I Corinthians 15

I Corinthians 15:1-2:
Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,
2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

I Corinthians 15:3-8:
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for which our sins according to the scriptures;”

That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

I Corinthians 15:9-11:
9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

1 Corinthians 15:12-20:
Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul does not balance weal and woe. Instead, he sets truth against untruth. We could almost say that here is the purest distillation of the gospel; for our whole faith depends upon this one fact. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is lies. We have even misrepresented God, and our hope is void — and not only our hope, but the hope of loved ones who have already died. If Christ has been raised, however, his resurrection is a “first fruits”. This means the first and freshest of the new harvest, which gives an indicator of the quality of what has not yet been gathered. Christ’s quality should be the guarantee of our own.

If the resurrection were a lie, or a fantasy, we would be trapped in sin, unable to escape. Then, we would deserve pity. The contrast for Paul is between a vigorous, plentiful crop full of goodness, and a failed harvest that yields nothing. Jeremiah and the psalmist both think along the same lines as Paul, although without Paul’s understanding of the resurrection. They see water and strong growth going hand in hand: those who trust in God are fruitful.
--Cally Hammond; Church Times

The problem: The people at the church in Corinth needed a clear understanding of the resurrection through Jesus Christ. However, some did not believe in the resurrection: (1Co 15:12) “Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” What is the purpose of preaching, ministering or baptizing if there is no life after death? (1Co 15:29) “Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptized for the dead?” The Response: Paul clearly enumerated the appearances of Jesus following His crucifixion and resurrection, proving that He was alive, was not just a spirit, and possessed a body. To those who questioned how the body could be given life, especially considering the length of time spent in death as well as the manner of death, Paul states that the new body will be a spiritual one. (1Co 15:44) “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” It is the work of God to perform the resurrection, therefore it will never be completely understood by natural man. The Application: Jesus promised to prepare a place for His people, and often spoke of that place. (Mat 25:34) “Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:” These are just two of the many references to heaven. [Source: Lawrence Butler]

I Corinthians 15:20:
“But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”

As the firstfruit offering represented the whole of the harvest to come, Christ rose as the firstfruits of those who died in faith. The significance of the firstfruits was not just that it came first but because it was a pledge of faith that the entire harvest was part of God’s grace and mercy to His people. Likewise, Christ was the first sheaf of the harvest presented as a token of the in gathering of the elect in the day of resurrection. Of the resurrection to eternal life, Christ is the first fruit. As He rose, His elect will rise. Christ resurrected is the proof of our resurrection.

I Corinthians 15:22:
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive

Adam’s death caused the death of his descendants; Christ’s resurrection guarantees that of His people. Christ came to restore what was ruined in Adam’s fall, hence Christ’s work produces the opposite effect of Adam’s.

In the modern world, skeptics have long questioned or denied the historicity of Adam. Neo-orthodox theologians added their voices to this chorus in the last century. More recently, and under the pressure of evolutionary theory, some prominent evangelical voices have as well. One prominent evangelical Old Testament scholar has argued that “it is not necessary that Adam be a historical individual for [Genesis 1–2] to be without error in what it intends to teach.” Another well-known evangelical Old Testament scholar denies that “a literal Adam [was] the first man and cause of sin and death.” Even so, he continues, we may retain “three core elements of the gospel,” namely, “the universal and self-evident problem of death; the universal and self-evident problem of sin; the historical event of the death and resurrection of Christ.”

It may help to pause and review what the issues in this particular debate are and what they are not. The issues do not concern the age of the earth and of the universe. Neither do they concern how we are to understand the days of Genesis 1. Reformed evangelicals have disagreed on these issues for generations, all the while affirming their common belief that Adam was a historical person.
We may frame the issue in the form of two related questions. First, does the Bible require us to believe that Adam was a historical person? Second, would anything be lost in the gospel if we were to deny Adam’s historicity?

