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Today, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 15:12–34, which talks about the inconsistency of those who want the gospel of Jesus without his resurrection. It is a vital passage to see the significant and important consequences of Jesus’ resurrection for life now as well as the future.
Yours,
Phillip
Phillip Jensen: Today, we will be looking at the resurrection of the dead in 1 Corinthians 15:12–34
Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.
Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
Peter Jensen: As you can see, you can be diverted in this passage by a number of tricky bits within it. But if you put your focus on the tricky bits, you’ll miss the main message, which can be summarised in one word: ‘hope.’ Hope is generated by this passage, and it matters always, but especially when we confront the death of one close to us, or our own death.
Phillip, you’ve had a lot to do with funerals over the years. What was your experience?
Phillip: When I was first involved with funerals, there were many things which startled me. The first was how small they were. The majority of people who died, of course, were aged, but by the time we come to old age, the number of friends and family we have left are very few. When I’d gone to funerals of young people, or Christian funerals, large numbers of people showed up. But when someone rang up and asked for a minister to take the funeral, I would see gatherings of 20–30 people, sometimes even smaller. The other thing I noticed was that the Christian funerals stood out as being so different not just in terms of numbers of attendees, but because of the hope that was present. They do not grieve in the same way that the non-Christians grieve. Peter, grief is one of those issues that you’ve thought about a lot.
Peter: I have, over the years, in listening to people, observing, and experiencing grief, because this is something we all experience, Christian or not. It can be overwhelming. It affects the body, the mind, the heart, and the conscience.
In the body, you can feel physical pain, or uncontrolled weeping. You can have difficulty speaking. The senses are bereaved. The poet Lord Tennyson once wrote, “O, for the touch of a vanish’d hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!”1
In the mind, the imagination goes into overdrive. “What would he be like now?” or “What would she be doing now?” are very common questions if the person has died young.
You remember the person clearly at first, then you find suddenly that your memory of them is fragmented. You don’t remember everything about them as you once did, and you doubt your memory. “Have I got it right?” you ask yourself.
There can be the sense of an absent presence. The person is absent, but you feel their presence. A number of things can spark that up, like a dream or a particular smell.
There’s the wounded heart of grief, the broken-heartedness, the abiding loss of ultimate separation.
There are decisions now made alone which used to be taken jointly. “When will we have the holiday?” “Where will we go this time?” Every decision creates a new and different life from what it was, but we don’t want that.
The poet Wordsworth, in his sonnet, Surprised by Joy,2 wrote
Surprised by joy—impatient as the Wind
I turned to share the transport—Oh! with whom
But Thee, long buried in the silent Tomb,
That spot which no vicissitude can find?
Love, faithful love, recalled thee to my mind—
But how could I forget thee?
The person to whom the poem is addressed—his daughter—is still alive in his mind. But the truth is that she is not alive.
So, you can have conscience. You can feel the things that you’ve done wrong, particularly if it’s your own death that you’re confronting. What I want to know is this: how can you face grief without hope? The wonderful thing is, of course, that as Christians we do grieve, as we’re told in the Bible. We grieve, because we are human beings. We don’t face grief, however, as a Stoic might, stony-faced and insisting, “I am not going to suffer the pain of death, so I will contain it all.” Neither do we face death in a romantic sort of way. At some funerals, the dead person is romanticised with a sort of emotion-fuelled optimism. As the Apostle says elsewhere, we grieve, but not as those without hope.
So what we see in this passage are the grounds of our hope. It’s not just optimism, but a real hope. So we reject the stupidity of those who would rob us of it by diverting the gospel, by changing it to rob it of its hope. As Paul says in 15:12, “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” The Ancient Greeks had a dreamy sort of belief in life after death, but it wasn’t the resurrection of the dead.
Phillip: That belief is optimism. Optimism doesn’t really have a basis in anything other than your personality. There are people who are optimists, who look on the sunny side, and then there are pessimists. Furthermore, Stoicism may sound like a great thing, but it is dreadful, because the way the Stoics were taught to go through pain and suffering was by avoiding all attachments. If you don’t love anything, if you’re not attached to anything, then losing it is of no consequence. If I don’t love anybody, then I won’t be hurt by grief when they die. But that means life is loveless, of course, and that also is a very central part of Buddhist thinking. You avoid pain by avoiding life. But that is not how we live as Christian people. It’s very difficult for anybody to live this way because when we come to death, grief follows because we do love, we do care, and we are attached in relationships with people.
