching given or handed over to the hearers.

The relative clause: “what also I received,” is usually stressed to mean that Paul received this λόγος from men, in the same way in which he in turn passed it on to men. It is stated that Paul would otherwise have added “from the Lord” although a reason for this view is not apparent unless the context should demand it, which it does not. The other reasons advanced are less convincing, namely that the verbs “I delivered” and “I received” are parallel, and that v. 3 and v. 11 are parallel, and that Paul mentions only Christ’s one appearance to him, that on the road to Damascus. But in Gal. 1:11–2:2 Paul is at pains to prove historically that he did not receive his gospel from men in any manner whatsoever, not from the apostles who were the first authorities (for years passed before he even met any of them), and certainly not from ordinary Christians. He declares in Gal. 1:12 that it was “through revelation of Christ.” He uses the identical verb παρέλαβον and even adds that he was not taught. In the present passage Paul speaks about the very heart of the gospel: that Christ died for our sins, etc.,—this is what he received and not merely the bare historical information that Christ died, was buried, and arose. Compare the notations on 11:23.

Paul is not in this connection committing to writing the entire contents of the gospel or even only a brief summary of it; he is recording “the statement” to which he refers in v. 2 which consisted of the three great facts that follow. The first fact is “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” “Christ” is not an appellative but a personal name. This Christ did not sink into a state of coma from which he afterward recovered; he actually and truly died, ἀπέθανεν, the aorist to express the historical fact. He died because he was killed. He died because his soul was separated from his body just as men still die today.

His dying, his burial, and his resurrection belong together; the latter of necessity presupposes the other two. But Paul’s “statement” is not mere history, it is gospel, therefore he adds “for our sins,” ὑπέρ, in behalf of them. Only one thought fits the ὑπέρ phrase, namely that of atonement for sins. Since Paul is writing to Corinthian believers, “our” sins is sufficient in the present connection. Yet this phrase is vital, for without this phrase the Corinthians would not have understood on the occasion of Paul’s first preaching, nor would they understand at this present writing, that Christ’s resurrection is also meant in a soteriological sense, Rom. 4:3 and other passages. Only because he died as the atoning sacrifice for our sins can the resurrection of Christ redound to our salvation.

The second addition, “according to the Scriptures,” namely the Old Testament prophecies concerning his atoning death, removes all thought that Christ died as men ordinarily die. His death is a part of God’s wonderful plan for our salvation, Isa. 53, etc. For this reason it was foretold and then occurred as it had been foretold. But “according to the Scriptures” includes everything that was foretold concerning the significance and the efficacy of Christ’s death; when Christ died, all of this, too, became everlasting reality.

1 Corinthians 15:4

4“And that he was entombed” or buried is added without a modifier. Even the Apostles’ Creed reads: was crucified, dead, “and buried.” This addition is necessary; first, because it attests the reality of Christ’s death, and secondly, because it shows that his death was like ours, for we, too, are buried after death. The latter is important because, like Christ, we who die shall have our bodies raised again. Paul intends to write at length regarding this resurrection of our bodies. Since the entombment is really a part of Christ’s death, no modifiers are needed when this statement is added.

The third item of Paul’s λόγος again has modifiers: “and that he has been raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Here the perfect tense after the two aorists is prominent. It draws a sharp distinction, R. 844, “Paul wishes to emphasize the idea that Jesus is still risen,” R. 896. The perfect tense normally records a past fact together with its present effect or result. Christ is now and continues to be in the condition of one who was raised from the dead. The addition “on the third day” is positive in regard to the historic reality of the resurrection. It fixes the exact time after the death and thus forms a natural transition to the appearances of the risen Savior.

Paul again adds “according to the Scriptures,” and this addition has the same force it had with reference to the death; both are equally mentioned in prophecy as cardinal acts in the divine plan of salvation. There is no indication that in v. 3, 4 Paul is reciting a fixed formula such as is found in the Apostles’ Creed. We know of no other case in which the wording used is like that which is here employed by Paul.

The question is raised as to whether the phrase “according to the Scriptures” includes only “he has been raised” or also the time, “on the third day.” The answer that only Hosea 6:2 and possibly 2 Kings 20:5, neither of which is quoted to this effect in the New Testament, could be used as proof, is unsatisfactory, for neither of these passages refers to Christ’s resurrection. One asks why the miracle wrought for the Prophet Jonah is omitted when Christ himself refers to it in Matt. 12:39, 40 as indicating the length of time which he would remain in the grave.

The mythical notion current among Persians and Jews that for three days the soul remains near the body and does not go to its place until the fourth day, and the supposition that this explains Martha’s cry recorded in John 11:34 and the assertions made in Acts 2:27, 31 and 13:35–37 that the body of Jesus saw no corruption during the three days in the tomb, are perhaps referred to in this connection in order to have the account of Christ’s resurrection “on the third day” take on the coloring of a myth. Why did the women hurry to Christ’s tomb on Easter morning in order to complete the embalming of his body? Because in that climate corruption sets in almost immediately after death, and the women feared that it might have already advanced so far as to render their task impossible. Martha was sure that the body of Lazarus already stank. The body of Christ suffered no decay because, as the passages in Acts inform us, God did not suffer this as he had foretold this through David.

1 Corinthians 15:5

5Beginning with the very day of Christ’s resurrection, Paul records in chronological order a number of appearances of the risen Savior in attestation of the momentous fact of his resurrection. He gives no complete catalog of these appearances, not because he does not know about those which he omits, but because he follows a selective principle. Paul presents those witnesses that are most important to the Corinthians and to the church in general for attesting the historical reality of Christ’s bodily resurrection. This he did when he first came to Corinth, and he therefore does the same now.

The suggestion that Paul omits the appearances to the women because the women were witnesses only to the apostles and not to the world, may be correct. But the other suggestion that Paul omits the appearances which had a pastoral import (Luke 24:13, for instance) is contradicted by the very first appearance which Paul records, for this appearance to Peter alone was undoubtedly intended to assure him personally of the Savior’s pardon for the sin of threefold denial. This pardon was later (John 21:15, etc.) also pronounced publicly, and Peter was formally reinstated into his office.

And that he appeared to Cephas; then to the Twelve. Then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the most remain until today although some fell asleep. Then he appeared to James; then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to the dead foetus, he appeared also to me.

The verb ὤφθη (ὁράω) is a passive: “he was seen,” and is idiomatically construed with the dative as a few of these passives are. It is used also in Luke 24:34, and Paul employs it throughout this catalog of the appearances. Although there is a pastoral purpose connected with the appearance to Peter, namely the assurance that the risen Lord had pardoned his fallen apostle, the event has a much greater importance. The other apostles, with the exception of John (John 20:8), still doubted (Luke 24:22–24); but when Peter reported that he had seen the Lord, they joyfully believed: “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.” The appearance to Peter is so important because he was one of the apostles, their leader we may say; because he was the first apostle to see the Lord; and because he saw the risen Lord on the very day of his resurrection. Peter is thus the first decisive witness named by Paul.

In connection with this passage a number of unsatisfactory remarks are found in modern commentaries such as that “the flesh” of Christ perhaps remained in the tomb; that Paul fails to use as evidence “the open tomb”; that Acts 10:41 has a materialistic view concerning the risen body; that Christ could not appear in his heavenly δόξα or glory. Paul’s and Luke’s ὤφθη is also clouded with doubt. It is said to denote “subjective vision” in “the modern psychological sense,” a seeing ἐνπνεύματι, “in the spirit” only “like all the heavenly viewings,” whereas the verb denotes seeing with the natural eye as any person or any object is seen. Christ also called the other natural senses into activity: “Handle me, and see … he showed them his hands and his feet (to touch and to feel) … they gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and did eat before them,” Luke 24:39–43. Christ asked Thomas to put his fingers into the print of the nails and his hand into the open side, John 20:27. There can be no doubt that Peter saw the very body that was laid in the tomb, that body the identity of which he placed beyond question. Paul will presently describe its new condition which enabled it to pass through the rock of the tomb and through the walls or the locked door of a room.

“Then to the Twelve” is attested also by John 20:19, etc.; Luke 24:36, etc.; Mark 16:14. This occurred late in the evening of the day of the resurrection, immediately after the two disciples from Emmaus had returned and had made their report, Nebe, Aufersteh-ungsgeschichte 180, etc. “The Twelve” is used as a standard term, although the defection of Judas had left only eleven, and has no reference to Matthias who later took Judas’ place. There is no reason to believe that Paul wishes to include also other appearances of Christ to the Twelve or to a part of their number such as are recorded in John 20:26, etc., and 21:1, etc.

1 Corinthians 15:6

6Paul next lists the appearance “to above five hundred brethren at once.” He does not specify the time or the place of this grand event. He writes only “then” and begins a new sentence; there is no ὅτι to continue the preceding dependent clauses. It is the great number of the witnesses which is in this instance so important to Paul, more than 500 brethren, and all of these were together at one time and in one place.

None of the evangelists records that so many believers saw the risen Savior at the same time. Yet we have cogent reason for combining Paul’s statement with Matt. 28:16, etc. Before his death Jesus tells his disciples in a significant way: “Howbeit, after I am raised up I will go before you into Galilee,” Mark 14:28. After the resurrection the angel bids the women to remind the disciples: “And lo, he goeth before you into Galilee,” Matt. 28:7. Then Jesus himself meets these women and repeats the direction to the disciples: “Go tell my brethren that they depart into Galilee, and there shall I see them,” Matt. 28:10. So we are finally told: “The eleven disciples went into Galilee unto the mountain where Jesus had appointed them,” and there he appeared to them and gave them the Great Commission to evangelize the world.

There is no reason for this repeated and emphatic summons to distant Galilee and even to a specific mountain there if only the eleven are concerned, whom Jesus had met twice in Jerusalem, namely on the day of his resurrection and eight days later, Luke 24:36; John 20:26. All is clear when we think that the eleven together with all of the other disciples of Jesus assembled in Galilee for this especially appointed meeting with Jesus. A meeting of this nature could not be held in or near Jerusalem, for in this city there were at most only 120 disciples. It was easier for these to travel to Galilee than for the more than 380 who lived in Galilee to come to Jerusalem, to say nothing of other difficulties.

The occasion fits the number assembled. It was for the purpose of the majestic announcement of the Great Commission. It was proper that this should be a public meeting which included the entire body of the Lord’s brethren. Here, on a mountaintop, this host came together at the appointed time. Word had been circulated among them. Removed from observation by outsiders, all of them assembled. The exact day is unknown. It must have been after the appearance at the Sea of Galilee, John 21:1, etc.; it probably occurred toward the end of the forty-day period.

The gathering on a mountain marks a noteworthy event. On a mountain Jesus preached his great sermon, Matt. 5–7; on a mountain he chose the Twelve; on a mountain he showed himself in the glory of the transfiguration. On mountain heights heaven and earth, as it were, meet, and the risen Savior speaks about his power over heaven and earth. With the vast expanse of the sky above him, and the vast panorama of earth spread beneath him, Christ stands in his exaltation and his glory—a glorious vision, indeed!

An important point in regard to this great number of witnesses who beheld the risen Lord at one time is the fact that, when Paul writes, most of them still “remain,” i.e., are alive and continue to repeat their testimony with their own lips. “Though some fell asleep,” with its aorist, merely records the fact. Death converted into a sleep is the effect of Christ’s resurrection; they died as “children of the resurrection,” Bengel.

1 Corinthians 15:7

7Paul continues: “Then he appeared unto James,” who must be one of “the brethren of the Lord” (cousins, as we may take it, of the Lord, sons of Clopas and the Virgin’s sister), 9:5, the later permanent head of the congregation at Jerusalem. We have no other record of Christ’s appearance to him. His prominence in the church accounts for the fact that Paul mentions him in this list of witnesses. He ranks next to the apostles themselves, Gal. 1:19. We must conclude that Peter, although he is at first mentioned alone, was among the Twelve, and we must also conclude that the Twelve were among the 500. The Twelve had received Christ’s orders to meet him in Galilee, and John 21 shows that they were there. James must have been there also although, like Peter, he is now named alone.

“Then” he appeared “to all the apostles.” The term “apostles” is used in a wider sense since it follows the more specific designation “the Twelve.” In this wider sense it came into use after the events here recorded when certain assistants of the apostles, like Barnabas, Acts 14:4, 14, like Timothy and Sylvanus, 1 Thess. 2:6, were at times called “apostles.” Just who is included in the present instance we are unable to say although we may well include James. Paul’s record suffices for the appearance here listed; no other record of it has been left us unless it be, as Nebe 382 surmises, that more than the eleven were present at the appearance when Christ ascended to heaven.

1 Corinthians 15:8

8“And last of all, as to the dead foetus, he appeared also to me.” This concludes the list of witnesses who were to attest Christ’s resurrection to the world. Other appearances such as that to Stephen, Acts 7:55, to Paul, Acts 18:9, etc., had an entirely different purpose. A tone of deep humility accompanies the words “also to me”; it is expressive of Paul’s feeling that as a non-believer he had no right whatever to be thus distinguished by the Lord.

This feeling is completely evident in the addition “as to the dead foetus,” which our versions misunderstand with their translation “as unto one born out of due time.” This strong designation does not intend to repeat the thought that Paul was called to the apostleship rather late, for this is implied in “last of all.” An ἔκτρωμα is an abortion, a dead foetus, and not a child born to parents in late life when a birth is no longer expected, nor a child born before the full period of gestation although it is able to survive. The dead foetus is naturally expelled from the womb because it is dead. When Christ appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus, Paul was utterly devoid of spiritual life, a violent persecutor of Christ and of Christ’s followers. This is an answer to those interpretations which insert into the figure the tertium comparationis of suddenness, of violence, or of absence of means in connection with Paul’s spiritual birth. The true tertium Paul himself indicates in a moment.

The article has been unduly stressed: “the dead foetus,” in order to find in this figure a vile name that was applied to Paul by his enemies. Paul is thought to take up this ugly term, in a manner to admit its truth as applying to himself, yet also in part to offer a correction. This is a heavy burden to place on an article. But Paul is not thinking of his enemies in this entire record. We never have difficulty in knowing when Paul deals with his slanderers. In such cases he uses more than an article. Paul himself applies this term to himself and at once tells us in what sense it is to be understood. He uses the article because he intends to say that he alone among the apostles is the unworthy one who came to be placed among their number.

1 Corinthians 15:9

9This is the force of Paul’s own explanation. For I am the last of the apostles, that am not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. For this reason Paul likens himself to an abortion, to whom the risen Lord nevertheless appeared. “Last,” ἐλάχιστος, is a true superlative, R. 279; yet it does not here refer to a point of time as though he was made an apostle long after the Twelve but to the thought of character, as having at one time been a persecutor of the church. He is “not fit to be called an apostle,” οὑκεἰμί, even now as he pens these words; Paul does not write ἦν, “was.” What he once did still haunts him, not as an aspersion cast upon him by others who resurrect his past in order to besmirch him, but as a depressing memory that is still active in his own heart. Others may or may not recall, he himself ever will. The crime is too great: “because I persecuted the church of God.” That final genitive “of God” weighs so heavily upon his soul.

Bengel has the correct interpretation: Ut abortus non est dignus humano nomine, sic apostolus negat se dignum apostoli appellatione. The tertium in τῷἐκτρώματι lies in the utter worthlessness, the total unfitness to be called an apostle for the terrible reason assigned. Paul does not say that he is an abortion as far as believers in general are concerned—he is not thinking of this great class of Christians—but as far as the apostles are concerned. They were apostles who had been duly selected and appointed by the Lord after a course of training and preparation. And to them the Lord appeared. Paul was a persecutor of the church, a vile, dead thing spiritually, fit only to be carried out and buried from sight.

Yet to him, to him while being such, the risen Lord also appeared. He, the abortion, placed at the side of these living men, treated, honored, dignified like them by the Lord!

1 Corinthians 15:10

10But much more must be said. God took this dead, vile thing, the most rabid persecutor of his church, and by his wondrous grace made not only a Christian of him but also an apostle, and not only one who was fit and worthy to be placed at the side of the other apostles but one who outranks the rest in his work, one who labors more abundantly than they all. But by God’s grace I am what I am; and his grace toward me did not prove empty; on the contrary, I did labor more abundantly than they all, yet not I; on the contrary, the grace of God with me.

The emphasis is on χάριτιΘεοῦ, Gottesgnade, without the articles, which absence stresses the quality of each of the nouns. Thus this is “grace” in the fullest sense, the favor Dei toward the unworthy and damnable sinner, which by its blessed means of grace removes all the deadly guilt, implants the new life from God, and in the case of Paul elevates him to the apostolate and enables him to do the great work which he did. Only “God’s grace” could accomplish such a deed. The abject lowness of the sinner Paul is thus put in overwhelming contrast with the supreme greatness wrought by God. The relative clause: “what I am,” is not the same as “who I am,” and not quite οἷος, qualis, “of what kind,” but “a more abstract idea,” R. 713. We prefer to say a more concrete idea, namely all that Paul is as an apostle.

While καί coordinates the next clause grammatically, it really explains what God’s grace did with Paul: “and his grace (ἡχάρις with the article of previous reference) toward me (who originally was such a dead, vile thing) did not prove empty.” The verb ἐγενήθη is weightier than the English “was”; the R. V. would reproduce its force by “was not found.” The aorist sums up all that this grace proved to be in Paul’s case. It demonstrated that it was not κενή, empty, hollow, or without inner substance. This adjective points to the quality of the grace itself. “Not empty” is a litotes for the positive idea “genuine,” being in the fullest sense exactly what the term “grace” expresses. The synonymous adjective μάταιος points to the effect, and its negative would mean “useless,” not attaining its purpose. The attributive phrase εἰςἐμέ is made too important in our versions: “which was bestowed upon me.” It is only a phrase that is attached to “grace” like an adjective: “his grace toward me.” When it came in contact with Paul it proved itself grace indeed.

Over against the negative “not empty” Paul places the strong opposite: “on the contrary,” ἀλλά. But he takes only one half of the step in the first clause and reserves the other half for a later clause. After he has said that this grace was not empty, we expect Faul at once to say what this grace actually did to show that it was not empty. This Paul does, but not at once. He first makes a statement that does not directly concern this grace at all but concerns himself: “on the contrary, I did labor more abundantly than they all,” namely as an apostle compared with all the other apostles. The verb κοπιάω refers to labor that requires strenuous exertion that tires.

Yet this exertion on Paul’s part is not the chief point as though Paul put more sensational effort into his work than the other apostles put into theirs. We should combine “labored” with “more abundantly” in the sense that, while Paul put much exertion into his work, he produced greater results than the other apostles, no matter what exertion they put forth.

Only when the fruits of this labor are made the chief point can Paul in the next clause turn about and ascribe everything he has done to the grace of God. To be sure, it was grace that prompted him to work so strenuously, but one may often work with tireless zeal and yet bring forth only meager results. We are not able to say just how much effort the other apostles put forth; it must have been a great deal. No one is able to make a comparison with Paul on this point. For Paul to do so would not be seemly; it would sound too much like self-praise, which is far from Paul’s mind. It would also convey the criticism that the other apostles should have worked harder than they did and thus have been equal to Paul.

All this disappears when the point of Paul’s statement is perceived, namely that he is thinking about the result of his labor. As a matter of mere fact these results are outstanding; witness the record of the Acts and the evidence in Paul’s epistles.

Paul intends to say a great deal when he compares results he has achieved with those of the other apostles. Exactly how much? Does he intend to say that he accomplished more than any one of the other apostles or more than all of them together? The words as they stand express the latter thought. If Paul desired to say the former he should have added a limiting term: more than “any one of them all.” In v. 7 πᾶσιν means “all” in the sense of one body, and it is natural to regard αὑτῶνπάντων in the same way. This accords, too, with Paul’s intention of praising God’s grace in the highest degree and with the facts recorded in the Acts and in the epistles.

Although Paul must truthfully say what he does regarding the results attained by him he does not dream of taking any credit to himself. For there now follows the main statement: “yet not I; on the contrary, the grace of God with me.” This contrast of “I” with “the grace of God” is conclusive evidence that Paul thinks chiefly of the results of his labor. It is literally true: grace alone achieved all these results. Paul is not merely ascribing them to grace with a sort of humble generosity on his part. When he thinks of what he originally was and then looks at these results he finds only one explanation: “not I—but God’s grace.”

Yet the addition σὺνἐμοί, “with me,” is necessary. Compare Mark 16:20; 1 Cor. 3:9, where this σύν appears in connection with the apostles. It in a way restates what Paul has in mind when he uses the verb “I did labor.” In the first part of v. 10 we have ἡεἰςἐμέ, the article before the phrase while in the latter part of this verse we have σὺνἐμοί minus the article. A fine point is involved. The former phrase shows that grace alone is active; the latter that Paul, too, is by no means inactive. Grace and Paul are in association.

While the laborer must say, “Thy pound hath gained ten pounds!” this laborer is not the slothful servant who folded his hands and did nothing. If the article were placed before the phrase, we should have: grace alone and not I in any sense did labor. Our versions translate as though Paul has used the article; they may not intend to convey the sense we have indicated but may have translated thus only to attain a smoothness of diction. It would, however, be a mistake to picture God’s grace and Paul’s effort as two horses together drawing a wagon, C. Tr. 907, 66, for the two are not coordinate. Paul’s effort is, in the last analysis, due to God’s grace, and it is put forth only as long as the Holy Spirit rules, guides, and leads him.

Verses 9 and 10 are a digression. But it is not Paul’s purpose to defend himself and his office against opponents in Corinth. To attach such a defense to a statement concerning Christ’s appearance to him on the way to Damascus would be strange indeed. Moreover, these two verses do not constitute a defense. Paul is moved to add this disgression as an expression of his inmost feeling in response to the greatness of the grace vouchsafed to him. When he thinks back to that great moment near Damascus and to all for which God has since used him he is overwhelmed with humble, shamefaced gratitude and joy; he must worship and magnify the grace that wrought it all by using him.

1 Corinthians 15:11

11After this digression οὗν returns to the main thought. Whether, then, I or they, so we are preaching, and so you did believe. This brings the presentation of the grand testimony regarding the resurrection of Christ to its conclusion. Paul’s thought runs to one point: no matter which of these competent witnesses the Corinthians examine, no matter to which of these notable heralds they listen, they will always hear the identical testimony and proclamation: “The Lord is risen; he is risen indeed!” We have no reason to find in the juxtaposition of “I” and “they” more than a natural emphasis on each pronoun; it is certainly not an effort on Paul’s part, by a pointed contrast between himself and others, to squelch derogations on the part of personal opponents.

The two adverbs “so” indicate manner. “So” = by announcing these facts we do our preaching; and the second “so” = by relying on these facts you did your believing until this time.

The difference in the tense of the two verbs is marked. The present tense is simple: “we are preaching,” i.e., continue to do so right along. More must be said regarding the aorist ἐπιστεύσατε. It is usually regarded as being ingressive: “so you came to believe” when this λόγος (v. 2) was first preached to you. The reason assigned is that in v. 2 this same aorist is regarded as being ingressive, and v. 11 is taken to be a repetition. Yet when Paul repeats he nearly always varies the thought in some way. We may accept the ingressive idea in regard to v. 2, although the aorist may well summarize the entire course of believing until the present moment (constative). In the case of v. 11, however, we have a definite reason for thinking of the more extensive constative sense.