In answer to the first question, yes, the Bible requires us to believe that Adam was a historical person. Some of the clearest testimony about Adam comes from the New Testament. When explaining Genesis 2, Jesus clearly speaks of the first man and the first woman in historical terms, and of the institution of marriage in historical terms (Matt. 19:4–6). The Apostle Paul, in referring to Genesis 2, speaks of Adam and Eve in terms equally historical (1 Tim. 2:12–14).

In 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, Paul places Adam and Jesus in parallel relationship. Paul calls Jesus the “Second Adam”—there is none between Adam and Jesus (1 Cor. 15:47). He also calls Jesus the “Last Adam”—there is none after Jesus (v. 45).

This relationship requires Adam to be a historical person. Paul compares Adam and Christ in terms of what each man did. Paul speaks of Adam’s one trespass in eating the forbidden fruit, and of Christ’s obedience unto death and resurrection unto life. For the comparison to hold, Adam’s actions must be as fully historical as Christ’s actions are historical, and Adam must be as historical a person as Christ was and remains.

So then, the Bible requires us to believe that Adam was a historical person. Now, taking up our second question, what are we to make of the argument that nothing in the gospel would be lost if we were to deny Adam’s historicity? May we uphold universal sin and death while discounting the way in which the Scripture says sin and death entered the world? The answer is no. The Bible does not give us that option. It clearly teaches that sin entered the world through the one action of one historical man, Adam (Rom. 5:12). If we reject the Bible’s account of a historical point of entry for sin into human existence, then, as Richard Gaffin has rightly observed, sin is no longer a matter of “human fallenness.” It is a matter of “human givenness.” It is just the way that human beings are.

This understanding of our plight upends the gospel. Absent a historical fall, the Bible’s account of redemption through the Second and Last Adam, Jesus Christ, makes no sense at all. How can it at all be meaningful to say with the Bible that God, in His sovereign and infinite mercy, has recovered and restored what was lost in the fall? To deny the historicity of Adam is no trivial matter. It has radical implications for the way in which we look at human nature, evil, and redemption.
--Ligonier Ministries

I Corinthians 15:24:
"Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the father, when he shall have put down all rule and all authority and power."

"The Last Days" refers to the period between Christ's past bodily resurrection and His future bodily return. Why is it termed "The Last Days?" Because it is the last period of God's redemptive work in the earth. The Last Days is the consummation of redemptive history--when we bask and work within the victory of Christ's death, resurrection, ascension, and session.

I Corinthians 15:31:
I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day!

Charles Spurgeon

We are not at this time being called to pass through the same fearful persecutions: if we were, the Lord would give us grace to bear the test. But the tests of Christian life, at the present moment, though outwardly not so terrible, are still more likely to overcome us than even those of the fiery age. We have to bear the sneer of the world—that is small; its flatteries, its soft words, its oily speeches, its fawning, its hypocrisy are far worse. Our danger is that we might grow rich and become proud; we might give ourselves up to the fashions of this present evil world and lose our faith. Or if wealth does not test us, worldly care is quite as mischievous. If we cannot be torn in pieces by the roaring lion, we may be hugged to death by the bear. The devil cares very little which it is, as long as he destroys our love for Christ and our confidence in Him.
I am afraid that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and easy days than in those rougher times. We must stay awake now, for we are crossing enchanted ground and are most likely to fall asleep to our own ruin, unless our faith in Jesus is a reality and our love for Jesus an ardent flame. Many in these days of easy-believism are likely to prove to be tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with attractive masks on their faces, but not the true-born children of the living God.
Christian, do not think that these are times in which you can dispense with watchfulness or with holy ardor; you need these things more than ever, and may God the eternal Spirit display His omnipotence in you, that you may be able to say, in all these softer things as well as in the rougher, “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).
— Charles Spurgeon, Evening by Evening, April 26.

I Corinthians 15:33:
Do not be deceived: “Evil company corrupts good habits.”

