1 Corinthians 15:12-20 sits inside this longer paragraph.
12Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. 14If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain. 15Yes, we are also found false witnesses of God, because we testified about God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn’t raise up, if it is so that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead aren’t raised, neither has Christ been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins. 18Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
20But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep. 21For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. 22For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. 23But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming. 24Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father, when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. 25For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26The last enemy that will be abolished is death. 27For, “He put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when he says, “All things are put in subjection”, it is evident that he is excepted who subjected all things to him. 28When all things have been subjected to him, then the Son will also himself be subjected to him who subjected all things to him, that God may be all in all.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 The first argument to prove that there is a…
The first argument to prove that there is a resurrection from the dead: Christ is risen again, therefore the dead shall rise again.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv12–20 12 Now if Christ be preached that he rose…
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?
Ver. 12. No resurrection] More than that of regeneration, Mat 19:28, that estate of the gospel called a new heaven and a new earth, 2Pe 3:13, the world to come, Heb 2:5, that resurrection already past, 2Ti 2:18, that first resurrection, Rev 20:5.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 The apostle having laid a good foundation, proving the…
The apostle having laid a good foundation, proving the resurrection of Christ by a plentiful testimony of those who saw him after that he was risen from the dead; and minded them, that this was the doctrine of the gospel, which both they and all the rest of the apostles had with one consent preached to them; he comes to build upon it, and from this, as a main argument, to prove, that there must needs be a resurrection from the dead; and beginneth with a reflection upon some in that church who denied it. Who those were we are not told: some think they were Hymeneus and Philetus, mentioned 2Ti 2:17,18, who held that the resurrection was past; others think he reflects on Cerinthus, who was one of the leaders of those heretics we read of, who after Simon Magus denied the resurrection others think they were some of the Sadducees, of whom we read in the Acts, that they denied the resurrection, or some of the Pharisees, who denied the resurrection of Christians, looking on them as apostates; others think they were some who had been tinctured, at least, with the doctrine of the pagan philosophers. We cannot certainly determine who, but certain it is some there were; and the apostle argues them in this thing to assert absurdly, upon this supposition, that Christ was risen.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv12, 20 Our apostle having asserted and proved the resurrection of…
Our apostle having asserted and proved the resurrection of Christ by ocular demonstration, by a plentiful testimony of those who saw him after he was risen, and withal informed them that this was the doctrine of the gospel which both he and the rest of the apostles had with one consent preached to them, he from hence infers the certainty and necessity of our resurrection. And because some of the church of Corinth were tainted with the wicked opinion of the Sadducees, who said there was no resurrection; therefore to strangle this monstrous opinion amongst the Corinthians in the birth, he shows the absurdity of it in these verses before us.
His first argument runs thus: If there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ the head is not risen; for if the head be risen, he will certainly raise up his members. Christ’s resurrection is the cause, the pattern, and archetype of ours: he did not only raise his body from the grave, but his church with him. For indeed Christ is not perfectly risen, till all his members are risen with him, and raised like him. True it is, that Christ’s personal resurrection was perfect when he arose; and it is as true, that all believers arose representatively when Christ arose. But till all believers arise personally, the resurrection of Christ has not received its utmost perfection.
Read full note →
His next work is to prove the certainty of Christ’s resurrection, from the manifold absurdities which would follow upon the denial of it; as namely, first, if Christ be not risen, then the apostle’s preaching was vain, and their belief of it was vain also. Our preaching is vain; that is, we who in our preaching have so strongly asserted Christ’s resurrection as an infallible argument of the divinity of his person and doctrine, have taught you a vain and idle dream. And your faith in Christ, as risen from the dead, is no better than a fancy, vain also; seeing the object of it faileth, Christ as risen from the dead.
2. If Christ be not risen, then we are found false witnesses of God: that is, then St. Paul himself, and the other apostles, had given a false testimony of God to the world, in affirming that God the Father had raised up Christ his Son from the dead: which he did not do, if there be no resurrection of the dead. To be false witnesses for men, is a sin of no common guilt; but to belie God, and be false witnesses for God, is a sin of aggravated guilt, which the holy apostle could not be supposed to be guilty of.
Again, 3. If Christ be not raised form the dead, then we are yet in our sins; that is, under the guilt of our sins, and liable to condemnation for our sins: we are not justified and absolved from them, unless Christ has expiated the guilt of them; and this he has not done if he be not risen, but remains himself under the power of death; for he was raised again for our justification.
Farther, 4. If Christ be not risen, then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished; that is, the dead saints in general, and the holy martyrs and sufferers for Christ, in particular, who are fallen asleep, are perished utterly, and lost finally, if there be no resurrection: martyrs will then be great losers, and martyrdom great folly.
Lastly, Then Christians are of all men most miserable. As if the apostle had said, As those martyrs were arrant fools, and perished as such, who laid down their lives for Christ, if they have no hopes of a resurrection, when they shall take them up again; so we Christians that survive are the wretchedest creatures upon earth, who undergo all the sufferings and hardships of this life; and deny ourselves many comforts and advantages which we might enjoy.
If after this mortal life we have no hope, who would care to do well, or who would fear to do ill? Were this believed, none would live so fleshly and sensual a life as those that do not believe the resurrection of the flesh; and none would be so miserable in this life as the holy, self-denying Christian, had he not a hope after death of a glorious resurrection.
Learn hence, That true Christians would be more unhappy than any other men, if their happiness were confined to this life only: we are of all men most miserable. We Christians are more miserable than other mortals; and we apostles and ministers more miserable than other Christians, who like beacons upon the tops of mountains, stand open continually to all storms and tempests raised against us by men and devils.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv12, 20 Having confirmed the truth of our Saviour's resurrection, the…
Having confirmed the truth of our Saviour's resurrection, the apostle goes on to refute those among the Corinthians who said there would be none: If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Co1 15:12. It seems from this passage, and the course of the argument, there were some among the Corinthians who thought the resurrection an impossibility. This was a common sentiment among the heathens. But against this the apostle produces an incontestable fact, namely, the resurrection of Christ; and he goes on to argue against them from the absurdities that must follow from their principle. As,
I. If there be (can be) no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not risen (Co1 15:13); and again, "If the dead rise not, cannot be raised or recovered to life, then is Christ not raised, Co1 15:16. And yet it was foretold in ancient prophecies that he should rise; and it has been proved by multitudes of eye-witnesses that he had risen. And will you say, will any among you dare to say, that is not, cannot be, which God long ago said should be, and which is now undoubted matter of fact?"
Read full note →
II. It would follow hereupon that the preaching and faith of the gospel would be vain: If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith vain, Co1 15:14. This supposition admitted, would destroy the principal evidence of Christianity; and so, 1. Make preaching vain. "We apostles should be found false witnesses of God; we pretend to be God's witnesses for truth, and to work miracles by his power in confirmation of it, and are all the while deceivers, liars for God, if in his name, and by power received from him, we go forth, and publish and assert a thing false in fact, and impossible to be true. And does not this make us the vainest men in the world, and our office and ministry the vainest and most useless thing in the world? What end could we propose to ourselves in undertaking this hard and hazardous service, if we knew our religion stood on no better foundation, nay, if we were not well assured of the contrary? What should we preach for? Would not our labour be wholly in vain? We can have no very favourable expectations in this life; and we could have none beyond it. If Christ be not raised, the gospel is a jest; it is chaff and emptiness." 2. This supposition would make the faith of Christians vain, as well as the labours of ministers: If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins (Co1 15:17), yet under the guilt and condemnation of sin, because it is through his death and sacrifice for sin alone that forgiveness is to be had. We have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, Eph 1:7. No remission of sins is to be had but through the shedding of his blood. And had his blood been shed, and his life taken away, without ever being restored, what evidence could we have had that through him we should have justification and eternal life? Had he remained under the power of death, how could he have delivered us from its power? And how vain a thing is faith in him, upon this supposition! He must rise for our justification who was delivered for our sins, or in vain we look for any such benefit by him. There had been no justification nor salvation if Christ had not risen. And must not faith in Christ be vain, and of no signification, if he be still among the dead?
III. Another absurdity following from this supposition is that those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. if there be no resurrection, they cannot rise, and therefore are lost, even those who have died in the Christian faith, and for it. It is plain from this that those among the Corinthians who denied the resurrection meant thereby a state of future retribution, and not merely the revival of the flesh; they took death to be the destruction and extinction of the man, and not merely of the bodily life; for otherwise the apostle could not infer the utter loss of those who slept in Jesus, from the supposition that they would never rise more or that they had no hopes in Christ after life; for they might have hope of happiness for their minds if these survived their bodies, and this would prevent the limiting of their hopes in Christ to this life only. "Upon supposition there is no resurrection in your sense, no after-state and life, then dead Christians are quite lost. How vain a thing were our faith and religion upon this supposition!" And this,
IV. Would infer that Christ's ministers and servants were of all men most miserable, as having hope in him in this life only (Co1 15:19), which is another absurdity that would follow from asserting no resurrection. Their condition who hope in Christ would be worse than that of other men. Who hope in Christ. Note, All who believe in Christ have hope in him; all who believe in him as a Redeemer hope for redemption and salvation by him; but if there be no resurrection, or state of future recompence (which was intended by those who denied the resurrection at Corinth), their hope in him must be limited to this life: and, if all their hopes in Christ lie within the compass of this life, they are in a much worse condition than the rest of mankind, especially at that time, and under those circumstances, in which the apostles wrote; for then they had no countenance nor protection from the rulers of the world, but were hated and persecuted by all men. Preachers and private Christians therefore had a hard lot if in this life only they had hope in Christ. Better be any thing than a Christian upon these terms; for in this world they are hated, and hunted, and abused, stripped of all worldly comforts and exposed to all manner of sufferings: they fare much harder than other men in this life, and yet have no further nor better hopes. And is it not absurd for one who believes in Christ to admit a principle that involves so absurd an inference? Can that man have faith in Christ who can believe concerning him that he will leave his faithful servants, whether ministers or others, in a worse state than his enemies? Note, It were a gross absurdity in a Christian to admit the supposition of no resurrection or future state. It would leave no hope beyond this world, and would frequently make his condition the worst in the world. Indeed, the Christian is by his religion crucified to this world, and taught to live upon the hope of another. Carnal pleasures are insipid to him in a great degree; and spiritual and heavenly pleasures are those which he affects and pants after. How sad is his case indeed, if he must be dead to worldly pleasures and yet never hope for any better!
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv12–20 Now if Christ be preached that he arose from…
Now if Christ be preached that he arose from the dead,.... As he was by the Apostle Paul, when at Corinth, and by all the rest of the apostles elsewhere.
How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Who these were is not certain, whether Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose notion this was, were come hither, or any of their disciples; or whether they were some of the followers of Simon Magus and Cerinthus, who denied the resurrection; or rather, whether they were not Jews, and of the sect of the Sadducees, who though they believed in Christ, retained their old principle, that there is no resurrection of the dead, cannot be affirmed: however, it is certain that they were such as were then at Corinth, and went under the Christian name; and it is highly probable were members of the church there; and who not only held this notion privately, but broached it publicly, saying, declaring, affirming, and that openly, before the whole church, what were their opinions and sentiments: it was indeed but some of them, not all that were chargeable with this bad principle, which the apostle asks how, and with what face they could assert, then it had been preached, and so fully proved to them, that Christ was risen from the dead; and if so, then it is out of question that there is a resurrection of the dead; for their notion, as it is here expressed, was not only that there would be no resurrection of the dead, but that there was none, nor had been any: though the apostle's view is also to prove the future resurrection of the dead, and which is done by proving the resurrection of Christ, for his resurrection involves that of his people; for not only the saints rose in, and with Christ, as their head representatively, and which is the sense of the prophecy in Hos 6:2 but because he is their head, and they are members of him, therefore as sure as he the head is risen, so sure shall the members rise likewise; nor will Christ's resurrection, in a sense, be perfect, until all the members of his body are risen: for though the resurrection of Christ, personally considered, is perfect, yet not as mystically considered; nor will it till all the saints are raised, of whose resurrection Christ's is the exemplar and the pledge: their bodies will be raised and fashioned like unto Christ's, and by virtue of union to him, and as sure as he is risen, for he is the firstfruits of them that slept. Besides, as he became incarnate, obeyed, suffered, not for himself, but for his people, so he rose again on their account, and that they dying might rise also; which if they should not, one end at least of Christ's resurrection would not be answered: add to this, that the same power that raised Christ from the dead, can raise others, even all the saints; so that if it is allowed that Christ is raised, it need not be thought incredible that all the dead shall be raised; and particularly when it is observed, that Christ is the efficient, procuring, and meritorious cause of the resurrection from the dead, as well as the pattern and earnest of it.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 How say some - Who probably had been heathen…
How say some - Who probably had been heathen philosophers.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 Verse 12. Now if Christ be preached, c.] Seeing…
Verse 12. Now if Christ be preached, c.] Seeing it is true that we have thus preached Christ, and ye have credited this preaching, how say some among you, who have professed to receive this doctrine from us that there is no resurrection of the dead, though we have shown that his resurrection is the proof and pledge of ours? That there was some false teacher, or teachers, among them, who was endeavouring to incorporate Mosaic rites and ceremonies with the Christian doctrines, and even to blend Sadduceeism with the whole, appears pretty evident. To confute this mongrel Christian, and overturn his bad doctrine, the apostle writes this chapter.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 19, 20 1Co 15:14-18. Then is our preaching — In consequence…
1Co 15:14-18. Then is our preaching — In consequence of a commission supposed to be given after his resurrection; vain — Without any real foundation, and destitute of truth; and your faith — In our preaching; is vain — Is grounded on falsehood and deception; yea, and we are false witnesses of God — Having testified that Jesus of Nazareth is his Son and the Messiah; that he hath atoned for sin; hath risen from the dead and ascended into heaven; hath obtained for his followers the Holy Spirit in his gifts and graces; a resurrection from the dead, and eternal life; and is constituted the final Judge of men and angels; — all which things, depending on his resurrection, are absolutely false, if he be not risen; and, of consequence, ye are yet in your sins — Unpardoned and unrenewed, without either a title to heaven or a meetness for it. So that there needed something more than reformation, (which was plainly wrought in them,) in order to their being delivered from the guilt of sin, and renewed after the divine image; even that atonement, the sufficiency of which God attested by raising our great Surety from the grave, and the influences of the Divine Spirit procured for us by that atonement. Then they who are fallen asleep in Christ — Who have died for him, or believing in him; are perished — Have lost their life and being together. This sentence shows, that in this discourse the apostle has the resurrection of the just principally in view, and that what he hath written concerning the excellent qualities of the bodies to be raised, is to be understood of the bodies of the saints only.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv12–20 Now if Christ ... - Paul, having 1Co 15:1-11…
Now if Christ ... - Paul, having 1Co 15:1-11 stated the direct evidence for the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, proceeds here to demonstrate that the dead would rise, by showing how it followed from the fact that the Lord Jesus had risen, and by showing what consequences would follow from denying it. The whole argument is based on the fact that the Lord Jesus had risen. If that was admitted, he shows that it must follow that his people would also rise.