The aorist ἐπιστεύσατε follows the durative present κηρύσσομεν, and the two verbs are correlative: preaching is intended to engender believing, believing is the normal response to preaching. If the preaching is durative, we may well expect that the correlative believing will match this continuous preaching. Paul could have used the present tense to express this thought: “so you are believing” right along. But the constative aorist does more. “We are preaching” means: as long as we preach at all. No matter whether men refuse to believe or are willing to believe, we do not stop preaching “so.” The constative aorist puts the matter of believing differently. It sums up the believing of the Corinthians from its inception to the present moment and stops with that moment.

What about continuing? The present tense would include the continuation; it would go on indefinitely. By pointing the Corinthians to the present moment the constative aorist bids them ask: “What shall we do from now on?” And that is exactly the question at issue in this chapter. Voices in Corinth are questioning the resurrection in general. If they are right, then Christ is not risen, and all of this testimony adduced by Paul is false. Then the Corinthians must change what they have believed until this moment.

We thus conclude that the aorist used in v. 11 is plainly constative.

The introduction to the grand subject has been concluded, the foundation for what follows has been laid. The very center of the Christian faith has been emphasized. Throughout this presentation the question must have come into the minds of the Corinthian readers: “Why?” This ample introduction is bound to arouse their attention to a high degree. Paul has purposely withheld all intimation as to what his purpose and aim may be. Psychologically this is perfect. It enables the Corinthians, even the doubters among them, to give their undisturbed attention to the central fact on which their faith rests and in their inmost hearts to reaffirm the faith they have held to the present moment.

No deflecting thought has had an opportunity to disturb this reaffirmation. No one could say regarding what Paul has thus far written: “Yes—but!” This is what so many minds are inclined to do (because of the flesh) when they see in advance whither some great truth would lead them—they begin to hesitate about fully accepting that truth even though they have held it thus far. Paul successfully checks such foolish proceeding on the part of the Corinthians. Now, with their faith in Christ’s resurrection again rising full and strong in their hearts, he flashes on the screen with one vivid sentence the startling, utterly unfounded denials at which this entire introduction has aimed from the very beginning. The effect produced must have been very strong when Paul’s words were first read in Corinth.

II. Our Resurrection, 12–34

1 Corinthians 15:12

12First, the question of surprise which is followed by all the negative deductions that it contains, v. 12–19. Then the affirmation of triumph with all the glorious truth it involves, v. 20–28. Finally, the application with its questions, protestation, and admonition, v. 29–34.

The connective is only the mild transitional δέ. Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how are some among you saying that there is no resurrection of (the) dead? The condition is one of reality, for Paul assumes beyond fear of contradiction that Christ is so preached, namely by all of the apostles, in fact, by all Christian preachers and prophets. He is being so preached even in Corinth at this very time. “Christ” is used here as it was in v. 3, the person is named according to his office. The passive “is preached” is broad and general and very appropriately omits all reference to the persons engaged in this work since the preaching and its substance are now the only issue. The Greek loves the personal construction, R. 658: “Christ is preached,” and as an apposition to “Christ” the clause which states what is preached is added.”

Paul puts this into compact form: “that he has been raised from the dead.” The perfect tense is explained in v. 4. The passive voice implies that God is the agent who raised Christ. The Scriptures make both statements: that God raised Christ, Rom. 6:4; 8:11; Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 26:32; and that Christ himself arose, Mark 9:21; Luke 18:33. In both expressions the act is due to the divine power which is Christ’s equally with the Father. Jesus has power to lay down his life and to take it back again, John 10:18. The apostle properly uses the passive here and makes God the agent because of the parallel which he has in mind regarding our resurrection, which is the work of God.

In the phrase ἐκνεκρῶν note the absence of the article, which absence stresses the quality of the noun: dead people, being dead, so that the sense is “from death.” The idea contained in ἐκ is that of separation, R. 598. This phrase occurs 35 times with reference to Christ, a few times with reference to other individuals; it is also used in a figurative sense. Two passages refer to the resurrection of many, and in these this standard phrase can have no other meaning than the one indicated.

Certain chiliasts speak of two resurrections: one at the beginning and one at the end of the millennium. To support this teaching they take ἐκνεκρῶν to mean: “from among,” “out from among the dead.” In their literature on this subject they print the Greek and point to the Greek preposition, which aims to impress those who know little or no Greek. This gives the appearance of reproducing only the literal meaning of Scripture but in reality misses the literal meaning. There is no article: “from the dead” in the Greek. The idea contained in this phrase is not that, when Christ arose, he left all the other dead behind; a student of Greek does not think of the other dead when he reads this phrase, nor has he a right to do so on the basis of this phrase. Christ came out of death and re-entered life; that is what the phrase literally and actually conveys.

No wonder, then, that this phrase is never used with reference to the ungodly; such a use, to say the least, would be misleading. When the ungodly are called forth from their graves, this summons is not an escape from death on the part of their bodies but an entrance of their bodies upon a state that is far worse than the decay in the grave. Yet some chiliasts make much of the absence of this phrase with reference to the ungodly.

It is easy to feel the surprise expressed in Paul’s question: “How say some among you,” etc.? Who these who are designated by the indefinite pronoun “some” are we have no means of knowing; see the introductory remarks to this chapter. Since the Corinthians were Greeks they would be inclined to philosophic ideas and reasonings. It seems safest to assume that these deniers of the resurrection were a few educated members of the congregation who revived some of the views that were advocated by Greek pagan philosophers. What such philosophers thought on the subject is shown by Acts 17:32. These doubters in Corinth were Christians, for, like the entire congregation, they, too, believed the resurrection of Christ.

For this reason, when he aproaches the subject, Paul makes sure that this essential point remains unshaken. If Christ arose, then the resurrection is established, for then it has already begun.

These doubters set up the proposition “that there is no resurrection of the dead,” that such a thing could not be, namely a rising up to life of bodies that are dead and buried. The verb λέγουσιν means that they were making this assertion. No articles are used with ἀνάστασιςνεκρῶν, Totenauferstehung, which gives this proposition an academic sound. Of course, if it were allowed to persist it would soon become much more. Paul is nipping this error in the bud. How this wrong theoretical proposition became established in the minds of these men Paul does not indicate, he deals only with the claim as such.

Human reason always finds objection to this wonderful doctrine and in one way or another attempts to show that it cannot be true. Paul sees at once what others at first apparently failed to see: the resurrection in general cannot be denied without ultimately advancing to a denial also of Christ’s resurrection. Both stand and fall together. What the denial of the latter implies is no less than destruction of the entire faith of the congregation, i.e., the abolition of the gospel in all its parts. This terrible result is the weapon which Paul uses to crush the incipient error in Corinth and to establish and to safeguard the truth.

1 Corinthians 15:13

13The logical basis of Paul’s reply is absolutely unassailable: a universal negative cannot be established if one fact to the contrary exists. Thus the single fact of Christ’s bodily resurrection once for all invalidates the assumption that denies the bodily resurrection in general. But instead of applying this incontestable proof at once, Paul first analyzes the negative proposition and points out all that it necessarily involves. It is far more than an academic or abstract idea. It is a deadly fountain from which a poisonous stream flows. By establishing Christ’s resurrection the fountain as well as the stream are swept out of existence.

But if there is no resurrection of (the) dead, neither has Christ been raised. Paul restates the Corinthian denial in the words already used and then adds the first terrible deduction. This plain and self-evident deduction must have come to the first readers with a shock. The condition is one of reality in which the negative is normally οὑ, R. 1011, etc.; and the perfect tense in the apodosis makes no difference, R. 1008; regarding the tense see v. 4. The resurrection deals with the body. Christ’s body was given into death on the cross and then, like any dead human body, was placed into the tomb.

He was flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, and in this respect altogether one with us although in person he was the Son of God. So it cannot be argued that he was a different and a higher being and therefore exempt from the rule that the dead are not raised. The apostle also disregards such an evasion of the point.

1 Corinthians 15:14

14The second deduction is linked up with the first. But if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is empty, your faith also is empty. This is again a condition of reality with οὑ, and the perfect tense is now used in the protasis, and ἄρα occurs in the apodosis to indicate the evident nature of the conclusion. This conclusion naturally extends in two directions, that of the apostolic proclamation, and that of the Corinthian faith. The noun τὸκήρυγμα corresponds with the verb κηρύσσειν used in v. 11, 12 and denotes the contents of the announcement. The proclamation and the faith are correlative, for the proclamation is intended to engender faith, and faith rests on the proclamation.

If Christ were not raised, if Christ were dead forever, both the proclamation and the faith would be “empty,” hollow, like a nut without a kernel. All gospel preaching, every assertion and every promise which are a part of the gospel, would be a mere sound of words without reality back of them. The same would be true regarding faith or confidence that is made to rest upon such preaching. In plain language, the preaching would be a lie, and the believing would be trusting in a lie. The preachers would be like those who sell fake stocks, and the believers like those who buy fake stocks. The Greek makes the two predicate adjectives κενόν and κενή strongly emphatic by their position: “empty then our proclamation, empty also your faith.”

1 Corinthians 15:15

15A third deduction is linked up with the second. Moreover, we also are found false witnesses concerning God because we bore witness against God, that he did raise Christ whom he did not raise, if so be that the dead are not raised.

“Moreover,” δέ, adds a new and different point, and καί adds the idea that this means nothing less than false witnesses. The entire proclamation rests on testimony, that of chosen witnesses concerning the reality of Christ’s resurrection, v. 5–8. If this proclamation and the faith resting on it are false, then these witnesses are “pseudo-witnesses,” liars, and all of their testimony is nothing but a lie. That is reprehensible when the witnesses and their testimony deal with ordinary matters of this life; but it is infinitely worse when they deal with God himself and with the acts of God. The genitive in the expression “pseudo-witnesses of God” is not subjective, for God never testifies through false witnesses—a monstrous thought. This genitive is objective: “false witnesses concerning God,” who testify falsely about him.

This is fully corroborated by the next clause: “because we bore witness against God, that he did raise Christ whom he did not raise.” “We are found” means: we are now (present tense) exposed, discovered to be, just plain lying witnesses. This is the plain proposition which all of those must accept who today deny the reality of the bodily resurrection of Christ. They can maintain their denial only by making all of the witnesses who beheld the risen Savior (from Peter downward to Paul) liars. Besides, they make also the ancient prophets liars, who bore a witness that God himself had told them, namely, that he would raise up the Messiah whom he never intended to raise up. Yet this blasphemous denial is today made from many pulpits which claim the Christian name. They may tone down their statement by saying that the prophets were subjective liars who did not know that they were lying; but a well-intentioned liar is often much worse than a conscious liar.

Paul states more than the simple reason that these witnesses could be exposed as liars. He recapitulates and in typical Pauline fashion reverts to his original proposition, namely that some say there is no resurrection of the dead. Thus the entire presentation of v. 12–15 is combined into a compact unit. “Because we bore witness” has the aorist which states the past fact as such. This may be simply the historical aorist, yet even as such it is constative, for Paul has just repeated this testimony in v. 5–8 in extenso and has included his personal testimony. So this aorist sums up into one point all of the testimony which the chosen witnesses uttered concerning the Lord’s bodily resurrection.

All of this testimony would be κατὰτοῦΘεοῦ, which is to be rendered “against God” and not “of God” as is done in our versions. The preposition does not mean “against” but “down upon.” It is used with the genitive after verbs of swearing, this is perhaps done because the hand was placed down upon the thing on which the oath was taken. So when the oath was taken on God himself instead of on some object, the preposition was retained, R. 607. Paul makes no mention of an oath on the part of the witnesses whom he indicates. Their witness itself, dealing, as it does, with God and with Christ, is sacred testimony of the highest degree. There is no need to swear by God that God raised up Christ.

The direct contradiction between the testimony and the fact (if the contention of the Corinthian deniers is, indeed, true) is sharply put: “that he did raise Christ whom he did not raise, if,” etc. The verbs and their objects are arranged chiastically: verb—object; object—verb. This places all the emphasis on the verbs: “did raise—did not raise”; an absolute yea against an absolute nay. Of course, this clash of the yea-testimony with the nay-facts exists only on the condition “if so be that the dead are not raised.” In the compound εἴπερ, πέρ has the note of urgency by stressing the “if”: “if so be,” “if indeed,” R. 1154. Paul, as it were, lays his finger on this evil “if” as if to say: “Yes—if!” The moment this “if” disappears, the clash between the testimony and the fact vanishes like a painful mirage, and the testimony is seen to reflect the fact and nothing but the fact. The addition of ἄρα emphasizes the close connection between the “if” clause and the main clause, “because,” etc.

Three points have been noted that deserve attention: 1) the identity of the category into which Paul places Christ’s bodily resurrection and our own bodily resurrection; 2) the sacredness of the apostolic testimony regarding the former; 3) Paul’s fanatical self-delusion if the appearance of Christ to him is, indeed, a psychological hallucination which makes his own spiritual transformation and his entire gospel rest on this delusion and on the pitiful mental weakness that made such a delusion possible.

1 Corinthians 15:16

16One series of deductions has been concluded. A second series must be unfolded in order to display still more fully the fateful consequences that lie hidden in the Corinthian error. This second series corroborates (γάρ) the first. Paul again begins as he did in v. 13 and correlates Christ’s resurrection with that of the dead generally. For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised. This is the key to the preceding and again the key to the following.

Both verbs are true passives as are those occurring in v. 12–14 and at the end of v. 15, all stress the agency of God. The present tense ἐγείρονται resumes the same tense that occurred at the end of v. 15: if the dead “are not raised,” it is a gnomic present (R. 866) that is always timeless and is often used in doctrinal statements as in the present instance. Its best commentary is the noun found in v. 12: there is “no resurrection of the dead.” The perfect tense of the verb used in the apodosis is explained in v. 4.

1 Corinthians 15:17

17From the first deduction, which is now made for the second time, Paul hastens to the second. But if Christ has not been raised, your faith is useless, you are yet in your sins. This deduction has been made already in part in connection with the preaching mentioned in v. 14, where both the preaching-and the faith are said to be “empty.” But more must be said. So Paul takes up this deduction independently and expands it and also follows it with two further deductions along the same line, v. 18, 19.

In v. 14 Paul says: your faith is κενή, “empty,” hollow, without a reality on which to rest. Here he says: your faith is ματαία, “useless,” idle, it gets you nothing. Our versions use “vain” to translate both synonyms, which obscures the important difference. Bengel: κενή, sine vera re; ματαία, sine usu. Only because faith is regarded as “useless” can Paul add the next clause: “you are yet in your sins.” For faith is to benefit us, bring us something, namely the greatest of all treasures, the forgiveness of sins. If it brings us nothing it is “useless.” On the other hand, faith is “empty” when the Word to which it clings is untrue, unreal.

Though it cling ever so firmly it grasps only an empty shadow, a delusive lie. The two ideas are clearly distinct, yet they are also closely related, for a faith that is empty and rests on empty air is for that very reason also of no use whatever.

This uselessness is made evident by the statement: “you are yet in your sins,” in your guilt and condemnation; compare John 8:21. To be in our sins = in their deadly sphere where all of our sins surround us and accuse us before God as so many deadly wolves about to tear us to pieces. Make the Savior what you please, if he failed to rise from the dead he is useless, for he cannot free us from our sin, the one thing for which we need a Savior. If there is no resurrection, there is also no redemption, no reconciliation with God, no justification, no life and salvation. If Christ is still dead, then every believer is still dead in trespasses and sins. As long as Christ, our surety, is not released, it is certain that our debt is not paid, we are still liable, no matter how much we may trust in some supposed payment or in some release without payment.

Christ’s resurrection is the positive proof that his sacrifice was, indeed, sufficient and fully accepted by God. Therefore, Christ was raised for our justification, Rom. 4:25. To reject his resurrection is to reject the efficacy of his sacrifice, and the death which he died is just as useless as our faith in such a dead Christ.

1 Corinthians 15:18

18The second deduction already includes a third: and accordingly they that fell asleep in Christ did perish. In the New Testament Greek ἄρα is not always postpositive. It denotes a correspondence with the preceding: “accordingly,” and καί adds this corresponding” point to the one that precedes. When Paul wrote this letter near Easter of the year 57, some of the Corinthians had already died, believing and trusting in Christ to the end.

Paul uses the significant designation: “they that fell asleep in Christ” (11:30). The substantivized participle is qualitative and describes these persons by stating this one past act of theirs, hence it is an aorist; the passive form is to be taken in the sense of the middle. But note well, “in Christ,” in union with him by true faith. To fall asleep in Christ is the beautiful Scriptural expression to designate the Christian’s death; his body sinks into peaceful slumber presently to be awakened by the risen Lord to a new and a glorious life in his presence. This very designation is already a denial of the Corinthian error, a clear testimony to the heavenly hope of the resurrection of the dead at the last day according to Christ’s promise.

One word reveals the tragedy like a blow: ἀπώλοντο, second aorist middle, “did perish.” When these believers closed their eyes in death, at that moment they perished completely and forever with body and with soul. We also say that they are lost or damned. The sense is the same. In this crushing way Paul brings home to his readers what the denial of the resurrection really involves. He who persists in this denial writes over every believer’s tomb: “Lost!” or, what amounts to the same: “Damned!” Nothing more heart-rending could be said. The entire hereafter is shrouded in the blackest night.

This blackness has swallowed up those who have passed beyond and waits to swallow up those whose life is now swiftly passing away. And this some foolish Corinthians, whether they realize it or not, were putting in place of the light and the hope that shine beyond the grave for every believer.

The verb “to perish” has been stressed to mean “to be annihilated,” to be deprived of existence. This has then been taken to mean that no hell or no hell-fire exist for the wicked. But in sacred language ἀπολλύμενος means perishing by losing salvation in contradistinction to σωζόμενος, being saved by obtaining salvation. He who perishes is forever separated from God, heaven, eternal life. His body and his soul share the fate of Satan in the eternal torment of hell. For an examination of all the pertinent passages see C.-K. 787, etc.

1 Corinthians 15:19

19As he did in the case of the first series of deductions in v. 13–15, so in the case of this second series Paul draws a summary. This second summary reaches back and includes all that precedes in regard to faith in Christ. If we are such people only as have hoped in Christ in this life we are of all men most pitiable. The condition contemplates reality. We should note the position of μόνον which is placed emphatically at the end of the εἰ clause. This implies that it is not to be construed with the ἐν phrase as is done in our versions: “in this life only.” The adverb modifies the entire clause or, what amounts to the same thing, the predicate ἠλπικότες. This participle with the following ἐσμέν is not a circumscribed perfect tense but a simple predicate with the copula.

Paul describes the Christian believers from the standpoint of death, i.e., the death which causes them to perish. They are people who had hope throughout their earthly life from the moment they came to faith and to the hope embodied in faith; but their death reveals that this their hope was an illusion. That is the type of people they are. The perfect participle conveys the idea that they at one time embraced this hope and then clung to it until they died. “In Christ” connects the activity of hoping with Christ and with all for which he stands. The fulfillment of the hope rests in him.

If this is all that we are, people who have cherished an illusion until the hour of their death, then “we are of all men most pitiable.” This, of course, implies that all who are without faith and hope in Christ, all non-Christians, are certainly also pitiable. They live and die without God and hope in this world. But it is still more pitiful, because it is far more tragic, to have a great hope in the heart throughout life, to shape the whole life according to that hope, to crucify the flesh, to war against temptation, to bear the cross, to suffer reproach and many other ills for the sake of this hope, and then in the end to have that hope turn out to be an iridescent bubble, a vacuous dream. This is Paul’s commentary on a Christianity that exists for this life only without regard to what is to come thereafter. Yet this is the type of Christianity that not a few seek to popularize at the present time. A Christianity without a risen Christ and the sure and. certain hope of our resurrection from the grave, whatever men may say in laudation of its moral influence and its good works, is worse than none.

The logic which Paul employs in this paragraph has been challenged as being merely an argument ad hominem or as being a mere appeal to the emotions, which is effective only for certain people in a subjective way. Preachers are also cautioned in regard to their Easter message; they are told that they must remember that Paul’s logic is unsound. Let us examine this challenge. Logical deduction starts with an admitted proposition. Here it is the proposition: “There is no resurrection at all.” This the Corinthian doubters believe and assert. They are thus bound to accept every necessary deduction that is involved in that proposition.

That is the logic of this case. Unless these doubters are ready to accept these necessary deductions they are forced to drop their proposition or to alter it so that those deductions do not follow.

Now what does Paul do? Make emotional appeals? Not for one moment. In his entire presentation not one emotional term is found. Argue ad hominem? That means to single out some admission that is made only by these doubters and by this admission to assail their proposition.

In his entire presentation Paul singles out nothing incidental; he adheres absolutely to the original proposition in its true and genuine sense as maintained by these doubters. The deductions which he draws are simple, clear, inescapable. In fact as well as in logical thinking they must ever be drawn. Beyond the shadow of a doubt every deduction lies in the original proposition. This is true logic, unassailable and deadly. It could not be truer or stronger.

This has been recognized throughout all the centuries. Unless he wishes to discredit himself, no commentator can at his late date call Paul’s deductions unsound.

The logicians (Taylor’s Logic; Reiser’s Humanistic Logic) define the argumentum ad hominem as an attack on the character of the opponent instead of on the contention of the opponent. We submit that this would be no argumentum at all even as such attack on character is used only when men have no real argument. When the wicked Jews had no argument whatever they shouted that Jesus was a Samaritan, that he had a devil, and finally picked up stones to stone him. Vilification and personal attack should not be called argumentum ad hominem. Needless to say that Paul is here using nothing of this kind. He is using sound deduction. He is using not even argumentum ad hominem in the true sense of the term, namely an argument based on some admission of his opponents.

Paul’s argument is called a reductio ad absurdum by some. But this is a misconception. The end of Paul’s logical chain is not in any sense an absurdity. It is the height of tragedy. It evokes no laughter; it leaves us shocked and dismayed because of what the Corinthian doubters maintain in their original proposition. All of Paul’s deductions are negative. Each deduction is a negation in form as well as in fact. The deductions must of necessity be negative because the original proposition is a universal negative: “There is no resurrection of the dead.” Paul’s logic is as sound and as inevitable as are the negative syllogisms of Jesus in John 8:39, 40, 47.

1 Corinthians 15:20

20By means of his deductions Paul has pitilessly pursued the Corinthian error to its last, desperate conclusion. He has welded about that error a chain so ponderous and unbreakable that it lies fettered forever, never again to free itself and to harass believers. Logic, the genuine logic of reality, however, requires one additional thing: the demolition of the universal negative that there is no resurrection by means of the tremendous, undeniable, and admitted fact that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead. Even the Corinthian doubters knew and admitted this fact. Something had blinded their eyes so that they failed to see that this one fact destroyed their entire proposition regarding the resurrection.

With a sudden dramatic turn, which is as effective as all of the reasoning by deduction which Paul employs, he hurls the great Easter fact at the Corinthian error. It has throughout trembled for expression in his own heart and no doubt also in the hearts of the Corinthians when they heard these inexorable lines read in their assembly. But Paul does far more than merely to introduce the fact of Christ’s resurrection as it took place on Easter morning. That fact, which is merged with our coming resurrection, transports Paul’s mind to the end of time, to the final triumphant consummation when “God shall be all in all.” Only when Christ’s resurrection is thus seen in its glorious connection with the final consummation is its full significance apprehended.