What I find strange, though, is that these people who rejected the resurrection of the dead are supposed to be Christians. In 15:1–2, we see that they have heard the gospel and accepted it, although he is warning them that they must stand firm in what they’ve believed. But now it seems that they’re denying the resurrection. I presume that means the general resurrection, the sense that the day comes when all will be raised to life. But once you start doing that, there’s this incredible list of negative consequences that Paul rightly argues for. That is, they’re demonstrating by their position that the blessings that come from the resurrection are fraudulent. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:13–14
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.
If that’s the case, then the sin problem is unresolved, for there is no justice and there is no mercy. There is no salvation from our sin. So those who have died are not asleep awaiting the Lord; they are lost. There are so many inconsistencies in the ways that people then live. For example, Paul picks on people who are baptised for the dead. He says that that’s a waste of time and energy. He then says that if the dead are not raised, his life of suffering for the cause of the gospel is stupid. If there is no resurrection then the only way of life left is, 15:32, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” But because of the resurrection, Paul tells them to reject this thinking. So the whole of life is dramatically changed when you acknowledge that Christ Jesus has risen from the dead.
Peter: His list of references here is very helpful to them and also to us, because we can see what the hope was based on. What do you think about his reference to baptism for the dead?
Phillip: One of the books I’ve read said that there were 40 alternative explanations to this. But the Greek is straightforward in its translation. People try to get around the meaning of it by asking questions like, “What is the meaning of the word ‘baptism’? What’s the meaning of the word ‘for’? What’s the meaning of ‘the dead’?” It is right to raise these questions. After all, baptism does not necessarily refer to Christian baptism; the Jews conducted baptism, and the Pagan religions practiced washings and baptisms too. So we don’t really know which kind of baptisms are being referred to. You’ll notice that in 15:29, he’s not talking about the Corinthians, or even Christians. He’s just talking about those who are baptised for the dead, whoever they are.
Peter: Are there any other Bible verses that might throw light on this for us?
Phillip: No, and that’s part of the problem of understanding this issue. It’s a practice we don’t know much about either in the Bible or outside of it, but the implication of the practice is that there’s some blessing available after death. But if you do not believe in the resurrection, there is no blessing.
Peter: There are points even in this letter where Paul refers to practices that were going on in the Corinthian church. Some people had a religious diet, so to speak, and Paul doesn’t forbid it; he just says it’s not important. So he can refer to practices which he doesn’t agree with, but he’s just pointing out how inconsistent it would be to do such a thing.
Phillip: Yes, it’s the inconsistency of beliefs that is being pointed out here. But I’ll give you another illustration. There are people who practice ‘grave sucking’.
Peter: I beg your pardon? What is ‘grave sucking’?
Phillip: It’s a practice which is supposedly based on 2 Kings 13, where someone gets placed in the grave of Elijah and comes to life again. So there is a group of people in California who lie on the graves of great Christian figures to try to “suck the spirit” up from the grave. Like the Apostle, the fact that I can refer to grave sucking is not an indication that I agree with it, or a suggestion that you should do it. I’m just saying that you can’t practise ‘grave sucking’ unless you believe in the spirit. You can’t do that unless you believe that you can be influenced by the dead. Likewise, you can’t be baptised for the dead unless you believe in the resurrection, which is the inconsistency that Paul is pointing to. We need to be wary of the Mormon belief in baptism for the dead, because Mormons do practice this, and they’re very focused on gathering up the names of dead people so that it can be practiced for them. But there’s no promise here that there’s any benefit from doing so.
Peter: Coming back to our main topic, we see that as the passage develops, we see that through Jesus, God is destroying the evil powers, defeating death, restoring humanity, and bringing in his kingdom. What a great thing.
In 15:22, Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.” Christ is truly and always man, and he is truly and always God. That is to say, he’s being regarded here as the head of a new race. He is the first Adam and the last Adam. He is the last Adam not in the sense of being the last person ever; he is the new Adam who is going to be the real head of the race.
Phillip: Christ is the firstfruits. That is, at harvest time, the firstfruits were an indication of the quality of the harvest to come. In other words, it’s the beginning of the new.
Peter: This calls back to last week’s passage and the wonderful description of the victory there. 1 Corinthians 15:51–53
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.
That wonderful passage is the direct consequence of the victory of Christ over death, and our union with him.
Phillip: Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15), and as the true image-bearer of God, Christ destroys all the enemies. And the last great enemy he destroys is death.
