1 Corinthians 15:12

Paul has just reminded the Corinthians of the gospel he delivered to them and of those who saw the risen Lord: Peter, the twelve, above five hundred brethren at once, James, all the apostles, and last of all Paul himself (1 Corinthians 15:1–11). That message was preached openly. The verb behind “preached”, kērýssō, means to herald or proclaim like a public crier, and in the New Testament it chiefly means to preach the gospel. The Corinthians had heard Christ’s rising announced in this way and had believed it. So the “if” (ei) at the start of verse 12 carries the sense of “since”, and Paul begins from what they already confess.

Yet some among them said that there is no resurrection of the dead. The word for resurrection, anástasis, means a standing up again, a coming back to life. “The dead” (nekrós) are the dead in the plainest sense, and the word is related to an older word for a corpse. “The resurrection of the dead” is the general term for the raising to come, so the doubters were denying a future resurrection for anyone, believers included.

Corinth was a busy, cosmopolitan city full of Greek philosophy, and that is the likely source of the doubt. Platonism prized an immortal soul and looked down on the body as a prison or a temporary vessel, so a body raised from the grave looked absurd or undesirable. Epicureans held that death is the end. When Paul preached the resurrection at Athens, some mocked (Acts 17:32). Ideas like these had made their way into the church, and Paul answers them through the whole of 1 Corinthians 15, which goes on to describe the body that will be raised, incorruptible and glorious (1 Corinthians 15:42–44).

Paul’s question, “how say some among you”, asks for no information. It sets two beliefs side by side. They confess that one man rose from the dead and in the same breath deny that the dead rise.

Verse 13 turns their claim around: “But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.” Christ truly died, so his rising was a rising from the dead. If the dead can never be raised, he could never have been raised either, and the denial of the general resurrection takes his resurrection with it. Paul argues from the place their position ends. Once they see that it ends with a dead Christ, they have to give it up.

Verse 16 says the same thing again almost word for word, and this time it opens with “For” (gár), a word that gives the reason for what goes before. The apostles would be false witnesses, as verse 15 says, for this reason: “if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised”. Paul repeats himself because everything hangs on this link.

The verb Paul uses throughout these verses, egeírō, means to waken or rouse, whether from sleep, from sitting or lying, from illness or from death. He uses it both for the dead and for Christ, so the same raising is in view for both. In its passive forms it means to rise or be raised, and verse 15 shows who does the raising: God “raised up Christ”. In verses 13, 14, 16 and 17 the Greek behind “risen” and “raised” is in the perfect tense, which speaks of a raising whose result still stands. The Christ who was raised lives now.

The name Christós means “anointed”, the Greek form of Messiah. The one who would still be dead, if the doubters were right, is the promised deliverer at the centre of God’s whole plan.

The link runs the other way too, and that is where Paul is heading. Christ is “the firstfruits of them that slept” (1 Corinthians 15:20). His rising is the first of the harvest and the promise of the rest. The Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to the mortal bodies of those in whom he dwells (Romans 8:11), so the power that raised Christ is the power that will raise all who are in him.

“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.” The word for preaching here, kḗrygma, means a proclamation, especially of the gospel, and by implication the gospel itself. It comes from kērýssō, the verb behind “preached” in verse 12. The word for vain, kenós, means empty. “Vain” comes twice in verse 14, once for the apostles’ message and once for the Corinthians’ trust, so both are emptied together. A gospel about a Christ who stayed dead would have neither substance nor power to save anyone, and faith in it would be faith in a dead man.

The apostles’ message was that God raised Jesus (Acts 2:24). Paul writes elsewhere that whoever confesses Jesus as Lord and believes in his heart that God raised him from the dead shall be saved (Romans 10:9). Peter says that God has given us a lively hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and an inheritance that is imperishable (1 Peter 1:3–4). The message is full because the Christ it proclaims is alive.

“Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God”. Paul adds a heavier consequence, and “found” here means found out, exposed. A pseudomártyr, built from the words for false and for witness, is one who bears untrue testimony. Witness was the apostles’ calling. The man chosen to join the apostles had to be a witness with them of the resurrection (Acts 1:22). Peter testified that God had raised Jesus (Acts 2:32), and the apostles gave their witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus (Acts 4:33).

