(NRSV, 1989)

In my estimation, 1 Corinthians 15 is one of the most doctrinally dense chapters in the New Testament outside of Paul’s letter to the Romans. Why the apostle writes what he does in here is easily in keeping with the rest of this letter, but the nature of its subject matter is not. In respect to the former, the Corinthians have strayed from what they were taught and had been demonstrated by Paul, and he was trying to get them back on track. When considering the latter, however, up to this chapter Paul has been focused more on practical or pastoral theology—the hows of the faith and where they have erred in their practice—but here in fifteen, Paul seems to be addressing error that has arisen in their belief. 

The gospel—the Good News of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified and Risen—is the only instrument for salvation that is available to the Corinthians. It seems that there may have arisen some doubt within the congregation of the gospel’s uniqueness in this regard. The Corinthians had heard and accepted Paul’s message and had staked their lives on it: “on which you have taken your stand…” Paul was under the impression that this was a done deal; but the apostle’s response here seems to indicate that there is now some doubt: maybe springing from the Corinthians’ determination to keep up the practices of their former lives. 

Note that it is through the gospel that they “are being saved, if [they] hold to the message…unless [they] believed in vain.” This is not a doctrinal statement that some denominations and traditions like to hear. Salvation is a process here and not a single, exclusive act. The Corinthians must “hold to the message” to achieve complete salvation in the future. Thus, believing is not enough to assure salvation. Remember James’ words to a Church that had fallen to temptation: “Even demons believe…” So there is more to salvation than simple belief. 

As stated in the introduction, Paul’s letter has been focused on the need for the Corinthians to change the way that they live—or more specifically the need to engage each other and world in a new, Christlike, way. Salvation, then, is best understood to be a process that starts with belief and ends with a person’s total transformation. “Now I see dimly as in a mirror, then I will see face to face.” Belief—in reference to mental acceptance—is not enough to reach salvation. 

Here is the Good News: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures [by which Paul means the Hebrew scriptures], that he was buried, that he was raised [to new life] …and that appeared [to others for proof].” These then shared the gospel with others who then shared the gospel. 

As Paul has stressed before to the Corinthians, the relationship with God has its cause in Him. Just as we can only understand God’s wisdom by the presence of the Spirit—remember, the wisdom of God is foolishness to the world—so, too, can we only become what we are supposed to be with God’s initiative. Paul doesn’t claim to be an apostle, he is an apostle by God’s action. Likewise, all the Corinthians can do is choose to respond in the way that Spirit desires them too, as demonstrated in the life of Christ. If they choose not to capitalize on what they have been given by God through Christ, they have received in vain. 

Salvation is a partnership—a collective action between God and the individual and God with the community and the individual with the community. To find proof of this, all one must do is recall the nine fruits of the Spirit: Three are between God and the individual; three are within the individual; and three are with others in community. Put another way, God does His parts, and we do ours—which we can only do by His presence and grace, ironically. Paul understands this. 

So, the purpose for Christ’s appearance to the apostles—the greatest and the least—is so that the Corinthians might believe and hopefully respond. Maybe they’ve got the first three fruits growing—love, joy, and peace—but the other six: patience, kindness, and generosity (with others) and faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (within themselves) so far in the letter appear to be lacking. In fact, maybe even the first three are hard to find. These first three fruits: love, joy, and peace, though, are Paul’s concern here in chapter fifteen. What these opening verses in chapter fifteen tell us is that the fruit that God demands is the product of our belief and our response, and that if we do not maintain a right belief in the gospel, there is no way for us to produce it. 

For some reason, it appears as though members of the Corinthian church are stepping away from the gospel that Paul had preached to them, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” and it is this gospel that provides the foundation of selfless love (agape), joy, and peace that is only found in Jesus Christ.

In abandoning their belief in the physical resurrection, the Corinthians are turning their backs on the first fruits of the Spirit. Gone is freedom from the fear of death. Perhaps their tendency to hold on to elements of their old lives is surfacing here, too. Previously, the Corinthians would have had no desire to be physically resurrected. (Visit the series on 1 and 2 Thessalonians for a deeper dive into Greek beliefs about death and the afterlife.) It is obvious that they once embraced Paul’s gospel, but now are falling away from it. We see in verse thirteen that the resurrection is central to the joy and peace bought by Christ’s selfless act on the cross. Without it, everything that Paul preached is in vain. 

If the resurrection is not true, then not only are Paul’s efforts in vain and the Corinthians’ faith futile, but the apostle states also that he is a liar and has shared with them a mere fairytale. “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.” The resurrection is required to complete the work of the cross. Paul will expound on this in his letter to the Romans, but as for now, he is satisfied to state this reality matter-of-factly. “If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone.” If it is only for this life, then what difference does it make? There is no progress, no freedom from sins power, no growth in humility, and not peace in weakness. Only the strong, the wealthy, connected, the beautiful, and the savvy will survive—and even them not for long. Without the resurrection we are still lost and Social Darwinism victorious.

But whether the Corinthians believe it or not, the truth is that “Christ has been raised from the dead,” and he will not be the only one. “For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man. For just as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” Paul doesn’t explain why this is here but will later in Romans. Maybe he had yet to work it out in the Spirit, or maybe he knew that the Corinthians were already hanging on by a thread and this would be just too heavy for them. Regardless, the apostle only gives us the shell of the doctrine of the cross and the empty tomb—only gives us a hint of the purpose of Christ’s mission. Put simply, Paul says, Adam brought death and Jesus brought resurrection.