Be preached - The word “preached” here seems to include the idea of so preaching as to be believed; or so as to demonstrate that he did rise. If this was the doctrine on which the church was based, that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, how could the resurrection of the dead be denied?
Read full note →
How say - How can any say; how can it be maintained?
Some among you - See the introduction to 1 Cor. 15. Who these were is unknown. They may have been some of the philosophic Greeks, who spurned the doctrine of the resurrection (see Act 17:32); or they may have been some followers of Sadducean teachers; or it may be that the Gnostic philosophy had corrupted them. It is most probable, I think, that the denial of the resurrection was the result of reasoning after the manner of the Greeks, and the effect of the introduction of philosophy into the church. This has been the fruitful source of most of the errors which have been introduced into the church.
That there is no resurrection of the dead - That the dead cannot rise. How can it be held that there can be no resurrection, while yet it is admitted that Christ rose? The argument here is twofold:
(1) That Christ rose was one “instance” of a fact which demonstrated that there “had been” a resurrection, and of course that it was possible.
(2) That such was the connection between Christ and his people that the admission of this fact involved also the doctrine that all his people would also rise. This argument Paul states at length in the following verses. It was probably held by them that the resurrection was “impossible.” To all this, Paul answers in accordance with the principles of inductive philosophy as now understood, by demonstrating A fact, and showing that such an event had occurred, and that consequently all the difficulties were met. Facts are unanswerable demonstrations; and when a fact is established, all the obstacles and difficulties in the way must be admitted to be overcome. So philosophers now reason; and Paul, in accordance with these just principles, labored simply to establish the fact that one had been raised, and thus met at once all the objections which could be urged against the doctrine. It would have been most in accordance with the philosophy of the Greeks to have gone into a metaphysical discussion to show that it was not impossible or absurd, and this might have been done. It was most in accordance with the principles of true philosophy, however, to establish the fact at once, and to argue from that, and thus to meet all the difficulties at once. The doctrine of the resurrection, therefore, does not rest on a metaphysical subtilty; it does not depend on human reasoning; it does not depend on analogy; it rests just as the sciences of astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, botany, and natural philosophy do, “on well ascertained facts;” and it is now a well understood principle of all true science that no difficulty, no obstacle, no metaphysical subtilty; no embarrassment about being able to see how it is, is to be allowed to destroy the conviction in the mind which the facts are suited to produce.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On v13 He brings many reasons to convince them of the…
He brings many reasons to convince them of the resurrection. 1. If there be no resurrection for others, Christ is not risen again: but his resurrection (as he tells them ver. 4) was foretold in the Scriptures. 2. And if Christ be not risen again,...your faith is also in vain, this being one of the chief articles of your belief. 3. We should be found guilty of lies and impostures; and yet we have confirmed this doctrine by many miracles. 4. It would follow that you are not freed from your sins; i.e. unless Christ, by his resurrection, has triumphed over sin and death. 5. Without a resurrection we Christians, who live under self-denials and persecutions, would be the most miserable of all men, neither happy in this world nor in the next, for the happiness of the soul requires also a happy resurrection of the body. 6. Christ is the first-fruits, and the first begotten of the dead, of those who have slept: and by his being the first-fruits, it must be supposed that others also will rise after him. 7. As death came by the first man, (Adam) so the second man (Christ) came to repair the death of men, both as to body and soul; and without Christ’s resurrection, both the souls of men have remained dead in their original sins, and their bodies shall not rise again. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv12–20 if--Seeing that it is an admitted fact that Christ…
if--Seeing that it is an admitted fact that Christ is announced by us eye-witnesses as having risen from the dead, how is it that some of you deny that which is a necessary consequence of Christ's resurrection, namely, the general resurrection?
some--Gentile reasoners (Act 17:32; Act 26:8) who would not believe it because they did not see "how" it could be (Co1 15:35-36).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv12–20 2. A denial of the resurrection is a denial…
2. A denial of the resurrection is a denial of the resurrection of Christ, and so a repudiation of the Christian faith, 12-19.
12. If… how say—This draws out the issue.
Read full note →
Some—Who or what were these some? Though with the Sadducees they denied the resurrection of the dead, and probably also the existence of spirit, the opposition between Sadducees and Christians renders it improbable that these deniers belonged to that sect. They may have been converts from among the followers of the Athenian philosophers, especially the Epicureans, who dismissed Paul so promptly for preaching Jesus and the resurrection. Indeed, the summit of the Acrocorinthus was almost in sight of Athens; and this epistle, addressed not only to Corinth but to the Churches of Achaia, doubtless included Athens. Nevertheless the some appear, from the objections of theirs answered by St. Paul, to have rejected the resurrection on account of their holding the oriental Gnostic doctrine of the essential impurity of matter. See note on Act_8:9.
Resurrection—The resurrection is, in the New Testament, designated by two words, each designating precisely the same event, but from a different standpoint; 1. ‘Εγειρω, to raise, transitively; where the divine power is the agent; 2. Ανιστημι, (noun αναστασις,) to rise up; where the person rising is the agent. In this chapter the former word is used at 1Co_15:4; 1Co_15:12-15; 1Co_15:15; 1Co_15:15-16; 1Co_15:16-17; 1Co_15:20; 1Co_15:29; 1Co_15:32; 1Co_15:35; 1Co_15:42-43; 1Co_15:43-44; the latter at 1Co_15:12-13; 1Co_15:20; 1Co_15:42; 1Co_15:52. Both words are applied to the resurrection of Christ, and to the resurrection of the general dead indiscriminately. The former is uniformly held as the essential model of the other.
He rose from the dead—Literally, that he has been raised from deads. See our note on Luk_20:35, where the difference between a resurrection of the dead, a resurrection from the dead, and a resurrection from deads, (dead being Greek plural and without the article,) is shown. This is a very important distinction, which no commentator has clearly noticed. Here it is a resurrection from deads or dead ones, Christ himself being included in the dead ones from whom he is raised; the being raised from one’s own dead self being included in the word.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 12. how say some among you that there is…
12. how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?] There were three different schools of thought among those outside the Christian Church which denied the doctrine of the Resurrection from the dead. The first was the materialistic school, represented by the Epicureans among the heathen and by the Sadducees among the Jews. They thought that man would entirely cease to exist after death, and that any other idea was only the result of man’s vanity and his insatiable longing after existence. The second, in which the Stoics were the most prominent body, taught, what amounted to the same thing, the Pantheistic doctrine of the ultimate reabsorption of the soul into the Divinity from which it had sprung, and therefore the final extinction of the individual personality. The third school, of which the disciples of Plato were the chief representatives, while maintaining the eternal personality and immortality of the soul, regarded matter as the cause of all evil, the only barrier between the soul and the Absolute Good, a thing, in fact, essentially and eternally alien to the Divine, and therefore could not conceive of immortality except through the entire freedom of the soul from so malignant and corrupting an influence. Hence the doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body was the principal stumbling-block in the way of an early reception of Christianity. It aroused the antagonism of an influential section among the Jews (Act_4:1-2; Act_5:17; Act_23:6-9), and was considered by heathen philosophers inadmissible and absurd (Act_17:32). This doctrine for many centuries has proved the principal hindrance to the progress of Christianity. It produced the numerous Gnostic sects, which were willing to accept the doctrine of eternal life through Christ, so long as it was not encumbered by the necessity of believing in the resurrection of the body. The Manichaeans and their followers maintained for many centuries a conflict with the Christian Church, mainly on this point, and were able for many years to boast of so distinguished a convert as St Augustine, who describes them, after his return to the Church, as holding that “Christ came to deliver not bodies but souls.” De Haer. 46. For information concerning the tenets of the heathen philosophers on this point, the student may consult Archer Butler’s Lectures on Philosophy; for the early Christian heretics, Neander and Gieseler’s Church Histories, and Mansel’s Gnostic Heresies, and for both Ueberweg’s History of Philosophy,
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv12, 14, 15, 16, 20 (12) If Christ be preached that he rose from…
(12) If Christ be preached that he rose from the dead.—Better, is being preached. It has been proved as a matter of historical fact that a man has risen from the dead; it is therefore illogical to say that there is no resurrection of the dead.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv12–20 Vers. 12-19. Terrible conclusions resulting from the denial of…
Vers. 12-19. Terrible conclusions resulting from the denial of two great gospel facts.
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, it 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 rids life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." In this paragraph the apostle refers to two great facts fundamental to Christianity, and peculiar to it as a system of religion. The one is the general resurrection from the dead, and the other is the resurrection, of Christ himself. In order to make clear Paul"s process of reasoning here, I see no better way than to exhibit the conclusions which he draws from the denial of these facts.
Read full note →
I Conclusions resulting from the denial of the GENERAL RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD. These conclusions are threefold.
1. The non resurrection of Christ. "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen." If you can demonstrate the impossibility of men coming to life again after they have been buried, then you prove, of course, that Christ has not risen. What is true of the whole is true of all the parts. If no man can rise from the dead, then Christ is still numbered amongst the dead. There were evidently men in the Church at Corinth who, like the Sadducees, denied the doctrine of a future resurrection. Hence Paul informs them that doing so is tantamount to the denial of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, which fact he had proclaimed amongst them.
2. That departed Christians are no more. "Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." They also, as well as others. If dead men do not rise, then our fellow disciples who have departed this life, and who believed in a risen Christ, are no more. Those thousands who from the day of Pentecost accepted Christ, lived according to his teaching, and who quitted this world, have perished. Can you believe it? Are they quenched in eternal midnight?
3. That there is no more pitiable condition in this life than that of Christians. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." How many things are implied in this language! It is implied that there are men in a pitiable condition on this earth; it is implied that the pitiable condition exists in different degrees; it is implied that the degrees of pitiableness are regulated by hope. Man is always hoping; man is always, therefore, enduring one of the greatest elements of suffering, viz. disappointment. It is implied that the hope of a Christian, if false, will make him of all men the most to be pitied. (For an amplification of these points, see Homilist, vol. 11. p. 61.) Of course it is not intended to teach that, apart from the resurrection of Christ, man has no evidence of a future state, nor that, on the supposition that there is no future life, the practice of virtue is not to be preferred to that of vice. It is implied that the higher the object of our hope, and the more of the soul that goes into it, the more overwhelmingly crushing will be the disappointment. The man who has thrown his whole soul into Christianity, and who reaches a point where he is convinced of its imposture, is at that moment "of all men the most miserable.
II Conclusions resulting from the denial of CHRIST"S RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. There are three conclusions here resulting from the denial of this fact.
1. That apostolic Christianity is vain. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." It is vain, void, an empty phantom, a worthless fiction. The resurrection of Christ was the foundation stone in the temple of Paul"s teaching. Take that stone away, then it falls and becomes worthless rubbish. But not only is preaching vain, and your faith vain, we ourselves are "false witnesses." We are impostors. Can you believe this? What motives have we to impose? The supposition either that they taught falsehood, that the disciples believed falsehood, or that they were "false witnesses," is eternally inadmissible. Hence Christ did rise from the dead.
2. That the faith of the disciples was vat,. "Your faith is also vain." What a wreck of faith is involved in the denial of Christ"s resurrection! Then
(1) faith in the credibility of historic testimony is vain. On what stronger historical testimony can any fact rest than that of the resurrection of Christ? Then
(2) faith in the accuracy of philosophic deduction is vain. The rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman empire m its first stages, and its subsequent influence throughout the world, reveal a mass of phenomena which you cannot account for if you deny the resurrection of Christ. Then
(3) faith in the moral value of character is vain. Did a nobler character than Christ"s ever exist? And yet if he rose not, then is he an impostor. Then
(4) faith in the righteous government of God is vain. If a being so transcendently excellent as Christ is to be crushed forever in the grave, where is the justice of Heaven? Verily, if our faith in the resurrection of Christ is vain, of what worth is any faith?
3. That the followers of Christ are still in their sins. It is here implied that faith in Christ can alone take men out of their sins. This is a fact grounded on history, consciousness, and the gospel. But the Christians at Corinth were conscious that they had got out of their sins, to a certain degree at least. "Such were some of you; but ye are washed," etc. Consciousness the highest ultimate argument, protested against Paul"s hypothesis that they were still in their sins; hence it goes to verify the fact of the resurrection of Christ.
