F. Victory over death (15:50–58)
F. Victory over death (15:50–58)
The chapter comes to a magnificent climax. Paul makes it clear that those who rise will not be creatures of flesh and blood. They will be ‘changed’, as will those who are alive when that day comes. They will no longer have bodies liable to death and decay. In a lyrical passage the apostle exults in the triumph Christ has won over death itself. This calls forth a thanksgiving to God, the source of victory, and an exhortation to steadfastness.
50. I declare to you heightens the significance of what follows, and emphasizes that it is important. Flesh and blood is not an uncommon way of referring to life here and now (e.g. Gal. 1:16; Heb. 2:14). It directs attention to two of the most important constituents of the physical body, and two which are peculiarly liable to decay. The expression is thus an apt reminder of our mortality and of the weakness of our mortal frame. It does not signify moral frailty, as flesh by itself often does (Chrysostom found here a reference to ‘evil deeds’). The combination flesh and blood, however, seems always in the New Testament to have a physical meaning. The blunt statement that flesh and blood cannot participate in the kingdom plainly excludes all crude ideas of resurrection. It is not this body that will enter the life of the world to come. J. Jeremias insists that the expression does not refer to the resurrection of the dead, but to those alive when Christ comes (NTS, 2, 1955–56, pp. 151–159). Incidentally, cannot is singular; flesh and blood are taken as a unity. Inherit must not be pressed. Strictly the word means ‘receive by inheritance’, but in the New Testament it includes secure possession, whether brought about by inheritance or in some other way. For perishable and imperishable see notes on v. 42. The combination of flesh and blood and the perishable means that neither the living nor the dead at the coming of Christ will go into the kingdom as they are. Both must be changed.
51. Paul continues in an emphatic style. Listen (actually, ‘Look’, idou) has the effect of focusing attention on what follows. for mystery see the note on 2:7. People could never have worked out for themselves what will happen at the second coming, but God has revealed it. For sleep, see on v. 18. Some think that Paul means that the second coming will take place in his own lifetime, but this is to press his words illegitimately. The same process applied to other passages (e.g. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14; 5:8; Phil. 3:11) would show that he would then be dead! But Paul often classes himself with those he is describing, without any implication that he is one of them (cf. 6:15; 10:22). The plain fact is that Paul did not know when these events would take place, and nowhere does he claim to know. When he says we he means ‘we believers’, ‘Christians alive at that day’. Some will not die, but whether we are among that number, or whether we die before that day, we will all be changed. This obviously means difference, but we should not miss the fact that it also means identity. This body will not be destroyed or abandoned; it will be changed. Notice that the difficulty is the opposite of that facing the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 4:13ff.). There Paul assured his readers that those who die before the parousia will be at no disadvantage. They will rise first. Here the problem is one for the living, for Paul has just said ‘flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God’. How then can the living enter the kingdom? The answer is, we will all be changed. Early scribes found great difficulty with the text of this verse and there are several variant readings. One is important, for it found its way into the Vulgate, and thus represents the way Roman Catholics have usually understood the words. In Knox’s rendering it runs, ‘we shall all rise again, but not all of us will undergo the change I speak of.’ The second clause has been understood to mean that the unsaved will be raised, but not undergo the change of which Paul speaks. However, the text behind NIV is to be preferred, as Knox concedes in a footnote (so also, more recently, JB).
52. The change will not be a long-drawn-out affair. The resurrection of the dead might be likened to the slow growth of a seed, but the change in the living will take place with startling suddenness. Flash translates atomos, ‘that which cannot be divided’, i.e. the smallest possible (we get our word ‘atom’ from it). It signifies the shortest possible time. Twinkling (rhipē) is connected with the idea of throwing. The twinkling of an eye is the time it takes to cast a glance, or perhaps to flutter an eyelid. The trumpet is linked in the Old Testament, in the teaching of Jesus and in contemporary Judaism with the events in the end time (cf. 1 Thess. 4:16 and the note in TNTC). Trumpets were frequently used at times of festivity and triumph, ideas which are both in place here. The sounding of the trumpet seems to be the signal for the dead to rise. Last refers not to the last in a series of trumpet blasts (as in Rabbinic speculation), but last among events on earth. It marks the end of things as we know them. The dead will be raised imperishable, which prepares the way for Paul to repeat his statement that we will be changed. He makes it abundantly clear that he does not envisage a return to the sort of life we live now.
