B. The denial of the resurrection (15:12–19)
B. The denial of the resurrection (15:12–19)
The exact views of those who said ‘there is no resurrection of the dead’ (v. 12) are not clear. They may have held the typical Greek view of the immortality of the soul and rejected any idea that the body would rise. Death for such meant the liberation of the soul from its prison in the body, for the body (sōma), they held, was a tomb (sēma). They may have thought of the state of the departed as the life of the ‘shades’ in Hades. They may have rejected the thought of bodily resurrection as a reaction to some Jewish views that the body will be raised exactly as it was when it died. Or, starting from the fact that the Christian has risen with Christ (Rom. 6:5–8; Col. 3:1–4, etc.), they may have held that the resurrection life believers live now is all the resurrection there is. But Paul insists that the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is of central importance. He shows the theological consequences of the position of the Corinthians. If dead men don’t rise, then Christ did not rise. If Christ did not rise, the Christian faith is empty. The objectors are striking at the heart of the faith.
12. In the summary of Christian tradition in the foregoing verses it is the resurrection that is stressed: the resurrection of Christ is central to the gospel. Paul says, ‘if Christ is preached, that he rose …’ (not if it is preached that Christ …); to preach Christ is to preach the resurrection. He goes on to inquire how, in the light of that, it is possible to deny the resurrection. There is no article with dead, which makes it perfectly general, ‘resurrection of dead men’. It is the concept of resurrection, rather than ‘the collective dead’, that is being discussed (BDF 254[2]; in this chapter the article is used with nekros only in vv. 29, 35, 42, 52).
13. Paul proceeds to show the consequences of holding that ‘dead men don’t rise’. If dead men in general are not raised, then not even Christ has been raised. Oude (translated then not even) here means ‘neither’ (BAGD). Paul is reasoning that, since Christ was genuinely human and died a human death, if men are not raised ‘neither has Christ been raised’.
14. The logic is carried on remorselessly. If Christ was not raised, our preaching is useless. The inferential particle ara (which NIV omits; RSV, ‘then’) indicates that what follows is the necessary logical consequence of the preceding. Useless (kenon) comes first with emphasis. The word means ‘empty’. If there is no resurrection of Christ, the preaching, which Paul has shown is not peculiar to himself but common to all the apostles (v. 11), has nothing in it, no substance. It is the resurrection that shows that God is active in Christ, and if the resurrection did not take place the gospel is a sham. Preaching (kērygma; see note on 1:21) means, not the act of preaching, but the content, the thing preached, the message. The word order in the latter part of the verse is ‘empty also your faith’, which again puts the stress on ‘empty’. The faith of the Corinthians depended on the gospel that had elicited it. If the gospel was a sham, then so was the faith it produced.
15. There is a further consequence. If there is no resurrection, all the apostles are shown to be liars. We are found means ‘we are caught out’ (Moffatt, ‘we are detected’). It cannot be said that they are honest men, who in sincerity have given advice they thought to be good, though it is now shown to be not as good as they had imagined. Christianity is not a system of good advice, and the preachers had not simply told people of a good way to live. They had said that something happened; God raised up Christ. Christianity is basically a gospel, the good news of what God has done. The function of preachers is to bear witness to God’s saving acts. The apostles had done just that. They had testified that God raised Christ. But if ‘dead men don’t rise’, then dead Jesus did not rise and it is a lie to say that God raised him. Paul is saying in effect, ‘Christ rose or we all lied’. Testified about God is more literally ‘testified against God’. They said he did something (almost they accused him of something) that he did not do. If in fact (eiper ara) is an unusual combination. There is an emphatic ‘if’ coupled with the implication that what follows is another’s opinion: ‘if, as they say’ (BDF 454(2)).
16. Paul repeats his statement of v. 13, with the change from ‘no resurrection’ to are not raised (i.e. ‘by God’). The repetition drives the point home. The Corinthians must be made to see the logical consequences of the position they have taken up.
17. As he had repeated the sense of v. 13, so Paul now repeats that of v. 14. Instead of ‘useless’ he has futile (mataios) and (as with ‘useless’) puts it in the emphatic position. Faith in Christ is a fruitless exercise if the result is you are still in your sins. To ‘be in one’s sins’ is not a common expression, though Jesus spoke of dying in sin (John 8:21, 24) and Paul of being ‘dead in sins’ (Eph. 2:1, 5; Col. 2:13). If people are still in their sins, what does ‘Christ died for our sins’ (v. 3) mean? In that case, Jesus’ death has accomplished nothing. ‘Christ dead without resurrection would be a condemned, not a justified, Christ. How could He justify others?’ (Godet). Faith would then be futile. The words can be given a second meaning. If Christ was not raised, believers would still be living in their sins like any pagan. But they have a new power over sin, stemming from faith in the living Christ. Therefore Christ must have been raised.
18. A further consequence concerns the fate of the departed. Few things are more characteristic of early Christianity than the changed view of death it gave people. For pagans death was the end of everything. It was an adversary that would in the end defeat everybody. But for Christians it was no more than sleep (see further, TNTC on 1 Thess. 4:13f.). Christ had drawn the sting from it (v. 55). Death is now ‘gain’ (Phil. 1:21), so that Paul can ‘desire to depart and be with Christ’ (Phil. 1:23). Thus when believers died they were not mourned as people irretrievably lost. They were with Christ. But only, Paul insists, if there is a resurrection. If Christ did not rise, then neither will they. In that event, they are lost, they ‘have perished’ (RSV). Edwards brings out the force of the aorist: ‘ “perished” in the act of falling asleep, as they thought, in Christ’.
19. The perfect ēlpikotes carries the idea ‘we have set our hope and continue to hope’. Only comes at the end of the clause and is best understood as applying to the whole: ‘if in this life we have set our hope on Christ, and that is all’ (though some take it to mean ‘if in this life we have no more than hope’, ‘we are only hopers’). In that case we are to be pitied more than all men. If there is no resurrection Christians are pitiably deluded people. They have set their hopes on a Lord who they think will bring them a richer, fuller life, and all that distinguishes them from others is a special form of hardship (cf. 2 Cor. 6:4ff.; 11:23ff.). While Paul never minimizes the compensations the believer has in this life in the way of peace within and the like, yet it is only common sense that, if this world is all there is, the believer is ‘a martyr to an illusion’ (Héring). Anybody is better off than he.