Vers. 12-34. Denying the resurrection from the dead, and what the denial involves.
Some of these Corinthian Christians denied that there would be a literal resurrection. They understood little or nothing of the idea of the body, of its uses intellectually and morally regarded, and of its partnership with the soul in all that concerned present probation and future reward. What had Grecian philosophy taught them? That the body was the seat of evil. What had Grecian art taught them? To admire the body for sensuous purposes as a gratification to aesthetic tastes. And what had idolatrous worships shown them? The body degraded to the lowest vileness. Yet, indeed, Christianity had assured them that the body was "the temple of the Holy Ghost," and, no doubt, St. Paul in his former preaching had instructed them in the sanctity of the body, "according to the Scriptures." But here they were explaining away the doctrine, and entirely unaware of what they were doing. "It was not materialism, but an ultra-spiritualism, which led the Corinthians into error" (F. W. Robertson). "Fascinated, perhaps, by its plausible appearance of spirituality, glad to get rid of the offence of a carnal and material immortality, and fain to take refuge in the more refined idea of the soul"s recovered independence of the body here, and its entire emancipation from the body hereafter" (Dr. Candlish). Whatever the influences at work upon their minds, the results were obvious to St. Paul. And to convince them of what a fatal error they had fallen into if their disbelief were logically carried out into its consequences, he proceeds to inquire of them how it was that Christ could be preached among them as One risen from the dead, if there were no general resurrection. What consistency was there in believing that the Lord of humanity had risen, Lord of its body no less than of its soul, and yet this humanity in the race must be dislocated, body and soul sundered forever, and soul alone be the survivor of death? This is the starting point, Christ the Representative, the federal Head, the Image of humanity as well as the Image of God. If there be no general resurrection, "then is Christ not risen." The argument is from a broad, universal principle to a particular case under that principle, the former being the resurrection of man, and the latter that of the Son of man. By legitimate inference, therefore, supposing there were no resurrection for man, Christ was still in his grave. "Christ not risen!
What follows? Apostolic "preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain." This is pressing the matter home with startling energy. But how could the logical consequence be otherwise? Christ Jesus, Son of God, had assumed man"s physical nature, had been born of a woman, had eaten and drunk and grown like other men, had conformed to the laws of human corporeity, had been "made under the law" of providence, and taken all its requirements upon himself; and hence, if "made like unto his brethren," he rose from the dead just as he had been incarnated, under the general law of humanity. From the beginning to the end, no break occurred in his career; it was human throughout, and just as human when he rose from the grave as when born of the Virgin Mary. To be sure, a glory beyond the human was in him and around him the glory of the eternal Sonship but the human was never lost or swallowed up, never even obscured, by the mysterious awe of the Divine investing him. In this view of the matter, Christ rose because he was a man among men, and by virtue of a law which found in him its highest manifestation, just as all other laws of humanity had realized in him their sublimest expression. But what of our preaching as apostles? If he has not risen (risen he cannot be unless there is a general resurrection), then "we are found false witnesses of God." Nothing else but false witnesses, "because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." Deluded men we cannot be; victims of excited and overwrought senses; innocent enthusiasts; all this is impossible; and we are downright deceivers. Is this Credible?go back and read the roll of testifiers: St. Peter and the twelve, the outstanding fact of their testimony being Jesus and the resurrection; then the five hundred brethren, next St. James, and I myself. Can you Corinthians believe a thing as absurd as this, that we are all false witnesses? So much for apostolical preaching. He had put their preaching as apostles and the faith of these Corinthians in the same category; they were each "vain," that is, "empty, groundless, unreal" (Kling). Now, then, he urges that if there be no resurrection, "Christ is not raised." If Christ be not risen, what object has your faith? To believe in his atoning death, you must believe in the necessary sequel and counterpart of that death, his resurrection, since the two facts are inseparably united. Admit his death, deny his resurrection, and "ye are yet in your sins." Is this credible? On the hypothesis of no literal resurrection, three things up to this point of the argument have been made clear, viz. Christ"s death was in vain, apostolic preaching of Christ crucified was in vain, and Christian faith was in vain. What a new Ecclesiastes is here! "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." But was this all? If a denial of man"s resurrection necessitated the rejection of Christ"s resurrection; if the loss of his resurrection swept away his atonement, seeing that there was no proof of its validity, and hence no assurance of pardon and peace; if the nullification of the atonement destroyed the value of preaching and the worth of believing; could there be any addition to the amount and quality of these dreadful consequences? Yes; the train of evils following this new doctrine of no resurrection was lengthened out still further; for "they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
All departed Christians are lost. There is no heaven for them, and the touching words, "fallen asleep in Jesus," are mocking rhetoric. Again, the thought recursWas this credible? Another vanity must be superadded: affection for the departed, the tenderest and holiest of all human feelings, that which perfects the love unable to obtain its complete growth while the object lived to the eyes and was clasped in the arms; this most beautiful and noble affection is idle sentimentality, for they have "perished." At this point something more than logical reasoning is involved. The deepest instinct of the soul in its human relationships is in issue. Is this instinct a cheat, a falsehood? We, the apostles and the five hundred brethren, are not the only "false witnesses," but your nature, the very core of your nature, is a deceit and mockery. You have lost your Christ and his apostles, lost your faith, lost your friends. Nothing precious is left; you dare not trust your firmest instincts. "Most miserable!" Could there be a greater torture? "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." The hope of being with him hereafter, of seeing and enjoying him, of becoming more and more like him, this is our heaven of anticipation; the crown is "a crown of righteousness;" the eternal reward is nearer and fuller communion with him. But this hope is all vain. Himself uncrowned, himself left to the dishonour of the grave, what can Christ be to you and what relief afford you you of all men most wretched? Other men resign themselves to their dreams of earthly joys, seek the pleasures of sense and find them, fall down and worship Satan and get their kingdoms of power and wealth and passion. These you have denied yourselves and put far from your pursuits. Heaven has been enough for you. But lo! this heaven is a vain hope, a fleeting creature of fancy, and you are the victims of a supreme folly, the lowest on earth in hopeless misery. This mournful picture is not allowed to detain the eye, for St. Paul immediately says, (1Co_15:20) "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." There is the fact of his resurrection; there is also the doctrinal import of the truth with respect to believers; so that after showing the absurdity of the opposite view, be now lays down a positive assertion in conformity with the first stage of his argument. Christ has risen, but in what character and relation? The answer is, "The Firstfruits of them that slept." A vast harvest is in the future, and he is the Firstfruits. Was not the first sheaf a specimen of the matured field, a thank offering to the God of providence, a pledge of the full ingathering? In all things he was to have "pre-eminence," and consequently in this, that he was "the first begotten of the dead." Previous resurrections had occurred, but in no sense were they "firstfruits, since no representative or mediatorial character appertained to them, nor did they involve the idea of a Divine covenant. The significance of Christ"s return to life is that, having been "reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. The specialty of his vicarious sacrifice gives specialty to his resurrection, which is the beginning of his exaltation to be a Prince and a Saviour, "for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins." And in this, humanity appears historically no less than prospectively: "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead." It is, in each instance, a race fact he is contemplating, and he sees the race as existing in the natural headship of Adam and in the spiritual headship of Christ. "As in Adam all die" a natural death, "even so in Christ shall all be made alive restored to existence as it consists in the union of soul and body. Further on, St. Paul specializes the difference between Adam and Christ; here and in the context, it is the similarity of attitude towards the human family which he presents. To see the unlikeness, we must first see the resemblance, and, accordingly, he institutes a parallel between the two, Adam and Christ, as preparatory to the divergence which he introduces when discussing other aspects of the resurrection. The union of body and soul, by which human nature is constituted, belongs in itself to the natural order of the universe, and therefore offers a common platform on which Adam and Christ alike stand, the one as causing death, the other as the restorer of life forfeited. St. Paul never loses sight of nature and natural order. Everything that he says of Christianity either asserts or implies something back of Christianity. If, as often happens, he describes it as a scheme of restoration, there is always an original system, vast in reach and compass, to which it is subordinate. And if, as frequently occurs, he is showing that "where sin abounded, grace did much more abound," reference is still had to a primary or normal condition as having been transcended by substituting a higher for a lower form of life. In congruity with this habitual method of thought, fundamental to all his other habits of mind, and without which he could not have been the thinker he was, he traces here the resemblance of Adam and Christ in their respective headships of the human family. But has Christ such an identification with our race as to put his resurrection, time and circumstances considered, on a level with our rising from the dead? No; he stands alone. "Every man in his own order." There is an order, a rank, a succession, and the headship of Christ is attested as before in the figure of the "firstfruits." "Afterward they that are Christ"s at his coming;" the long interval between the first and second coming of Christ illustrating his majesty as the risen Lord, and ripening a harvest worthy of him as the "firstfruits." If, then, the ages are to witness the success of his power as "a Prince and a Saviour," and if the final demonstration of his glory as exalted to the right hand of his Father be reserved for the resurrection of his saints and its attendant events, this result must be of the nature of a consummation. Viewed as a system within a system, it must be limited by conditions, must have instruments and agencies, must have various adjustments of means to ends, and the ends in turn accommodated to ulterior purposes, all which go forward to an era of grandeur. A perpetual scheme of this kind is inconceivable. It involves the trial of certain definite and clearly announced principles, the coworking of God and man, the test operation of peculiar motives and sentiments; in brief, the idea of probation in the most educative and august shape it could assume. Are we the only learners in this school? Worlds have brotherhood as well as men, and the network, too delicate for any eye to see all the filaments even here, is spread over spaces unmeasured by the visible firmament. It is a mediatorial economy under which we live, nor can any reader of the New Testament doubt that the universe is affected in some way, though the manner and extent are mysteries, by this mediatorial rule. Inasmuch, then, as it is mediatorial, this system cannot be permanent, and hence "every man in his own order" presents the conception of a successional development, which must, at some period, reach its crisis and pass away. "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." What is it that shall terminate? The previous verses (20-23) throw some light on this subject. Humanity is represented therein as to its contrasted forms, and these forms are Adam and Christ. Contrast is our chief mode of knowing objects in this world, and we are unceasingly dependent on its activity. It is a mark, however, of the weakness of our faculties and the limited sphere in which they are confined. Now, these contrasted forms of humanity as embodied in Adam and Christ shall vanish away, because they belong to our knowing "in part" and are only disciplinary for that "which is perfect." All the conflict between our nature in Adam and our nature in Christ having ended, and its connections with preternatural agents having come to a close, and that close triumphant on the side of the Lord Jesus, every sign of this sort of rule, authority, and power, shall disappear from the universe. We may venture to suggest that some hint of this is given in the forty days. The posthumous life of the risen Christ has dropped off the outward marks of its former rule, authority and power. No discussions are held with scribes and Pharisees; no snares are laid to entangle him; no repelling on his part the charges of sabbath breaking, confederation with Beelzebub, and blasphemy in claiming to be the Son of God; but the battle has closed, and the Victor fresh from the grave is victor over Sanhedrim and Herod and Pilate, and henceforth the Holy Spirit orders the struggle between the forces of good and evil. But on a far wider arena, and with an infinitely grander display of majesty, will the Lord Jesus Christ consummate his victory over earth and hell when he resigns to God the Father his delegated sovereignty as the Mediator. As in the forty days no winds and waters were to be stilled, no demoniac crossed his path to call forth his power, no exertion made in the exercise of authority and rule over those inimical to his divinity, but conflict was swallowed up in conquest; so now, the end having been attained of mediatorial government and all opposition put down, what befits him so royally as to resume the ancient characteristics of his Sonship as the second Person in the holy Trinity and take the glory of eternal ages back, long ago resigned, to his bosom? Does this require that his humanity shall be laid aside? By no means. Turn again to the forty days. Humanity then manifested in him a semi-glorified state. Over time and space he was conqueror, nor was he amenable to any law of flesh and blood, but enjoyed the immunities of a "spiritual body." Yet, notwithstanding, he was most human, and in his voice the old tones were tenderer and sweeter, so that Mary knew him when he spoke her name, and in his manner there was a more precious condescension, which St. Thomas felt when he exclaimed, "My Lord and my God." The human body as it goes downward towards the brutes loses its native properties as the companion of the soul. The human body as it goes upward towards God increases its capacity to enshrine and show forth the spirit. What limit exists to this capacity, we know not. But we may well believe that Christ"s humanity, though the Mediatorship cease to exist, will be associated forever with his Sonship. And under what conditions shall this termination of the Mediatorship occur? When the "last enemy shall be destroyed." And that enemy is death. This closes the protracted warfare. It began with his victory over the grave, it ends with his triumph over all graves. Death itself there dies.