The weight of the charge lies in the words “of God”. The apostles “testified of God that he raised up Christ”. The word theós means a deity, and with the article the supreme God. Their testimony concerned what God himself had done, so if the dead rise not, they had credited God with a deed he left undone. That would misrepresent his power and his truthfulness, and he is a God of truth. Their gospel stood on God’s own act. Paul writes that Jesus was declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead (Romans 1:3–4).

“Whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not” ties the apostles’ witness back to the Corinthians’ denial. Whoever holds to the denial has to call the apostles false witnesses, and whoever trusts the apostles has to give up the denial.

“And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” “Vain” here translates mátaios, empty or profitless. It shares the English word with the kenós of verse 14, though the Greek words differ. A faith that leaves people in their sins has failed at the very thing it was for.

To be “yet in your sins” is to stand still under their guilt and their power. The word hamartía means sin, and it is properly an abstract word, so it names sin itself as well as the wrongs a person does.

Forgiveness hangs on the resurrection as well as on the cross, because the resurrection is God’s own sign that he accepted Christ’s sacrifice as full payment for sin. Christ was delivered for our offences and raised again for our justification (Romans 4:25). Had he stayed in the grave, his death would be the death of a martyr. Because he rose, his one sacrifice stands complete (Hebrews 10:11–14), and Paul writes that we who were reconciled to God by the death of his Son shall be saved by his life (Romans 5:10).

Verse 18 opens with “Then” (ára), a particle that marks a result drawn from what went before, and adds “also” (kaí, meaning and, also, even) to set this loss beside the ones already named. It reaches the dead: “Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.”

“Fallen asleep” translates koimáō, to put to sleep or to slumber, and figuratively to die. It is the usual gentle way of speaking of a believer’s death. “In Christ” (en with Christós) describes those who died united to him by faith, as people who belong to him. Beside the gentle word Paul sets a harsh one, apóllymi, which means to destroy fully, to perish or to lose. If Christ were still dead, the believers the Corinthians had buried would be lost, and their sleep would have no waking.

Because Christ rose, the gentle word is the true one. Paul tells the Thessalonians that they may grieve with hope, since God will bring with Jesus those who sleep in him (1 Thessalonians 4:13–14).

“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” The verb elpízō means to hope, to expect, to trust. “Life” (zōḗ) here is natural life, the life we live now between birth and death. The word for most miserable, eleeinós, means pitiable, and it is related to eleos, pity or mercy.

Believers in Corinth and elsewhere were shunned, persecuted and made poor for their faith. They gave up pleasures, bore suffering, and some died for Christ. If their hope stopped at the grave, they had given everything for nothing, and they would be the most pitiable people on earth. Those who live for the present at least have what they live for, and later in the chapter Paul names their outlook: “let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die” (1 Corinthians 15:32).

Christian hope looks to what is still out of sight. We hope for what we wait for with patience (Romans 8:24–25), and faith is the substance of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1).

Christ has been raised, and so every loss in these verses is reversed. As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive, and Christ the firstfruits leads the way for those who are his (1 Corinthians 15:20–23). He is “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), raised to die no more (Romans 6:9–10), and he holds “the keys of hell and of death” (Revelation 1:18). He is “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25–26), and he has won the victory over death (Hebrews 2:14–15).

His rising reaches our bodies. He will change our vile body so that it is fashioned like his glorious body (Philippians 3:20–21). All who are in the graves will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life and those who have done evil to the resurrection of damnation (John 5:28–29). In the end death is swallowed up in victory, its sting is gone, and God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:54–57).

It reaches our life now as well. Believers are buried with him and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4), and they are joined to him in the likeness of his resurrection (Romans 6:5). God has made us alive and raised us up together with Christ (Ephesians 2:5–6), and we are risen with him through faith in the working of God (Colossians 2:12). The power at work toward us who believe is the same mighty power God worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20).

Read with the empty tomb in view, these verses become a list of what we have. The preaching of the gospel is full of substance, and faith in Christ rests on a living Lord. The apostles told the truth about God, and God shows himself true and mighty, able to do all he has promised. Our sins are forgiven, because the sacrifice of Christ was followed by the rising that declared it accepted. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ are asleep, and they will wake. Our hope reaches past this life, so whatever is suffered for Christ is suffered for something. That is why Paul can close the chapter with the assurance that “your labour is not in vain in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 15:58).