53. Paul brings out something of the nature of the change, singling out the cessation of ‘corruption’ (liability to bodily decay) and mortality. These things are totally incompatible with life in the hereafter. Paul stresses the continuity between our present and our future states with a fourfold use (in this verse and the next) of the word ‘this’: ‘this’ perishable, ‘this’ mortal (NIV omits all four). Paul is emphasizing that it is this perishable and this mortal that will be clothed with imperishability and immortality. Clothe itself is a metaphor pointing us to the truth that the body is not the real person; it is only its clothing. In the life to come the real person will put on another suit, so to speak. Immortality (athanasia) is found but rarely in the New Testament (only in v. 54; 1 Tim. 6:16).
54. It is characteristic of Paul to see in all this a fulfilment of Scripture (Isa. 25:8). What God has planned long since, and has revealed to his servant the prophet, he will certainly fulfil. Swallowed up in victory points to the complete defeat and destruction of death.
55. In language reminiscent of Scripture (Hos. 13:14), Paul sings of the triumph to come. He is not basing an argument on Scripture, but using scriptural language for his exultation over the total defeat of death. The word kentron (sting) may refer to a goad (as in Acts 26:14), but it is also used of the sting of bees, scorpions and the like (cf. Rev. 9:10). Death is a malignant adversary, torturing people. But Christ has drawn its sting, and it is harmless to those who are in him.
56. Moral issues are the serious ones. It is not death in itself that is harmful; it is that death that is ‘the wages of sin’ (Rom. 6:23) that matters. Death, considered simply as the passing out of this life into the immediate presence of the Lord, is a gain, not a loss (Phil. 1:21, 23). Where sin is pardoned, death has no sting. It is quite another matter where sin has not been dealt with. There death is a virulent antagonist. The sting is not in death; it is in sin. And sin has an unexpected ally and source of power, the law. The law is divine in origin, and Paul can speak of the commandment as ‘holy, righteous and good’ (Rom. 7:12). But it is quite unable to bring people to salvation (cf. Rom. 5:12ff.; 7:7ff.; 10:4). Indeed, by setting before us the standard we ought to reach and never do, it becomes sin’s stronghold. It makes sinners of us all. It condemns us all.
57. But, says Paul (Barrett speaks of ‘this great but’), introducing as it does the very opposite; the victory that defeats death and sin and law. Christ is victorious over death (Rom. 6:9); indeed he has abolished it (2 Tim. 1:10). He has satisfied the law’s claims, for he ‘redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us’ (Gal. 3:13). He has replaced the ‘reign’ of sin with that of grace (Rom. 5:20f.); he has drawn its sting. So Paul can say, thanks be to God! (cf. Rom. 7:25). The use of the present participle (NIV gives) may convey the thought that it is God’s characteristic to give victory. There is also the implication that we participate in that victory now, and that we participate in it daily. Chrysostom asks, ‘For whence, after all this, is death to prevail?’ and answers, ‘Through the law? Nay, it is done away. Through sin? Nay, it is clean destroyed.’ The Christian life is characteristically a life of victory. The use of the full title our Lord Jesus Christ heightens the sense of the majesty of his Person. There is victory for the Christian, but it comes only through what Christ has done for him.
58. Arising out of all this comes an exhortation to Christian stability. Hedraioi (firm) was used in 7:37 of having ‘settled the matter’; there is the thought of stable purpose, something that will not easily be disturbed, for the person’s whole bent is behind it (cf. Col. 1:23). Let nothing move you underlines this thought. The Corinthians were prone to fickleness, shifting without reason from one position to another. Let them get a firm grip on the truth of the resurrection, on God’s final plan for all people and all things, and they will not be so readily shaken. The imperative ginesthe, ‘be’ (NIV stand), might be translated ‘become’. Paul sets before his readers a state from which they were as yet all too far, and urges them to continue in it. They should be ‘always abounding in the work of the Lord’ (AV, RSV). The Christian life is an abundant life. There is nothing cramped or narrow in the genuine Christian experience. Edwards speaks of faith in the resurrection as producing ‘a consciousness of boundless and endless power for work’, and adds, ‘In the case of a believer, youth’s large dreams never contract into commonplace achievement.’ Because you know is probably not the right way to translate the participle ‘knowing’; it introduces the accompaniment of the foregoing, not the reason for it (the reason is surely the resurrection truth that Paul has been expounding). Because of the resurrection with all that it means of God’s final triumph, and of the survival of the believer through death, Christian labour (kopos, labour to the point of weariness) is not in vain (kenos, ‘empty’; Moffatt, ‘never thrown away’). Deissmann sees in these words ‘a trembling echo of the discouragement resulting from a piece of work being rejected for alleged bad finish and therefore not paid for’ (LAE, p. 314). The Christian faces no such discouragement. His labour is in the Lord. And what is done in the Lord is never done in vain.