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, first fruits of them that are asleep. Paul simply announces the great fact. He has already recorded the full historical evidence for it in the first paragraph of the chapter, and that evidence forever attests the fact. “But now”—thank God what a relief! Compare Rom. 3:21 for an exact parallel; “now” refers, not to time, but to the thought. “Christ has been raised,” the tense is the same as that used in v. 4. “From the dead” is explained in v. 12. Like a climber in the Alps, who trembles on the brink of some bottomless gulf with the rock already crumbling beneath his feet suddenly finds himself at a turn where the path stretches safe and wide before him, so we feel when, after the journey through verse 19, we step across into verse 20.

All of the deductions which Paul has knit so tightly he now unravels with one motion. All of them are false because the original proposition is false. They collapse like a house of cards when the breath of truth is blown upon them. The exact opposite of all these dreadful deductions is true. And more, infinitely more, is true—because Christ has been raised from the dead. He was raised, not like Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son at Nain, or Lazarus at Bethany, to walk again in this life and to pass through death a second time, but he was raised by the glory of God, lifted up into the glory which he had in the beginning with the Father (John 17:5), with a name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9).

Highly significant to all who believe in him is the apposition added to “Christ”: “first fruits of them that are asleep.” The figure of “the first fruits” suggests the image of a great harvest which is ushered in by the first sheaf that is presented as an offering to God, Lev. 23:10. The noun is singular in the Greek, but the English idiom prefers a plural. “First fruits” has no article since the term is general. The figure occurs regularly in the New Testament, 1 Cor. 16:15; Rom. 11:16; 16:5; James 1:18; Rev. 14:4. Its connotation is that of certainty: as certainly as Christ was raised, so certainly shall we be raised. For as the first sheaf cannot be harvested and offered unless the entire harvest is ripe and ready, so Christ cannot be raised unless all of us believers are ready to be raised also. God sees us as being thus ready.

The interval of time does not count with him. The dead believers are called “they that are asleep,” the perfect participle is somewhat different from the aorist used in v. 18: they that have gone to sleep and now slumber. Compare also v. 6. Paul, of course, writes only concerning Christians.

The three persons whom Christ raised to life during his earthly ministry cannot be referred to as constituting a part of the great resurrection since they had to undergo death a second time and are now among those that sleep. Enoch and Elijah were translated bodily to heaven and did not die at all. Paul makes no reference to the saints that arose after Christ’s resurrection and appeared unto many in the holy city, Matt. 27:52. Christ alone is the “first fruits”; and with him the great and final resurrection has actually begun.

1 Corinthians 15:21

21By way of explanation (γάρ) Paul unfolds what lies in the significant apposition: “first fruits of them that are asleep.” For since by man death, by man also resurrection from death. All of the nouns are without articles, and no verbs are employed. This means that each noun is stressed as to its quality, and that the weight of meaning lies wholly on the nouns. We have difficulty only in rendering the last genitive νεκρῶν into English, for we cannot say “resurrection of dead” like the German Totenauferstehung but must use the article: resurrection “of the dead,” or reproduce the sense: resurrection “from death.” We have no right to insert verbs, either “came” in both statements as our versions do, or “came” in the first and “shall come” in the second as R. 395 and others do. Paul does no more than to fix this exact parallel: man the death medium—man also the resurrection medium. There is a reason for this parallel to which Paul points with “since”; but what this reason is he withholds for the moment.

We are told that Paul draws this parallel on the basis of an ancient apocalyptic principle which is basic to all ancient apocalyptic thought, namely that the start of time and the end of time must correspond. We are told that Paul adopted this thought and so drew the parallel: Death through man at the start—resurrection through man at the end. The answer is that, if Paul had drawn from such turbid sources as Jewish apocalyptic fancies, he could never have penned this divine chapter.

1 Corinthians 15:22

22A second γάρ explains still further. For even as in Adam all go on dying, thus also in Christ all shall be made alive. Now we know whom Paul has in mind when he twice writes in v. 21: “through man.” The one man is Adam, the other man is Christ. He even places the article before each name (which the Greek allows but not the English) in order to mark each of these two persons as being well known.

But Paul now changes the prepositions. From διά which he used in v. 21, which makes each person only a medium, he advances to ἐν, which makes each person a sphere, one circle being drawn by Adam, the other circle being drawn by Christ. R. 587 scarcely does justice to this preposition when he renders it “in the person of” the Adam (whom we all know) and “in the person of” the Christ (whom we all know). For this rendering does not agree with the verbs which Paul now uses and with the force of their tenses.

Paul states a fact that is connected with each of the two notable persons whom he has named. Just as in v. 21 he bids us not to look for verbs, so he now fixes our attention upon two verbs which he himself writes. Paul does not say that “in the person of Adam” all died, i.e., when death struck him, and likewise that “in the person of Christ” all came to life, i.e., when he arose and came to life. R. 827 himself calls the tense of the first verb, ἀποθνήσκουσιν, a frequentative present: “they go on dying.” This is correct, for Paul states the fact: a continuous process of dying. This tense is, therefore, not a timeless gnomic present. In Rom. 5:12 Paul makes an entirely different statement, namely that in the one sin by which Adam fell all men sinned, and that thus by that one sin death came upon all men.

In other words, Adam’s one sin was the death of all of us. In Romans, Paul therefore uses aorists; but here in Corinthians he has the iterative present. In Romans he stresses the historic fact that occurred in the tragedy of Eden, in Corinthians the continuous fact that progresses from Eden to the last day.

In the statement regarding Christ, Paul cannot use another present tense and say: “thus also in Christ all go on being made alive,” i.e., in the person of Christ who arose on the third day. For this is not the fact. Paul is speaking about those who die, whose bodies are laid in the grave as a result of the process of dying which he has just mentioned. These bodies remain dead—Paul himself says they are asleep. Whenever this sleeping is mentioned it, of course, refers to the bodies of believers and never to their souls, for these do not sleep. Paul uses a future tense, ζωοποιηθήσονται, which R. 872 rightly calls punctiliar: “they shall be made alive” in one grand act at the last day.

This is again the fact. Thus beside the continuous process of dying Paul places the final single act of bringing the dead bodies back to life.

The two prepositions ἐν are, therefore, in no way mystic but, like all of the other words used in these two clauses, expressive of plain facts: “in Adam,” “in Christ” = in connection with Adam, in connection with Christ. And the connection is according to each of the two persons—how else could it be? The one is a natural, the other is a spiritual connection. The one is by natural descent from a sinful progenitor who brought death and dying upon us all by his sin; the other by a spiritual regeneration through faith in the Redeemer who conquered sin and death and brought life and immortality to light by his resurrection. Yet we should not extend Paul’s words so as to include more than he himself puts into them. He discusses the bodily resurrection of believers only—of these alone; he states that all of us believers die now, and that at last all of us shall be raised. This process of dying is due to our connection with Adam; the coming event of our resurrection is due to our connection with Christ.

This helps us to explain the two πάντες, “all,” concerning the force of which there is considerable confusion. The two words appear without modifiers because none are needed. “All” are dying; “all” shall be made alive. The same persons are referred to. “All” = all believers. Yes, it is true, unbelievers as well as believers die so that we must say, “All men die.” But Paul is not instructing the Corinthians in regard to all men, he is speaking only about believers and throughout his discussion does not mention unbelievers. This is very plain when we consider the second “all”: “all in Christ.” None are in connection with Christ save by true faith alone.

In an effort to determine who is referred to by the two “all” we decline to have recourse to Plato and to Plato’s metaphysical thought that in the author of a series all the successors are included just as in an idea all the individual phenomena of that idea are included. By thus finding Platonic influence behind Paul’s words the first “all” is found to mean “all men” because that would be in keeping with Plato’s thought. The second “all” seems to have a limitation because Paul writes “all in Christ,” but this cannot be Paul’s intention, for according to Plato’s conception of “the idea” “all men” ought again to be the sense. But Paul and not Plato wrote v. 22; and Paul is not a philosopher-theologian but a fact-theologian to the very core. So true is this regarding Paul that he is governed, not even by abstract ideas or abstract forms of thinking, but by the simple actualities and realities.

In order that the Corinthians might understand the resurrection of believers at the last day it is vital that Paul should combine the continuous dying as being still in progress due to Adam’s fall with the final act of Christ when he shall call back to life the dead bodies of his saints at the end of days. Did some of the Corinthians think that their dead should be rising now even as Christ died and then quickly arose on the third day? They have their answer in this statement of Paul’s. Let us observe also the voices of the verbs: “go on dying” is active, for we die of ourselves; but “shall be made alive” is passive, for only by the power of Christ shall our bodies be made gloriously alive at the last day.

“How does Paul know all of this?” has been asked. This question introduces the supposition that what Paul writes is a “theory” at which he has arrived, and that, while he presents this theory with a great certainty, his theory really rests on old apocalyptic sources. But nobody has as yet been able to produce the actual apocalyptic Jewish writings from which Paul drew his “theory.” In due time, however, these writings will no doubt be found. But we ask: “Is some apocalyptic document necessary in order that Paul may learn that ‘in Adam all (the saints) die’?” That is a Catechism truth. So also is the next clause that “in Christ all (the saints) shall be made alive.” How often did Jesus say concerning every believer: “I give unto him eternal life and will raise him up at the last day”? Paul had the Old Testament and knew how to use it.

To cap all, Paul spoke as an apostle and a prophet by revelation from Christ, Gal. 1:12. Thus also Paul does not advance a “theory” but presents the realities themselves; no wonder he speaks with unhesitating certainty.

1 Corinthians 15:23

23Paul proceeds by adding another point (δέ) to his explanation. Yet each in his own order; as first fruits Christ, then they that are Christ’s at his Parousia. This new point must be added (δέ) to what Paul says concerning all believers, namely that they shall be made alive.

But this new point is misunderstood when the idea of “order” is stressed so that Paul is thought to answer the question: “In what order (or succession) does the resurrection take place?” Paul does not have groups in mind, the one rising now, the other later, each being like a τάγμα, literally, “a military troop,” that appears when it is called. Then the lone person of Christ would also be designated as a “troop,” which is not true. The question is one in regard to the believers only, concerning whom Paul says that they shall be made alive: “When shall their bodies be raised from the grave?” The answer appears in the final phrase which for this very reason is in the emphatic position at the end: These believers shall be made alive “at his (Christ’s) Parousia.”

The connection of thought with v. 22 is quite free and yet altogether clear. After stating that “in Christ all shall be made alive” Paul adds: “Yet each in his own order” and then states the order. The connection is thus ad sensum and not formally with the subject “all” or with the verb “shall be made alive.” For when Paul continues: “as first fruits Christ,” we see that Christ is not included in “all,” nor does the verb “shall be made alive” refer to Christ, for he is already raised from the dead. Yet the statement of v. 22, “that in Christ all shall be made alive,” of necessity involves also the resurrection of Christ, for without it no believer will ever be raised. For this reason Paul mentions Christ’s resurrection first, and then adds that of the believers together with a reference to the time when they shall arise. A proper and exact instruction concerning our resurrection must state just what Paul writes to the Corinthians.

What is said concerning Christ is thus preliminary. The fact that he has already been raised Paul has stated in v. 20 by significantly calling him “first fruits” of them that sleep. It is in connection with the idea of “first fruits” that the question arises as to when the harvest proper shall follow. This will be “at the Parousia.” Thus the statement: “each in his own order,” receives its appropriate explanation: “as first fruits Christ, then they that are Christ’s at his Parousia.” The great resurrection harvest will not occur until that time.

The word ἕκαστος, “each,” should, therefore, not be stressed, either by itself or in connection with τάγμα, so as to imply 1) Christ 2) those that are Christ’s 3) all the rest. Nor should τάγμα be stressed to mean “a military troop”: first troop, Christ; second troop, believers; third troop, unbelievers. Again the decisive term ἀπαρχή, “first fruits,” should not be lightly regarded as though it were only incidentally attached to Christ. This is the very term which shows how many Paul has in mind, and in what “order” they are to come. For this reason “first fruits” is repeated from v. 20 and is even placed emphatically before Christ: “as first fruits Christ.” “Each in his own order” means exactly two and not three. First fruits are followed by the harvest, and that is all; never also by a second “harvest,” if this second could by any stretch of the imagination be called a “harvest.” Christ is “first fruits” only with respect to believers, “those that are his.” He stands in no connection with unbelievers; he is absolutely not their “first fruits.” By so emphatically calling Christ “first fruits” Paul excludes all unbelievers.

In v. 22 Paul writes “all,” and we now learn from him who these are: “they that are Christ’s.” The Greek is satisfied with the genitive of possession, and we need not supply: they that are “disciples” of Christ as R. 767 does. Those do not identify “all” in v. 22 with “they that are Christ’s” who feel that Paul must mention also unbelievers.

The word παρουσία (παρά plus εἶναι) is the standard New Testament term for the second coming of Christ at the last day. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East 372, etc., finds the term used extensively in Hellenistic Greek to designate the arrival of kings and emperors. Coins were struck, and at times a new era was dated from such a coming. Yet the conclusion is not warranted that this pagan use of the term gave rise to the Christian use. This is shown conclusively from the use of this term on the part of the disciples when they in Judea asked Jesus about his Parousia, Matt. 24:3. No pagan influence was evident in the case of these disciples.

Moreover, Christ’s Parousia is never called “the Parousia of the King” but that “of the Son of man.” The term seems to be of Jewish origin. The Jews expected the Messiah’s coming or Parousia, and the Christians, from Christ’s time onward, used the word to designate Christ’s coming at the last day. A synonymous expression is ἡἡμέρααὑτοῦ, “his day,” 1:8; 2 Cor. 1:14; 2 Thess. 2:1, etc.; and other passages. Not until the day of the great Parousia will the believers’ bodies be raised from their graves. See C.-K. 406, etc.

1 Corinthians 15:24

24The proper instruction concerning the resurrection must go back as far as Adam, v. 21, and forward as far as God who shall finally be “all in all.” Only in this its true setting can the resurrection be understood. It is not merely a theoretical or academic question but a vital link in the great chain of facts, which begins with the fact of Adam’s fall and our dying and ends with Christ’s redemption and his kingdom’s consummation. Here again Paul displays his comprehensive and all-embracing view of the realities and facts involved.

Some of his commentators do not keep pace with him—which is one reason for the vagaries which they present. Paul does not stop with the announcement made in v. 23 that the believers shall arise at the time of Christ’s Parousia. We must know more. But the idea is not that these are entirely different matters or matters that are only loosely connected with our resurrection. They are matters that are vital to our resurrection as being the necessary complement of Christ’s resurrection as the first fruits. Therefore Paul is not leaving the subject in v. 24. So little as Paul leaves the subject when he goes back to Adam, so little does he now leave it.

Then the end, when he shall deliver the kingdom to the God and Father, when he shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power. The observation is correct that v. 24 begins a new sentence.

But ἀπαρχή … ἔπειτα (v. 23) … and now εἶτα (v. 24) do not mark three stages in the sense of three periods of time. Some are of the opinion that Paul teaches two different resurrections, first a general resurrection of the saints, secondly (after an interval presumably of a thousand years) a general resurrection of the damned. The fact remains that “as first fruits” is a predicate noun that is attached to “Christ”: “as first fruits Christ,” and it is thus different from the two adverbs that follow. Again, the fact is that “first fruits” has and can have only one correlative, namely the general harvest which consists of “those that are Christ’s.” Thus “Christ” and “those of Christ” constitute a complete whole.

In the face of these facts some still think that Paul has in mind a third group, and that he refers to this third group. We are told outright: “Paul teaches the double resurrection.” He derives it from Jewish apocalyptic sources. John 5:29 is quoted as proof that Jesus himself taught the double resurrection whereas the words: “The hour cometh, in which all that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and shall come forth,” prove the opposite.

Because of the long interval that obtains between the resurrection of Christ and that of the Christians a similar long interval is assumed between the resurrection of the Christians and that of the non-Christians. Thus one assumption is added to another: 1) a double resurrection is taught; 2) a long interval (a thousand years) intervenes. This long interval is found in εἶτα, “then,” which is made parallel with ἔπειτα, “then” or “thereupon,” in v. 23. But “then” in v. 23 is not the word that tells us about the interval between Christ’s resurrection and that of the Christians. “Then,” ἕπειτα, may mean immediately after or at any time after. It is the final phrase “at his Parousia” which informs us about the interval that will occur in this case. Paul adds no corresponding phrase or corresponding expression when he writes: “Then the end.” What right have we to insert or to assume such a phrase: “Then the end—after a thousand years”; or: “Then the end—after an indefinitely long interval”?

In John 5:29 “the hour” is a unit and not a duality that is divided by a long interval. “The hour” is the day of the Lord, the last day. And “all … shall come forth” presents “all” as another unit, all the dead (Christians and non-Christians), and not again a duality that is divided by a millennial interval.

In v. 23 “then” or “thereupon,” ἔπειτα = “at his Parousia.” Paul himself defines the adverb by means of the phrase. He does the same in v. 24 with regard to “then,” εἶτα; this he defines by two “when” clauses: “Then … when (ὅταν).” And “then … when” go together even more closely than “then … at” (ἐν) in v. 23.

Paul writes simply: “Then the end,” and omits the verb as not being necessary. Our versions translate quite correctly: “Then cometh the end,” and use the present tense. Those who think of a double resurrection supply a future tense: ἔσται, “then will be or will come the end.” This permits the interval which they find, for they may extend this future tense into a thousand years or as far as they please. The only difficulty is that Paul sets down no verb and no tense; and a doctrine which is based on a verb or a tense that are inserted rests on what does not exist. “Then the end,” with neither a verb nor a tense or any kind, means: then at the Parousia. No known rule of language allows us to supply a future tense, to say nothing about the long interval.

What is τὸτέλος, “the end”? This term that indicates time Paul himself defines at once by means of the two “when” clauses: “the end when” the events now stated occur. The occurrence of these events constitutes the end. The thought is quite the same when we regard τὸτέλος as “the goal”; it is reached “when” these acts are performed. The proposal to regard “the end” as “the end of being made alive” in the sense that then, after the long interval, also the wicked shall finally be made alive and as the last τάγμα or “troop” come out of their graves, is untenable, for it finds in the simple noun “the end” what it cannot convey.

Some give τὸτελός the meaning “then the rest,” namely the wicked, i.e., then they, too, shall be made alive, of course, after the long interval. But this meaning is unknown even to the dictionaries. Finally, some take “the end” in the sense: “Then the resurrection end,” i.e., then “the last act of the resurrection which, as is self-evident from the preceding, pertains to the non-Christians.” The interval is, of course, again assumed. While this attempts to interpret only “the end” and after a fashion retains the true meaning “the end” or “the conclusion,” this interpretation is not derived from the words of Paul but from the interpreter’s subjective views.

According to Paul the “end” is “when he shall deliver the kingdom to the God and Father, when he shall have abolished all rule,” etc. As “the end” is a designation of time it is naturally defined by two temporal clauses: “the end … when … when,” etc. (ὅταν … ὅταν, really indefinite: “whenever … whenever”). The two tremendous acts here recorded constitute “the end.” The end is not something by itself, nor is it merely accompanied by these two great acts; still less does an interval lie between the end and these acts. Two objections are raised to this interpretation. First, a parallelism between ἔπειτα and εἶτα, which has already been answered above. Secondly, that no mention is made of the wicked.

The latter is not true, for as we shall see, they are in a way mentioned. What Paul says is that the Parousia and the resurrection usher in the end, namely the abolition of all hostile powers (here, indeed, including the wicked) and the transfer of the kingdom to God.

The better reading is παραδιδῷ and not παραδιδοῖ although both forms are present subjunctive, R. 312, 1214, and other authorities; the latter is not an optative. The present tense is punctiliar because of the nature of the act, namely the deliverance of the kingdom to God. Regarding “the kingdom” compare 4:20. This kingdom denotes, not the church or the persons of the saints, but the rule of Christ, the King. His kingdom here on earth is found wherever he rules with his grace and his gifts. He rules with his grace in Word and Sacrament throughout his church.

This rule he received from the Father, and when the end comes, when all the work of grace has been completed according to the Father’s will, then Christ will return this rule and authority with all that it has accomplished to the Father’s hands, Phil. 2:9, etc.; Eph. 1:21; Acts 2:33, etc.; Heb. 1:3, 13. The one Greek article: “the God and Father” combines the two nouns as designations for one and the same person: God who is also Father, the first person of the Godhead.

Shall Christ then cease to rule? The angel said to Mary: “Of his kingdom there shall be no end,” Luke 1:33. As little as the Father fails to rule now when Christ exercises the rule, so little will Christ cease to rule when he delivers the rule to the Father. Although nothing is said about the Holy Spirit, we may be sure that this is true also with regard to him both now and when the transfer is made. This is well expressed dogmatically: Opera ad extra sunt indivisa aut communa.

Some stress the fact that the rule of Christ is now invisible and spiritual, and that the rule of the Father will be visible and infinitely glorious. Luther does this in the comparison: “Now one sees the light but not the sun itself; but when the clouds are taken away, one sees the light and the sun together all in one.” This, however, attempts to describe the effect of the transfer upon us instead of the transfer itself and what it may mean for Christ and for the Father. Christ and the Father are one. There is no difference in their majesty and glory. This transfer indicates no subordination of the Son to the Father as little as the transfer of the rule to Christ originally involved a subordination of the Father to the Son. All three persons rule now and forever because of the oneness of their being, yet per eminentiam Christ rules now, the Father eventually.

This is as close as we can get to the ineffable mystery in the light of the revelation that is now granted us. Instead of speculating or rationalizing let us believe and worship.

In the second “when” clause the verb καταργήσῃ is the aorist subjunctive. The addition of κατά lends the verb a perfective force, R. 851: “shall have put down utterly.” The aorist tense has similar force: “shall have completed” this act. At the same time in this second clause this tense conveys the thought that the putting down of all opposition precedes the action of transferring the kingdom which was mentioned in the first clause and which is expressed by the present subjunctive: Christ shall transfer the kingdom when he shall have utterly abolished all opposition.

Chiliasts say that it will take a thousand years after the Parousia to accomplish this victory. But the Parousia itself completes this victory, for its climax is the final judgment at the last day. According to Matt. 24:29, etc., the loosing of Satan and the last great battle occur before and at the time of the Parousia, with which also Rev. 20 agrees. Paul uses κατεργεῖν in 1:28 and 2:6 and often elsewhere in many combinations where this verb suits his thought. One is, therefore, quite astonished to find this verb called “a technical dogmatic-apocalyptic term”; yet when we again look at the way in which Paul uses the word, we are rather astonished that it should have been called by such a name.

The fullest designation of the hostile powers that shall be utterly put down at the time of the Parousia is found in Eph. 1:21. In our passage Paul uses only three of the terms that are found in Ephesians and combines the second and the third: “all rule and all authority and power.” The multiplicity of these enemies of the kingdom is expressed by “all” and not by “rule, authority, and power.” The idea is not that some have ἀρχή, others ἐξουσία, and still others δύναμις, but that each enemy, demon or human, has a certain rule and with it a certain authority and power. In Ephesians Paul adds the thought that each has also a certain lordship and a certain name or title. The world is full of these enemies, for instance, worldly or atheistic scientists. They have a sphere in which they exercise rule and domination, in which they claim authority and refuse to let anybody contradict or correct them, and combined with this authority they exercise power, the power to mislead their followers and to cast out their opponents.

The same thing is true regarding pseudo-churches, heretics, and all ungodly, antichristian combinations in the world. Back of them is the kingdom of darkness in which Satan is supreme with his rule, authority, and evil power, and the evil spirits in their various evil capacities, some operating in one line, some in another, each thus with his rule and with his authority and power. Until the Parousia all of them remain active, being restricted only by the power and the providence of Christ, Matt. 28:18: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and earth.” But when “the end” comes at the time of the Parousia, the final and complete overthrow of all these enemies shall take place, and the kingdom of Christ shall rise in triumph forever. Paul does not merely heap up terms for rhetorical effect (i.e., without definite meanings) when he writes “rule, authority, and power.”

