Resurrection Queried
RESURRECTION QUERIED
1 CORINTHIANS 15:12-19
Paul comments on the beliefs of some of the Corinthians who denied the resurrection.
Paul’s citation of the creed had a purpose in view. He is leading up to the theme which the remainder of the chapter will deal with: the resurrection of Christ and of his people.
We may reconstruct a little of the setting. Evidently there were those in the Corinthian assembly who held strange views about the life after death (15:12). This denial of the resurrection may have taken one of two forms. The current Greek notion (eg stated by the Athenians, Acts 17:18,32) was that human immortality depended on his divine soul which survived death by being released from its imprisoning receptacle, the body. After the dissolution of the body from which the real self escaped at death, that soul was either absorbed into the divine or lived on in a shadowy existence of the underworld, Hades. But any hope of resurrection was to the Greek mind unthinkable.
The other possibility (of which there is evidence in 2 Timothy 2:18 and later Gnostic literature) which some Corinthians may have embraced was the view that the resurrection had already taken place, and that no future hope awaited the church.
Paul faces the heresy at Corinth head on. He recalls the basic conviction of Christ’s own resurrection as the true starting-point (15:13) and proceeds to show that unless this particular resurrection really happened, no vital assertion of Christian truth can be certainly made—with the consequence that one (ie Christ’s) resurrection proves that his people may confidently expect their resurrection in like manner (Philippians 3:20-21).
What is at stake if this assertion of a real resurrection (over against spiritual survival or a demythologized version) is denied? Paul gives three fateful consequences: (1) Christian faith, awakened by the preaching of the message of 15:3ff., is empty, for its content has evaporated (15:14,17); (2) moreover, our experience of sin’s forgiveness is shown up as a piece of self-deception (15:17b), for we believe that his death did remove our guilt, but lack the vital proof that God accepted him as our substitute and Savior—only the resurrection can offer such a guarantee; and (3) the future hope is seriously jeopardized both personally (15:19) as well as for those who have died “in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life” (15:18).