If you hang around with these people who say there is no resurrection of the dead, although you think there is, you’ll start to believe just as they do. And when you start to believe as they do, then you will start to behave as they behave. And he said “I want you to understand it, bad company corrupts good character.” Incidentally and in passing there is a word here I believe that had never struck me in studying this passage before. But there is a word here for these solid Christians who determine that they are going to stay in liberal churches where the minister does not believe the Bible and does not teach the Bible. And they’re staying there, they say, because they’re going to turn it around. I admire their zeal. I call in question their strategy. Why? Because of this statement: “Bad company corrupts good character.” You cannot sit and listen to nonsense week after week after week without imbibing a significant amount of that nonsense. And over twenty years of observation, I have yet to see a group turn a church around but I have seen many within those groups lose their flame, lose their passion, lose their light, lose their edge. Cause they wouldn’t apply the proverb clearly. It is the responsibility of every straight-shooting Christian to sit consistently under the effective, useful, clarifying, relevant preaching of the Word of God.

I Corinthians 15:34-43:
34 Awake to righteousness, and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame.
35 But someone will say, “How are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come?”
36 Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.
37 And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be, but mere grain—perhaps wheat or some other grain.
38 But God gives it a body as He pleases, and to each seed its own body.
39 All flesh is not the same flesh, but there is one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of animals, another of fish, and another of birds.
40 There are also celestial bodies and terrestrial bodies; but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another.
41 There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differs from another star in glory.
So also is the resurrection of the dead. The body is sown in corruption, it is raised in incorruption.
43 It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power.