There comes a point in a soccer game where, say, one team is 10 goals up. The outcome is fairly certain at that stage of the game. 10 goals in a soccer game is fairly extraordinary. Well, death comes to us in Genesis 3, making life hopeless as Ecclesiastes says. It’s the wage that sin pays in Romans 6:23. It brings to us the sting of the law here at the end of 1 Corinthians 15. Everyone’s appointed to die once, and after that, there is the judgement as is said in Hebrews. But right at the end of the Bible, in Revelation 20:13–14, death itself is finally done away with. In the new age, death is of no longer any significance to us. It’s a great victory. But ultimately, Jesus is the head of the church, as is said in that Colossians passage I mentioned, because his redeemed people will always be alive. He will hand over all things to his Father; his triumph, his victory, his redeemed new mankind, and humanity are all to be handed over so that God will, in the end, be the ruler over all things.
The resurrection is importantly physical, because the physical is good. God has created this world and our bodies, and what he sees in his creation is that it is good. Therefore, our bodies will be redeemed. In fact, the creation itself will be redeemed in Revelation 21, but there will also be a new heavens and a new earth. In Romans 8, there’s an extraordinary little passage, Peter, about the whole creation groaning, waiting for our redemption so that it can be liberated from the frustration of death that it is living under.
Peter: Yes, and the sons and daughters of God will be revealed. This will be the moment of immense joy in creation.
Phillip: And so we must watch out, making sure that we don’t turn spirituality into being anti-creation and anti-physical, because the spiritual world is still a world. It is created by God. There are 2 misconceptions which are prevalent today.
The first is that there’s no physical recreation of our body; we will be like ghosts and spirits.
The other is that we are to be involved in recreating the world. Our ecological disasters on this world are a failure to recognise God’s valuing of the created order, and we must work to somehow bring about the new heavens and the new earth.
Both of these ideas are strange because the reality is very simple. There will be a new heavens and a new earth when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. There will be a physical world with a physical resurrection, and that’s when everything is to be handed over to God the Father. Even the Son himself is then subject to his Father.
Peter: That last point seems a very strange thing to say.
Phillip: It’s strange because we have such weird egalitarian ideas nowadays that no one should be subject to any other person because we are all equal. Of course, that is nonsense. Submission and subjection are good things, but in our sinful corruption of mind, we always see it as being connected with inferiority. We think that if I’m submissive to somebody else, I’m somehow inferior to the other person, even sometimes on an ontological level. Whereas we know God the Son is as much God as God the Father is. Yet one submits to the other as a son does to a father. So, the problem here is not the problem of the text, but of our minds.
Peter: Yes, and if you read the commentaries, you’ll see dozens of pages on the subject. But it is a reminder to us that there is one God, not 3 gods. It also reminds us of Philippians 2:10–11, “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
At the end of the passage he quotes what looks like a proverb, “Bad company ruins good morals.” Then he calls upon them to “Wake up from your drunken stupor. Don’t go on sinning.” What’s going on?
Phillip: The thing that gives us hope is Jesus and his resurrection. It helps us deal with the whole subject of grief and of death, of meaning and of life, of where the universe is going under the lordship of Jesus Christ. There are people who have embraced the gospel back in 15:1 but who are now trying to say that they don’t believe in the resurrection of the body. To that, Paul is saying, “Not only is your position inconsistent, erroneous, and destructive, but you really need to stop because the end point of it is a loss of everything in the gospel. So stop sinning. Stop rejecting the gospel itself. You cannot continue in Christ and deny the resurrection of the body.”
Peter: The power of fellowship is brought into it too. “Bad company ruins good morals” is a reminder to us that we are very powerfully affected by groups of people, and so we forget that the most important fellowship we can have is with the Lord.
Phillip: This is especially so with the thought bubbles of today. There are algorithms that work such that the machine thinks that you look at this document, read this article, watch this movie, or listen to this podcast, based on what you’ve shown an interest in. This way of forming groups of people into bad company is very dangerous. It happens theologically too; instead of reading the scriptures and living under the word of God, we can live in a fellowship community that may well deny the very things that are in the word of God. It’s important that you live in a community that reads and teaches the Bible, and that’s not necessarily the one that’s going to be warm, friendly, happy, and gregarious.
Lord Tennyson, Break, Break, Break, 1842 (Edward Moxon).
William Wordsworth, Surprised by Joy, 1815 (Longman & co).
Scripture quotations are from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Links & Recommendations
For more on this topic, check out this talk called A Futile Faith.
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