By the subjection of the Son to the Father, we understand, then, that it is the incarnate Son who is thus subordinated, and that this interferes in no way with the human relation sustained to his people. Less than Son of man he can never be, any more than less than Son of God. But just as his semi-glorified state during the forty days endeared him all the more to the disciples, and that too while they felt him removed from the old forms of social contact, so this last and most resplendent display of Christ"s Godhead will elevate the humanity of his saints into a fuller assimilation to himself. The new distance will be only a new nearness, for God shall be "all in all." The next verse (1Co_15:29) introduces an abrupt change: "Else " since" or, "again what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all?" Various interpretations have been put on this obscure passage, none of them free from difficulties. "Posthumous baptism by proxy," or the baptism of a living person for a friend who had died unbaptized; baptism in the sense of "being immersed in sufferings;" or, again, as signifying "a vicarious occupancy of the position once filled by a deceased person;" or, once more, as applied to all believers, are the leading explanations offered. Whatever the meaning is of being "baptized for the dead whether it was a superstitious custom which had sprung up in the Church and was condemned by the apostle, or, the ordinary and proper use of this sacrament it is not necessary for us to determine in order to see its connection with the argument. In any view of the matter, baptism was an unmeaning thing, if there were no resurrection. Solemnize it as they might, practise it with reference to the affectionate memories of the dead, administer the holy rite altogether with respect to the living, but, nevertheless, the living and the dead were in the same category, unless there were a resurrection. Why are we risking so much by our baptism as a profession of Christian faith? Why this useless and irrational "jeopardy"? Plainly enough, jeopardy has a Divine meaning for the living a meaning, too, that every grave illustrates and enforces, if baptism is a sacrament and, unquestionably, we do well to incur the risks, provided there be a general resurrection. But the dead body, what of that? And the living body, what of this? I write to you, Corinthians, of no disembodied existence. I write of no immortality of spirit as spirit. I have nothing to do with that. Baptism has nothing to do with that; our memory of the dead is no abstract memory of their souls, but of body and spirit as forming their human nature. And now, if baptism recognize the union of body and spirit, and symbolize the redeemed sanctity of each, there is good reason for jeopardy; otherwise none at all. By his love for this Church, by his joy in its members, he protests that his own jeopardy is so great as to warrant the statement, "I die daily." Outward circumstances beset him with so many perils and the inward pressure was so heavy and constant, as that he suffered like a dying man, day by day. To particularize; if (metaphorically) he had "fought with beasts at Ephesus," what advantage was it if the dead rise not? Was he facing all these terrible risks, hour by hour, to preach a gospel that left Christ imprisoned in the sealed grave of the Sanhedrim, and that it was vain to preach and vain to believe, and that made baptism a nullity? Was it for this that he underwent so much distress? "Let us eat and drink." If the body has no part or lot in the grace of Christ, and has no future, let us make the most of its enjoyments in the present life. "Tomorrow we die." No punishment can be inflicted on the body hereafter, since it has no hereafter; "Let us eat and drink." And yet beware; deception is always possible, and deception is certain in this instance. "Evil communications corrupt good manners;" so that poet and apostle, Menander and St. Paul, are at one as it respects association and intercourse, and their effects on practical life. Then follows the warm exhortation: "Awake to righteousness exclamation full of apostolic majesty" (Bengel) sin not." Such views as he had condemned came from a want of the knowledge of God. More than this, it was humiliating that such errors were found among the Corinthians. "I speak this to your shame. The argument, as conducted to its present point, has included a number of particulars, each luminous in itself, each reflecting light on the general course of the idea foremost in his mind; and from the wide range, reaching to the end of the mediatorial kingdom, he returns to himself as daily dying for the sake of these truths. On the other side, what is the landing place? It is, in Epicurean morality and practice, the deception and corruption and shame of "Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die." And as he comes back from this extensive circuit of thought, convictions far more profound than earthly logic, and emotions deeper than earthly love, press themselves into utterance while he reminds these Corinthians how far astray they had gone, "not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. L.
Vers. 12-19. Did Christ rise?
I A GREAT QUESTION. Everything connected with "after death" is of high interest to us, but this, whether the professed Messiah and Saviour burst the bands of death or was held captive by them, is of the very highest moment. Christ rested his claims upon his resurrection; if it failed, they failed. His rising from the tomb was the demonstration of his Divine Sonship. (Rom_1:4) His witnesses were to be witnesses of his resurrection, as of an all important event. (Act_1:22) His resurrection was the seal of the power of Calvary. It gave authority to all his teaching. It corroborated the antecedent miracles.
II A DISPUTED QUESTION. Disputed from the first, when the absurd rumour was spread that his disciples had stolen his body away in the night, and that men sound asleep had witnessed the depredation! Around this central point of Christian faith have surged floods of controversy. It was and is natural that the citadel of Christianity should be fiercely attacked. Every conceivable supposition has been made to explain away the evidence. But this remains, that greater miracles have to be taken for granted by deniers than by believers. Our faith need not be shaken one whit by the onslaught; the truest and best things in the world have ever been the favourite targets of the devil and his archers.
III A VITAL QUESTION. With the answer Christianity stands or falls. This the apostle willingly admits. Note what amongst other things is involved in the denial of the resurrection of Christ.
1. The falsity of the witnesses.
(1) Yet everything these witnesses say and do has the savour of sincerity. They live lives of humility, purity, unselfishness; and in support of the asserted fact of the resurrection are willing to die. Yet if they knew their statement to be false, they had nothing to gain, but everything to lose, by making it.
(2) They must have been false, not deceived. The circumstances of Christ"s repeated appearances, as narrated by the evangelists, render it inconceivable that the witnesses should have been victims of illusion or Imposture.
(3) False witnesses of God. Their sin was directly against the Eternal. They blasphemously asserted that he had done what they knew he had not.
(4) Their condition was most deplorable; 1Co_15:19, "If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most miserable." For we have said it is not hope of Christ"s resurrection that we possess, but our solemn testimony in God"s sight has been that we were personal witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. Our claim has been, not hope, but certainty. Now, if we only have the former whilst we have professed to possess the latter, how great is our criminality! how miserable is our condition! how dread must be our future! We have been guilty of the basest misrepresentation in a matter of the highest moment. Other interpretations of 1Co_15:19 seem to involve, what most Christians will strenuously deny, that if Christianity be a delusion, the condition of the believer in the present life is more miserable than that of the unbeliever.
1. All preaching of the gospel is vain. Instead of the proclamation of the truth, it becomes the dissemination of a lie. It is empty, unreal, has no basis. The gospel so rests upon Christ"s resurrection that, when one succumbs, the other must share the same fate.
2. Faith is vain. It must be useless to trust to one whose word has already failed. To build our hopes upon one whose most solemn assertion has fallen to the ground would be nothing but sheer madness. The "Lord Jesus Christ," indeed, disappears, and we have left, as the object of our faith, only one like to ourselves.
3. Living believers are unsaved. Christ, we read, "was raised for our justification"; (Rom_4:25) but if he did not rise, we are not justified. In penalty and power sin still attaches itself to us. And yet we feel that the burden has gone and that the power is broken! How can these things be?
4. The dead in Christ are perished. Not annihilated, but before God without a Mediator! God and the future remain if Christ did not rise, but those who have fallen asleep in Christ, believing on him, have found in him no help, have found through him no pardon. With all their sins upon them, they have entered into the presence of their Maker and Judge. What a relief to turn to the confident utterance of Paul, "But now is Christ risen from the dead"! (1Co_15:20) How thankful should we be for the clear, satisfactory, conclusive evidence of Christ"s resurrection which we possess! And careful should we be not to hold loosely, or to deny, some doctrine which may seem of comparatively small importance, because we cannot understand it fully or because it conflicts with our prejudices. Much more may be involved than we think of. Some of the Corinthians denied the resurrection of the body, but appear to have been willing and desirous to accept the rest of the gospel revelation. They, perhaps, did not see how the single denial destroyed the whole fabric. But Paul shows that if the resurrection of the body be denied, the resurrection of Christ must be, and that this involves the destruction of the claims of Christ as the Messiah and Saviour and the entire overthrow of the gospel. H.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv12, 19, 20 Now if Christ be preached that He rose from…
1Co_15:12-19
Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection?
Read full note →
If there be no resurrection
1. Our religion is not based upon opinions, but upon facts. Whatever your views may be, is a small matter; what are the facts of the case?
2. When those outside the Church deny the gospel facts, we are not at all astonished; they are unbelievers, and they are acting out their own profession. But when men inside the Church deny the resurrection, then is our soul stirred within us. Pauls argument begins, If there be no resurrection--
I. Christ is not risen. Now--
1. The apostles bore witness that Christ had risen.
2. But, says one, Christ might rise, and yet not His people. Not so, for Christ is one with His people. When Adam sinned, the whole human race fell in him, for they were one with him. In Adam all died. Now, Christ is the second Adam, and all believers are one with Him; and because He rose again, they must rise again; He lives and they shall live also.
II. Apostolic preaching falls (1Co_15:14-15). For--
1. The apostles were false witnesses. When a man bears false witness, he usually has a motive for doing so. What motive had these men? Surely they were the most extraordinary false witnesses who ever lived. What were their morals?
2. If we suppose that they were mistaken about this matter, we must suspect their witness about everything else; and the only logical result is to give up the New Testament altogether.
III. Faith becomes delusion.
1. It is the belief of a lie. Take this home to yourselves: if He did not literally rise, this faith of yours, that gives you comfort, which has renewed you in heart and life, which you believe is leading you home to heaven, must be abandoned; it is fixed on a falsehood.
2. The trial will be too great for faith to endure, since it has for the very keystone of the arch the resurrection of Christ from the dead. If He did not rise, your faith rests on what never happened; and certainly your faith will not bear that trial. When you are sure that the Lord is risen indeed, then you feel that there is something beneath your foot that does not stir.
IV. Ye are yet in your sins. For then--
1. There is no atonement made. Christ died, and by His death obtained the full discharge of all our obligations. But His rising again was the token that He had discharged the whole of the dread liabilities.
2. There is no life for those who are in Christ. If He were still slumbering in the grave, where would have been the life that now makes us joyful, and now makes us aspire after heavenly things?
V. All the pious dead have perished.
1. One phrase must be explained by the previous one; if Christ is not risen, they are yet in their sins. They died, and they told us that they were blood-washed and forgiven; but if Christ rose not from the dead, there is no saint who ever died, who has had any real hope; he has died under a delusion, and he has perished.
2. If Christ be not raised, the godly dead are yet in their sins, and they can never rise; for, if Christ did not rise they cannot.
VI. Our source of joy is gone (1Co_15:19).
1. Believers have given up sensuous joys. If we consider the mirth of the worldling to be no better than the husks of swine, and there be no bread for us, in the fact that Christ rose from the dead, then we are hungry indeed.
2. We have now learned superior things--holiness, communion with God. Now if, after having tasted these superior joys, they all turn out to be nothing, then we are indeed of all men the most miserable.
3. We have had high hopes that have made our hearts leap for joy. We have been transported with the full conviction that our eyes shall see the King in His beauty, etc., and if that be not sure, then are we of all men the most miserable.
Conclusion: Everything hinges upon a fact, and if that is not a fact, it is all up with us.
1. Our eternal hopes do not depend upon our moral condition; for these men in Corinth would not have been better or worse if Christ had not risen from the dead. The reason of your being safe is not the result of what you are, but of what He did.
2. The great hope you have does not hinge even upon your spiritual state. You must be born again; but still, your ultimate hope is not in what you are spiritually, but in what He is.
3. Your being forgiven and saved depends not upon your sincerity and your earnestness. You may be very sincere, and very earnest, and yet be wrong all the while. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
If there be no resurrection, what then?--
The method which the apostle employs is that known as the argument from the absurdity of the contrary supposition. He points out five such absurdities.
I. Christ himself is still dead (1Co_15:13). The suborned report of the Roman guard is true, the Sanhedrin after all is triumphant, ye are worshipping a corpse.
II. The gospel is a delusion (1Co_15:14; 1Co_15:17).
1. Vain is our preaching.
2. Vain also is your faith. Ye have been putting your trust in a myth.
3. Ye are still in your sins. The proof that Jesus is the Saviour lies in His resurrection (Rom_1:4); but if Jesus has not been raised, then He is not the Son of God--you have no Saviour, your fate is still among the unforgiven.
III. The apostles are liars (1Co_15:15). Observe how St. Paul puts his own personal veracity and that of his fellow apostles into direct issue.
IV. The saintly are lost (1Co_15:18). If it is the fact that there can be no resurrection of the dead, then Christian morality is a failure. The Heavenly Father puts no difference between His children and the beasts that perish.
V. The life in Christ is a misery (1Co_15:19.) To profess Christ means self-denial, persecution, martyrdom. Moreover, Christianity awakens within us loftiest aspirations which can never be satisfied in this world. But if there is no resurrection, then we Christians are of all men the most to be pitied. (G. D. Boardman, D.D.)
Supposing Jesus be not raised from the dead, what then?
I. As to the apostles. We are false witnesses--liars, the whole twelve of us. Peter heard Him say, Lovest thou Me? I heard Him ask, Why persecutest thou Me? We have risked our lives for the pleasure of telling a lie which has landed us in poverty and disgrace. What do you take us for? Men now try hard to find some standing-place between the assertion that Jesus was the Christ of God, and positive denial of His claims. They talk of His moral influence; what! the moral influence of an impostor? Jesus claimed a place which no ordinary man can claim without blasphemy. Yet we never accuse Him of blasphemy or madness.
II. As to the disciples.
1. Theirs was an empty faith, and they were yet in their sins. An empty or void faith is one which has no centre, an empty thing like a soap-bubble, a filmy something floating in vacancy. For faith must have a person to whom to cling. Faith towards God will be strong or weak according to our conception of what God is. But if God sent Christ into this world, and then treated Him so as the Crucifixion indicates, what kind of a God is that to trust in? What an appalling mystery that the Creator, whom we call Father, should evolve into being such a soul as that of Jesus, simply to dash it into nothingness! No doubt of this being a devils world then.
2. They were yet in their sins. The idea that Christ lifts us out of our sins, is one of which we cannot make too much. But if man is to die the death of the swine, why may he not live the life of the swine?
III. As to those who have fallen asleep. They are perished. Fallen asleep in Christ! Suggestive word--so full of rest and quietude! But those of whom we thus think are not in this beatific state. If Christ be not risen, they are perished. We cannot believe that. Our loved ones are gone hence. Their going was a loss to us; oh, how great! Where is he? she? The idea of immortality is in my mind. How did it get there? How could it get into a mind not preadapted to receive it? Then this intuition is corroborated by Jesus the Christ. In My Fathers house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. Now see, says one, what these sceptics require us to believe: that all those who have shed a sunshine upon earth, and whose affections were so pure and good that they seemed to tell you of eternity, perished utterly as the selfish and impure! You are required to believe that the pure and wise of this world have been wrong, and the selfish and sensual all right. But how can we believe it? The thing is impossible. The resurrection of Jesus the Christ says that they who have fallen asleep are not perished; they are in His keeping to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. Perished! Why, even the material does not perish; it changes, but that is all. Why the spiritual? (Reuen Thomas, D.D.)