FW Grant

You put seed into the ground, and, in the Scripture language, "it is not quickened except it die" (1 Cor. IS: 36). Does the living germ become extinct in order to bring forth the harvest? Are the organic processes extinguished in it? Where would the harvest be if they were? Yet this is in Scripture twice over spoken of as "death." And, if you reflect a little, the analogy to the death of man is nearer than it seems. There is that of the seed which is cast off as refuse, and decays. The germ within "puts off its tabernacle," but, so far from becoming extinguished in the process, springs up into the plant thereon. Is there no lesson in that? no type? no analogy commending the use of the strong word "death" in this case? Would it ever have occurred to these annihilationists that "except a com of wheat fall into the ground and DIE, it abideth alone, but if it DIE, it bringeth forth much fruit"? Does the grain of wheat become extinct in order to bring forth fruit? They have never (at least, that I can find) attempted to illustrate their doctrine by it, that death is the cessation of existence, the extinction of organic processes.
The death of man is spoken of, moreover, in language which is not doubtful. I have fully admitted already, and without hesitation, that there are a large class of passages which (identifying man with his body) speak in the ordinary popular phraseology about it. Passages too there are, which will be examined in the sequel, which may present difficulty in harmonizing them with the language of other parts. But, on the other hand, the clear full light of the New Testament affords us, in many simple and intelligible statements, abundant satisfaction as to what death is. Some of these I shall now proceed to examine.
1. As we have seen, the apostle Peter styles death the "putting off of his tabernacle" (2 Pet. 1: 14). The language of Paul is similar, and if comment be needed, may supply it: "If the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved" (2 Cor. 5: 1). Plainly, the apostle distinguishes between the tabernacle and the one who dwells in it: "For we which are IN this tabernacle," he says a little further on. The tabernacle was to be dissolved, not the inhabitant; and the man is identified with the latter rather than the former.
2. Another expression for death in the same passage (2 Cor. S: 4) is "being unclothed'": "Not that we would be unclothed." I would ask, If there be not something to be disembodied, how can you use the expression at all ? Can one talk of "disembodied breath" or "disembodied life?" The putting off of clothing, if that is a figure of disembodiment, as it is, is simple enough, but only when we recognize a part, and that the higher part, of man, to be something that is not the body, but is in it, as the living soul is. Here plainly, then, death is not cessation of existence, whatever becomes of soul or spirit afterwards, which for the present I leave open.
3. In the text in 2 Pet. 1: IS, before referred to, death is called "decease," literally, exodus, "departure": "After my departure." Now here the man departs; where, is not the question yet. The man departs—he leaves the earthly house of this tabernacle. Can you gather from the Bible that after dying he becomes extinct or unconscious? Death is not it: does not infer or imply it. It is my "departure."
4. And to this agrees the expression used again in 2 Cor. 5: 8, "absent from the body,"—"willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." People contend, I know (and it is their only hope), that this does not refer to death at all, but to resurrection. To make "absent from the body" to apply just to the time when the body will have its fulness of bliss, is only to make incomprehensible what is very simple. Certainly the "wining rather" must include the intermediate state, if oaiy as the way to the other, "WUling rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." And that these two things are not successive, but contemporaneous conditions, is manifest also. For, when he says, "Whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord," these states must go together: how then can it be doubted that the two things he desires, being the opposite of these conditions, go together also? It is vain to oppose the apostle's "Not that we would be unclothed" to the simple and natural interpretation of this desire to be absent from the body, as if the two were contradictory. This is by no means the case. He does say that what he groaned for was, not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. He groaned for resurrection, true, and the unclothed state was not in itself what he or any man desired. Still, knowing that to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord, he was after 3. In the text in 2 Pet. 1: IS, before referred to, death is called "decease," literally, exodus, "departure": "After my departure." Now here the man departs; where, is not the question yet. The man departs—he leaves the earthly house of this tabernacle. Can you gather from the Bible that after dying he becomes extinct or unconscious? Death is not it: does not infer or imply it. It is my "departure." 4. And to this agrees the expression used again in 2 Cor. 5: 8, "absent from the body,"—"willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord." People contend, I know (and it is their only hope), that this does not refer to death at all, but to resurrection. To make "absent from the body" to apply just to the time when the body will have its fulness of bliss, is only to make incomprehensible what is very simple. Certainly the "wining rather" must include the intermediate state, if oaiy as the way to the other, "WUling rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord." And that these two things are not successive, but contemporaneous conditions, is manifest also. For, when he says, "Whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord," these states must go together: how then can it be doubted that the two things he desires, being the opposite of these conditions, go together also?
It is vain to oppose the apostle's "Not that we would be unclothed" to the simple and natural interpretation of this desire to be absent from the body, as if the two were contradictory. This is by no means the case. He does say that what he groaned for was, not to be unclothed, but clothed upon. He groaned for resurrection, true, and the unclothed state was not in itself what he or any man desired. Still, knowing that to be absent from the body was to be present with the Lord, he was after all "willing rather" to be absent. Death had no terror for him, but the reverse. Death, then, is that disembodiment—the putting off the tabernacle of the body, being unclothed, departing, and being absent from it.
Moreover, we have already seen that Matt. 10: 28 asserts that the death of the body is not the death of the soul. Our Lord bids us, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Soul cannot be life merely, else those who kill the body would destroy it. Such a phrase moreover as "killing life" does not, and could not, exist at all, as I have before said: because "killing" is in itself "taking life," and you could not speak of taking the life of the life. Proof is conclusive, that when man dies his soul is not touched by it. If it is conscious is another thing, and presently to be examined. And what destruction of body and soul in hell is, I do not inquire yet. Suffice it just now, that when we put off the body at death, the soul still lives.

I Corinthians 15:44:
44 It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.

The term “spiritual body” in 1 Corinthians 15:44 does not, in Paul’s original use, mean what the phrase seems to imply in English. [N. T.] Wright points out that to the original audience, a “spiritual body” understood as an “immaterial body” would be a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing. You might as well talk about solid mist or dry water. What Paul is doing, in context, is contrasting a body of flesh (which is the most common New Testament metonym for fallen humanity) with the body of the Spirit—that is, a body empowered and animated by the Holy Spirit. The Jews and Greeks had words for immaterial beings.
If Paul had meant for us to expect a non-physical resurrection, he could have spoken of “ghosts,” or “spirits.” He did not. For a man of his background, “resurrection” meant only one thing: To get up out of the grave, body and all, and walk again. Jesus left behind an empty grave devoid of flesh and bones. He took them with Him. And so will we. (1 John 3:2) -G. Shane Morris

I Corinthians 15:45-49:
45 And so it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.
46 However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, and afterward the spiritual.
47 The first man was of the earth, made of dust; the second Man is the Lord from heaven.
48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are made of dust; and as is the heavenly Man, so also are those who are heavenly.
49 And as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly Man.