1 Corinthians 15:25

25With γάρ Paul explains why Christ does not transfer the kingdom until he has put down all hostile “rule,” etc. For he must reign until he shall have put all his enemies under his feet. Paul is not quoting Ps. 110:1 but is restating its contents, in particular the clause: “until he shall have put,” etc. No difficulty whatever is caused by transferring what God said: “Until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” to what Paul here says that Christ does: “Until he (Christ) shall have put all his enemies under his feet.” The psalm does not imply that Christ shall sit idly at God’s right hand until God lays all these enemies prostrate under Christ’s feet. God puts these enemies under Christ’s feet by making Christ the omnipotent Ruler and King. We have the same truth when the Scriptures tell us that God raised Christ and that Christ himself arose. The charge that Paul’s use of the passage from the psalm changes its sense to the very opposite is unwarranted.

All types of necessity are expressed by the impersonal δεῖ, literally, “it is necessary”; it is often translated “must.” Here the necessity is that of the divine arrangement by which Christ rules and continues to rule as King, βασιλεύελν, durative present. Paul has already said that Christ shall transfer the kingdom to his Father and has also added the time when this shall take place, namely at the Parousia, the end. Moreover, he has added that at that great day Christ will have put down all hostile forces forever. We now learn that a divine necessity lies back of all this: Christ’s rule as King (βασιλεύελν) must extend that far. He would not be truly a King and rule as a King if at the end, when he transfers the kingdom, any enemies remained active. If even a single enemy were left who might use any measure of power at the time of the Parousia and the end, Christ would not be the King that God intended him to be as witness Ps. 110:1 and other prophetic passages such as Ps. 2:6, etc.

With ἄχριοὗ (the LXX’s translation of the psalm has ἕωςοὗ, which is a mere variation) we may or may not have ἄν. The aorist subjunctive θῇ denotes completeness: “shall have put.” “All his enemies” defines who is meant by “all rule,” etc., in v. 24. “Under his feet” brings out the full force of “shall have abolished,” v. 24. Their power shall be broken utterly and forever so that they shall not rise from the ground or stir a finger against the King. After this reigning as King is thus absolutely complete, Christ shall return his commission to the Father who gave it to him.

1 Corinthians 15:26

26As being especially pertinent to this entire instruction concerning the resurrection Paul adds: As a last enemy the death is abolished. This personifies “death,” which some find “surprising,” but which is not at all so for one who knows his Old Testament as Paul does. Death is here regarded as an independent enemy, as one that is singled out from among the many enemies of Christ and the kingdom. When Satan’s work through sin is done, death stands out as the result, a dreadful foe, indeed. And this death now lays low the bodies even of believers and holds them until Christ’s Parousia.

In a sense death is already swallowed up in victory because by the gospel its sting is broken for all believers. In another sense death still reigns over us, namely for the time being. The victory over death which is now ours through the gospel shall not be fully revealed until death itself is forever abolished. This abolition is not a separate act of Christ’s, one that follows our resurrection. Destructio mortis resuscitatio mortuorum. Ambrose.

When the bodies of the godly are raised to eternal life, death itself shall disappear. This means, not merely that no more bodies shall die, but that what is called death shall no longer exist. Death is dependent upon Satan, sin, etc. All of these shall be abolished, and so death as the last enemy shall also disappear. The philosophic view of death as a “principle” is foreign to Paul, who deals only with realities and not with abstractions and philosophical conceptions.

The verb καταργεῖται (compare the aorist in v. 24 and the remarks on its meaning) is the dramatic or prophetic present, a counterpart to the historic present and frequently found in New Testament predictions. This tense startles and arrests. It affirms and does not merely predict. It conveys a sense of certainty. R. 869, etc. The main emphasis is, however, on the predicative designation “as a last enemy” and then on the subject “the death” as the position of these terms in the sentence shows although the tense of the verb is also striking.

In v. 24 the verb καταργήσῃ has the emphatic position so that in v. 26 it is not necessary to repeat this emphasis since that would overemphasize and thus produce a wrong impression. From among “all his (Christ’s) enemies” mentioned in v. 25 “the last enemy” is singled out. Death is naturally last since it constitutes the climax of the destructive work of all the other hostile powers. The abolition of this enemy shall thus also be last and shall mark the final part of the abolition which leaves no enemy on the scene.

1 Corinthians 15:27

27The fact that “death” must also be abolished is now substantiated. For, all things he did put under his feet. Paul has no formula of quotation; yet the words following “for” are found in Ps. 8:6. It may seem remarkable to us, but in the New Testament this psalm is repeatedly interpreted in a Messianic sense, Matt. 21:16; our passage; and Heb. 2:6, etc. We may accept the general assumption that Paul does not use a formula of quotation because this psalm is so well known. In Matt. 28:18, without reference to this psalm, Jesus attributes to himself just was this line which Paul quotes declares, namely that all power has been given to him in heaven and on earth.

A careful reading of Heb. 2:6–18 shows us just how this psalm has a Messianic sense, i.e., how what this psalm says about man in general at the time of his creation, about his dominion over all things, involves Christ and the subjection of all things to him, including also and especially death. Through sin man lost his dominion over the creatures and the powers of earth so that only vestiges of that dominion remain. In the end every man succumbs, and his body yields to death. Then Christ joined himself to us, made us his brethren (Heb. 2:11–14), even died (v. 9) and 14: “through death”) in order by his “propitiation” (v. 17) to “bring many sons unto glory” (v. 10). It is thus that Christ, our Brother, has all things placed under his feet, namely for our sakes, in order to restore us to our original high and glorious position. And this of necessity includes among “all things” that are made subject to Christ as our Redeemer that terrible enemy “death” in order that he “might deliver all them who through the fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (v. 15).

Nothing exhibits sinful man’s loss of dominion as does “death.” A thousand tiny and great forces in nature are busy killing our race. Already while Christ was on earth, death had to obey him and to yield up its prey at his command (Jairus’ daughter, etc.). Death received its own deathblow when Christ arose from the tomb. And at the end death shall be abolished forever. It is thus that Ps. 8 becomes truly Messianic, and that the line which Paul quotes, which refers to man in Eden, directly involves also Christ: for our sakes “all things,” including death, “God did put in subjection under his feet.”

In order to correct a possible misunderstanding Paul adds the remark: But when he said that all things have been put in subjection, it is evident that this is with the exception of him who did subject unto him all things. This may well be called an exegetical statement, one that explains just how far “all things” in the quotation from the psalm extend: they do not include God himself. Yet this is more than a mere grammatical deduction, i.e., that the verb “to subject” must except the person who did so subject. For what the grammatical terms express is itself true. God cannot subject himself to another. This statement is quite necessary at this place because at the end (v. 28) Christ will subject himself to God.

In the line quoted from the psalm the subject is God: God put all things under Christ’s feet. No change of subjects is indicated when Paul continues: “But when he saith,” etc. It is God who speaks. The words of the psalm which God speaks are even restated: “But when he saith that all things have been put in subjection.” But now the perfect is used whereas Paul before used the aorist. This perfect is entirely proper in the restatement: in the line quoted from the psalm the aorist ὑπέταξεν, “did subject,” states the past fact, which is enough; in the restatement the perfect ὑποτέτακται, “have been subjected,” conveys the idea that this, once done, continues in effect indefinitely. The tenses are thus exactly used.

An entirely different sense is secured by assuming a parenthesis and by continuing the sentence on through v. 28: “But when he (Christ) shall have said (to God at the last day): ‘All things are put in subjection!’ (evidently excepting him that did subject all things unto him); when I say all things have been subjected unto him, then shall the Son also himself,” etc.; see the R. V. margin. This reading pictures the scene at the end when Christ makes, as it were, his final report to the Father and states that the work of subjecting all things, even death, is completed. This reading seeks to satisfy the aorist tense εἴπῃ and the perfect tense ὑποτέτακται by means of the parenthesis indicated and by letting the second ὅταν clause resume the first ὅταν.

The objections to this reading are the following. The subject at the beginning is changed from God to Christ without the least warning. No reader could guess this change. Paul writes an involved and broken sentence whereas he has throughout constructed only simple sentences. And in this cumbersome sentence the fact that all things are subjected to Christ is repeated three times—why so often? Emphasis requires only one repetition.

The aorist ὅτανεἴπῃ, “when he said,” which is a mere variant for the present ὅτανλέγῃ, “when he says” (either of which could be used), is without linguistic necessity stressed to mean: “When he shall have said.” The perfect ὑποτέτακται is now taken in the less usual sense of a line of action reaching a point of termination:————> |, instead of the far more usual sense of a point of beginning extending in a line of effect: | ————>. Finally, δῆλονὅτι is given the unusual meaning “evidently.” We, therefore, decline to accept this reading.

1 Corinthians 15:28

28After explaining that, when God placed all things under Christ’s feet, he naturally excepted himself, Paul is ready for the final statement. Now when all things have been subjected to him, then also the Son himself shall subject himself to him that did subject all things to him in order that God may be all in all. This is the supreme climax involved in the resurrection of the dead.

The second aorist subjunctive ὑποταγῇ points to the great moment when “all things shall be subjected” or “shall have been subjected” (the English may use either) to Christ. When that grand moment arrives, the Son shall do what Paul now says. As in v. 27 God is the subjecting agent, so in v. 28 God is again the agent back of the aorist passive. But Paul now changes the subject of the main clause and leaves no doubt about it, for he continues: “Then also the Son himself shall subject himself,” etc. This clinches the point that, if in v. 27 Christ is intended to be the subject of εἴπῃ and ὑποτέτακται directly after ὑπέταξεν has God as the subject, Paul would certainly make it plain by simply inserting “Christ.”

Our versions regard ὑποταγήσεται as a future passive: “shall be subjected” by God. But this form is also a future middle, R. 809, and here the thought calls for the middle sense. When all things are subjected to Christ, force is brought to bear upon them; they are conquered and thus subjected. After such a thought Paul would not write a passive and say that the Son, too, shall be subjected, for the implication would be that force is brought to bear also upon him in order to coerce his subjection. The opposite is the fact. By a free act, in harmony with the whole divine plan that made him supreme over all things, Christ subjects himself to the Father, regarding whom we once more read that it is he who “did subject all things to him,” namely to Christ.

Commentators debate concerning the final clause as to whether it depends on the preceding participle: “who did subject all things unto him (Christ) in order that God may be all in all”; or whether this final clause modifies the entire preceding sentence or the action of Christ in subjecting himself. A decision is not difficult to reach. We have twice before heard that God subjected all things to Christ. When this act is now mentioned for the third time, it would be strange, indeed, to have the remark concerning its purpose appended as a kind of afterthought. Moreover, the tremendousness of this divine purpose “that God may be all in all” is the climax of the entire paragraph with all that it contains about Christ’s resurrection, about our resurrection, and about the end. The ultimate purpose of all of these acts is that finally “God may be all in all.” This final clause, therefore, modifies the entire last sentence.

We have had πάντα so often as a neuter that we cannot now regard “all in all” as meaning “all things in all men” although this masculine is said to mean “in all godly men.” There is no restriction in the expression “all in all.” Why should there be a restriction? But the fact that God shall be all in all is not the doctrine of the apokatastasis or restoration of all things, i.e., that even the ungodly and the devils shall at last be restored and brought into communion with God. The Scriptures know only the opposite of this doctrine, which opposite Paul also declares in the paragraph before us. Such an unbiblical view cannot be substantiated by a simple predicate like “all in all.”

In 12:6 we read concerning God: “who works τὰπάνταἐνπᾶσιν, all the things in all ways,” i.e., all spiritual gifts, abilities, and good works in all possible ways. The τὰπάντα is definite here and the object of “who works.” Paul now writes πάντα (no article), makes “all” the predicate, and adds ἐνπᾶσιν. The sense is “that God may be all-supreme.” Ἐνπᾶσιν is a frequently occurring adverbial phrase: “in all ways,” or in English, “in every way.” Here, after the copula, “all in all” is best regarded as one predicate expression. The words are not to be separated: “that God may be all things—in all things.” God is not “things” in any sense of the word.

When “all in all” is said to mean “the life ground” common to all things, “the citadel of salvation filling the needs of all,” these words obscure a tangible meaning for the reader. What Paul says is plain: after all things are at last subjected to Christ, and he himself subjects himself to God, then God shall be supreme, “all in all,” in one perfect harmony with not a hand or a voice in the whole universe raised against him.

Christ has disposed of the wicked and the devils. Their rule, authority, and power are abolished so that no trace of them is left. All of these enemies are under Christ’s feet so that none of them can ever show themselves or do anything. They are judged, undone, in hell. The new heavens and the new earth shall know them not. This is the absolute opposite of an apokatastasis.

On the one hand, Paul’s statement that “the Son himself” shall subject himself to God is used in proof of the subordination to the Father, which thus destroys the equality of the three persons of the Godhead. On the other hand, we are told that it is not the business of exegesis to investigate whether Paul’s statement agrees or disagrees with the Bible doctrine regarding the Holy Trinity. If this is not the business of exegesis, then exegesis has no business at all. If it cannot give a correct answer to this question of subordinationism, which involves the very doctrine regarding God himself, then all else it may attempt to give is valueless. Paul either does or does not teach the equality of the divine persons when he says that the Son will subject himself to the Father. Which is it? The answer must be exegetical and not dogmatical, for all true dogmatics rests wholly on true exegesis; it is wholly dependent and never independent.

The answer is simple. He who subjected all things to Christ is the Father, the first person of the Godhead. It is also Christ, the Son ἔνσαρκος, incarnate, not the Son ἄσαρκος, apart from his incarnation, who has all things put under his feet, all things made subject to him. This incarnate Son delivers the kingdom to his Father at the end, lays the work assigned to him, complete and perfect, into the Father’s hands and by this act subjects himself to the Father. Thus ὁΘεός, “God,” not one person merely but the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, shall be “all in all,” supreme in eternity.

Up to the moment of this glorious consummation an economic division of functions exists between the three persons of the Godhead in regard to this sinful world and its salvation. In this very paragraph the Father does certain things, and the Son does other things. While nothing is said about the Holy Spirit, other passages tell us about his part of the work. In this economic division the incarnate Son rules as King and Lord. He thus stands in the foreground for his church. When the consummation is reached, this position shall cease, in the very nature of the case it must then cease, for its final object is then attained. From that moment onward ὁΘεός, the Triune God in all three persons conjointly, one God, shall stand supreme amid glorified humanity in the new heaven and the new earth. “And I heard a great voice out of the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God (the Triune), is with men, and he shall dwell with them, and they shall be his peoples, and God himself (the Triune) shall be with them, and be their God,” Rev. 21:3.

This also answers the question: “Does Paul intend to say that the Son shall then rule no longer?” What about Gabriel’s word to Mary: “He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end”? Luke 1:33. As Christ now rules in his kingdom of grace he shall, indeed, cease to rule when the work of grace is completed. But this kingdom of grace shall merge completely into the kingdom of glory. “Grace” and “glory” only mark the two stages of the kingdom, for this kingdom is one. It will forever be and remain his kingdom, founded, built, brought to consummation by him. When Christ turns this kingdom over to the Father, this does not mean that the Son will then be deprived of this kingdom and his rule, the Father taking his place.

Then the Triune God will rule in the unity of the three persons with all his glory fully revealed. In that unity the God-man has his place. Luke 1:33 is true as is also the Nicene Creed which declares regarding the glorified God-man: “Of his kingdom there shall be no end.” Read Rev. 22:3: “the throne of God and of the Lamb.”

1 Corinthians 15:29

29Paul groups his material perfectly. In the preceding paragraph he presents our resurrection as resting on that of Christ and as thus being an integral part of all the tremendous facts that center in Christ. In the new paragraph, which begins with this verse, Paul presents our resurrection as being vital to the entire Christian life from the moment of its beginning in baptism onward to the immanent moment of its close in temporal death. We may put it into simple words: 1) Our resurrection is vital to the restoration that centers in Christ; 2) Our resurrection is vital to the restoration that centers in our own selves.

If there is, indeed, no resurrection, then the entire Christian life, as it faces temporal death, is vacuous. To call this part of Paul’s presentation an argumentatio ad hominem that is based only on the admissions of Paul’s readers and thus hoisting them on their own petard is unwarranted. See the remarks on v. 19. The facts back of baptism and back of the Christian life are facts whether the Corinthians admit them as such or not. If they do admit and believe them, so much the better for the Corinthians. But these facts are not mere subjective opinions held by the Corinthians, they are not in the least dependent upon anyone’s admission.

It is also a misunderstanding to regard this new paragraph as a reversion to v. 17 and 19 as if Paul inappropriately inserts at this place what should have been inserted after v. 19. Paul never writes in a loose and scattered fashion. All of the preceding instruction hinges on Christ directly, i.e., on his resurrection and on all that goes with it. The new instruction rests on the resurrection in general, both Christ’s and our own: “if the dead are not raised at all,” ὅλως. The resurrection of Christ and of ourselves underlies the entire Christian life as this faces death, eventual death or imminent death. Paul presents this basic fact, which has its own convincing power as a fact.

Else what shall they do who are baptized with a view to the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why at all are they baptized with a view to them? The condition is abbreviated to the mere conjunction ἐπεί, R. 1025. “Else” = if all that is stated in the preceding is not fact. The interrogative form is dramatic and strikes home, for when the reader himself faces and answers this question he will be the more convinced. Whereas the former paragraph addresses no one (except v. 12), this paragraph is entirely personal and ends in direct admonition. The future tense: “What shall they do,” etc., is not the logical future, which refers only to a sequence of thought and not to actual future time. This is a deliberative future used rhetorically, R. 876, for Paul asks the Corinthians in regard to what certain people shall do at an actual future time.

He calls them οἱβαπτιζόμενοιὑπὲρτῶννεκρῶν, which we render, “They are baptized with a view to the dead.” The tense of the participle lays no stress on the element of time, which is true also with regard to the following verb βαπτίζονται. It is, therefore, not in contrast to the aorist and the past. The present timeless participle describes those who receive baptism at any time, whether in the past, present, or future. We, therefore, do not accept the meaning they that are now being baptized in distinction from others who were baptized before this time or are to be baptized in the distant future. An aorist participle would be out of place since it would restrict the thought to those who were baptized in the past and disregard all others.

All of the Corinthians are, of course, among the baptized, and so this designation includes all of them. But it also includes all others at other places who are baptized plus all others who receive baptism anywhere and at any time. The one mark that is characteristic of all of them is baptism, the sacrament which makes us Christians. It includes all who are or ever will be Christians, infants as well as adults. Paul will in a moment speak about ἡμεῖς, “we,” namely the apostles and their assistants, concerning whom he has something especial to say in addition to baptism; and then he also exemplifies by speaking about himself alone. He starts with the reception of baptism because this begins the spiritual life of all Christians, and because this very beginning already connects us with death and with the resurrection.

Rom. 6:3–5 tells us that baptism joins us to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Gal. 3:27, 29 makes it plain that by baptism we become “heirs according to promise,” and we know of no heavenly inheritance without both Christ’s resurrection and our own.

This connection is made plain by the phrase ὑπὲρτῶννεκρῶν, “with a view to the dead.” All efforts to disconnect this phrase from the participle, to which every reader naturally joins it, and to attach it to the main verb: “what shall they do, for the dead?” have proved futile. Nor would anything be gained by such a construction, for the same operation would have to be performed with ὑπὲραὑτῶν in the next question, which cannot be done since βαπτίζονται is the only other word left. In both instances the preposition indicates the motive for the reception of baptism, a duty which ὑπέρ frequently performs in classical as well as in New Testament Greek, for instance, in Rom. 15:8.

The phrase does not mean that the baptism of certain living persons conveys benefit to other persons who are already dead. This would necessitate the absence of the article; Paul would have to write ὑπὲρνεκρῶν. “The dead” of whom Paul speaks are not any persons who are dead but the baptized Christians who died as such Christians in the sure hope of a blessed resurrection. Their example, i.e., their baptism and their godly life and final death in this sure hope, furnishes the motive that prompts the living also to desire and to receive baptism for the same blessed purpose. Paul’s question, therefore, has this sense: that all who are thus moved to receive baptism have no hope, and their baptism is wholly in vain if there is no resurrection (for Christ and for Christians). This is the force of: “Else what shall they do?” etc.

This is likewise true with regard to the second question: “If the dead are not raised at all (if neither Christ nor Christians are raised), why at all are they baptized in view of them” (i.e., the dead)? In this second question the condition, which is compressed into “else” in the first question, is fully written out: “If the dead are not raised at all”; and ὅλως, “at all,” includes the entire resurrection, that of Christ as well as that of Christians. Regarding the gnomic present tense ἐγείρονται, “are raised,” see the remarks on v. 16. The present tense βαπτίζονται has the same meaning as the present tense of the participle in the first question: it includes all receptions of baptism at any time. The καί after the interrogative has the classic meaning: why “at all” are they baptized because of this motive? The translation of ὑπέρ: “for the dead,” i.e., for their benefit, is untenable.

This little preposition has been the cause of such a volume of varied views that it is useless to make a list and to show wherein each of them is unsatisfactory. We mention only two of these views. The phrase is translated “for the benefit of the dead,” i.e., of such who died without baptism. A Christian who has been baptized, we are told, allows himself to be baptized a second time, as a substitute for some person who died without baptism, on the supposition that this baptism would be credited to the dead person. A specific name was invented for this sort of baptism, it was called “Vicarious Baptism.” In support of this supposition we are referred to reports of Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Chrysostom regarding such perversions of baptism among the followers of Cerinth and of Marcion. What happened among these heretics is carried back across the years to Corinth in order to explain a preposition which complicates the efforts of these interpreters.

It is needless to say that the New Testament knows nothing about “Vicarious Baptism”; and that if Paul had discovered the beginnings of such a perversion in Corinth he would have opposed it in no uncertain terms. Nor would such a man as Paul was stoop to make use of this “superstition” for “tactical” reasons, i.e., in order to win a point in an argument.

The other view identifies “the dead” with “those that receive baptism” so that these persons consider their own death when they are baptized and ask themselves: “What would our death be if there is no resurrection?” But the phrase at the end of the second question cannot be understood in the sense suggested.

1 Corinthians 15:30

30Just as the baptism of all Christians in view of the dead, whom they must sooner or later join, would be devoid of all meaning if there is no such hope as the resurrection from the dead, so also the risks incurred by men like Paul would be senseless and

foolish. Why do we ourselves also face danger all the time? The connective καί adds this question to the one that precedes as being a question of the same kind. Yet τίκαί may also be regarded in the classic fashion: “Why at all,” as in v. 29. The emphatic ἡμεῖς, “we,” cannot include all of the Corinthians or all of the baptized, for they are not always in danger as this is true regarding Paul and his fellow workers. These men devote all their energies to preaching the resurrection and joyfully go from one danger into another.

What would be the sense of such a course of conduct if no resurrection awaited them at the end? The noun ὥρα is used in the sense of “time” (not “hour”) and in v. 31 is followed by the more specific phrase “from day to day”; and the accusative πάσανὥραν denotes extent: “all the time.”