The certainty of the resurrection of Christ
The religion founded by Jesus Christ has many teachings in common with other religions of the world; spiritual teachings which concern the relationship of God to man, and moral teachings which concern the relationship of man to his fellow-men. Eminent among the truths thus exclusively proper to Christianity is the truth of the resurrection from the dead. The resurrection is essentially and notably a distinctive Christian truth. Other religions of the world have entertained, with more or less clearness, notions of the immortality of the soul. The ancient religion of Egypt (as we learn from the custom of careful and costly embalming, from the erection of massive sepulchral pyramids, and from the teachings of the Book of the Dead) manifested a consciousness not only of the immortality of the soul, but also of the ultimate re-union of the soul with its revivified body. But none of these ancient teachings are comparable, either in scope or perspicuity or inspiring power, with the Christian revelation concerning the rising from the dead. None of them unfold, as does St. Paul (chap. 15.), the characteristics of the risen body and the risen life. And, what is more important than all else, it is Christianity, and Christianity alone, which has furnished to the world a historic illustration and example of the risen life. No doubt there are many earnest, conscientious persons who find great, sometimes even insuperable, difficulty in accepting the fact of Christs resurrection. It is a fact so wonderful, so awful, so glorious, so altogether unique in majesty and sublimity: it is, moreover, a fact so utterly unlike anything which the world has ever witnessed either before or since; both science and religion are helplessly unable to supply any parallel to it--that multitudes of thoughtful people shrink from accepting, and even utterly reject the fact. Yet, while fully allowing the possibility of honestly doubting, or even denying, the resurrection, still it seems to me that the difficulties of doubt are greater than the difficulties of faith; the difficulties of denial greater than the difficulties of acceptance.
1. For, first of all, it is clear that the course of the world is a course of progress--progress frequently hindered by lapses and retrogressions. It is surely, then, natural--and none the less natural because of the retrogressions of Mohammedanism--to believe that this great law of progress and ascent should apply to religious knowledge and religious conduct and religious aspiration; and that Christianity should contain illuminations brighter and more heavenly than any of the religions which preceded it.
2. The inherent wonder of the resurrection is not greater than the inherent wonder of many every-day occurrences. In itself, and apart from the frequency of its occurrence, a birth is more marvellous than a resurrection; it is more marvellous that a life should begin to be than that its existence should be renewed and prolonged. If resurrections were as frequent as births, births would be considered more marvelous than resurrections.
3. But the non-recurrence of the resurrection, instead of being unreasonable and unnatural, is just the opposite. For why has there been only one resurrection in the long history of mankind? Simply because, during the whole course of that long history, there has been only one Christ. The resurrection was as natural, as necessary, to the Christ, as death is natural and necessary to us. The perfections of His holiness, and the prerogatives of His Sonship, made His corruption impossible and His resurrection a necessity. If the Son of God has, indeed, taken human flesh, then, I ask you, which is the more reasonable and the more credible supposition--to believe that His body never saw corruption, or to believe that His body is dead, eternally dead?
4. This, moreover, is our answer to those who affirm that the resurrection of Christ goes contrary to the laws of nature. For who, we ask, shall say what was the law of nature in the instance of the Christ? If there had been many Christs and only one of them had risen, while all the others had turned to corruption, then we should rightly have deemed that the one resurrection was contrary to the laws of nature operating upon the Christs. But as there has been only one Christ, we have no means of judging what were the laws of nature in His case, except from what actually happened to Him.
5. And what is the alternative of rejecting the resurrection? The alternative is that Christianity is founded on a falsehood; and that Christ and His apostles are deceivers and untrue. (Canon Diggle.)
Terrible conclusions resulting from the denial of two great gospel facts
Conclusions resulting from the denial of--
I. The general resurrection.
1. The non-resurrection of Christ. What is true of the whole is true of all the parts. If no man can rise from the dead, then Christ is still numbered amongst the dead.
2. That departed Christians are no more. Those thousands who accepted Christ, lived according to His teaching, and who quitted this world have perished--can you believe it? Are they quenched in eternal midnight?
3. That there is no mere pitiable condition in this life than that of Christians. It is implied--
(1) That there are men in a pitiable condition on this earth.
(2) That the pitiable condition exists in different degrees.
(3) That the degree of pitiableness is regulated by hope. Man is always hoping, and therefore enduring one of the greatest elements of suffering, viz., disappointment.
(4) That the hope of a Christian if false will make him, of all men, the most to be pitied. The higher the object of our hope, and the more of the soul that goes into it, the more overwhelmingly crushing will be the disappointment. The man who has thrown his whole soul into Christianity, and who reaches a point when he is convinced of its imposture, is at that moment of all men the most miserable.
II. Christs resurrection.
1. That apostolic Christianity is vain.
(1) It is an empty phantom, a worthless fiction. The resurrection of Christ was the foundation stone m the temple of Pauls teaching. Take that stone away, it falls and becomes worthless rubbish.
(2) We are impostors; can you believe this? What motives have we to impose? Either supposition is eternally inadmissible.
2. That the faith of the disciples was vain. What a wreck of faith is involved in the denial of Christs resurrection! Vain is--
(1) Faith in the credibility of historic testimony. On what stronger historical testimony can any fact rest than that of the resurrection of Christ?
(2) Faith in the accuracy of philosophic deduction. The rapid progress of Christianity in the Roman Empire in its first stages, and its subsequent influence throughout, the world, reveal a mass of phenomena which you cannot account for if you deny the resurrection of Christ.
(3) Faith in the moral value of character. Did a nobler character than Christs ever exist? And yet if He rose not then is He an impostor.
(4) Faith in the righteous government of God. If a Being so transcendently excellent as Christ is to be crushed for ever in the grave, then where is the justice of Heaven?
3. That the followers of Christ are still in their sins. But the Christians at Corinth were conscious that they had got out of their sins. Such were some of you, but ye are washed, etc. Consciousness, the highest ultimate argument, protested against Pauls statement that they were still in their sins, hence it goes to verify the fact of the resurrection of Christ. (D Thomas, D.D.)
If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.
If there be no resurrection Christ not risen
Paul refused to consider Christs resurrection as a miracle in the sense of its being exceptional and aside from the usual experience of man. On the contrary, he accepts it as the type to which every man is to be conformed. Precedent in time, exceptional possibly in some of its accidental accompaniments it may be, but nevertheless as truly in the line of human development as birth, and growth, and death. Christ being man must submit to the conditions and experience of men in all essentials, in all that characterises man as human. And therefore, if resurrection be not a normal human experience, Christ has not risen. The time at which resurrection takes place, and the interval elapsing between death and resurrection, Paul makes nothing of. A child may live but three days, but it is not on that account any the less human than if he had lived his threescore years and ten. Similarly the fact of Christs resurrection identifies Him with the human race, while the shortness of the interval elapsing between death and resurrection does not separate Him from man, for in point of fact the interval will be less in the case of many. Both here and elsewhere Paul looks upon Christ as the representative man, the one in whom we can see the ideal of manhood. If any of our own friends should die, and after death should appear to us alive, a strong probability that we too should live through death would inevitably be impressed on our mind. But when Christ rises this probability becomes a certainty, because He is the type of humanity, the representative person. As Paul here says, He is the firstfruits of them that sleep. When the farmer pulls the first ripe ears of wheat and carries them home, it is not for their own sake he values them, but because they are a specimen and sample of the whole crop; and when God raised Christ from the dead, the glory of the event consisted in its being a pledge and specimen of the triumph of mankind over death. (M. Dods, D.D.)
And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.--
Reverse the proposition
I. Preaching is not in vain.
1. It has power.
2. Effects moral miracles.
II. Faith is not in vain. It brings--
1. Comfort.
2. Pardon.
3. Life.
III. Therefore Christ is risen. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
What comes of a dead Christ
We do not prove that an event has happened by showing the advantages of believing that it has. Paul here deals with the results that would follow from the denial of a Resurrection to show, not that it has taken place, but that the belief of it is fundamental to Christianity. With the resurrection of Christ--
I. The whole gospel stands or falls. It is emptied of its contents. There is nothing in it. A dead Christ makes a hollow gospel; a living Christ makes a full one. If the Resurrection goes--
1. The supernatural goes; if the Resurrection remains, the door is opened for the miraculous. We hear that all miracle is impossible. The historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ shatters all such contention. That fact is the key of the position. Like some great fortress standing at the mouth of the pass, as long as it holds out, the storm of war is rolled back; if it yields, all is surrendered.
2. All the peculiarity of Christs nature goes with it. His life is full of claims to a unique position. Is He in the grave still? If so, there is no use in mincing the matter, Jesus Christs talk about Himself was false. But if He has risen, then He is declared to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead.
3. The special character and efficacy of His death goes. If He lies in the tomb, then it is idle to talk of sacrifice for sin; but if He has come forth from the grave, then we have the great Divine attestation to the acceptableness of His expiation. So, if all these things go, what is left is not Christianity: yet a great many think all is left--viz., the beauty of Christs words, the loveliness of His character, His position as our Pattern. Yet, says Paul, if that is all I have to preach, I have nothing but an empty shell to preach.
II. The character of the witnesses stands or falls. The apostle puts his finger upon the real state of the case when he says, This is the question: Are we liars or are we not? He points out, too, the palpable improbability, when he says that, if so, they are false witnesses of God--men believing themselves to be servants of the God of truth, and thinking to advance His kingdom by telling a monstrous falsehood. But the vulgar old theory has been long abandoned, and now the men that least accept the apostles theory are those who abound in compliment to their moral elevation, to the purity and beauty of their religious character. But Paul would have said to them, I do not want your compliments; my business is to tell a plain story. Do you believe me, or do you not? They talk about illusions. Strange illusions that sprung up in a soil that had nothing in it to prepare for them! There was no expectation which might have become parent of the belief. Illusions shared by five hundred people at once! We are shut up to the alternative, either Christ is risen or these noble lives of self-sacrifice and lofty morality are the spawn of a lie.
III. The faith of the Christian stands or falls. Twice the apostle says, according to A.V., Your faith is vain. But the two words are not the same. The first means empty. The second (1Co_15:17) means having no effect. A dead Christ makes--
1. An empty faith. There is nothing for faith to lay hold of. It is like a drowning man grasping a ropes end swinging over the side of the ship which is loose at the other end and gives; or like some poor creature falling down the face of a precipice, and clutching at a tuft of grass, which comes away in his hand. A dead Christ is no object for faith. Faith is empty of contents unless it grasps the risen Lord; and if it lays hold of Him, it is solid and full.
2. A powerless faith. A religion which does not bring conscious deliverance from sin, both as guilt and as tendency, is not worth calling a religion. Unless for the Resurrection, we have no ground of belief in the expiation and sacrifice of the Cross; and unless we have a faith in a Christ that lives to help and quicken and purify us, we shall never really be delivered from the dominion of our sins, nor live a life of purity and of righteousness.
IV. The heaven of Christs servants stands or falls. A dead Christ--
1. Means dead Christians (1Co_15:18). The one thing that makes immortality certain is the fact of Christs resurrection. A living Head means living members; a dead Head means members dead.
2. Makes deluded Christians (1Co_15:19). People say, What a low notion that is! Would it not be better to be a Christian than not if there were no future life? Did not the Stoic philosophers, who said, Virtue is its own reward, reach a higher level than this apostle? I do not think so. Notice, he does not say they are most to be pitied, because of any sorrows or trouble that they have had here, but because the nobler the hope the more tragic its disappointment. And of all the tragedies of life there would be none so great as this, that Christian men cherishing such aspirations should all the while have been clutching a phantom, grasping mists. If we, journeying across the desert, are only cheated by mirage when we think we see the shining battlements of the eternal city, which are nothing but hot air dancing in empty space, surely none are more to be pitied than we. On the other hand, a living Christ turns these hopes into certainties, and makes us, not the most pitiable, but the most blessed of the sons of men. (A. Maclaren, D.D.)
Consequences of denying the resurrection of Christ
If Christ be not risen, then vain is our faith--
I. In the credibility of historical testimony. If their testimony is not to be taken, history is worth nothing.
II. In the certainty of philosophical deduction. The rapid prevalence of Christianity in the Roman Empire, in its first era, and its subsequent influences throughout the world, present a mass of phenomena, of which you have no philosophic cause, apart from the resurrection of Christ. Deny that, and you find all history teeming with effects of which yon can find no sufficient cause.
III. In the worth of human character Character is the foundation of confidence; and earth never had such a character to inspire human confidence as that of Christ. But if He rose not from the dead, then He is an impostor, and there is no character for us to trust.
IV. In a future state of existence. Whatever probable evidence we may discover of a future state, its power depends on Christs resurrection.
V. In the moral government of God. If a being like Christ is to be smitten and crushed for ever by wickedness, then where is Divine justice?
VI. In the power of moral exhortation. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things, etc. This is the most powerful of all exhortations, yet it is delusion if Christ be not risen. (W. Johnson Fox.)