I Corinthians 15:50-58:
50 Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. 51 Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed--
52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”
55 “O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?”
56 The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
58 Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

While we still sorrow, the hope the apostle Paul talks about is that death doesn’t have the final say (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). There is something that follows, another word: resurrection. Paul grounds that hope in the reality of the resurrection of Christ (v. 12), and says “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (v 14). If our hope as believers is limited to this world only, that’s just a pity (v. 19).
We will one day see those again who have “fallen asleep in Christ” (v. 18) — grandparents and parents, friends and neighbors, or perhaps even old schoolyard crushes. Death doesn’t get the last word. Resurrection does. John Blasé

Physiologists have measured reflex arcs and found that the closing of the eyelid is the most rapid movement of all human reflexes.
There will be a dramatic sound, like a trumpet, that will call all believers home. Although there is a trumpet mentioned in Revelation 11:15, called the 7th trumpet of judgment, Greek scholars tell us that isn’t the same trumpet as this one in 1 Corinthians 15. After this trumpet, the most amazing thing happens as “the dead will be raised.” 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17 says that the bodies of dead saints will rise first and then the living saints will follow, removing all believers from the earth. -Pastor Ed Rea

The history of six thousand years of evil has heen lost on man. He refuses to read its awful lesson regarding sin and God's displeasure against the sinner, which that history records. The flood of evil that has issued forth from one single sin he has forgotten. The death, the darkness, the sorrow, the sickness, the tears, the weariness, the madness, the confusion, the bloodshed, the furious hatred between man and man, making Earth a suburb of Hell -- all this is overlooked or misread. Man repels the thought that sin is crime which God hates with an infinite hate and which he, in his righteousness, must condemn and avenge.

If sin is such a surface thing, such a trifle as men deem it, what is the significance of this long sad story? Do earth's ten thousand graveyards, where human love lies buried, tell no darker tale? Do the millions upon millions of broken hearts and heavy eyes say that sin is but a trifle? Do the moaning of the hospital or the carnage of the battlefield, the blood-stained sword, and the death-dealing artillery proclaim that sin is a mere casualty and the human heart the seat of goodness after all? Do the earthquake, the volcano, the hurricane, the tempest speak nothing of sin's desperate evil? Do not man's aching head, and empty heart, and burdened spirit, and shaded brow, and weary brain, and tottering limbs utter -- in a voice articulate beyond mistake -- that sin is guilt? And do they not utter that guilt must be punished -- punished by the iudge of all -- not as a mere "violation of natural laws," but as a breach of the eternal law, which admits of no reversal: "The soul that sins, it shall die?" For without law, sin is nothing. "The strength of sin is the law" (1 Corinthians 15:56), and he who makes light of sin must defend moral confusion and injustice. He who refuses to recognize sin as guilt must dissolve the law of the universe or ascrihe imbecility and injustice to the Judge of all.

The world has grown old in sin. It has now more than ever hegun to trifle with it, either as a necessity which cannot he cured, or a partial aberration from good order which will rectify itself ere long. It is this tampering with evil, this refusal to see sin as God sees it, as the law declares it, and as the story of our race has revealed it, that has in all ages been the root of error and of wide departure from the faith once delivered to the saints. Admit the evil of sin with all its eternal consequences, and you are shut up to a divine way of dealing with it. Deny the evil of sin and the future results of that evil, and you may deny the whole revelation of God, set aside the cross, and abrogate the law.
Horatius Bonar (The Everlasting Righteousness)