1 Corinthians 15:31

31The last of the three questions introduced by “why” is clinched by the strongest kind of an assertion on Paul’s part. From day to day I die—I protest by that glorying in you, brethren, which I have in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Paul faces deadly dangers so constantly that he is able to write: “From day to day I die,” κατά being used in the distributive sense. The present tense “I die” is iterative, R. 827. Death is his daily companion. Paul uses himself as an example of the entire group that is included in “we.” He points the Corinthians to his own concrete case.

He never knows at what moment some blow of persecution may strike him down. It is strong language and yet not too strong. While it is hyperbolic in a sense, this hyperbole is the natural expression of the apostle’s deep feeling and is therefore justifiable.

This is the only time νή is found in the New Testament although it is a common Attic exclamation in solemn asseverations and oaths, literally, “yea” or “truly,” and it is well rendered by our versions in its true force: “I protest,” R. 1150. It is always used with the accusative. The possessive pronoun ὑμετέραν may be either subjective or objective: “your glorying in me” or “my glorying in you,” as the context must determine. Here it is the latter (R. 685), for the Corinthians do not glory in Paul as they well might; many of them glory in other leaders, 1:12, etc.

The relative clause: that glorying “which I have,” etc., is decisive as to Paul’s meaning. Paul is proud of his successful work among the Corinthians. He glories in it; καύχησις is the act of glorying. Yet Paul would never take undue credit to himself. He is only the Lord’s instrument while he is doing his work, and when that work shows marked success as it did at Corinth, Paul returns all the credit to Christ. He has the right to glory only “in connection with (ἐν) Christ Jesus, our Lord,” whom he designates with his full soteriological title.

This very name and title is full of the idea of the resurrection. Without the resurrection we should have no “Christ Jesus, our Lord,” to commission Paul, to accomplish great things through Paul, to make the Corinthians Paul’s glory, pride, and joy. The word “glorying” is, indeed, subjective, something that Paul does; but this subjective act rests on objective fact, namely on the Corinthian church with all of its spiritual realities. And this fact rests on one that is still greater: “Christ Jesus, our Lord,” in and by whose living power all that exists in Corinth is wrought.

Paul is quite able to present the great facts of our faith in calm, deliberate, objective fashion, and he does this on many occasions. But he is also able to present these facts so that his heart with all its throbbing feeling wells up in these facts. He never forsakes the facts no matter how deep his emotion may be when he utters them. He uses even νή, coupled with the personal appeal “brethren,” in this instance. The resurrection is absolutely vital no matter in what manner one presents its reality. Therefore it is so vital, too, when this apostle thinks of his past work and success and of his daily experience in facing death. Take away the resurrection, and everything related to Paul, all his work and all his trying ordeals, would be nothing but monumental folly.

1 Corinthians 15:32

32From the general danger that stalks Paul “all the time” he advances to the threats of death that come one after another “day after day” and then closes with a particular instance that must have occurred at a specific moment in Ephesus where he is writing this letter. The same climax is found in the verbs: “we face danger”—“I die”—“I fought with beasts.” If after the manner of men I fought with beasts at Ephesus, what does it profit me? Did Paul actually fight with wild beasts in the arena, or is ἐθηριομάχησα figurative to designate a battle with vicious, bloodthirsty human enemies? As might be expected, the commentators are divided into two camps. For us the question resolves itself into another: “What exegetical reasons decide one way or the other?” Lacking sufficient exegetical grounds, the best course to pursue is to leave the question unanswered.

The question is not answered by the proposal to read the sentence as a condition of unreality: “If I had fought, etc., what would it have profited me?” with ἄν omitted in the apodosis, which, we are told, is permissible with τίτὸὄφελος. The phrase κατὰἄνθρωπον is taken to mean: “according to man’s will,” i.e., if things had gone as men desired them to go. Acts 19:23, which records the riot caused by Demetrius, is regarded as a reference to the occasion when this supposed eventuality nearly overtook the apostle.

This answer to the question is unsatisfactory. The omission of ἄν would not suggest to a Greek reader that a condition of unreality is intended. This alone is decisive. The phrase “according to man” always denotes manner and not will and cannot be taken to mean: “according to man’s will.” With regard to Acts 19:23, etc., we should not forget that Paul was a Roman citizen and thus could not be cast to the lions or to wild beasts. Moreover, he left Ephesus immediately after that tumult. He undoubtedly wrote this letter in Ephesus before that disturbance occurred. So this letter could not contain a reference to that happening.

When Paul assures the Corinthians by his own pride in them in Christ Jesus that he “dies” daily, it is clear that he uses the verb figuratively, for he is still alive, and no one can die more than once, he cannot actually die “day after day.” When Paul now adds an exemplification of this general statement that he dies day after day, the reader has no difficulty in understanding the new dramatic term: “I fought with beasts at Ephesus” in the same figurative manner as meaning: “Right here in Ephesus I faced death as one who fights with wild beasts.” The close relation existing between “I die daily” and its exemplification “I fought with beasts” furnishes the exegetical reason for regarding the latter verb figuratively as we do the former. This, too, is the reason that Paul does not need a modifier to show that the second verb is also used figuratively.

Its aorist tense states a past fact in a condition of reality. This aorist is usually regarded as a reference to some individual instance when Paul’s bloodthirsty enemies endangered his very life. Yet we are not sure that only one event is referred to. If this were the case, it cannot be the one mentioned in Acts 19:23, etc., for the reason already assigned. Paul writes without adding a modifier such as “in Ephesus.” This would indicate that the Corinthians caught his reference and needed no further hint. The aorist may, however, be constative and sum up into a unit a number of dangerous happenings such as he mentions to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20:19: “trials which befell me by the plots of the Jews.” We are not certain whether only a single event or a group of events is referred to, and even less certain which events these would be.

The position of κατὰἄνθρωπον makes it decidedly emphatic so that the sense of the entire question hinges on this phrase: “after the manner of men,” i.e., if I did incur this mortal danger only in the manner of ordinary men who are moved merely by temporal considerations such as gain, honor, ease, and the like. “What does it profit me?” literally, “As to what is there profit for me?” Evidently as to nothing. From the standpoint of ordinary men what possible gain is secured by the work of an apostle who has to face these mortal encounters as Paul did face them right there in Ephesus? Only on the supposition that Christ arose, and on the supposition that we shall arise, and on the supposition that all is true that depends on this assurance, only then is Paul no fool in facing death in the pursuit of his great calling.

In the so-called Acts of Paul there appears the legendary story that Paul was first thrown before a lion, then before other beasts, but that, like Daniel in the lions’ den, he was not touched by them. Apart from this legend it has often been thought that Paul was actually thrown to wild beasts in Ephesus. Since Paul was a Roman citizen and as a consequence was exempt from anything of this sort, and since he was ever ready to assert his Roman rights, a situation must be supposed in which he would have no opportunity to assert these rights. This puts a strain on the imagination and has the appearance of inventing a set of circumstances in order to gain an explanation. When Paul in 2 Cor. 11:24 makes a long and detailed list of all notable sufferings which he endured he says nothing about being thrown to the beasts in Ephesus.

But does Paul not overlook the thought that the souls of the dead might live on in glory with Christ even if their bodies are not raised from the grave? Cannot the Corinthians answer all of Paul’s deductions and inductions by this simple reply? They cannot. If there is no resurrection, then Christ is not risen, and then all salvation for soul as well as for body disappears.

“What does it profit me?” Nothing! Very well, Paul continues: If the dead are not raised, we will eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Then we will make the best of it, and this is what it is. The conditional clause: “If the dead are not raised,” should not be construed with the preceding question, for this already has its condition and cannot well have two; besides, the phrase “after the manner of men” is the correlative of the clause “if the dead are not raised.” The present tense has the sense found in v. 12: “there is no resurrection of the dead” and is explained as a gnomic present in v. 16.

The subjunctives φάγωμενκαὶπίνωμεν are usually regarded as hortatives: “let us eat and drink,” as is done in our versions; but R. 931 is correct when he lists them as volitives: “we will eat and drink,” as expressing a volition in regard to the future. The reason for this resolve is sound: “for tomorrow we die,” so we will enjoy ourselves while we can. Paul adopts the LXX translation of Isa. 22:13 as being adequate to express his own thought in this case. Compare this same philosophy as found in the apocryphal Book of Wisdom, 2:2–9; Seneca: Bibamus, moriendum est; an inscription on the entry to a merchant’s house in Pompeii: Lucrum, gaudium, Gain and a good time. The attempts to tone down Paul’s words as though he really does not mean what he writes contradict the very injunctions which now follow. If death ends all, life has really little more to offer than eating and drinking, creature comforts like those of the brute.

1 Corinthians 15:33

33Paul closes the instruction on the reality of the resurrection with pointed admonition and rebuke. Be not deceived! as the tense shows, means: “Do not go on being deceived! Deception runs its course; do not be persuaded to enter on or to continue in this course.” As the passive shows, deception is communicated by deceivers.

Paul makes this plain by means of a quotation: Bad company corrupts good manners. Paul may have known this saying only as a proverb and so appropriated it here. Menander, the Attic comic poet, has it in Thais. He may have originated this line, or he, too, may have found it already coined. Menander has many apt maxims and for this reason was much read in the schools. Not much can be deduced from Paul’s use of this proverbial saying concerning his acquaintance with the Greek poets. He quotes from two others, namely Aratus (Acts 17:28) and Epimenedes (Titus 1:12).

While ὁμιλίαι means “communications” and “conversations,” the term is here used to designate “associations” or “company” with a definite influence. If these associations are κακαί, “good for nothing” and thus “bad,” they are bound to corrupt and to ruin manners that are χρήσθα, “serviceable” and thus “good.” The adjectives are contrasts; the one means worthless, the other serviceable and thus full of worth. Paul intends to say in the present connection that association with deceivers who are full of skeptical ideas is bound to react hurtfully on the good ways of life (ἤθη) of Christians. Instead of letting the divine truth mold their manner of living they let the false and insidious ideas of their associates mislead them. Even one bad apple spreads rot among many others. He who rejects the resurrection cannot live and act like one who truly believes this divine reality; compare v. 58. This is, of course, a sharp edge which is turned against “some among you,” namely the doubters mentioned in v. 12; and it warns them, too, against the pagan authors of their skeptical ideas.

1 Corinthians 15:34

34The negative admonition: “Be not deceived,” is followed by the positive: Sober up in the right way! to which is appended the explanation: and sin not! The aorist is both peremptory and indicative of one decided action, that of coming out of a dazed or drunken state. “Awake up,” R. V., suggests a condition of sleep, while ἐκνήψατε suggests a condition of drunkenness. The appended adverb δικαίως, “in the right way,” i.e., the way that is right in God’s sight, intimates that the doubters in Corinth imagined that they were thinking soberly and that they assailed the believers as people who are being carried away by foolish and fanatical notions because they actually believe such an impossible doctrine as the resurrection.

It is the way of all rationalists and all skeptics to pose as clearheaded, sound, and sober thinkers and to charge true believers with blind acceptance of “dogmas” that are nothing but narcotics. Our present-day scientists are often arrogant in their superiority. They alone know the facts, they alone do straight and sober thinking, they alone are right, and woe to him who dares to challenge their claims! Against this pseudo-soberness and pseudo-saneness Paul launches his little adverb δικαίως. Here, too, this derivative of δικαιοῦν retains its forensic meaning, for “rightly” means rightly in the judgment of God and not merely in my own judgment. The Pharisees claimed: “We see!” John 9:41, and proceeded with mighty assurance “to justify themselves,” Luke 16:15; but the judgment of God declared them wickedly and wilfully blind and cast them out.

So Paul commands the Corinthians to be sober in the true way that God approves. He is rightly sober who sees and believes the divine realities as God reveals them, and who does all his thinking so that every thought accords with these realities. And this man does not need to wait for the divine verdict that he is rightly sober; that verdict is recorded in a thousand places in Holy Writ.

“And sin not” with its present tense means literally: “and do not go on missing the mark.” There is, then, a kind of thinking and of reasoning that seems to be sanely sober and is yet wholly wrong because it goes on missing the mark, namely the true mark set by God for all our thinking, the realities about God, his will, his work, etc. This is the worst kind of sinning, for it affects not only our conduct but corrupts the very heart, the source of all conduct. “Sober up rightly!” Paul calls to the Corinthians, and go on hitting instead of missing the mark.

Do the Corinthians wish to know why Paul speaks to them on this subject in such peremptory fashion? Paul answers with a γάρ: for some are afflicted with ignorance of God; to move you to shame I tell you this. That is the trouble with “some” (see v. 12). Paul says more than that “some are ignorant”; he says that “some have ignorance” like a disease that is afflicting them spiritually. Thinking that by denying the resurrection they are displaying great γνῶσις or “knowledge,” they actually display ἀγνωσία, “ignorance,” the opposite of knowledge. Their coin is counterfeit, Rev. 3:17, 18.

They are to blame for this ignorance which they carry around with them and which they try to sell to others as knowledge. For this reason Paul adds with great plainness: “to move you to shame I tell you this.” The preposition πρός indicates aim or purpose, R. 626. When we render this expression into English we are compelled to translate the Greek noun with a verb: “for shame” = “for filling you with or moving you to shame.” The idea is not that Paul sees something shameful in the Corinthians as the A. V. translates it: “I speak this to your shame”; but that by means of this rebuke Paul intends to make the Corinthians feel ashamed of themselves, namely for having anybody in their midst who denies the resurrection. The presence of these skeptics brings disgrace to the entire congregation, and the congregation ought to realize this and to purge itself.

Paul is not theorizing when he writes: “We will eat and drink,” etc., v. 23. He, of course, presupposes that the Corinthian believers will recognize this unchristian language for what it is, but we may well conclude that the deniers of the resurrection carried out their convictions by loose living, for which reason Paul warns against their company which corrupts morally. False doctrine never aids true moral conduct but works to corrupt that conduct. Whatever eats at the root (doctrine and faith) damages or destroys the fruit (love and Christian virtues). Matt. 7:16, 17.

We are often told that errorists are just as “good” (morally) as those who believe and confess God’s truth, perhaps even “better”; but Paul does not agree, for this is contrary to nature. Doctrine is never an indifferent thing even though it be decried as “dogma”; it always works itself out in life. Doctrine may be held merely by the intellect, but this is decidedly abnormal and thus quite exceptional. The rule is more important than the exception. Let us, too, sober up in the right way and never condone or excuse erroneous teaching by telling ourselves that it has little or no effect on right living. Nor let us cling to the fallacy that only aberrations so great as the denial of the resurrection produce moral decline, for every falsehood works evil according to its falsity, and often a little leaven leavens an entire lump out of all proportion to its seeming littleness.

A small germ may carry destruction to the entire body. The process is often hidden from observation so that we cannot meet the challenge for a full diagnosis and proof in each individual case; nevertheless, like causes produce like results.

III. The Resurrection Body, 35–58

From the mighty fact of the resurrection Paul now advances to the wonderful manner of the resurrection. Yet in the discussion of the change which our bodies will undergo in the resurrection the basic question is still the reality of the resurrection itself. This elucidation concerning the change is intended to remove the main objection of the skeptics in regard to the possibility and the actuality of the resurrection. These skeptics ask the very question which Paul now puts forward. They can conceive of the human body only in its mundane form as we see it in this life. Bodies of this kind, even if they are by the power of God brought back to life from the dust and the decay of the grave, are unfit for heavenly existence.

So the skeptics conclude: There is no resurrection. Perhaps they only ask the question and leave it to the believers to give what answer they can and then scoff at the answer by presenting the view that bodies which are brought back to life would have to be just like our bodies are at present and have the same gross substance and the same functions.

1 Corinthians 15:35

35 Paul meets this question regarding the constitution and the character of the resurrected bodies squarely and fully. But someone will say: How are the dead raised? Just what πῶς, “how,” refers to is at once made clear by putting the question in a little different way (δέ): and with what manner of body do they come? The two present tenses are gnomic presents, both are timeless as they are customarily used in doctrinal propositions, see v. 16.

1 Corinthians 15:36

36 When he answers this question Paul first removes the ignorant assumption that influences the questioner, namely that the living human body can have only one mode or manner of existence, that which we see in this life. A simple analogy suffices. Fool! What thou thyself sowest is not quickened unless it die. The adjective ἄφρων is a nominative used as a vocative, which is a frequent use of this case. The term is not an address but an exclamation: “Fool!” i.e., “Fool thou art!” Does this man try to make a joke of the resurrection and to turn the laugh upon simple believers by stating that the dead body will be patched together again from the dust, once more to begin its round of life in eating and drinking, digesting and eliminating, sleeping and working, begetting and keeping house?

What a fool to think of the resurrection in so pitiful a way! This is a caricature and not the reality.

“What thou thyself (σύ is emphatic) sowest is not quickened unless it dies.” This fool refutes himself every time he sows seed. He then reckons with a dying which results in a quickening to a new and wonderful life; in truth, this strange quickening, he knows, cannot occur unless the dying precedes. Compare Christ’s similar analogy in John 12:24: dying grain and resulting fruit, the first being necessary for the second, and the second wholly dependent on the first.

In our effort to apply an analogy or a comparison we should not go beyond the point of the comparison. Here it is decomposition and yet new life. The first is necessary for the second, the second dependent on the first. The analogy is not between the germ in the seed and something similar to it in our dead and buried bodies, for nothing similar to this germ is found in our dead and buried bodies. The analogy is not between the bulk of the seed and the bulk of the dead body so that both bulks act alike. For the bulk of the former decomposes and remains decomposed, and only the germ shoots up into a plant, while our very dead and buried bodies rise from their graves and leave nothing behind.

The germ of the plant develops, produces new kernels as fruit, and these repeat the process indefinitely. Not so our bodies when they rise. By finding new and strange features in Paul’s comparison we miss Paul’s meaning and perhaps find new doctrines that are based only on our own analogies from nature and not on Paul and the Scriptures. The fact concerning the resurrection is not that a germ which is hidden in our dead bodies comes forth while our dead bodies themselves remain dust and ashes. The view, moreover, that the Lord’s Supper is intended to preserve in our bodies during this life such a resurrection germ, which then slumbers in the grave until the resurrection morn, is therefore unwarranted.

1 Corinthians 15:37

37 There is, then, a dying which results in a quickening and a new life. But this should not be misunderstood. And what thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be but a bare grain, it may chance of wheat or of some other kind. The καί is explicative; some call it epexegetical. The sentence which it introduces is an explication of the one that precedes. It, therefore, offers no second or new point of the analogy; it aids us only to understand the true point which has already been stated in regard to a decomposition which ends in a quickening and a new life.

It is a bare, little kernel of grain that one sows, nothing more; yet everybody sees and knows that not this bare, little kernel comes forth from the ground. The little kernel rots, and the quickening of it does not mean that it again becomes what it was originally.

All conceptions of the resurrection to the effect that the bodies of the dead shall return to their former coarse existence are thus eliminated by Paul’s analogy. All skeptical objections that seek to ridicule the doctrine on this score evidence an ignorance of what the doctrine is. The future participle γενησόμενον, “that shall be,” is ingressive punctiliar, R. 892. In εἰτύχοι, “it may be,” literally, “if it should happen,” a remnant of the optative is found, it is a stereotyped phrase, R. 1021.

Much has been said about the adjective γυμνόν, “bare,” “naked,” which Paul applies to the kernel of grain. It is called a technical term in this connection and also a new figure which complicates the analogy. The matter is quite simple, for Paul himself places “a bare grain” in contrast with the plant that grows out of it so that we understand exactly what he means. The complication results when Paul’s commentators have this little adjective mean “bare of clothing,” and when this idea is transferred from the kernel to the dead body of the believer in the grave. The next step is to introduce a misinterpretation of 2 Cor. 5:2, etc., where the word γυμνοί also occurs. In this latter passage “naked” is not used with reference to our bodies but with reference to souls that are without the heavenly home.

Finally, Plato and the Greeks are introduced with their views of naked or bodiless souls. The conclusion of these various views regarding the word “bare” or “naked” is the teaching that, when our souls leave their bodies behind in the grave, they are clothed with what are called “resurrection bodies” and are thus not left “naked.” It seems that these novel “resurrection bodies” are now in heaven awaiting the time when our souls shall arrive in order that they may then be properly dressed.

Second Corinthians 5 does not speak of the resurrection. The fact remains that we sow only a bare, little kernel in the soil, and it is not this same bare, little kernel that presently rises out of the soil.

1 Corinthians 15:38

38 In the same, simple fashion Paul completes his thought. But God gives it a body even as he did will, and to each of the seeds a body of its own. Note the contrast between “thou” and “God.” We merely do the sowing, that is all; nor can we do more. God does the rest.

Paul is not delivering a biological lecture. He is constructing a simple analogy which all of his readers are able to understand whether they are scientific biologists or not. A dying results in a quickening and a new life—we see it in the seed which we plant. God’s creative act is back of what we see and not a will or an arrangement of ours. What goes into the ground is a bare seed, what comes out is a beautiful plant. God is responsible for this marvel: “God gives it a body.” Paul does not stop with the so-called “laws of nature” or at a halfway station. He goes back to God who created all the processes of nature. This he does in beautiful harmony with the purpose of his analogy, for the resurrection of our dead bodies is also altogether an act of God’s.

More than this: God does what we see him doing with the kernel of grain “even as he did will” (ἠθέλησε, an aorist) when, at creation, he ordained that each plant should yield seed “after his kind,” Gen. 1:11. “And it was so,” and due to that original divine volition it has been so ever since. Each kind of seed grows its own body; each is true to its nature. We now speak of it in learned botanical terms, Paul is content to draw attention to the great creative fact as such. Because our botanists often study only the botany of the case they lose sight of God and the law which he ordained at creation. They eliminate God and creation and substitute their speculative “evolution.” The words: “and to each of the seeds a body of its own,” thwart every speculation of this kind. A seed of wheat produces a plant of wheat and no other species of plant; and so does every other kind of seed.

In the resultant plant every seed gets “a body of its own,” always the one God originally designed for it, the one God now gives it. The vast world of nature demonstrates this in endless succession. “Great oaks from little acorns grow” and not great elms or beeches, nor little currant or raspberry bushes.

The simple analogy is thus made secure against misunderstanding: seed and body go into the ground—new living forms result; but in both cases with a marvelous change that is due entirely to God’s almighty will and power. To be sure, what is said concerning the seed is fitted closely to what is meant regarding the body. Why find fault with Paul for that? Whoever drew a correct analogy in any other way? It is a fault in us that we so seldom go back far enough.

1 Corinthians 15:39

39 As far as bodies are concerned, God commands the most wonderful possibilities. Astonishing examples are before our eyes at every turn. The supposition that in the resurrection our bodies must have the appearance which they had in this earthly life is invalid; God is able to renew our dead bodies in a form of existence that is utterly different from that in which we now see them. Not every kind of flesh is the same flesh; but there is one of men, and another of beasts, and another of birds, and another of fishes.

Instead of “all flesh” (our versions) we translate “every kind of flesh,” R. 1163; and “the same flesh” means the same in identity. There are great differences in structure, quality, functions, etc. We are unable to render into English the gentle touches of the particles μέν and δέ; the repeated δέ marks contrast, which our “and” fails to indicate. Since ἄλλος has the meaning “different,” R. 747, we may translate: “One of men, and a different one of beasts,” etc.

In this enumeration Paul seems to have in mind Gen. 1:10, etc., but he reverses the order and omits reptiles. He thus secures four different kinds of flesh, the usual rhetorical number for indicating that all of the kinds are referred to. The word κτῆνος means a domestic animal. In creation God was not restricted to one kind of flesh; how can he then be restricted in the resurrection? The human body which we bury shall rise again, but, although it remains the very same body, it will appear wonderfully different in the resurrection. We see this in the case of Christ: the identical body, now dead, now risen; now laid limp and lifeless into the tomb, now come forth glorified.