If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised.--
Christs resurrection the ground of belief in our own
Few of us may have seen an Oriental pearl, and still fewer a collection of such gems, but we have no difficulty in believing, when we see one, that such also are the others, whether in the repositories of the wealthy, or even within the shells of the pearl-producing animals living at this moment at the bottom of the eastern seas. We hold in our hands a golden sovereign coined in the royal mint, and from its obvious appearance and properties we infer the facts of its origin and value, and never question, or think of questioning, the statement when made to us, that there are millions of such coins stored up in the cellars of the Bank of England. So, says the apostle, we ought to do with respect to the doctrines of the Resurrection. The resurrection of Christ is not a solitary instance; it is one of a class. It is evident that, if Christ has been raised from the dead, there can be no likeness or congruity between Him and His people, unless in these respects they are assimilated to Him. The stock must be like the sample--the coins in the Treasury to those in circulation--the stars hid, it may be, behind a cloud, similar to that which shines in the clear heavens. (L Cochrane, A.M.)
And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.--
Logical consequences of rejecting Christianity
There are two kinds of doubters: those who wish to doubt, and seek materials to strengthen their unbelief; and those who would be glad to believe, but are perplexed with doubts that they do not cherish. It is impossible to assist the first of these. Their difficulty is not with the head, but with the heart. I shall therefore pursue a line of thought adapted to assist the honest doubter. The text begins, not with an affirmation, but with a question; so I ask, What will follow from the assumption that the gospel of Christ is untrue?
I. That God has never, in any supernatural way, spoken to man.
1. There is no other religion that can be put into competition for a moment with the gospel as having claims to a supernatural origin. Of course, Judaism you would reject; and Mohammedanism, which is a mixture of Judaism, Christianity, and heathenism, in about equal proportions.
2. We come to systems of philosophy. Plato differed from Socrates in a great variety of modes. And what was the relation of Aristotle to Plato? But what is the condition of affairs to-day? A friend, who has been reading nothing but philosophy for twenty years, testified to me that he has not in all his library two works which substantially agree. But upon the assumption that philosophers do agree, how can they be authenticated? Can a system of philosophy span the river that separates us from the future state? Is it possible for a system of philosophy, without instruction from God, to interpret properly the plans of God, involving the whole course of human life and the final adjustments of eternity? And there will be nothing supernatural in it.
3. Now, let us look at it upon the basis of Nature. J.S. Mill logically argued that Nature is a contradictory witness. Look at her on one side, and she seems to say, The Being who made us is good. Look at her on the other side, and she seems to say, He is not good.
II. The most elevating precepts we have are without a Divine sanction. Take, e.g., the Golden Rule. Some say that it can be found outside the Bible, and I will not deny it; but if it is, it is found without a Divine sanction. No man, according to the Scriptures, can love his neighbour as himself unless he first loves God and recognises the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Now take the specific applications of the Golden Rule. If the gospel be not true, the Sermon on the Mount is a purely human production. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Why? For theirs is the kingdom of heaven; and there is no kingdom of heaven if the gospel be not true.
III. The noblest examples are fictitious. The Book of Job must take its place by the side of Shelleys Queen Mab, as a mere creation of human fancy. The character of Christ is but a rhapsody. Pauls character is entirely inexplicable; and even Peter must be set down as a myth if the gospel be not true.
IV. It is folly to think of pardon for sin. In nature there is no proof, of any kind, of forgiveness. If the gospel is not true, a man cannot incur guilt, and therefore may dismiss the idea that he is guilty. It his conscience says he is, he can say to it, You are a presumptuous usurper. There is no law, and I cannot be guilty. But men cannot do that; they know that they are guilty. But the man who has a sense of guilt, if the Bible be not true, has no power to secure its obliteration from his conscience.
V. There is no regenerative influence. When a man for twenty-five years has tried to keep good resolutions, and has broken them, and has to acknowledge at the end of that time that be has made little progress in purifying his heart, he will do one of two things, according to his temperament: he will sadly relinquish the effort to obtain moral purity, or he will continue on without hope or any inward peace. The gospel of Christ declares that there is a regenerative influence. Now, if the gospel be untrue, there is none such; consequently, to doubt the gospel is to doubt whether there be anything which can possibly make men pure and good.
VI. there is no comfort in trouble. It has been said by a French writer that philosophy conquers past and future evils. Dr. Johnson represents Rasselas as going to hear a philosopher, who taught him how to subdue his passions and to conquer trials without any difficulty. The next day, however, Rasselas found the philosopher tearing his hair and walking up and down in great agony. Why this grief? asked Rasselas. Oh! said the philosopher, my only daughter, the light of my home and comfort of my old age, is dead! But, certainly, said Rasselas, the philosophy which you so eloquently descanted on yesterday comforts you now? Oh, no, cried the philosopher, wringing his bands; what can philosophy say to me now, except to show me that my condition is inevitable and incurable? Rasselas went to Imlac and told him what he had heard, and he replied, They preach like angels, but they live like men. The gospel does offer comfort to every class of afflicted persons, and Tom Moore only told the truth when he said, Earth hath no sorrow that heaven cannot heal; or, as I would say, earth has no sorrow that the gospel does not offer to heal. But if the gospel be untrue, all these offers of consolation are baseless.
VII. There is no strength for temptation. How is a man to subdue his passions and propensities? Probably four-fifths of the persons who reject the gospel have sophisticated themselves into the belief that what is natural cannot be wrong. But there are men who reject the gospel that never have done that, and they keep on through life struggling and failing. Now the gospel offers to man several kinds of helps.
1. The commands of Almighty God.
2. Promises for every situation of trial and difficulty.
3. Holy examples of men of like passions with ourselves.
4. The privilege of taking these commands and of strengthening his faith by them at the very throne of grace.
But if the gospel be untrue, every promise and command in the Bible may be thrown aside as a matter without any foundation in fact.
VIII. There is no answer to prayer. A distinguished rationalistic preacher ceased to preach, and a friend asked him why he stepped. Said he, I liked the preaching, and could have got along with it very well as long as I lived; but there was one thing I could not get along with at all, and that was prayer. I did not expect my prayers would be answered, and never believed they would; and to stand up before the congregation and address the Deity as if I really believed that prayer produced a result, seemed to me too much like hypocrisy. No man will long pray who has not a specific promise upon which to rest.
IX. The institution of marriage is imperilled. This cannot be sustained without a religious sanction, and never was in the history of this world. The heaviest strain on human nature is chastity, and it cannot be sustained unless the obligation rests upon a solemn accountability to God, and the human race cannot sustain it without religious sanction after marriage, and never have. Polygamy, on the one hand, and either spiritual or carnal or free love on the other, would certainly spring up, as they have done, to run riot all over the world.
X. You uproot the whole idea of future accountability, and the question of whether a man will live or die becomes a question of logic. What reason is there why a man utterly dissatisfied with life should not commit suicide? Suppose the case of a man wile has lost all his friends, his property, and his reputation? He is too old to begin again. Prove that he ought not to commit suicide. I cannot, unless you give me the gospel. You cannot find an instance of a sane, devoted, intelligent Christian, remitting suicide: but you can produce a hundred instances of irreligious men not insane committing suicide. The reason men are committing suicide, and making such a trifling thing of it, is the spread of infidelity, the spread of doubts as to future accountability.
XI. Everything with regard to a future state of happiness must be remanded to the realm of conjecture. No man can prove a future state in any proper sense of the term. If you could show it to be probable, you could not determine the mode of existence, or the relation between the future and the present life, or get any means whatever to do so. Then, if the gospel be not true, let us face the issue and strike out, In My Fathers house are many mansions. Conclusion: Is it rational to believe that God has given no voice to man? Is it rational to believe that the noblest precepts are without a Divine sanction, etc.? It is not! Rather than believe that, I would believe There is no God! But because I cannot say there is no God, I must say that He has spoken to man; and because I must say that, I must believe that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ has a supernatural origin. (J. M. Buckley, D.D.)
Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.--
Our lost ones
I. Their character. In Christ.
II. Their condition. Fallen asleep, implying--
1. Rest.
2. Life.
3. Hope.
III. Their doom. Perished--impossible. Then the assumption is false; Christ is risen, and they must also rise. (J. Lyth, D.D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 12–19. How say some . . that there is…
12–19. How say some . . that there is no resurrection of the dead. These seemed to admit that Christ was raised, but denied the resurrection of others. He now shows that if Christ be raised the general resurrection must follow as a result.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv12, 20 1Co_15:12.—Cf. the strain of 1Th_4:14, or Rom_8:11. Also see…
CRITICAL NOTES
1Co_15:12.—Cf. the strain of 1Th_4:14, or Rom_8:11. Also see that it is “Christ” [and not first of all facts about Him] who is the burden and substance of the preaching. Cf. 2Co_4:5, “We preach Christ Jesus, as Lord.” Perhaps “denying” a resurrection in fact, whilst claiming still to “believe in it” in the (non-natural) sense of 2Ti_2:18. [Epicureans were practically Materialists; Stoics taught (a Nirvana-like or Pantheist) return of the individual into the Great, Central Being. So they laughed with polite contempt at Athens. “A new god and goddess: Jesus and Anastasis” (Act_17:18). Common people believed that death was either extinction of the soul or a worthless shadow life, and this most likely the form of disbelief which would be prevalent in the Church at Corinth. (After all, in this, as in many similar cases, the philosophers only state more explicitly what common people with native shrewdness feel. E.g. the difficulties raised in 1Co_15:35 are recurrent perpetually amongst plain people who never heard of even the names of the philosophers.) Very important to notice in this discussion how the resurrection of the body is made to stand or fall with the after-life of the man. As in Mar_12:18 sqq. Christ enlarges the scope of the discussion from one merely concerning the resurrection, to an argument for the immortality of the man in covenant with God, and hence for his body also, as an integral part of his redeemed and covenanted manhood.]
Read full note →
1Co_15:12.—“If one, then all.”
1Co_15:13.—“All, or none at all.”
1Co_15:14.—Not this time “vain” through any fault or failure on their part, but because the very basis of faith and life has been an unreality.
1Co_15:15.—“We were chosen to be His witnesses of this very fact (Act_10:41; Act_2:32; Act_3:15; Act_13:31); it would turn out that we were God’s false witnesses!” Of God (second time) is “as to God, and what He has done.”
1Co_15:18. In Christ.—As Rev_14:13; 1Th_4:16. [But not 1Co_15:14, which is “through Jesus,” rendering the connection more probable “will God bring through Jesus with Him” (viz. Jesus).]
1Co_15:19.—Do not connect “hoped in Christ.” [Cf. for this, 1Jn_3:3 (no longer ambiguous in R.V.). Yet see Eph_1:12.] Our whole life is “in Christ”; our “hope” is the hope of men who are “in Christ.” Miserable.—In the old sense (cf. “miserable sinners” in the Anglican Liturgy) “to be pitied, or compassionated, unhappy that we are!”
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.—1Co_15:12-19
1. “Does death end all?” Well, answer another question: “Did His death end all?” A popular illustrated edition of Renan’s Vie de Jésus has, as its last page, inserted even after the “Fin,” which closes the text, a woodcut of the Crucified. It is simply and only a crucified peasant, one before whose cross a man might pass with half-contemptuous pity, and cry in modern slang, “Poor beggar! Pauvre diable!” He is alone as he hangs in the picture; not even the raven of the classical quotation is yet wheeling around the gibbet; the sky behind is cloudy and angry; the head hangs slouched in death’s relaxation; the hair is the uncombed, matted mass of a wretched peasant who for twenty-four hours has been in the hands of enemies. The title of the picture might have been “Fin” too. The realistic page, the execution of a Jewish fanatic, is the last in Renan’s book. When He says, “It is finished,” Renan thinks it is finished too. The Vie de Jésus goes no further. Forsaken, a failure, finished,—so He hangs in the illustration. If that were all, if the life of Jesus did end there, what a difference! But is that the end of the story of the Incarnate Son? No. His life did not begin at Bethlehem; nor did it finish at Calvary. Yet such talk as was rife at Corinth, at least in some quarters, could only have one logical consequence, viz. that it did there finish, that Christ, like any other dear or great name of the past, is nothing but a memory.
2. Doubtless a good deal of such talk was the informal, loose, “liberal,” “intellectual” theologising on this particular topic, of which the first and last and only specimen was by no means that in Corinth. Some caught up, parrot-fashion, the current novelty of their circle: “No intelligent man, you know, believes in any resurrection of literally dead men. Nobody, you know, denies the Resurrection. Oh no; but of course it is agreed that nothing was ever meant but a moral rising again. ‘Awake to righteousness,’ for example.” Or a superficial, natural sharpness, in danger of making that native shrewdness which so generally proves right in common things, the arbiter of judgment in every sort of case which comes under its review, pronounces off-hand: “Cannot be, you know! The dead rise again? The dead? Why, look at them! Is not that enough?” (1Co_15:35). Or another of these exceedingly clever, reasonable people, with great wisdom propounds their pet difficulty: “Well, you see, our point is here. We cannot see where they are to get a body. What sort of body is conceivable for them? No, no; such a doctrine cannot pass muster with us.” Human nature is the same in all ages and Churches and lands. It likes to pose as the philosopher; it likes to be amongst the people “not quite so easily satisfied as some folks, you know!” And there may have been some in their hearts really half afraid of the doctrine; hardly caring to face the thought of having some day to confront in a restored life the past and its account.
3. By-and-by (1Co_15:36 sqq.) Paul deals fully with the objections raised by such “sharp,” “’cute” people, rather vain of their wisdom, and of their emancipation from old and foolish beliefs. Here he drives home at their Christianity. He gives them credit for being sincerely Christian, so far as they understood it. In 1Co_15:36 he is bitingly satirical: “Yes, you are exceedingly clever, no doubt, to perceive such difficulties. But you are really fools, with all your wisdom.” Here he takes the most favourable estimate: They do really care to be Christians; they do really prize their Christian hope; they would be distressed, he is willing to believe, if all ended in vanity and mocking emptiness. Then let them look where they are being led, before they commit themselves to such rash pronouncements. Are they prepared to go all the length of the path into which, with such a light heart and confident, they have begun to enter?
