1 Corinthians 15:1-58 - My Thoughts

1 CORINTHIANS 15:1-58

I want to start my discussion by saying that I have something of a special relationship with 1 Corinthians. A few years ago when I wrote my doctoral dissertation the topic I chose was preaching to congregations that were experiencing conflict, and a significant part of my work was using 1 Corinthians and its progression as a template for preaching in such circumstances. So I’ve spent a lot of time working with 1 Corinthians, researching 1 Corinthians, studying 1 Corinthians, writing about 1 Corinthians and preaching from 1 Corinthians. It’s a fascinating letter – written, of course, by Paul – and before we get into the topic for tonight we should perhaps just very briefly put the discussion about resurrection in Chapter 15 into the context of the letter. The church of Corinth was a church in conflict and Paul’s letters to them (there were at least 3 letters from Paul to Corinth, although we only have copies of the two that are in the New Testament) are trying to help them deal with that conflict. In very basic terms, in 1 Corinthians Paul starts with a carrot (“I always thank God for you”) but then he moves quickly into acknowledging the existence of conflict (“some … have informed me that there are quarrels among you.”) He then outlines the various peripheral issues that were causing the conflict (there were a lot) before moving on to what seems to have been the central issue in Corinth – the abuse of spiritual gifts (and especially the gift of tongues; of speaking in unknown languages) in order to create a hierarchy (apparently those who spoke in tongues considered themselves better Christians than those who didn’t) and he reminded them that the only purpose of spiritual gifts was to allow the community to be able to care for itself and build itself up, while the Corinthians were using spiritual gifts to tear the community down. So, spiritual gifts had to be used in a spirit of agape love (for the well being of others and not for one’s own glory.) That takes up the first 14 Chapters of the letter. But there was one issue remaining that Paul saved until the end – the concept of resurrection, and I think it’s important that Paul saves it for the end (and, yes, there is a 16^th Chapter but for the most is mostly a bit of personal advice, personal requests and personal greetings – the substantive part of the letter ends with Chapter 15.)

I think it’s important for us to understand that in Chapter 15 when Paul is speaking about resurrection, he isn’t just speaking about the resurrection of Jesus – he’s talking about what we sometimes call “the general resurrection” – the resurrection of all the dead; the idea that those who die will literally in some way rise from the grave, so to speak, and be alive in a substantive, material way. That’s important to remember, and we’ll understand why (I hope!) very soon.

There’s always been debate about what it is about Jesus that should be central to the church’s understanding of its mission. Broadly speaking, there are three avenues the church could take. First, we could focus on Christ’s life and teachings, so that Christianity would be essentially an ethical system of behavior. Second, we could focus on Christ’s death, so that Christianity becomes focused basically on sin – either Christ saving us from sin through his death or Christ dying because of human sin. Third, we could focus on Christ’s resurrection, so that Christianity becomes about future hope and overcoming the natural human fear of death and dying. Ethics, sin and hope. Ideally, all three are a part of a fully developed Christianity, but which is central? Which one do the others revolve around? Paul only mentions the last two in 1 Corinthians 15 (“Christ died for our sins … [and] was raised up on the third day.”) Paul never really deals very much with the life and teachings of Jesus. In the context of 1 Corinthians – trying to help a church that was literally tearing itself apart – Paul by how he structures the letter clearly makes the point that the resurrection is the hub of the Christian faith. It’s not that he ignores sin (not at all!) but the existence of sin and its consequences always has to be seen in the light of the resurrection of Christ.

Now, our study has been focusing on the resurrection appearances of Jesus, so looking at 1 Corinthians 15 is a bit out of place, but I thought it was important to establish a theological understanding of the concept of resurrection. And there are resurrection appearances mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul in fact mentions 6 resurrection appearances by Jesus – some of which aren’t mentioned anywhere else, and it’s unfortunate that he doesn’t offer details or descriptions of them. The appearances are listed very quickly in 15:5-8. There’s an appearance “to Peter,” which isn’t recorded anywhere else, and then one “to the Twelve” (he means the whole group of disciples, since there were never actually “Twelve” after the resurrection) – so this might be the doubting Thomas appearance or the Sea of Tiberias appearance. Paul then speaks of Jesus appearing “to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time” – we have no clue what he’s speaking of there. He then mentions an appearance “to James” – this could have been James the Son of Zebedee and the brother of the Apostle John, who was also one of the Twelve, or it could have been James who is believed to have been the brother of Jesus, who rose to prominence in the church that formed in Jerusalem. If I were guessing I’d probably go with it being Jesus’ brother, but that is just a guess. Then there’s an appearance mentioned “to all the apostles” – maybe the Sea of Tiberias if that wasn’t the appearance to “the Twelve” or maybe the appearance at which Jesus shared the Great Commission, or even possibly the appearance at which Jesus ascended to heaven? We don’t know. And then, “he appeared to me also,” Paul said – a reference to Paul’s Road to Damascus experience. On the one hand, this isn’t an exhaustive list of resurrection appearances; on the other hand it includes appearances not mentioned anywhere else. Obviously Paul can only write about what he himself knows or has heard. But the purpose of mentioning these appearances (even if just in passing) seems to be to establish the truth of his story. It’s especially noticeable when he speaks of the appearance to the five hundred. It’s surprising that we don’t know of it from any other source, because presumably it would have been big news, and Paul makes the point that most of these five hundred are still alive. His purpose in mentioning it (and perhaps the other appearances as well) seems to be to say “there are people who have seen him – so if you don’t believe me, talk to them.”