1 Corinthians 15:40

40 Paul at once reaches farther, to the very limits of creation. This is Paul’s way—he never stops halfway. Also bodies celestial and bodies terrestrial; yet one the glory of the celestial while a different one the glory of the terrestrial.

We need not supply the verbs even in the English since all is clear without them. Whereas in v. 39 Paul writes “flesh” he now employs the broader term “bodies.” Some conclude that these are organic, living bodies because, as it is used in the preceding verse, “flesh” refers to living creatures. So they state that the celestial bodies are angels and the terrestrial all living creatures on earth. But the assumption that angels have some sort of ethereal bodies is speculative and usually leads to the extravagant conclusion that even God has some sort of a tenuous body. Moreover, we should look back, not only to v. 39, but to v. 36, and also forward to v. 42. Then we see Paul’s gradation: 1) just a kernel of grain; 2) different kinds of flesh; 3) celestial and terrestrial bodies in general.

We should also apprehend the point of difference which Paul wants us to note with reference to the latter kinds of bodies, namely the different δόξα or glory of each. Paul is not speaking about bodies, one class of which we cannot see, whose “glory” is hidden from our view, which we cannot even imagine; but about bodies, all of which we ourselves can see, and both kinds of which we can compare as to their “glory.”

These celestial bodies are sun, moon, and stars. We see how they shine with a light and a radiance that are far above every kind of body that is visible to us here on earth. Paul is not addressing a group of chemists regarding the molecular or atomic structure of heavenly and earthly bodies. He is writing to plain, ordinary people regarding a matter that all of them constantly see. The fact that the material of which all of these bodies in our universe are composed is quite the same really helps Paul’s thought; it certainly causes no interference with it. Although their structure is the same, their appearance is vastly different. Although the substance of our human bodies is the same whether they are lying in the grave or are glorified in the resurrection, their appearance in these two states is vastly different.

The term σῶμα, “body,” is in place. Paul is not speaking about a difference between organic and inorganic structure. Even secular writers often use “body” to denote material substance. There is a contrast in ἑτέραμέν … ἑτέραδέ, R. 749, and not merely one of degree as is the case in v. 41. The celestial bodies have a radiance of light which is entirely lacking in the terrestrial. The latter have only a beauty of color and an attractive form.

1 Corinthians 15:41

41 A difference of glory is evident among the celestial bodies themselves. Since this is a difference only in the degree of brightness, Paul uses ἄλλη and ἑτέρα. One glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

The absence of a connective seems to make v. 41 a continuation of v. 40. Paul dwells only on the difference existing between the heavenly bodies and leaves the recognition of the difference existing between the earthly to his readers. “Sun” and “moon” need no article in the Greek since each is the only one of its kind. We, too, say “sun, moon, and stars” and use no article even with reference to the latter. For the genitive with διαφέρει see R. 455. This verb means only “differs” and not “excels.” The point in which the difference appears is expressed by a prepositional phrase: “in (point of) glory,” although an accusative: “as to glory,” or a dative: “in regard to glory” would also be in place. Paul simply draws attention to the many differences that appear in bodily forms.

God never finds himself restricted when variety in forms is concerned. So he knows what he will do with our bodies when he calls them forth from the grave, how beautiful and how glorious he will make them appear in the resurrection. Paul is not writing about the differences that will appear between the saints and the fact that some will shine in greater glory than others. This difference is referred to in other passages of Holy Writ, it is not mentioned in this verse.

1 Corinthians 15:42

42 We who see all of this variety in the creatures which God called into being and placed before our eyes ought to have no difficulty as to the form and the character of the bodies which God will bring forth from the graves at the resurrection. The application which Paul now introduces by the brief statement: So also the resurrection of the dead, is lovely and striking in every respect and must always call forth our highest admiration.

1 Corinthians 15:43

43 It is sown in corruption; it is raised in in-corruption. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. As was the case in v. 39, four statements are made, and this number covers the whole matter. Yet the climax is found in the last statement; it is like the keystone in an arch and makes the answer to the questions as to how the dead are raised, and with what kind of body they come, complete.

Paul returns to v. 36 when he writes “it is sown,” i.e., into the ground. In v. 36 the seed is placed into the soil; here it is the dead human body that is so placed. Thus σπείρεται, “it is sown,” is to be understood figuratively: the dead body is buried in the grave. Paul does not need to add “the body,” for nothing else can be supplied. The present tense of the verbs is gnomic as is explained in v. 16. There is even a rhyme in σπείρεται and ἐγείρεται. The subject of the latter is identical with that of the former. The identical body that is first buried is afterward raised. To think of two bodies, one that is buried and remains buried, and a second that is raised out of the grave, is unwarranted. Whence would this second body come? and how could it have entered the grave?

In three of the contrasts Paul uses ἐν phrases, in the fourth he employs adjectives. Each phrase describes the condition of the body: first, when it is buried; secondly, when it is raised. In each case ἐν states what is connected with the body. The idea is that of sphere, enclosing the entire body. In each of the three pairs of phrases we have direct opposites.

We are buried “in corruption,” we are raised “in incorruption.” The corruption is very evident when we bury a dead body. The body decays: “Dust thou art, to dust returnest.” Perhaps it is necessary to recall Martha’s exclamation before her brother’s tomb: “Lord, by this time he stinketh!” John 11:39. Incorruption is the opposite of corruption or decay. It is easy to say this, but it is impossible really to understand it as long as we are in this world where only decay is constantly before us. Incorruption is a timeless state, perfect, constant, changeless.

The dead body is buried “in dishonor,” it is raised “in glory.” We, indeed, try to honor the dead whom we bury by clothing them in their best, giving them a fine casket, flowers, our attending presence, etc. All of this is well; it means much if we have the sure hope of a blessed resurrection with reference to the dead. What it means when this hope is absent we need not say. Yet the body itself is enveloped “in dishonor”—we soon hurry it from sight. In a little while its decomposition would cause us to shrink from it in horror, in the resurrection this identical body appears in glory. This does not mean that honor and glory are merely heaped upon it from the outside, but the body itself is made glorious, it is like that of Christ at the time of the transfiguration, radiant and shining. We have never seen this heavenly condition and are powerless to describe it adequately.

The dead body is buried “in weakness,” all of its ἰσχύς or strength is gone. Not enough strength is left to draw one breath. To say that only the strength to resist decay is gone is too narrow a view. Helpless lies the dead body, wholly a prey to nature’s elements. At the time of the resurrection this identical body appears “in power,” filled with the ability to do all that its new state requires. This is not power as we know it now in our living bodies but transcendent power, beyond all that our minds can now conceive. Luther writes: “As weak as it is now, without all power and ability when it lies in the grave, so strong will it eventually become when the time arrives, so that not a thing will be impossible for it if it has a mind for it, and it will be so light and agile that in an instant it can float both here below on earth and above in heaven.”

1 Corinthians 15:44

44 All that Paul expresses in these six phrases he now sums up, yea, transcends. Paul uses the word σῶμα, “body,” the same body which is at one time in a condition that is properly described as being merely “natural” and again in a condition that is quite the opposite, namely “spiritual.”

Man is composed of two parts; the one is material, the other immaterial. The latter is in the Greek designated by two terms, ψυχή and πνεῦμα. The ψυχή is the immaterial part as it animates the material part or body and makes it alive. The πνεῦμα is the same immaterial part, but as it is open to impressions from the supreme πνεῦμα, the Spirit of God. Death separates the immaterial from the material part, but ψυχή and πνεῦμα cannot be separated, being one entity; these two can be distinguished only as two sides of a unit. At the moment of death both are withdrawn, and the body lies lifeless.

In English we use the two terms “soul” and “spirit” to designate man’s immaterial part, but “soul” is not a true equivalent for the Greek ψυχή. In English usage “soul” and “spirit” are nearly alike in force and in meaning. In the Greek ψυχή often means only “life,” that which animates the body (not, however, ζωή, the spiritual life principle); it often also designates “person.” The fact that the Greek ψυχή lies on a far lower level than the English word “soul” appears from the lack of an English adjective form which is derived from “soul” to match ψυχικός which is derived from ψυχή. Hence in translation we can only approximate this Greek adjective by substituting “natural” or in some connections “carnal.”

The “natural body” that is placed into the grave is the body that is in this life animated by the ψυχή, which causes all the organs to function in their processes. When the ψυχή is withdrawn, and the lifeless body is laid into the grave, it is merely this sort of a body, ψυχικόν, “natural.” Paul intends to describe only the present natural state of the body and not the spiritual condition of the person to whom the body belongs. The adjective may, of course, be used also for the latter purpose as is done in 2:14; here, however, the person is a true believer and hence spiritual. In the resurrection this “natural body” comes forth completely changed into a “spiritual body.” This does not mean that the body is now constituted of spirit or πνεῦμα just as σῶμαψυχικόν does not mean that the body is composed of soul or ψυχή. The new condition of the body is such that it is now in all respects a proper organ for the spirit and is thus called “spiritual.” This does not mean that in the resurrection the πνεῦμα instead of the ψυχή animates the body. What takes place is something far higher and grander than a mere reanimation; it is a complete transformation and glorification of the very substance of the old body.

At one time the entire body was dominated by the ψυχή; the body was really its organ. Regeneration and sanctification changed this only in part; they moved the body and its members to many spiritual functions of worship, prayer, service, etc., yet not perfectly. In the resurrection the πνεῦμα, which is the inner seat of the reborn spiritual life, will dominate the body completely so that all of its substance is controlled by the “spirit,” and it itself is so changed and exalted as perfectly to respond to this control. This does not refer to a substitute body which is composed of a new substance such as the ether of which some have thought. Nor does the ψυχή perish so that of the immaterial part of man only the πνεῦμα is left. Just as the material part will be identical and entire, so also the immaterial part.

But the latter will assume a far higher type of control than that which was possible in this life, one that is spiritually perfect in every respect. Christ speaks of this new condition: “In the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of heaven,” Matt. 20:30; Luke 20:36; compare 1 Cor. 15:48, 49.

When Paul uses these terms does he draw on pagan, Hellenistic sources? Some who propound this question and search the literature of pagan philosophy and of the pagan mystery cults give an affirmative answer. The fact that the two words ψυχικός and πνευματικός were in existence before Paul wrote is not convincing, for this is true regarding a large number of specific terms which are used in the New Testament. The hypothesis that Paul found these terms in use among the Corinthians and that he employed them in his letter in order to give his readers their correct import by using them in the true gospel sense, is untenable. If Paul intends to recoin these terms he fails to indicate his purpose by a single hint. It has not been established that the Corinthian Christians knew and used these terms in a pagan sense.

Philosophic and cult terms that are occasionally found in a few writings never become the common property of a group of people such as compose an ordinary Christian congregation. Paul never puts the terms “natural” and “spiritual” into the mouth of the skeptics whom he corrects. They appear only in Paul’s own elucidations just as do all the other words which he uses to express his thought. He uses them also in other connections, especially the term “spiritual.” In every instance we need not go outside of the Old and the New Testaments to understand what Paul means by these terms and to see why he uses them.

Since the point of Paul’s answer to the question, “With what kind of bodies are the dead raised?” lies in the clause “it is raised a spiritual body,” Paul centers his further instruction on this clause. For the fact that we shall rise with a “spiritual body” is a thought that is so important and so high in every respect that its mere enunciation is not sufficient. So Paul proceeds: If there exists a body natural, there exists also one spiritual.

1 Corinthians 15:45

45 We might expect Paul to pass by the existence of “the natural body” as being a truth that is quite self-evident to his readers. It is after a fashion self-evident; but Paul is concerned that his readers should know just what he means by “the natural body,” for unless they do they will not understand what he means by “the spiritual body,” and they may doubt its existence and be inclined to reject the resurrection in spite of what he has stated thus far. Therefore Paul points his readers to Gen. 2:7: Thus also it has been written (the perfect tense: has been written and is still on record) in regard to the natural body: The first man Adam became a living soul.

The point of emphasis lies in the predicate phrase εἰςψυχὴνζῶσαν, which is used instead of a predicate nominative, R. 458, “a living soul,” for this explains the previous expression “a natural body,” one that is animated by the ψυχή or soul and is thus ψυχικόν. Paul wants his readers to understand that God himself so made man that his body is now animated by the soul. When God breathed his breath into the body of inert earth which he had formed, the first man became a living soul. All of Adam’s descendants are like him in this vital feature: in the body of every one of us there is a living soul or ψυχή. From Adam onward every human being has an animated body of this kind, σῶμαψυχικόν.

Both the Hebrew and the LXX read: “Man became a living soul.” Paul is taken to task for reproducing this in the fuller form: “The first man Adam became a living soul.” Paul is charged with a rabbinical and targumistic practice which adds all manner of remarks to a Scripture text as though they belonged to the original. The specific charge is that Paul put into the quotation the very thought which he intended to draw out of it and thus deliberately altered the Scripture quotation in his own interest. But when Paul adds the word “first” and the name “Adam” he in no wise changes the sense of the original. These additions are intended only to aid Paul’s readers in understanding the original sense of the passage. In the quotation “man” means “Adam” and not man in general. The addition of “Adam” emphasizes the true sense of the original.

And “first” refers to Adam as the progenitor of all other men. It would be of no consequence whatever if only in his own person Adam became a living soul, and if all of us were not likewise living souls.

We now also see why Paul introduces the quotation with οὕτωςκαί, “thus also” it is written. He intends to say that, when he speaks about a natural body, this is the very way in which the Scriptures themselves speak in Gen. 2:7 when they say that Adam became a living soul. The quotation concludes with this sentence regarding Adam. And Paul does not intend to make the next sentence, the one about the second Adam, a part of the quotation. This charges Paul with manufacturing half of the quotation, the chief half, which he needs for his purpose. Paul would then assume the ignorance or inadvertence of his readers, and do that in the matter of a Scripture passage which was so well known. He would then defeat his own purpose; for the moment his fraud is discovered, all who see what he has done will call him a liar.

Others suppose that this statement about the second Adam is a quotation in summary which is based on different Old Testament passages such as Isa. 42:1; 48:16; Joel 3:1, etc.; Ezek. 39:29 which are interpreted messianically. The difficulty is that in none of these or in any other passages is Christ called “the last Adam.” This summary is evidently an effort to meet what seems to be a difficulty.

Finally, Paul is thought to find a hidden meaning in Gen. 2:7, a kind of implication which he then puts into the words: The last Adam a life-giving spirit. Or instead of finding an implication Paul draws a logical deduction that is based on the idea of contrasting counterparts: if it is true that the first Adam is a living soul, then it must be equally true that the last Adam is the opposite, a life-giving spirit. This deduction Paul is thought to record as a part of the quotation itself.

In the first place, Paul is too honest not to differentiate between the original quotation and his own deduction—if he makes a deduction. In the second place, this supposed deduction is nothing of the kind. For the creation of Adam in no way implies a second Adam. If Adam had not sinned, Christ would never have come; the living soul of Adam would never have needed rescue by the life-giving spirit of Christ.

Paul’s quotation from Gen. 2:7 ends with the statement concerning Adam and adds nothing about Christ. It is Paul himself who in words of his own choosing sets down beside the passage from Genesis the statement: “The last Adam a life-giving spirit.” These commentators evidently assume that Paul is in v. 45 trying to prove the double assertion which he made in v. 44, that if a natural body exists, a spiritual body must also exist. But οὕτωςκαί, “thus also,” does not introduce a proof. It shows only how the Old Testament speaks about Adam. It does not speak about Christ in a corresponding way. It is Paul who calls Christ the last Adam and as such a life-giving spirit.

As little as Paul proves anything from Gen. 2:7 regarding “the natural body,” so little does he attempt to prove anything from this or from any other passage regarding “the spiritual body.” Paul actually states two great facts: one concerning Adam, the other concerning Christ. The fact that Christ is, indeed, the last Adam and a life-giving spirit Paul proves at the very beginning of this chapter when he repeats at length the evidence for his resurrection from the dead (v. 3–11), and when he records at length all that this resurrection involves (v. 20–28). If that does not show that Christ is the last Adam, a life-giving spirit, then nothing that the Old Testament says anywhere can prove it.

Now we see, too, why in the quotation from Genesis Paul inserts the two words “first” and “Adam.” They do, indeed, bring out the true sense of the passage most clearly. These two words at the same time match the designation which Paul wishes to apply to Christ when he now calls him “the last Adam.” Yet let us note that “the first Adam” does not receive his name from “the last Adam,” but vice versa. This answers the view that Paul inserts these two words into Gen. 2:7 for the reason that he wants to read something about Christ into Gen. 2:7.

Adam is the “first” man, and he bears the name “Adam” whether there is a Christ or not and apart from any title that Christ may bear; and Adam became “a living soul” at his very creation whether Christ should ever appear as “a life-giving spirit” or not. Christ and his work and his titles are based on Adam and on Adam’s sin and not the reverse. Paul does not give a dogmatical turn to Gen. 2:7. He simply states the undisputed facts that Adam is the first man, that his name is Adam, and that in his creation God made him a body that was animated by a soul. Paul then describes Christ and again states only the facts regarding him and now uses terms that match those which he employed when he was speaking about the progenitor of our race. These terms are well chosen to designate the great facts which Paul has already recorded concerning Christ. Christ may, indeed, be called “the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.”

The parallel between the two is close, and there is yet a great difference between them. Both Adams are progenitors, yet the one is a progenitor of only a natural, the other of a spiritual race. From the one we have received only “a natural body” (σῶμαψυχικόν) because at his creation he came to be only “a living soul” (εἰςψυχὴνζῶσαν); from the other we shall receive “a spiritual body” (σῶμαπνευματικόν) because he came to be for us “a life-giving spirit” (εἰςπνεῦμαζωοποιοῦν). The first Adam left us on this low level and necessitated the coming of the last Adam because sin and death entered the world. This tragic fact underlies the entire chapter. In the term “life-giving” there lies the concept “life,” ζωή, the heavenly life principle which never dies but ascends to glory and blessedness.

Paul fitly calls Christ the “last” Adam, there can and will be no other who has the function of an Adam. Since Christ followed Adam he may also be called “the second Adam.”

In the statement concerning Christ we supply ἐγένετο, “became,” an historical aorist, which raises the question as to when Christ became a life-giving spirit. Some assert: at the creation or even before the creation. Then we are told that God created both Adams, the one with a natural, the other with a spiritual body, the one only living, the other life-giving. Where Paul obtained this idea we are not told, but a search to discover the source is being made. It seems that the Midrash and the Talmud contain no clue, and even Philo taught that God first created only the idea of man and then formed Adam, and Philo never connects this idea of man with the Messiah. In accord with this view “life-giving” is regarded as a creative power or δύναμις by which all creatures were called into being. This view is thus only a modern revival of ancient Gnosticism.

“Became” is also referred to the incarnation. The life-giving power is then attributed to Christ’s divine nature, which necessitates an appeal to the communication of attributes in order to help to explain. But the statement is valid that after the incarnation, when the Son “became” man, he possessed throughout his earthly life a σῶμαψυχικόν, a natural body of flesh and blood that was animated by a human soul; he ate, drank, labored, slept, suffered, died, just like other men, he was in the form of a servant, in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:7), although, even when he was tempted he remained without sin (Heb. 4:15). It is even true that before the incarnation, throughout the Old Testament, Christ was the Mediator of spiritual life. But he was this just as he is now our Mediator, not because of the act (incarnation) by which he began his work, but because, having begun, he gloriously finished this work as Paul has fully set forth in v. 3–11.

In his resurrection and his glorification Christ literally and historically “became the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.” We should consider the resurrection and the enthronement at God’s right hand together: “Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave him the name which is above every name,” Phil. 2:9. One form of that supreme name is “the last Adam, a life-giving spirit.” He still has his human body and will have it forever, which is now “the body of his glory,” Phil. 3:21. When Paul writes that he became “a life-giving spirit” he does not mean that Christ discarded his body and that he now exists in heaven only as a spirit. We should not separate the two words πνεῦμαζωοποιοῦν. “Life-giving spirit” designates Christ in relation to us: he is the fountain of spiritual life for us. That spiritual life flows, not from his body, although it has become a spiritual body and the body of his glory, to our body; but from the spirit that dwells in his glorious body to our spirit that dwells in our body and thus quickens us spiritually and gives us life (ζωή). In the Holy Supper Christ’s life-giving spirit employs even his body and his blood given and shed for us so that we may eat and drink for the nourishment of our spiritual life.

In all of this it is the human πνεῦμα of Christ that gives us life. In that human spirit of his the ego or person is the eternal Son of God (in humiliation as well as in exaltation). Yet not the mere union of the person of the Son with the human spirit, soul, and body makes him for us the fountain of life, but the expiating work which he accomplished for us does. As the one who died for us and rose again he now brings back life and immortality to us.

This giving of life to us begins in regeneration, when we receive the ζωή which passes right through temporal death into a blessed eternity. This begins in us the work of the last Adam who is a life-giving spirit. The consummation of this work is the resurrection and the glorification of our bodies which shall then again be joined to our souls and our spirits and be made spiritual bodies, v. 22. “Who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things to himself.” Phil. 3:21; Col. 3:4; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17.

In this life the ordinary animation of our body continues even though we are spiritually reborn, but in the resurrection the spirit takes Complete control of the body which has been gloriously refashioned so as to respond fully to that control. Here our spirit rules the animated body only partially, as a refractory subject; there it shall rule the body perfectly as itself being a truly spiritual subject. Here we still distinguish between ψυχή and πνεῦμα, there this distinction will have faded away. It is thus that we lay into the grave a natural body, σῶμαψυχικόν, and in the resurrection receive a spiritual body, σῶμαπνευματικόν.

1 Corinthians 15:46

46 Nevertheless, the spiritual is not first but the natural; then the spiritual. Neither the context nor the sense requires that we supply “body.” Paul states simply the historical fact and no more. He speaks of only two and states the order in which they occur. The first in this order is τὸψυχικόν, “the natural,” which belongs to the ψυχή; the second is “the spiritual,” which belongs to the πνεῦμα. What is briefly and pointedly summarized here is more fully developed in the following verses: first Adam, then Christ; first those who belong to Adam, then those who belong to Christ. Paul has no philosophy of the matter, he records simply the historical facts.

Because Paul places the negative first by saying that the spiritual is not first, that seems to be an indication that some of his readers were inclined to philosophize instead of adhering simply to the facts. They seemed to think of these matters abstractly and thus concluded that the spiritual ought to precede the natural. They may then take the next step and argue that the spiritual, being the original, ought alone to remain. Thus they repudiate the natural and arrive at the rejection of the bodily resurrection. Paul eliminates all such deductions by this simple statement of fact and by its elucidation in the following verses.

Paul is not speaking abstractly as though he is stating a law, one that is bound to work itself out. This has been called the law of creation which proceeds from the lower to the higher in a kind of evolution. A misleading philosophy is then built up on this law. The fall is regarded as a necessary consequence of a state of mere natural life. It is regarded as a step upward although it at first proceeded downward. A moral natural life according to the light of natural religion is said to lead upward to the spiritual life in Christ.