4. “No resurrection of dead persons” at all? Then take a choice; read the alternative in two directions: “All, or none at all.” All, or no risen Christ! (1Co_15:13; 1Co_15:16). “One and all.” A risen Christ, and therefore all! If no risen Christ, then all distinctively “Christian” preaching is folly (1Co_15:14), or falsehood (1Co_15:15), whether intentionally so or not. To recast, reconstruct, the Christian scheme, so as to leave out a Risen Christ, is to produce what is not Christianity at all. For what underlies this elimination of His rising again in the proposed scheme of doctrine? Naturalism; which presumes always against the breaking-in of the supernatural, and even the exceptional, upon the natural and ordinary in the world’s course. [“Are we then, by assuming this one event, to abandon the entire modern view of the world?” (A. Schweizer, quoted by Delitzsch). “So soon as I can convince myself of the reality of the resurrection of Christ, this absolute miracle, as Paul seems to declare it, I shatter the modern conception of the word. This breach in the order of nature, which I regard as inviolable, would be an irreparable breach in my system, in my whole world of thought” (H. Lang, apud Delitzsch, Expositor, January 1889).] And that is no “Christianity” which is not full of God’s present-day, active, wise, loving operativeness in His world, especially as incessantly “elaborating” its Redemption by His Son, Christ. As well, moreover, delete the Cross as the Resurrection, and hope to call the expurgated story the story of Christ. It may be an imitation of the story; like some clever historical novels, making use of known facts, and keeping in many parts fairly parallel with them. But though it may borrow the name, and try to pass as “a Gospel,” though with differences; it is a “different Gospel”; another there cannot be (Gal_1:6-7). The old “preaching is vain” if this be true. A vexatiously restrictive code of ethics is left, without adequate motive or power, and encumbered with a good deal else besides the Resurrection which is “top-hamper,” some day to be thrown overboard to lighten the ship.
5. Nor has it only theological consequences. The practical consequences are many and serious. Faith in good testimony is seriously shaken (1Co_15:15); but of more consequence is it that Faith has been groping after, laying hold of, a shadow, a memory, a name, a vanished Christ. There may have been an offering of the Lamb of God on Calvary, but we have no token by which to differentiate that death from any other crucifixion. The offering may have been accepted, but we have no evidence of the fact. Behind the veil there is for a guilty soul no real, living, interceding High Priest drawing near to God with its burden of “sins” (1Co_15:17). Long ago that “High Priest’s” body was left to corrupt in its new grave in a garden near Jerusalem. Jesus is no more than the Lazarus now finally dead; He is only living as Paul is still living. The death on the cross may then well have been only the abortive end, unfortunately premature, of a life which might have done much more for its generation if it had been longer spared. But everything distinctive of the Christian hope, everything of a real Atonement on which a guilty conscience may stay itself, is gone. Christ is one of the world’s great names—perhaps the greatest. But “in Christ”? As well say “in Paul”?
6. “In Christ.” It is a restricted life. It has its joys and its compensations, whatever its value, or truth, or falsehood. But it has its restrictions, its sacrifices, its self-denial; it goes entirely against the “grain” of human nature; it entails heavy penalties, social and other. And if, after all, its eternal compensation is a delusion; if, above all, the guilty soul must pass into eternity without a Saviour and an Atonement, left eternally “in the lurch,” “made ashamed by our hope” (Rom_5:5); then Christians have lived in a fool’s paradise, and made a fool’s bargain. In the arena as they are, before a gazing world (1Co_4:9), they may well expect the laughter of the spectators, unless indeed these accord them pity. They are of “all men most pitiable.” “Nos perituri salutamus.” [And this is not much mitigated, if—seeing that the argument of the chapter assumes that no resurrection means no after-life at all, and so no judgment or (perhaps) hell—it be the earthly bargain of which account is alone taken by Paul.]
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1Co_15:19. “If … of all men most miserable.”
I. A few of the facts which this implies.—
1. There is misery among men upon earth. Obviously. But remember three things:
(1) Not so great misery as man’s sin deserves.
(2) Not so great as man’s happiness. Days, weeks, of affliction; years of health and happiness.
(3) Not so great as the good it will ultimately work out. Suffering in perdition works no good; here, under Mediatorial rule, it is disciplinary and corrective.
2. Misery amongst men exists in different degrees.—Some are “most miserable.” Calm and sunshine in one lot; storm and darkness in another. One knows nothing of sickness or poverty; another nothing of health and sufficiency. Some followed by consequences of sin, lashed by guilty conscience; some sin and suffer nothing; some have the Christian peace. A day is coming when eternal justice must balance the accounts, for earth’s inequalities.
3. The degree of misery is sometimes regulated by hope.—Hope directed to right objects, and rightly founded, will bear a man up under all the ills of life, make him calm in the tempest and valiant in the fight; will give him such a grasp on the future as will prevent him from sinking under the present. It will be a firm anchor, holding his ship securely amidst the tumultuous billows of his stormy life. Yet does not all disappointment grow out of hope? What is disappointment but a hope lost? And this, but a kind of life lost? Loss of hope is hell.
4. The hope of a Christian, if false, will make him “of all men most miserable.”—These words must not be taken to teach:
(1) That apart from the resurrection of Christ man has no [kind or measure of] evidence of a future state. “It is said that the Emperor Frederick III., hearing of the death of a very wicked man, who had lived in prosperity, without having had at any time his health or fortune impaired, and died at the age of ninety-three, said, ‘See here a proof of another life.’ ” So whispers the rational instinct of all.
(2) That, on the supposition that there is no future life, the practice of virtue here would place man in a worse condition than vice. Virtue, as embodied in Christianity, would give a man considerable advantage even in this world. “Ways of pleasantness,” etc.
(3) That, apart from a future state, a godly life is not binding on man. So long as man and his Maker exist in relation to each other, so long his obligation to love Him “with all his heart,” etc., must continue. What, then, do they mean? [The writer then greatly limits the truth of the text to the Apostle and his “evangelical contemporaries.” (But query this?) Also (he says) remember “that he supposes the disappointed to survive the discovery of the delusion.” Else existence would terminate in, or the next moment after, the discovery of the delusion, and there would be no misery at all. (Query, this over subtle?)] The misery of a tremendous disappointment. [Is not the usual, “superficial” view truer, that it is that present loss and unhappiness which to the outside world seems in varying degree always to be the price of being a Christian? “The game not worth the candle.”]
II. Several things will tend to aggravate this disappointment.—
1. The hold which the blighted hope had obtained over the whole soul. Solomon speaks of the loss of a hope as “the giving up of the ghost.” His idea was that the dissolution of a soul from hope was as terrible and distressing as the dissolution of soul from body. Imagine the case of a man who had thrown his whole being into Christianity, who had allowed its doctrines to absorb his thoughts, its precepts to rule his life, its promises to fire his aspirations, and who sanctified all the comforts, advantages, and honours of this life for its sake, being met at the moment when his hopes were at their zenith, and when his death was at hand, with the conviction that all was a delusion; and you have a man “of all men most miserable.”
2. The deception which this blighted hope prompted [Query, “led”?] its subjects to practise.—“False witnesses of God.” The deception of a hearty and practical believer in Christianity is earnest. If he believes in the leading subjects contained in the Gospel, he must become an enthusiastic propagandist; the desire to make men believe as he does becomes the dominant passion. His deception is systematic, not an occasional attempt, a spasmodic effort, a desultory endeavour; it is the organised purpose of his life. It is influential. No system has proved itself more victoriously aggressive. By it these workers “turned the world upside down.” To think, then, that not only themselves had been the victims of delusion, but had helped to make others such, would intensify the disappointment, and render them “most miserable.”
3. The destitution in which the departure of the hope would leave the soul.—Christianity makes a most radical change in a man: what he once loved he loathes, what he once sought he shuns, once valued now despises, what seemed gain to him counts loss. On the discovery of the delusion, he would be left with tastes and desires for which there was no pleasure correspondent. Nothing in the old to meet the new proclivities, and the new has melted away into thin air.
Conclusion.—Add these things together, and then—“most miserable.” Thank God all this only hypothetic. “But now Is Christ risen,” etc.—Adapted from “Homilist” New Series, 4:61.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1Co_15:14. Reverse the Proposition.
I. Preaching is not in vain.—It has power. It effects moral miracles.
II. Faith is not vain.—It brings comfort, pardon, life. Therefore—
III. Christ is risen.—[J. L.]
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20 12. “But if Christ is preached that He is…
12. “But if Christ is preached that He is risen from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection from the dead?
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v20 1 Corinthians
1 Corinthians
THE DEATH OF DEATH
Read full note →
THE CERTAINTY AND JOY OF THE RESURRECTION
1Co 15:20.
The Apostle has been contemplating the long train of dismal consequences which he sees would arise if we only had a dead Christ. He thinks that he, the Apostle, would have nothing to preach, and we, nothing to believe. He thinks that all hope of deliverance from sin would fade away. He thinks that the one fact which gives assurance of immortality having vanished, the dead who had nurtured the assurance have perished. And he thinks that if things were so, then Christian men, who had believed a false gospel, and nourished an empty faith, and died clinging to a baseless hope, were far more to be pitied than men who had had less splendid dreams and less utter illusions.
Then, with a swift revulsion of feeling, he turns away from that dreary picture, and with a change of key, which the dullest ear can appreciate, from the wailing minors of the preceding verses, he breaks into this burst of triumph. ‘Now’-things being as they are, for it is the logical ‘now,’ and not the temporal one-things being as they are, ‘Christ is risen from the dead, and that as the first fruits of them that slept.’
Part of the ceremonial of the Passover was the presentation in the Temple of a barley sheaf, the first of the harvest, waved before the Lord in dedication to Him, and in sign of thankful confidence that all the fields would be reaped and their blessing gathered. There may be some allusion to that ceremony, which coincided in time with the Resurrection of our Lord, in the words here, which regard that one solitary Resurrection as the early ripe and early reaped sheaf, the pledge and the prophecy of the whole ingathering.
Now there seem to me, in these words, to ring out mainly two things-an expression of absolute certainty in the fact, and an expression of unbounded triumph in the certainty of the fact.
And if we look at these two things, I think we shall get the main thoughts that the Apostle would impress upon our minds.
I. The certainty of Christ’s Resurrection.
‘Now is Christ risen,’ says he, defying, as it were, doubt and negation, and basing himself upon the firm assurance which he possesses of that historical fact. ‘Ah!’ you say, ‘seeing is believing; and he had evidence such as we can never have.’ Well! let us see. Is it possible for us, nineteen centuries nearly after that day, to catch some echo of this assured confidence, and in the face of modern doubts and disbeliefs, to reiterate with as unfaltering assurance as that with which they came from his glowing lips, the great words of my text? Can we, logically and reasonably, as men who are guided by evidence and not by feeling, stand up before the world, and take for ours the ancient confession: ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. The third day He rose again from the dead’ ? I think we can.
The way to prove a fact is by the evidence of witnesses. You cannot argue that it would be very convenient, if such and such a thing should be true; that great moral effects would follow if we believed it was true, and so on. The way to do is to put people who have seen it into the witness-box, and to make sure that their evidence is worth accepting.
And at the beginning of my remarks I wish to protest, in a sentence, against confusing the issues about this question of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in that fashion which is popular nowadays, when we are told that miracle is impossible, and therefore there has been no Resurrection, or that death is the end of human existence, and that therefore there has been no Resurrection. That is not the way to go about ascertaining the truth as to asserted facts. Let us hear the evidence. The men who brush aside the testimony of the New Testament writers, in obedience to a theory, either about the impossibility of the supernatural, or about the fatal and final issues of human death, are victims of prejudice, in the strictest meaning of the word; and are no more logical than the well-known and proverbial reasoner who, when told that facts were against him, with sublime confidence in his own infallibility, is reported to have said, ‘So much the worse for the facts.’ Let us deal with evidence, and not with theory, when we are talking about alleged facts of history.
So then, let me remind you that, in this chapter from which my text is taken, we have a record of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, older than, and altogether independent of, the records contained in the gospels, which are all subsequent in date to it; that this Epistle to the Corinthians is one of the four undisputed Epistles of the Apostle, which not the most advanced school of modern criticism has a word to say against; that, therefore, this chapter, written, at the latest, some seven and twenty years after the date of the Crucifixion, carries us up very close to that event; that it shows that the Resurrection was universally believed all over the Church, and therefore must have then been long believed; that it enables us to trace the same belief as universal, and in undisputed possession of the field among the churches, at the time of Paul’s conversion, which cannot be put down at much more than five or six years after the Crucifixion, and that so we are standing in the presence of absolutely contemporaneous testimony. This is not a case in which a belief slowly and gradually grew up. Whether we accept the evidence or not, we are bound to admit that it is strictly contemporaneous testimony to the fact of Christ’s Resurrection.
And the witnesses are reliable and competent, as well as contemporaneous. The old belief that their testimony was imposture is dead long ago; as, indeed, how could it live? It would be an anomaly, far greater than the Resurrection, to believe that these people, Mary, Peter, John, Paul, and all the rest of them, were conspirators in a lie, and that the fairest system of morality and the noblest consecration that the world has ever seen, grew up out of a fraud, like flowers upon a dunghill. That theory will not hold water; and even those who will not accept the testimony have long since confessed that it will not. But the Apostle, in my context, seems to think that that is the only tenable alternative to the other theory that the witnesses were veracious, and I am disposed to believe that he is right. He says, ‘If Christ be not risen, then, are we’ the utterly impossible thing of ‘false witnesses to God,’ devout perjurers, as the phrase might be paraphrased: men who are lying to please God. If Christ be not risen, they have sworn to a thing that they know to be untrue, in order to advance His cause and His kingdom. If that theory be not accepted, there is no other about these men and their message that will hold water for a minute, except the admission of its truth.