Having said that, the Corinthians seem to have believed in Jesus’ resurrection. They simply had trouble believing in a general resurrection of all the dead. So Paul points out the logical flaw in those two positions. “If it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” And he goes on for several more verses talking about this inconsistency and how not believing in the resurrection of the dead makes Christian faith pointless. Why has this become an issue in the Corinthian church? Remember that Paul has taken the lead in spreading Christian faith into the wider Roman world, so that rather than being merely a Jewish sect, Christianity has become a faith on its own – related to but separate from Judaism. Corinth was (and is) a city in what is now south-central Greece – part of the Roman Empire at the time. Corinth was a well to do city, and the Corinthian church was a relatively well to do church. With wealth comes the opportunity to become a bit lax at times, which might explain some of the conflict in the church – the Corinthians had lots of free time to argue. It was also a hotbed of the ancient Greek pagan religion – there was a huge temple in the city dedicated to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love. One of the characteristics of ancient Greek paganism was that it generally had a negative view of the human body. It prized physical beauty, but because so few people could really achieve the heights of beauty that were considered ideal, the body became something to escape from, and Greek paganism developed the idea that when a person dies, their soul is liberated from their body and happily leaves the body behind to travel to heaven. Although the Jewish Scriptures speak of a “soul” it’s a very different concept – it’s really more of what you might call your inner being, but not a separate entity that leaves the body at death and takes its place in eternity. Jews either believed that the body died and life was over (the Sadducees) or that the body died and was one day brought back to life. Paul, as a Pharisee, was part of the latter group. He believed in the resurrection, but that presented a problem to him when he began evangelizing the Greek pagan world. Resurrection was integral to Christian faith but it would be a hard sell to a society that desperately wanted to leave their bodies behind! This was an issue Paul would have to deal with. Paul had to present the concept of bodily resurrection in a way that didn’t offend Greek sensibilities. Although the issue isn’t deal with in 1 Corinthians, this is essentially the same problem Paul would have to deal with in other pagan communities when the question arose as to whether a person would have to become Jewish before they could be a Christian. That would have required circumcision (for the males) and Greek pagans – already convinced that the body was inherently bad – would not want to disfigure it even more. So Paul basically says “OK. You don’t have to be circumcised; you just have to believe.” It was one of the first concessions of Christianity to the surrounding culture. But Paul would not concede on the subject of resurrection.

Twice in the passage Paul makes a clear correlation between Jesus and Adam (v.20 – “as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” and v.45 – “the first man Adam became a living being; the last Adam a life giving spirit.”) But even so Christ was more than spirit – Paul never saw any of the resurrection appearances of Jesus as simply visions or spiritual experiences. So one purpose of making the connection between the two was to say that as Adam was flesh and blood, so Christ is flesh and blood. But I think the main reason he draws this connection between Jesus and Adam is the same as I’ve mentioned before: to link Jesus with all of humanity and not just with the Jewish people. So Luke (a Gentile who is very much sympathetic to Paul, which is clear from Acts) traces Jesus’ lineage back to Adam, and John (who wrote to a church that by his time was dominated by Gentiles) links his Gospel to the origins of creation with the words “in the beginning” and not just to the birth of Jesus or even to the beginning of Israel but to the beginning of all creation. Paul (the apostle to the Gentiles) is saying to the Corinthians – “Jesus is one of you as much as he’s Jewish.” So resurrection, far from being only for Jesus (the Corinthians might have been able to accept the resurrection of Jesus if they equated him with the gods) is also for them. But how? The Corinthians are not well disposed to flesh and blood. They want to escape flesh and blood. So Paul makes another cultural concession. The resurrection body is different. “The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” But implicit in all that is one simple fact that Paul will not concede on – the body that’s raised to eternal life is still a body! It has substance; it’s real; it’s tangible. It’s a perfected body, but it’s still a very real body.

Our society is very much like Corinthian and Greek pagan society by the way. For the most part in my experience people seem to believe in a soul that gets released from the body and goes to heaven rather than in a body that gets raised from the dead in a perfected form. For the most part today Christianity counters this pagan belief at graveside services when interring the deceased: “To the ground we commit that which remains of his/her body – earth to earth, ashes to ashes and dust to dust, IN SURE AND CERTAIN HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION TO ETERNAL LIFE THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.” So, the soul is not released from the body; the body is raised from the dead at some point. We say those words for a reason.

Paul then concludes his great teaching on resurrection by making a point about resurrection, using the same word three times: “Death has been swallowed up in victory” … “Where, O death is your victory” … “Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” For Paul, resurrection is victory, and anything less than some sort of bodily, physical resurrection is pointless nonsense. It is, in fact, the very assurance of a physical resurrection that allows Paul to end the chapter by assuring the Corinthians that “your labour in the Lord is not in vain.”  This emphasis on victory is the culmination of how Paul structures his argument. He starts on the defensive (“how can you say that there is no resurrection?”) He eventually pivots to the offensive (“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead.”) He declares triumph “God gives us the victory!”) The nature of Christ’s resurrection (to which there were many witnesses) and which was for all and not just for the Jewish nation is the final triumph of Paul’s argument.

Paul has made his point that Jesus was not a disembodied spirit when he was resurrected. He could be touched and he could eat. Neither will we be disembodied spirits, Paul says. I had a professor once who defended Paul’s view on this subject by saying something like “when I’m in eternity I want to be in my body because if I’m just a disembodied spirit then it isn’t really me since my body is an integral part of who I am.” Paul would have agreed.