This is something that the Corinthians cannot derive from worldly wisdom. It is outside of their wheelhouse. Jesus will be resurrected and then “those who belong to Christ.” Following this, there will be an end when Christ Jesus receives authority over God’s kingdom, “When everything [that] is subject to Christ, [including Christ] himself, will also be subjected [to God], so that God may be all in all.”  I can only imagine the Corinthians’ confused faces when they read this. 

Theirs originally was an afterlife of their eternal spirit. Theirs was a world that would keep on going, even if it occasionally underwent destruction; it would always come back. (Visit the discussion of the Greek word olethros in the Thessalonians series.) And God becoming all in all, what does that mean? Does he mean that someday we will all be gods or that we will become spirits and merge with God, like the Buddhists believe? No and no. This is something that Paul doesn’t explain here but will eventually. 

Paul is concerned about the Corinthians. In so many aspects of their lives they are struggling to live as Christ would have them to, and they even seem to be leaving behind their faith in Him. It appears to be just too difficult for them to put their old ways of living and believing behind them, unlike the Thessalonians who has bought into the gospel to such an extent that they had become example to so many Christians in Greece and Macedonia. 

So far in chapter fifteen Paul has informed the Corinthians that to abandon their belief in the resurrection from dead it to abandon the efficacy of the cross. It is say that Jesus died for nothing and that Jesus and the apostle are both liars. To abandon the resurrection of the dead is to embrace futility—that there can be no transformation or lasting change. Paul tells the church that it must be patient and that as Christ was raised from the dead, so too will be his faithful. And this is ultimately Paul’s command to the church: Remain faithful.

He continues in verse twenty-nine: If there is no resurrection from the dead…

No one can say with certainty what Paul is talking about here, but it appears that people are being baptized into Christ Jesus for the sakes of those who have already died. This doesn’t appear to be a fringe activity, since he asks why, if there is no resurrection, would that church expend its time and energy on what is essentially a pointless exercise. I doubt he would have even brought it up if only a handful of members were doing such a thing. This does, however, provide an opportunity for me to state that there is no evidence that the whole Corinthian church was ever Paul’s intended audience. His comments are repeatedly directed at those or some within the congregation that are living out their faith in a questionable manner. 

Plainly put: Every difficulty Christians face on account of their faith is not worth the hassle if there is no resurrection from the dead. 

Paul provides a detailed rationale for resurrection in the form of an answer to two questions: “How are the dead raises? What kind of body will they have when they come?” What will be raised from the earth is not the same as it was when it was sown into the earth. “…God gives it a body as he wants, and to each of the seeds its own body.” But regardless of what physical form it had when it was sown, when the body arises anew, it is always as God intends it to be: splendorous. “So it is with the resurrection of the dead: Sown in corruption, raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor, raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power; sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.”  Paul continues:

Paul delves into the ontological, here. He reminds the Corinthians that, contrary to their previous beliefs, to be human means to be natural. Greeks understood a person to consist of two parts: one physical—natural—and the other spiritual—which is the real person. We compared this dualism to Judaism’s monism in some detail in the Thessalonians series. For just a quick review: the natural, material person is bad and the goal of life is to free the spirit from it. This is dualism. On the other hand, Paul believes that a person is first and foremost the stuff that he or she is made from. “There is a natural body…So it is written, the first man Adam became a living being…” The second man—“the last Adam” whom Paul does not name but is Jesus—“became a life-giving spirit” after His resurrection. “However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural, then the spiritual.” The Corinthians would have been raised believing that their spirits were preexistent before their bodies. 

Since the physical man came first and then the spiritual one, so, too are we first material beings, just like Adam. However, once we have come to faith in Jesus Christ as Messiah, “we…bear the image of the man of heaven.”  This is why Paul can claim a pre-resurrec-tion, if you will, in Galatians when he writes to the congregation in 2:20, “…it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Paul no longer lives by the desires and ways of the flesh but by those of the spirit. 

Here in chapter fifteen, the Corinthians are receiving a very complex—and seemingly contradictory—message. On the one hand, Paul tells them that humans are first natural, material creatures and not spiritual ones. And we can be raised into eternal life only because our material, corruptible bodies have been sown as seed back into the earth. We are not firstly spirit—as they were raised to believe—but, rather, flesh. However, that which is corruptible and transient cannot enter the eternal; it “cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can corruption inherit incorruption.” This is why it is necessary to possess within our hearts the life and Spirit of Jesus Christ. Our inward nature must change for our outward one to follow suit. 

Those who have died in Christ, whether physically alive or dead, will put on the Savior’s incorruptibility. 

Our victory over death results from our faith in Jesus Christ, in dying to ourselves we live through Christ. Sin, on the other hand, results only in death—and there aren’t many spiritual fruits found in it, are there? Paul will expand on this considerably in his letter to the Romans. “…and the power of sin is the law.” Here, Paul is not likely talking about the Law of Moses—or even the Jewish law. Remember, the Corinthians are very Greco-Roman: This is human law in contrast to natural law.  Sin’s power, therefore, is found in the things that we try to do to overcome death or to set ourselves apart; its law is the living by our standard(s) and not God’s standard that is found only in Jesus Christ.

Paul encourages the Corinthians to continue striving to live into the life of Christ that is in them and not to continue living as they did before the apostle came to them and shared the gospel.