This law is then extended so as to include the history of nations who rise from barbarism to civilization; it also includes the development of individuals, whose natural feelings and affections become sources of their spiritual devotions; it finally includes nature itself, in that lower forms produce higher forms, and imperfect forms bring forth perfect forms. Paul speaks about two and about no more. Paul gives us the order in which these two appear. He would subvert his entire gospel if he made the natural bring forth or produce the spiritual. Paul is not recording a law or “a principle of universal application.”

Nor was the last Adam created at the beginning, before the first Adam, so that we should normally expect the last Adam to become operative before the first; yet we are told that the activity of the last Adam is held in abeyance until the period of the last Adam has run its full course. Thus that which is natural comes first, that which is spiritual follows. This is so contrary to truth that it should not be advocated in a Christian commentary.

1 Corinthians 15:47

47 The summary of the fact mentioned in v. 46 is followed by the detailed specifications of that fact. The first man is out of the earth, earthy; the second man is out of heaven. Paul refers to the two Adams of whom he has just spoken. He now calls Christ the “second” man instead of the “last” in order to match v. 46 where he writes “then” the spiritual. Paul characterizes the first man with respect to his body and the second man with respect to his person. “Out of the earth” and “out of heaven” denote origin (ἐκ); the one is derived from the earth, the other is derived from heaven. The origin is twice mentioned, but these origins are opposites. Therefore he who is “out of heaven” cannot be derived from him who is “out of the earth,” nor can the latter be the source of the former.

Being “out of the earth,” Adam is “earthy,” χοϊκός (Gen. 2:7: χοῦνἀπὸτῆςγῆς, LXX). The constitutional feature about him which corresponds with his origin is his earthy body that is formed from the dust. This is not the case with regard to Christ. It is a textual question whether Paul wrote a term to match “earthy” in the statement regarding Christ. Some texts read: “the second man is Lord (or the Lord) out of heaven.” The preponderance of evidence is against this addition. “Lord” also does not match “earthy.” Paul leaves the place for a correlative term blank; he evidently does this because human language affords no term which may describe the substance of Christ’s glorified body without the fear of misunderstanding.

But are the soul and the spirit of Adam not also of heavenly origin, breathed into his body by the Creator himself? And is the human body of Christ, born of the Virgin Mary not a descendant of Adam, “out of the earth,” just as much as Adam’s body? Both observations are quite true. The first man has a heavenly side, the second man an earthly side. And we must add that Christ retained his earthly body, transformed it, and elevated it into the glory of the Trinity, that body that came from his human mother. Nevertheless, Paul’s antithesis stands: there is an absolute difference in origin as well as in being between Adam and Christ.

Adam began with the dust of earth. God formed that dust into a body that was composed of earth. Then, without knowledge, consent, or activity of this body, God breathed his breath into it. Thus Adam became a living being. The complete opposite is true regarding Christ. The person of the Son of God existed from all eternity.

By that person’s own volition and power a human body was conceived in the womb of the Virgin, in which this person became incarnate, not for the purpose of his own existence, but for the purpose of redeeming our fallen race. Thus Adam is “out of the earth, earthy”; Christ “out of heaven.”

We must add more. Formed as Adam was, with a soul and a spirit breathed into him before a volition of his own existed, it became his task to make his spirit the master of his entire being, we may say to spiritualize his soul and his body. God gave him the necessary ability to achieve this great purpose of his being. By a volition that was in harmony with his own spirit and with the help of God who bestowed that spirit upon him Adam could and should have risen to the intended height and have obtained the state of glory that was awaiting him. Adam failed. His spirit abdicated its mastery.

His ψυχή usurped the high function of his πνεῦμα. In him and in his descendants the spirit no longer rules; the control has gone to his animated body. Man is now “earthy” even in his thinking and his willing. His spirit is enslaved, reduced to the low level of only the consciousness of his personal being, with only conscience left as “the spirit-remnant in psychial man” (Zezschwitz). Man has become materialized.

But from the very beginning of his earthly being, by his human spirit in which his divine person ruled, Christ controlled perfectly his body as well as his soul (ψυχή). He is lord of himself. By his own free will he humbled himself in order to work out our salvation. Thus while he was on earth he did not appear in glory. Paul is not concerned about this phase here; he looks at “the second man” in the exaltation of his resurrection and his ascension, when he who is “out of heaven” is fully revealed as such by his return to heaven. Compare Delitzsch, Biblische Psychologie, 334, etc. While it is impossible to exclude the incarnation from ἐξοὑρανοῦ, “out of heaven,” since this underlies all that appears in the glorified risen body of Christ, Paul here compares and contrasts Adam as the one who began in Eden with Christ after he reached heaven.

1 Corinthians 15:48

48 After the two great heads of our race, Adam, the earthly, and Christ, the heavenly, have been placed before our minds in due order and in contrast to each other, Paul connects those who share their nature with each of these heads. As the earthy one, such also the earthy ones; and as the heavenly one, such also the heavenly ones. Paul uses no verbs with their relation of time to disturb our thoughts. We shall understand him best if we omit even the usual “is” and “are” which are used in translation only because the English is mechanical in this respect. The English also lacks inflections to indicate number and gender in adjectives; so we add “one” and “ones” to aid us in understanding the sense.

Paul’s two statements are precise parallels and exact opposites. The first statement is obvious: Adam is earthy, and all others who are earthy are like him. All of us are by nature the children of Adam. As such our distinguishing mark is the fact that we are earthy. Ours is a body of earth that is controlled by the ψυχή, and the πνεῦμα is thrust out of control. It is the body and its present condition to which Paul points with the term “earthy.” All of Adam’s children—psychic bodies; no more.

On the other side is Christ, “the second man.” He is “the heavenly one,” and all others who are “the heavenly ones” are like him. It is not stated how they obtain their heavenly quality; we know that it is by grace through regeneration. Paul does not employ prolepsis when he is speaking about “the heavenly ones,” for all ideas of verb and tense are omitted. The terms ‘“the heavenly one” and “the heavenly ones” are taken from the phrase “out of heaven” which occurs in v. 47. Yet Paul is careful not to say that, as Christ is “out of heaven,” so those who are like him are also “out of heaven,” for that would make these the equals of Christ, which is a palpable falsehood. Paul is speaking only about bodies and about their characteristic quality, bodies in which the πνεῦμα rules as it should, pneumatic bodies, “heavenly” in this sense.

Paul is thus thinking, not of the beginning of this condition as we experience it here on earth, but of the completion and consummation in the resurrection. Grace and regeneration begin the change; the resurrection consummates it. Phil. 3:21.

1 Corinthians 15:49

49 Paul answers the question, “With what kind of bodies are the blessed dead raised?” He gives the direct answer in v. 44 and the culmination of that answer in v. 49. When he presents his answer in extenso he begins with a duality in v. 36 (seed, plant). He lets this expand into a multiplicity (all kinds of flesh, of bodies, of glories). He then returns to dualities in v. 43 (corruption, incorruption, etc.). And finally, as his answer conies to a close, he reaches a unity (the image of the earthy is gone, the image of the heavenly alone is left). This is a part of the mastery with which Paul presents his thought, and it is worthy of more than passing attention, for he exhibits this mastery everywhere.

We now have the verbs for which we have been waiting, and both have the inflectional subject “we.” Both verbs are decidedly emphatic by position, and, although they were at first withheld, satisfy fully now. And even as we did bear the image of the earthy one, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly one. First an aorist, ῥφορέσαμεν, “we did bear,” from φορέω, the stronger form of the common φέρω, to designate usual and continuous bearing (garments and the like). In contrast with this aorist Paul places the same verb in the future, φορέσομεν, “we shall bear.” Both tenses are viewed from the moment of the resurrection at the last day. When that great event takes place, both the aorist and the future are true. Then we can and will say: “We did bear” the image of the earthy one, and that is now done with forever as far as our bodies are concerned; now “we shall bear” the image of the heavenly one forever and ever.

A textual question arises in regard to the future tense, as to whether we should read the future φορέσομεν, “shall bear,” or the aorist subjunctive φορέσωμεν, the hortative, “let us bear.” The textual evidence is preponderantly in favor of the subjunctive as a glance at the codices shows. But this is a case where the textual evidence, which is otherwise so decisive, cannot be accepted. It would be exceedingly strange that a paragraph which is so entirely didactic as this one is should reach its close with a final contrast that begins again in simple didactic fashion and then suddenly continues with hortation. It would be strange, indeed, that by means of the aorist Paul should place us at the resurrection moment at the last great day and then with a hortative subjunctive should force us back to the present moment in which the Corinthians and Paul are living as he writes these words. This is so inconceivable that we find general agreement in accepting the future tense as the correct reading: Luther, our versions, a long line of commentators. Moreover, the textual difficulty is easy of solution as R. 200 himself shows: the long ω and the short ο were often confused when writing Greek words.

The term εἰκών, “image,” merits close attention. It “always supposes a prototype, that which it not merely resembles, but from which it is drawn, an Abbild corresponding to a Vorbild, as the monarch’s head on a coin, the sun’s reflection in the water, a statue in stone or metal, a child in relation to its parents. The companion term ὁμοίωμα, ‘likeness,’ may mean only superficial resemblance, as an egg is like another, one man appears like another though they are not akin.” Trench. The image we now bear in our bodies is, indeed, one that is derived from the earthy one, namely Adam; and the image we shall bear is also truly derived from the Heavenly One, namely Christ. What our bodies will look like and with what heavenly powers and functions they will be endowed when they come forth at the resurrection like unto Christ’s glorious body, we may dream about but cannot now describe.

1 Corinthians 15:50

50 In the final clause of v. 49 the thought of the entire paragraph comes to a close. The effort to attach v. 50 to that paragraph produces an odd appendix. A new subject is now introduced which is marked as such also by the fraternal address. No proper question which the Corinthians may ask is to be left unanswered by Paul. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood are unable to inherit God’s kingdom, neither does corruption inherit incorruption. The preamble: “This I say,” as well as the address, make the statement that follows emphatic; and “I say” together with “brethren” lend a personal touch.

“Flesh and blood” is one concept, and the quality of the nouns is stressed by the absence of the Greek articles: “flesh and blood as such”; the verb, too, is necessarily the singular (Souter’s text, for some unaccountable reason, has the plural). “Flesh and blood” describes the human body as it exists in this life; previously Paul called it a “natural or psychic body.” We should observe the distinction between the body as such and the condition or form in which the body may appear. Jerome says well: Alia carnis, alia corporis definitio est; omnis caro est corpus, non omne corpus est caro. Now our body is like that of the brute beasts, flesh like theirs, blood like theirs. In this animal like state the body cannot enter heaven.

Yet the truth of the resurrection of the body is lost when we speculate about the material particles of the body and conclude that they do not endure forever; when we introduce the physiologists who tell us that during the course of seven years every material particle of the body changes; and when we thus take Paul’s words to mean that only the spiritual principle of life abides, and that this principle attracts to itself such material particles as shall serve it for a suitable eventual habitation. In other words, the body that we bury remains buried; whatever it is that arises is something else. There is a tendency to read into this chapter, the very purpose of which is to establish the doctrine of the resurrection of the body (the identical body which we bury), the reverse of that doctrine.

The body of Jesus grew and developed just as our bodies do, it had the same metabolism and the same cellular change. That body died, and that identical body rose gloriously transformed, no longer subject to what we call the laws of nature, to the physical changes and the renewals of organic flesh and blood, and to the limitations of matter because of time and space. Rocky walls did not hem in his body, nor did locked doors bar it out. Thus our bodies will be “conformed to the body of his glory,” Phil. 3:21. The fact that after death our physical substance disintegrates and scatters creates no difficulties for God so that he could not bring those bodies back gloriously transformed. The only difficulties are those which are made by men’s minds when they cling to the observations which physiologists make regarding “flesh and blood,” and when they associate these with Christ’s miraculous “working whereby he is able to subject all things unto himself.” Christ knows what he will do and how he will proceed in restoring this “flesh and blood” after it has become dust; we do not know and can never know.

We do not reduce the significant verb “to inherit” to the meaning “to have.” We likewise do not make it a figure of speech for some other idea. To be sure, the inheritance is given to us, and we also have it (Col. 3:24; Acts 20:32; Gal. 3:18), but it is given to us by the testator as heirs according to his testament (the promise), and we receive and have it only as heirs, only according to the provisions of that testament. There is no reason for modifying the meaning of the verb in the present connection. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom” for the simple and sufficient reason that God’s testament nowhere contains a clause which names flesh and blood as the heir. All men are by nature flesh and blood, and only believers are named as heirs in the testament. What makes believers heirs according to the testament is not their natural flesh and blood but their regeneration, their adoption as children and as sons of God. This includes the bodies of God’s heirs, which already in this life become temples of God that are sanctified by his indwelling, which shall be changed entirely from mere natural flesh and blood and become glorified in the resurrection of the dead.

“God’s kingdom” is, of course, identical with Christ’s kingdom, for we do not know of two kingdoms, one God’s and another Christ’s. Christ reigns in this kingdom until he at last delivers it up to God; see the remarks on v. 24. To inherit God’s kingdom means much more than merely to receive a place in that kingdom as one of its subjects. Already in this life we ourselves are royal, 1 Pet. 2:9, actual kings who reign, Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6; and in the life to come crowns await us, 2 Tim. 4:8; James 1:12; 1 Pet. 5:4; Rev. 2:10; 3:11, and a great coronation day when we, the sons of the King, shall have authority over five cities, yea, over ten, and shall sit with the King in his throne, Rev. 3:21, and shall reign with him forever, 2 Tim. 2:12.

When Paul speaks of inheriting the kingdom he places us in the midst of these realities. See the author’s Kings and Priests, especially the first three chapters. Now it is impossible for “flesh and blood,” for our bodies as they exist in this life, to receive this royal inheritance. Our present physical nature is totally unfit to exercise the supreme prerogatives that are here implied. A tremendous transformation must take place before our inheritance can be completely turned over to us. The fact that this change shall, indeed, take place is the positive implication that lies back of Paul’s negative statement regarding the impossibility of ordinary flesh and blood inheriting the kingdom.

The two clauses of v. 50 constitute a parallelismus membrorum, in which the second clause restates the thought of the first in such a way as to make it fully clear: “neither does corruption inherit incorruption.” For the concrete terms “flesh and blood” and “God’s kingdom” Paul substitutes the abstract terms “corruption” and “incorruption.” The opposite is often done, namely when categories are to be elucidated by exemplifications. The thought process is the reverse here: when we see the real nature of “flesh and blood,” i.e., that it is “corruption,” and the real nature of “God’s kingdom,” i.e., that it is “incorruption,” we perceive that the two are direct opposites and exclude each other because of their very nature. Corruption contradicts incorruption, and vice versa.

Paul records the fact: “corruption does not inherit incorruption”—it never does. Whereas he first asserts the impossibility: “cannot,” he now seals this impossibility by stating the fact: “does not.” We usually do the reverse: we first say that a thing is not so and then clinch this by adding that it can not so. But in this case the reason that the thing can not be so is not at once apparent. That reason is then presented by the use of terms which show that the thing is never so. In other words, because corruption does not inherit incorruption, never does, therefore flesh and blood cannot inherit God’s kingdom. The logic, even as logic only, is incontrovertible: on the fact “does not” it rests the conclusion “cannot.” The present tenses are in order because the statements are doctrinal.

Both φθορά and ἀφθαρσία are derived from the same root and are thus opposites even etymologically: the corruption, ruination, in plain words in this connection, decay, rot. Flesh and blood do not remain flesh and blood but break up. Their organic existence is destroyed; the organism disintegrates; only dust and ashes are left, which disappear among the elements. How can a body of such a nature, as long as it remains thus, inherit incorruption? The latter denotes indestructibility and changelessness of nature and of form as well as of substance. Incorruption = immortality.

God’s kingdom above remains just as it is, in timeless existence, in eternal immutability, in changeless perfection like God himself. Corruption is found in our flesh and blood because of sin; God’s kingdom is incorrupt because sin is excluded from its very nature. This kingdom cannot break down or disintegrate. Only when sin together with its effects are completely removed from our bodies, which takes place in the resurrection, do our bodies attain incorruption and thus inherit God’s kingdom.

1 Corinthians 15:51

51 The negative propositions stated in v. 50 raise the question regarding those who shall be alive at the Parousia. Paul gives the answer at once. Behold, a mystery I declare to you: We shall not all fall asleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for it shall trumpet, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The exclamation “behold” draws special attention to the following. This Paul declares to be “a mystery,” something that no man can know except by direct revelation from God. Yet a widely known commentary says that Paul is assuming a mysterious air; that what he states never came into his mind until this moment of writing, and that others had expressed the same truth long before Paul thought of it. Paul wrote twice on this subject, here and in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. No one before him ever knew or recorded what Paul here reveals. We do not know when and how he received this revelation.

The grammarians and the exegetes are confused with regard to the force of οὑ, “not,” which is found in the clause: “we shall not all fall asleep.” The negative, of course, belongs to the subject or to the verb. Some prefer the one construction, others the other. One finds no example of πάντεςοὑ, the negative placed after the numeral; B.-D. 433 finds a very plain example. One finds an exception which permits the negative to be separated from the verb; the other states that exceptions are impossible. Robertson contradicts himself: on page 423 he states not to read: “none of us shall fall asleep,” and on page 753 advises to do this very thing.

A number of variant readings are also introduced and the question is asked, what views of Paul’s thought these readings reflect, but these readings are altogether negligible. Finally, the assertion is made that “we all” refers only to Paul himself and to the Corinthians; that Paul asserts that neither he himself nor any of the Corinthians shall die (fall asleep), yet both he and they died, which makes Paul a false prophet; or he asserts that “we all” shall not die, and yet they did die, which again makes him a false prophet. Truly a snarl!

The fact is that it makes no difference whether we join “not” to the subject or to the verb. “Not all,” they say, means “none.” Very well. If none die, then all remain alive; and if all fail to die, then all remain alive. The mistake made by these learned commentators lies in the sense which they attribute to the adverb “not”: they make “not” absolute so that “not all” = none; and “not fall asleep” means none fall asleep. The difficulty disappears when we perceive that “not” is a partial denial and no more. “Not all” shall fall asleep = some shall, but not all, some shall still be found in their flesh and blood at the end. Or, combining “not” with the verb, all “shall not fall asleep” = only some shall, the rest shall be alive at the end. Luther and our versions join “not” to the subject, which is quite in order although it is immaterial.

We at once see that the persons to whom Paul refers cannot include only the Corinthians and Paul. Many other believers were living at that time. How can Paul then write such a restrictive “we” and place it only into the inflectional ending of the verb? This quiet “we” is general and includes all believers who are such when Paul is writing or who shall be such at any future time. Paul has no revelation to the effect that neither he nor any of the Corinthians will die, that all will be alive at the Parousia, see 11:30. The address “brethren” at the beginning of this paragraph in no way compels us to understand “we all” in this verse with reference only to Paul and the Corinthians.

To be sure, this paragraph is addressed to the Corinthians. They are to know about this “mystery,” but surely not they alone. This mystery reaches far beyond the brethren at Corinth.

The error that is evident in this connection is the general assumption that Paul expected to be alive at the Parousia. So his words are said to mean: “I myself shall not die before Christ returns, nor shall you Corinthians, for Christ shall come back in a very short time.” This did not, of course, prove to be the truth. We are told that Paul was simply mistaken (like the old Millerites and other “time-setters”). The simple fact is that Paul did not know when Christ would return. He was in the exact position in which we are. All that he knew, and all that we know, is that Christ may come at any time.

So Paul spoke in his time exactly as we still speak in ours, namely in two ways: Christ may come immediately; or he may delay a long while. We know neither the hour (ὥρα in the sense of period) nor the day (date). In the passage before us Paul says nothing at all regarding the time.

“We shall all be changed,” refers to all believers whether they are dead or alive when the end comes; Paul is speaking about our bodies. These bodies, he says, “shall be made other,” ἀλλαγησόμεθα, which is translated “shall be changed” or altered. Just what shall be done with them Paul in a moment tells us in detail. Back of the passive verb stands the divine almighty agent who shall work this miraculous change. The entire chapter thus far certainly shows that the dead bodies in the grave must undergo a great change before they, too, are able to enter heaven. The same is true regarding the bodies of all believers who are still alive at the end as “flesh and blood.” Those who refer Paul’s statement that we shall “all” be changed only to the believers who are living at the end get themselves into difficulties.

1 Corinthians 15:52

52 This change shall be wrought upon the bodies of all believers, dead or alive, “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” The repetition of the phrase emphasizes the instantaneousness. An ἄτομον is something that cannot be cut or divided (compare the word “atom”). The very instant will be indivisible. “The twinkling of an eye” = “the cast, glance, or glimpse” of an eye, Augenblick. As the creative acts recorded in Genesis, including the animation of Adam’s body, were instantaneously timeless, so the final change at the end will be.

“At the last trumpet” recalls Matt. 24:31 and 1 Thess. 4:16, although “last” does not occur in these passages. This adjective leads some to refer to the seven trumpets mentioned by the rabbis and Revelation, at least two of them, one in connection with the so-called first and the other in connection with the so-called second resurrection. But Paul has the last trumpet sound to summon the believers whereas the theory requires that he should have the last sound to call the wicked. “Last” is absolute and marks the last moment of time. We may take it that an angel will blow that trumpet at the Lord’s command, see Matt. 24:31. As miraculous as the end itself is with its stupendous events, so also is this trumpet and its sound. The whole earth shall hear it just as, when Christ descends from heaven, all eyes shall see him.

No human mind can truly imagine or describe, not to say explain, these events. Why a trumpet blast will be used—who can say?

Paul adds further explanations and attaches them with two γάρ. The first presents the facts of the change, the second (v. 53) a description of the change itself. It is difficult to reproduce the terse σαλπίσει in English. The verb is either impersonal as the German commentators think because they can translate: es wird posaunt; or the subject is implied in the verb: “the trumpet shall trumpet,” R. 392. The more important point is the repetition: “at the last trumpet—it shall trumpet,” which makes this feature emphatic. God gives the signal, and God determines the moment.

By means even of the passive form of the two vital verbs, “shall be raised,” “shall be changed,” we are pointed to God. Paul does not write “then” shall the dead be raised; or “when” the trumpet sounds. His clauses are paratactic, coordinate: “it shall trumpet, and the dead, etc., and we,” etc. Each of these three acts is to receive our full attention.

At the sound of the trumpet “the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” The fact that they shall be raised we know from the preceding although this is now stated in so many words. The future tense has the effect of a glorious promise: they shall be raised, there is no doubt about the coming fact. The emphasis is, however, on the adjective “incorruptible.” We have had full preparation for it in v. 50. “The dead” are the dead bodies in the grave; souls do not arise and are not raised. Bodies are corruptible, v. 50. Not in their old form as “flesh and blood” shall they be brought forth out of the earth but without even a trace of the corruption and the decay that held them for so long a time. At the instant of the resurrection they shall be without corruption—the same bodies but in a new state.

“And we shall be changed” repeats “all we shall be changed” which was stated in v. 51. Paul does not need to add “all.” But the pronoun “we,” ἡμεῖς, is now written out in full whereas it was before contained only in the inflectional ending of the verb. “We” = all believers, those who died and are now raised and those who are living at the end. The latter do not drop dead at the sound of the trumpet, at once to be raised again with the other dead. Living as they are, the miraculous change which comes over the dead will come over them, too, in the same instant. The fact that the emphatic pronoun “we” cannot denote the living as distinct from “the dead” we have seen already in connection with the unemphatic “we” which was used in v. 51.