The fashionable modern one, that it was hallucination, is preposterous. Hallucinations that five hundred people at once shared! Hallucinations that lasted all through long talks, spread at intervals over more than a month! Hallucinations that included eating and drinking, speech and answer; the clasp of the hand and the feeling of the breath! Hallucinations that brought instruction! Hallucinations that culminated in the fancy that a gathered multitude of them saw Him going up into heaven! The hallucination is on the other side, I think. They have got the saddle on the wrong horse when they talk about the Apostolic witnesses being the victims of hallucination. It is the people who believe it possible that they should be who are so. The old argument against miracles used to say that it is more consonant with experience that testimony should be false, than that a miracle should be true. I venture to say it is a much greater strain on a man’s credulity, to believe that such evidence is false than that such a miracle, so attested, is true. And I, for my part, venture to think that the reasonable men are the men who listen to these eye-witnesses when they say, ‘We saw Him rise’; and echo back in answer the triumphant certitude, ‘Christ is risen indeed!’
There is another consideration that I might put briefly. A very valuable way of establishing facts is to point to the existence of other facts, which indispensably require the previous ones for their explanation. Let me give you an illustration of what I mean. I believe in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, amongst other reasons, because I do not understand how it was possible for the Church to exist for a week after the Crucifixion, unless Jesus Christ rose again. Why was it that they did not all scatter? Why was it that the spirit of despondency and the tendency to separation, which were beginning to creep over them when they were saying: ‘Ah! it is all up! We trusted that this had been He,’ did not go on to their natural issue? How came it that these people, with their Master taken away from the midst of them, and the bond of union between them removed, and all their hopes crushed did not say: ‘We have made a mistake, let us go back to Gennesareth and take to our fishing again, and try and forget our bright illusions’ ? That is what John the Baptist’s followers did when he died. Why did not Christ’s do the same? Because Christ rose again and re-knit them together. When the Shepherd was smitten, the flock would have been scattered, and never drawn together any more, unless there had been just such a thing as the Resurrection asserts there was, to reunite the dispersed and to encourage the depressed. And so I say, Christianity with a dead Christ, and a Church gathered round a grave from which the stone has not been rolled away, is more unbelievable than the miracle, for it is an absurdity.
Then there is another thing that I would say in a word. Let me put an illustration to explain what I mean. Suppose, after the execution of King Charles I., in some corner of the country a Pretender had sprung up and said, ‘I am the King!’ the way to end that would have been for the Puritan leaders to have taken people to St. George’s Chapel, and said, ‘Look! there is the coffin, there is the body, is that the king, or is it not?’ Jesus Christ was said to have risen again, within a week of the time of His death. The rulers of the nation had the grave, the watch, the stone, the seal. They could have put an end to the pestilent nonsense in two minutes, if it had been nonsense, by the simple process of saying, ‘Go and look at the tomb, and you will see Him there.’ But this question has never been answered, and never will be-What became of that sacred corpse if Jesus Christ did not rise again from the dead? The clumsy lie that the rulers told, that the disciples had stolen away the body, was only their acknowledgment that the grave was empty. If the grave were empty, either His servants were impostors, which we have seen it is incredible that they were, or the Christ was risen again.
And so, dear brethren, for many other reasons besides this handful that I have ventured to gather and put before you, and in spite of the prejudices of modern theories, I lift up here once more, with unfaltering certitude, the glad message which I beseech you to accept: ‘Christ is risen, the first fruits of them that slept.’
II. So much, then, for the first point in this passage. A word or two about the second-the triumph in the certitude of that Resurrection.
As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostle has been speaking about the consequences which would follow from the fact that Christ was not raised. If we take all these consequences and reverse them, we get the glad issues of His Resurrection, and understand why it was that this great burst of triumph comes from the Apostle’s lips. And though I must necessarily treat this part of my subject very inadequately, let me try to gather together the various points on which, as I think, our Easter gladness ought to be built.
First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. A dead Christ annihilates the Gospel. ‘If Christ be not risen,’ says the Apostle, ‘our preaching,’ by which he means not the act but the substance of his preaching, ‘is vain.’ Or, as the word might be more accurately rendered, ‘empty.’ There is nothing in it; no contents. It is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind.
What was Paul’s ‘preaching’ ? It all turned upon these points-that Jesus Christ was the Son of God; that He was Incarnate in the flesh for us men; that He died on the Cross for our offences; that He was raised again, and had ascended into Heaven, ruling the world and breathing His presence into believing hearts; and that He would come again to be our Judge. These were the elements of what Paul called ‘his Gospel.’ He faces the supposition of a dead Christ, and he says, ‘It is all gone! It is all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to preach if I have not a Cross to preach which is man’s deliverance from sin, because on it the Son of God hath died, and I only know that Jesus Christ’s sacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I have it attested to me in His rising again from the dead.’
Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is suspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike that out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, a lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His own importance and His relation to men and to God; but you have got nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the cross rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other side of the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown across the black gulf, and the Cross remains ‘dead, being alone.’ You must have a Resurrection to explain the Cross, and then the Life and the Death tower up into the manifestation of God in the flesh and the propitiation for our sins. Without it we have nothing to preach which is worth calling a gospel.
Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the Authorised Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith ‘vain.’ But he really uses two different words, the former of which is applied to ‘preaching,’ and means literally ‘empty,’ while the latter means ‘of none effect’ or ‘powerless.’ So there are two ideas suggested here which I can only touch with the lightest hand.
The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith; He gives me something for it to lay hold of.
Who can trust a dead Christ, or who can trust a human Christ? That would be as much a blasphemy as trusting any other man. It is only when we recognise Him as declared to be the Son of God, and that by the Resurrection from the dead, that our faith has anything round which it can twine, and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour will stretch out His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my poor, trembling little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and clasp it. You cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour, and unless you exercise faith in Him your lives are marred and sad.
Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would be as devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such a faith would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mother’s breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguished lamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first blessing which the believing soul receives through and from a risen Christ, namely, deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed to be our sacrifice by His death and our sanctification by His life has not risen, then, as we have seen, all which makes His death other than a martyr’s vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when we recognise that in His Cross explained by His Resurrection, we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by the communication of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that new nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faith operative in setting us free from our sins.
So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith to lay hold of, and will make it the hand by which we grasp His strong hand, which lifts us ‘out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and sets our feet upon a rock.’ But if He lie dead in the grave your faith is vain, because it grasps nothing but a shadow; and it is vain as being purposeless; you are yet in your sins.
The last thought is that the risen Christ gives us the certitude of our Resurrection. I do not for a moment mean to say that, apart from the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the thought, be it a wish or a dread, of immortality, has not been found in men, but there is all the difference in the world between forebodings, aspirations, wishes it were so, fears that it might be so, and the calm certitude that it is so. Many men talked about a western continent, but Columbus went there and came back again, and that ended doubt. Many men before, and apart from Jesus, have cherished thoughts of an immortal life beyond the grave, but He has been there and returned. And that, and, as I believe, that only puts the doctrine of immortality upon an irrefragable foundation; and we can say, ‘Now, I know that there is that land beyond.’ They tell us that death ends everything. Modern materialism, in all its forms, asserts that it is the extinction of the personality. Jesus Christ died, and went through it, and came out of it the same, and I will trust Him. Brethren, the set of opinion amongst the educated and cultured classes in England, and all over Europe, at this moment, proves to anybody who has eyes to see, that for this generation, rejection of immortality will follow certainly on the rejection of Jesus Christ. And for England to-day, as for Greece when Paul sent his letter to Corinth, the one light of certitude in the great darkness is the fact that Jesus Christ hath died, and is risen again.
If you will let Him, He will make you partakers of His own immortal life. ‘The first fruits of them that slept’ is the pledge and the prophecy of all the waving abundance of golden grain that shall be gathered into the great husbandman’s barns. The Apostle goes on to represent the resurrection of ‘them that are Christ’s’ as a consequence of their union to Jesus. He has conquered for us all. He has entered the prison-house and come forth bearing its iron gates on His shoulders, and henceforth it is not possible that we should be holden of it. There are two resurrections-one, that of Christ’s servants, one that of others. They are not the same in principle-and, alas, they are awfully different in issue. ‘Some shall wake to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’
Let me beseech you to make Jesus Christ the life of your dead souls, by humble, penitent trust in Him. And then, in due time, He will be the life of your transformed bodies, changing these into the likeness of the body of His glory, ‘according to the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto Himself.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv12–20 Now if Christ is preached that he hath been…
Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v17 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv12, 20 The resurrection of Christ basic for the Christian’s faith:
The resurrection of Christ basic for the Christian’s faith:
v. 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?
Read full note →
v. 13. But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen;
v. 14. and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
v. 15. 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.
v. 16. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised;
v. 17. and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins.
v. 18. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.
v. 19. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.
All the Corinthians had to admit that in the doctrine of the resurrection of Christ (as in all other doctrines of the Christian faith) the apostles taught in perfect harmony. Christ was preached as having been raised from the dead, and that historical fact they accepted as the truth. At the same time, however, there were some in their midst that held there was no such thing as a resurrection of dead men. It was a most peculiar contradiction, but one which had not entered their consciousness as such. Such a sweeping denial by the side of the calm acceptance of the great historical fact of Christ’s resurrection was so strange as to cause an outcry of displeased surprise on the part of the apostle.
Forthwith he proceeds to enlighten them by a double argument, showing that, if their position was right, Christian doctrine must be false, and faith must be useless. What follows from the position which these brethren in Corinth took? If the bodily resurrection of the dead is an impossibility, neither is Christ risen; the idea of a risen, living Christ is then absurd, for the denial of a bodily resurrection must strike Christ as well as all the other dead, since He died as a true man. Another result: If Christ, however, be not raised, vain then is also our proclamation, vain also your faith. This would be the second consequence of the denial: If the fact of Christ’s resurrection would be given up, in line with the first argument, then the testimony of the resurrection must be discredited as well; and the message being untrue, it follows that faith which is based upon a false representation has no basis, it is hollow, ineffectual, useless. Did any of the Corinthians care to maintain that the Gospel with all its glorious effects was a delusion? And what would be the result so far as the character, the veracity, of the apostles was concerned? But we should be found, discovered, set forth in shame, as lying witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up, if the contention as to the absurdity of bodily resurrection will hold good. If any person says of God that He has done something which, as a matter of fact, He did not do, although able to do so, then he gives false testimony against God. It would follow that the apostles were not only deluded fools, but tricksters and imposters as well. That is the one result if one will insist upon denying the resurrection of the body.
The apostle now restates the contention of the misguided Corinthian Christians in order to show a second inevitable consequence of that position, namely, that the entire fabric of Christian faith and life is unreal and a mockery. He starts out once more with the statement that, if there is no bodily resurrection, the fact of Christ’s resurrection cannot be upheld. What follows? If Christ is not raised, your faith is useless, vain, without beneficial results, a delusion. And since that faith is essentially trust in the forgiveness of sins made possible by the work of Christ and sealed by His resurrection, it follows that you are yet in your sins; the atonement is a mockery. And so far as those are concerned that fell asleep in Jesus, trusting in His perfect redemption, they died in a vain hope; instead of obtaining the blessedness of a perfect salvation in the presence of God, their fate is that of perdition. "If Christ did not rise for our justification, then those whose death seemed but a blessed sleep to a happy awaking in fellowship with their living and glorified Redeemer, so far from having been received into eternal life, were doomed still to abide under the wretched dominion of death. " And to drive home the truth which he wishes to impress upon the Corinthians, the apostle adds: If in this life only we are hopers in Christ, if all hope for the future is vain and a foolish delusion, if there is no forgiveness of sins, no hope of a future inheritance in heaven, then indeed we Christians are of all men most in need of pity. For to insist upon a hope that has no basis, that can never be realized, and for such a hope to deny all material good,—that would give the unbelievers a right to consider us weak-minded fools that are to be pitied for their miserable delusion. The argument of Paul is all the more effective as it practically forced every true Christian in the Corinthian congregation to draw the inference: I know that my faith is not a futile trust; the Christian doctrine is not based upon a delusion; I am sure of the forgiveness of my sins as assured to me in the Gospel; the apostles must be true witnesses; Christ is risen from the dead; there must be a resurrection of the body.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12, 15, 18, 20 how can some of you say there is no…
how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
Paul is using this question to begin a new topic. AT: "you should not be saying that there is no resurrection of the dead!" (See: Rhetorical Question)
Read full note →
if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised
Paul is using a hypothetical case to argue that there is a resurrection of the dead. He knows that Christ has been raised and so infers that there is a resurrection. To say that there is no resurrection is to say that Christ has not been raised, but this is false because Paul has seen the resurrected Christ (1 Corinthians 15:8). (See: Hypothetical Situations)
not even Christ has been raised
This can be translated in active form. AT: "God has not even raised Christ" (See: Active or Passive)
raised
made alive again
translationWords
Christ
preach
raise
die
resurrection
preach
vain
faith
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv12, 14, 19, 20 15:12-34 Paul now makes the case for a future…
15:12-34 Paul now makes the case for a future resurrection.
15:12-20 Christ’s resurrection confirms the reality of the future resurrection.
Read full note →
15:12 Some believers in Corinth apparently had a difficult time accepting the Jewish notion of a bodily resurrection of the dead, preferring instead the Greek notion of the immortality of the soul (cp. Acts 17:18, 32).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.