1 Corinthians 15:53

53 The second γάρ elucidates still further by describing the change that shall take place with regard to all of us, dead or alive, at the last day. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. In the Greek δεῖ denotes all forms of necessity as well as of propriety, and the context reveals which form is intended. In the present instance there is a temptation to take “must” in the absolute sense as though Paul is referring to an abstract law or principle which is operative in the entire world as such. This has been defined as the triumph of the eternal-divine over all things perishable, earthly, that are dominated by sin and death. If Paul intended “must” to be understood in this sense he himself would be a philosopher like these his commentators.

He plays no such role; he merely reports what the Lord has revealed to him. This “must” is neither abstract nor absolute. It states what God has ordered and arranged in his plan for our restoration. In other words, “must” is soteriological.

In v. 50 Paul states what cannot and, in fact, does not take place: “Corruption does not inherit incorruption.” Now, with the same form of parallelism, he states what must and will take place. But he could not say: “Corruption must put on incorruption; mortality must put on immortality.” Instead of the abstract nouns “corruption” and “mortality” he feels constrained to use concrete terms: “this corruptible,” “this mortal.” The abstract word “corruption” may, indeed, be used as a designation for the corrupt human body, but in itself it means the corruptive power, and when it is used concretely with reference to the body it refers to that body which has this corruptive power dominating it. As such it can neither inherit nor put on incorruption. For that would be the same as to say that “flesh and blood” inherit or put on incorruption. As long as it is “flesh and blood,” a body dominated by corruption, this is impossible. So Paul writes “this corruptible,” and then, specifying more closely, “this mortal.”

These are concrete terms and denote the body itself which has been wrecked or is in the process of being wrecked by the power of corruption and of death. That body, although it is now in so sad a condition, can both inherit and put on the new form and the quality of incorruption and immortality. In other words, corruption and mortality can be and according to God’s arrangement will be driven out by incorruption and immortality. “This” is deictic as though Paul were pointing to his own body.

“Corruptible” is the wider term; “mortal” is the narrower which implies the particular agency of death. The one helps to define the other. But both terms apply to the dead bodies in the grave and to the bodies of believers who are living at the end. Paul has twice said: “we shall be changed.” We now see what he means: our bodies shall be clothed with incorruption and immortality. “Incorruption” (see v. 50) is the new heavenly condition and form which ever remain perfect. Every trace of sin and of its effects is gone, and in their place there are the glory, beauty, and power of an imperishable life, “an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you,” 1 Pet. 1:4. Its other name is “immortality,” a condition and a corresponding form that are free from the power of death and from any deterioration or change which death works, they are fadeless because of the unchanging powers of eternal life.

It is worth observing that both terms that are here used by Paul are negative. They deny what is now in our bodies, corruption and death. They are unable to state the heavenly opposite that will surge through our bodies when the great change is wrought. The nearest Paul comes to positive statements regarding this matter is in v. 43, 44, 49. Yet even there the terms that sound positive are positive only in contrast with the negative, they deny the negatives: spiritual—not psychial; heavenly—not earthy. This is ever true with regard to conditions in heaven and in the life to come; the Scriptures use negatives to a great extent, Rev. 21:4; or figures, viz., Matt. 8:11. The realities are too ineffable for mundane minds and language.

Paul uses the figurative verb, ἐνδύσασθαι, “put on” (accusative with infinitive after δεῖ), an aorist to express the instantaneous act, it is repeated for the sake of emphasis. This does not, of course, mean that corruption and mortality shall merely be covered up and hidden from view by having a mantle of incorruptibility and immortality cast over them in order merely to hide what is underneath. These two are opposites that exclude each other to such an extent that whoever puts on the new garment must first lay off the old. It is like being clothed with the garment of Christ’s righteousness, which means laying off the garment of sin and guilt and the filthy rags of our own righteousness. In this life sin and guilt keep appearing again and again and must again and again be removed by daily contrition and repentance whereas when we put on incorruption and immortality, corruption and death are gone forever.

This figure, like all others that are employed in connection with this subject, can convey only a part of the great reality. All of them understate even when they are made as strong as possible. The figure of putting on a garment may not seem to be as strong as it might be, for it stresses appearance, the visible exterior that meets the eye of others. Yet this seems to be the very reason that Paul employs this figure. He leaves it to the two mighty nouns incorruptibility and immortality to take care of the total inward change that transforms our bodies and uses the verb to intimate how we shall then appear to all who behold us in our bodies. Thus the figure of the garment points to our δόξα, the heavenly radiance which shines forth from our bodies and thus appears as a garment of glory.

1 Corinthians 15:54

54 The description continues. Now when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and this mortal shall put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that has been written: The death was swallowed up in victory.

There is something grand and solemn about the way in which Paul repeats the words he used in v. 53. Like the chords of a triumphal song, he makes them ring in our ears. Let them sink in deeply! Some codices omit “this corruptible shall put on incorruption,” but the evidence of the best texts proves that the words are genuine, and they certainly heighten the effect. By extending the conditional part of the sentence the apostle keys up our expectation the more as to what the conclusion will bring. The construction is regular in a condition of expectancy, ὅταν with the subjunctive followed by the future indicative.

The aorist subjunctive is like the aorist infinitive that was used in v. 53 to indicate the instantaneous act of putting on. “Then” points emphatically to the great moment described in the “when” clause. All of us are waiting for the great consummation marked by this “when” and “then.”

The λόγος or “saying” which Paul quotes is found in Isa. 25:8, “having been written” there and standing thus to this very day, it is an imperishable, infallible Word of God (this the force of the perfect participle). It is now only a written word, but the reality which it states will presently appear when what this word declares “shall come to pass” and actually occur.

Isaiah wrote: “He (Jehovah) swallows up death forever,” which the LXX translated: “Death, having prevailed, swallowed up men.” Paul rejects the translation of the LXX and retranslates the Hebrew. Although he changes the active verb into the passive, let us note that this leaves Jehovah as the agent and is thus only a formal change, one that more adequately agrees with the present connection. The Hebrew lazenach, which Delitzsch and Eduard Koenig render “forever,” is probably derived from nezach, to shine or be victorious (Aramaic, Syriac, etc.), and thus lazenach came to be rendered εἰςνῖκος, “in victory” or “victoriously.” This rendering is found frequently, and Paul makes use of it (νῖκος is a later form for νίκη, “victory”).

The verb is placed forward for the sake of emphasis: “Swallowed up was the death”; and the aorist of the completed act fits the moment pointed to by “then,” i.e., when this “word” shall have come to pass. The figure in “swallow up” is drastic and expresses complete destruction. Luther: “The Scriptures announce how one death (Christ’s) devoured the other (ours).” “And death shall be no more,” Rev. 21:4. “The death” = the bodily death, the destructive power that is in us at birth and finally lays our bodies into the grave. “In victory” is decidedly important for bringing out the true sense of the original Hebrew.

Read Isaiah’s triumphant song. Death is not merely destroyed so that it cannot do further harm while all of the harm which it has wrought on God’s children remains. The tornado is not merely checked so that no additional homes are wrecked while those that were wrecked still lie in ruin. The destruction of death is far more intense: death and all of its apparent victories are undone for God’s children. What looks like a victory for death and like a defeat for us when our bodies die and decay shall be utterly reversed so that death dies in absolute defeat, and our bodies live again in absolute victory. Yea, more! for these bodies will be restored, not merely again to be “flesh and blood,” but henceforth to be incorruptible, immortal, “spiritual” (v. 44), “heavenly” (v. 49).

1 Corinthians 15:55

55 The exalted feeling which throbs through the preceding verses with their balanced terms and paralleled lines now bursts forth in dramatic paralleled questions that apostrophize death itself. Where, death, thy victory? where, death, thy sting? The two questions are an allusion to Hos. 13:14. This mode of using the thoughts and the words of another because of their special force and beauty is a regular procedure on the part of all good writers, and so it is also followed by Paul. No quotation is intended but only an adaptation of another’s thought and language to those of the writer. Sometimes the setting is entirely new and different although it is not in the present case.

We naturally expect the New Testament writers to appropriate freely from the Old Testament because their minds are full of the thoughts and the expressions of the old prophets. The A. V. serves as such a storehouse for us when we live in its thought and its language.

Paul retains Hosea’s apostrophe to death. The Hebrew has an exclamation which the LXX changes into questions. Paul prefers the latter. The effect is not changed, for the questions, too, are highly dramatic. The best codices address “death” in both questions although the Hebrew has sheol in the second, which the LXX has translated hades. Since Paul speaks only of death he goes no farther when he now borrows from Hosea.

The Hebrew reads: “O death, I will be thy plagues; O sheol, I will be thy destruction.” The LXX: “O death, where is thy punishment? where thy sting, O hades?” Paul appropriates “sting” (the A. V., following the textus receptus, places “sting” into the first question; the R. V. follows the better texts). Hosea has Jehovah announce nothing less than the utter abolition of death so that Paul can do no better than to appropriate Hosea’s words when he himself points to the destruction of death in the resurrection at the last day.

Paul sees death forever conquered and sings a song of triumph over the vanquished foe. It is important to preserve the emphasis in both questions. This rests on the interrogative “where.” The vocative “death” (or if we prefer: “O death!”) is placed in the middle of the question where it has little emphasis. “Where?!” interrogative and exclamatory in one, implies the answer “Nowhere!” just as emphatically. The possessive σοῦ is separated from its noun by the intervening vocative. Now the Greek likes to place pronouns forward in this fashion; yet in this case the separation places an emphasis on “thy”: “Thy victory is crushed by another’s.” Death’s victory seems assured, so assured that the world is full of skeptics regarding even the possibility of a bodily resurrection. Among these skeptics there are found even “Christian” preachers and theologians.

Look at these dead bones in countless graves, all of this dying from which even God’s people are not exempt. Is death not supreme in victory? The reality is otherwise. Death is only an instrument in God’s hands and, having done its temporary work, is thrown aside; resurrection steps in and by its supreme victory reverses all of that which seemed a victory for death.

The instrument which death uses in its apparent victory is called death’s “sting.” The figure in κέντρον is scarcely that of the ancient goad for driving oxen, for the oxgoad does not kill while death’s “sting” kills. It must be either a sharp, deadly weapon or a poisonous sting; it is likely the latter. Death thus pierces all of us, and no protection against its murderous “sting” has ever been found.

Hosea has written sheol in the second exclamation: “O sheol, I will be thy destruction!” The Hebrew sheol refers to the place where death’s power is displayed. This term is broad and thus is used in various connections in the Old Testament. But there is considerable confusion in regard to this term. In the Old Testament all men are said to pass into sheol since all must give up life and enter into death. This type of statement disregards the difference that separates men in death. Then the Old Testament uses sheol in an intensified sense with reference to the wicked, with the implication that sheol is their proper punishment.

When the LXX translated the Old Testament they had only the Greek term hades (the unseen place) to use for the Hebrew term sheol. The fact that hades is only a translation of sheol in the Greek Old Testament and thus in the Greek quotations from the Old Testament has sometimes been overlooked. When we interpret such passages we should go back to the Hebrew and see in what sense sheol is used, whether in the broad or in the narrow sense. The New Testament Greek, apart from Old Testament quotations, uses hades in the specific sense of “hell,” the place of torment for the damned. This appears with the greatest clearness from the description which the New Testament appends to hades.

Thus the use of sheol and of hades in the Scriptures becomes clear. The bodies of all of the dead enter the grave. The souls of the righteous pass at once into the hands of the Father and of Christ (Acts 7:59; Phil. 1:23; etc.); those of the wicked are cast into hades or hell. The godly souls never enter hades, never enter sheol in the sense of hell. Only their bodies enter sheol in the sense of the state of death and the grave. It is, therefore, unwarranted to deny the existence of hell on the strength of those Old Testament passages that employ sheol in the broad sense. Wherever the New Testament uses hades without quoting this word it never means “grave” but always means “hell.”

Nor is hades an intermediate place between heaven and hell, neither does this intermediate place receive the souls of all the dead, godly as well as wicked. This intermediate place is said to contain two compartments: an upper one for the souls of the blessed, a kind of anteroom to heaven; and a lower one for the souls of the damned, an anteroom to hell. There are thus four places in the hereafter: heaven—the upper hades—the lower hades—hell. These four approach the Catholic five. The souls in the two chambers of this intermediate place are retained there until Christ’s return and then enter either heaven or hell. But those in the lower chamber may escape by a probation after death, before Christ returns.

In fact, some state that an extensive mission work is in progress in this lower half of hades. Some think that the saints in the upper part of hades were released by Christ at the time of his descent into hell. The place is now apparently vacant.

1 Corinthians 15:56

56 Paul does not leave us with the figure of the sting. He tells us exactly what this figure means and by so doing places all that he says regarding death on the strongest kind of foundation. The sting of the death—sin; the power of the sin—the law. No verbs are used, not even the copula, for the full impact of the thought is delivered by the nouns. Sin is the murderous weapon of death. Take sin away, and death is harmless.

Paul uses the abstract term ἡἁμαρτία for “sin” and refers to all that is properly included in this concept. The term itself means “missing the mark,” i.e., which is set by the divine law. We thus see that Paul associates the sin and the law as correlatives. Even the smallest sin has in it the power to kill. Men try to play with “the sting of the death” and hope to avoid its fatal stroke. That game is impossible; the thing cannot be done.

Sin is always connected with God’s law, for the law sets the mark, and by missing the mark the sin obtains its fatal reaction. The law never submits or consents to be violated; it always reacts against the violator. For the law is not merely so many words of a code, it is the divine will itself. To challenge that will is to declare war against God. In this way the law is the power of the sin. Take away God’s will and law, and all right and all wrong, all sin and all righteousness disappear.

But this means to take away God himself—and us also. In fact, sin does try to thrust the law and God aside as if they do not exist and could thus be treated with impunity. In this way the law becomes the death power of the sin. It reacts instantly, makes itself and the God back of it felt, with invincible power it strikes and kills.

In this way the death comes to be (Rom. 5:12), and in this way it slays and slays: the sin and the law are behind it. Even when Christians now come to die they are not spared all of the bitterness of physical death since their dying, too, results from sin, for we still need a last repentance in death. Old Matthias Claudius said on his deathbed: “I have studied all my life to be ready for this hour, yet I did not think it would be as serious and severe as this.” And Vinet writes: “On the countenance of death, however blessed it may appear, there still rests a reflection of the wrath of the Highest.” Men may despise life, but that does not mean that they have really made ready to die; and they may despise death, but that does not say that they have really conquered death.

It is worth while to note that ὁθάνατος—ἡἀμαρτία—ὁνόμος have the Greek article and are thus definite, almost personified, “the death” is even apostrophized. This is also the case in Romans beginning with 5:12, with the distinction that “the death” = the death power, “the sin” = the sin power, while ἁμαρτία = only sin in general or what is sin. So also ὁσκότος is the darkness power. In Revelation we have as companions “the death and the hades,” both are personified. By disregarding the articles, which are not used in this way in English, some lose the thought which these articles convey in the Greek.

1 Corinthians 15:57

57 With two strokes Paul has displayed the real inwardness of the death; with one stroke he now displays the real inwardness of the abolition of the death. The two strokes are didactic, this last is exultant. But to God thanks, to him that gives to us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. The emphasis is on “God,” who is, therefore, placed first and is also in contrast to the forces of sin and death because of δέ. In v. 56 Paul looks down, in v. 57 he looks up. The author of the miraculous change which Paul describes is the Triune God; hence all our thanks belong to him.

The cause for Paul’s gratitude is expressed by an attributive participle that is attached to “God,” and this participle is the present tense. This tense is sometimes taken to mean that our future victory over death is as certain as though we had it now. It is sometimes taken to define the very nature of God: it is his nature to give the victory to us. The fact is that the participle does duty for a relative clause. The tense is simply durative: “he that keeps giving.” While it does describe God it does so by telling us about his continuous giving by a grand act of grace. The participle does not speak only about what God will do at a future time but about what he does now and does continually.

The victory is bestowed upon us now, hour by hour. We obtain it from God in ever-increasing measure. Compare 1 John 3:2 for the thought. This wonderful giving deserves the deepest thanks on our part. “Thanks” and “to him that gives” are intimate correlatives.

Paul repeats τὸνῖκος, “the victory,” and the article points back to what Paul has said about this victory. It is just one word, but one that sums up all that Paul has written in this chapter, one that brings all of it to one focal point. The consummation of this victory is attained in the great change that is wrought upon the quick and the dead at the last day. “Victory” connotes enemies and battle, but it is not for us, for we should never win. This stupendous victory is being given to us. The last phrase therefore names the Victor, names him as the medium through whom the victory gift becomes ours. “Our Lord Jesus Christ” is his full personal and official name in which “our Lord” voices faith, confession, and adoration on the believer’s part. It is fitting that this glorious resurrection chapter should end with the name of him who is the Resurrection and the Life for all of us.

1 Corinthians 15:58

58 The instruction concerning the resurrection has been concluded. As at the close of the first half of the chapter a word of admonition is appended in v. 33, 34, so one is added at the close of the second half. That former admonition is negative: not to be deceived, not to be drunken with non-knowledge; this final admonition is quite positive. Therefore, my brethren beloved, be steadfast, unmovable, abounding in the work of the Lord alway, having realized that your labor is not empty in the Lord. So the entire chapter ends with the title “Lord.”

Much can be said regarding ὥστε, “therefore,” which reaches back over the entire chapter. Even if we connect this conjunction with v. 57 only, in particular with God’s giving us the victory, the result is practically the same, for the entire chapter comes to a climax in this victory gift. This “therefore” bases the practical on the doctrinal. It shows how true doctrine results in godly life. Doctrine is a statement of the divine facts. When these facts are apprehended they automatically shape the life.

Take away the doctrine with its substance of divine facts, and the life drifts and is blown about by every wind of (false) doctrine, Eph. 4:14, which ignores or denies the facts. The true doctrine is in its very nature one, ever will be one and the same; false doctrine is always manifold, its very nature is division, non-unity. With the facts in our possession, we have something to live for; when these facts are absent from our hearts, what have we to live for?

When Paul calls the Corinthians “my brethren beloved” he voices his own tender love for them, his ἀγάπη, the love of full understanding and of highest spiritual purpose, which is deeper than the φιλία of liking and affection. At the same time Paul appeals to the Corinthians to show themselves worthy of being addressed by such a title. As brethren Paul and the Corinthians must be truly one in the hope of the resurrection, truly one in receiving the gift of victory through Jesus Christ.

The imperative γίνεσθε, as its tense shows, means: “continue to be.” The observation is correct that in the Greek of this period the idea of becoming has disappeared from this verb in such connections as we have here. Hence we cannot translate it “become steadfast,” and there is no thought of growth or process. “From now until death be and remain steadfast!” is Paul’s admonition. He presupposes that the Corinthians are steadfast; by no means that they are unsteady and are to achieve steadfastness.

The adjective ἑδραῖοι means “sitting,” established in a seat, and thus fixed, settled, firm, solid. It thus refers to our own inner faith and conviction. Having a victory so great and vital, our first obligation is to be firmly and fully settled in it and thus to realize for ourselves its greatness and its glory, its preciousness and its power, and to abide in it with happy and thankful souls. So many are inwardly unstable, are like water or sand, never settle down solidly in the gospel and its glorious faith. They allow their hearts to be fixed elsewhere; and as empty as these other ideas are, so empty is their attachment to them.

The companion word is ἀμετακίνητοι, from κινεῖν, to set in motion, to shift; the Germans thus call their motion picture shows Kinos, and we say cinema. “Be not shifted from your position!” is Paul’s admonition. This refers to outward solicitation and attack. Foes are always ready to assail our faith. Some strike at it with open denial, some with subtle error that leads us to compromise our faith and our confession, and some come with immoral temptation. They seek to turn us, who are victors in Christ, into slaves of men. Pau1 bids us to stand “unmovable against all of them.” The verbal is passive and thus points to the evil agents that would move us. The English “unmovable” is somewhat stronger than the Greek which means “unmoved.” “Be not carried away by divers and strange teachings: for it is good that the heart be stablished by grace,” Heb. 13:9.

Solid personal conviction that is settled and firm against every assault is and must ever be our first response to the heavenly truth revealed to us. Then there follows a second response which may be summarized as tireless diligence. The present participle περισσεύοντες is ranged alongside of the preceding adjectives, and the tense makes it durative: “being more than enough,” being rich to superfluity, “abounding.” What a word for the thousands who work, pray, give, suffer as little as possible! Because of our wealth of heavenly spoils and our eternal victory in Christ we can afford to “abound.” We are not called to idleness and mere enjoyment but to diligent effort “in the work of the Lord.” If Christ is not risen, and if no transformation awaits us, then we should have no real work in life. Creature enjoyments would be our all, v. 32b. But now a thousand voices call upon us to be busy and tireless. Paul is an excellent example in following his own admonition.

Paul significantly calls this the work “of the Lord.” He has instituted this work, and all of it belongs to him personally. This is the work of the gospel, the work of filling our own hearts and our lives with the truth, the power, and the light of the gospel and the hearts and the lives of as many others as possible. This is the work of the church which has places and tasks for every one of us. Its nature is spiritual throughout. This significant genitive “of the Lord” should correct the so-called “church work” of many who busy themselves with worldly tasks in the churches, with mere humanitarian “social service” and a hundred other things with which the Lord and the gospel are not concerned.

“Alway” adds another point: in youth and in age; in pleasant as well as in somber days; when many work with us, and the work is a joy, and when we plod on alone with heavy hearts; when we have already done much, and when others have done scarcely anything—“alway,” πάντοτε.

The next participle εἰδότες is a perfect and thus modifies περισσεύοντες. We are to abound in the Lord’s work since we “have realized” that it is not empty. The word κόπος means toil, exertion that is hard and tires. It matches “abounding.” Strenuous effort in abounding work needs something adequate to produce and to sustain it. This is the certainty of success. When the labor is ended, the laborer will not stand there with empty hands. That is the case with all who work for money, honor, and mere temporalities; when they are through working, their hands are empty.

“Not empty” is a litotes, a negative form to express a positive idea, namely “wonderfully productive” of everlasting results. But note that “not empty in the Lord” belongs together. Because our labor is in connection with the Lord, therefore it is highly productive. All of the harvest and all of the reward come from him, Matt. 28:20; 20:8; Luke 19:17. Without him all of love’s labor is lost. What an inspiration this assurance of success produces! How it freshens the tired laborers! Paul is an illustration of observing his own words.

The Lord’s work is spiritual, and its results are therefore for the greater part invisible to our eyes. We cannot measure the faith, the love, the virtues in the hearts of God’s people. In the case of the most of our earthly work the result is easily measured. A bricklayer lays so many bricks in so many hours and receives so much pay. A merchant sells so much in his store and makes so much profit. But it is not so in this work of the Lord.

We cannot count or take inventory. The results are too intangible. The Lord alone sees and knows. We often feel as though our efforts are in vain and are therefore liable to become discouraged, to cease the strong exertion, or to stop altogether. Hence this apostolic assurance: “having realized that our labor is not empty in the Lord.” This deep conviction sustains our spirit to continue to the end with joyful confidence, John 4:36.

R. A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, by A. T. Robertson, 4th ed.

B.-D. Friedrich Blass’ Grammatik des neutestamentlichen Griechisch, vierte, voellig neugearbeitete Auflage, besorgt von Albert Debrunner.

C.-K. Biblisch-theologisches Woerterbuch der Neutestamentlichen Graezitaet von D. D. Hermann Cremer, zehnte, etc., Auflage, herausgegeben von D. Dr. Julius Koegel.