1 Corinthians 15:51

These eight verses are the summit of the chapter often called the resurrection chapter, Paul’s fullest teaching on the resurrection of the dead. He begins with the gospel itself, Christ who died, was buried and rose again (1 Corinthians 15:1–11), and names those who saw the risen Lord (15:3–8). Some in the church at Corinth were asking “how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (15:12), and Paul shows where their view leads: “if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (15:14). He works this out in 15:12–19 and carries the argument on through verse 34 (15:12–34).

Then comes the turn: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept” (15:20). As death came through Adam, so life comes through Christ (15:21–22). Each rises in his own order, and Christ reigns until all things are put under God (15:23–28, the whole movement of 15:20–28), for “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death” (15:26). Paul then answers how the dead are raised and with what body, using the picture of a seed and the plant that grows from it (15:35–49). The body “is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption” (15:42–44, within 15:42–49), and “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (15:44). Just before our passage he says, “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (15:50). Verses 51 to 53 tell how God will make us fit for that kingdom (15:50–53), verses 54 to 57 celebrate the victory (15:50–57), and verse 58 draws the conclusion for daily life.

Corinth was a busy, cosmopolitan Greek city, and many there were shaped by Greek philosophy. Platonism taught that the soul is immortal and thought little of the body, which some called the soul’s prison, and the Epicureans denied any life after death. To minds trained in those schools, a bodily resurrection sounded absurd or simply undesirable. Paul’s long argument answers them with the truth about us: we are body and spirit together, and God’s plan of redemption takes in both.

The mystery is that some believers will still be alive when Christ returns, and that they and the raised dead together will be changed into immortal bodies. Paul opens with “Behold”, idoú, a word that calls for full attention because something important and new is coming. A mystery, mystḗrion, is a secret once hidden and now made known by God. The pagan mystery religions used the same word for their secret rites, and Paul gives it its biblical sense of truth that God himself discloses. So what follows comes from God, given through his apostle.

“We shall not all sleep” uses Scripture’s gentle word for the death of believers, koimáō, to sleep. It speaks of death as something from which God’s people will wake. When Christ returns a generation of his people will be living, and they will pass into the new life without dying.

“But we shall all be changed.” The verb allássō comes from a word meaning “other”, and it means to make different, to alter. Every believer, whether raised from the grave or still alive, receives a body fit for eternity. The change has to happen, because “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 15:50), and God makes us ready for his kingdom by changing us.

Paul gives the same hope to the Thessalonians: “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). He tells the Philippians that we look for the Saviour from heaven, “Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20–21). This is the “blessed hope” that Paul names in Titus 2:13. It shows that salvation reaches the body as well as the soul, for the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus “shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you” (Romans 8:11).

Paul uses two expressions for how fast the change will come. “In a moment” renders átomos, literally “uncut” or “indivisible”, the word from which English takes “atom”. It stands for the smallest possible point of time. “The twinkling of an eye”, rhipē ophthalmou, was a common expression for an instant, a mere flicker. Together they say that this great transformation happens all at once, in a single instant.

It happens “at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound”. For Israel the trumpet announced great acts of God, and at Sinai, when God came down to give the law, there was “the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud” (Exodus 19:16). Among the Romans, trumpets signalled the movements of armies, royal proclamations and public gatherings. So “the last trump” is God’s final and authoritative call, and its sounding is what sets the raising of the dead and the changing of the living in motion.

“The dead shall be raised incorruptible.” The word áphthartos is formed from a negative and a word meaning “to decay”, so it means undecaying or imperishable. Believers who have died, whose bodies have gone back to the dust, will rise free from decay, disease and the power of death. “And we shall be changed” speaks of the believers still alive, whose mortal bodies will be made like the raised bodies of the saints.

Verse 53 names two things that must change. “This corruptible” is phthartós, decayed or perishable, the body as it is now, subject to decay, disease and death in a fallen world. It must put on “incorruption”, aphtharsía, incorruptibility or unending existence. “This mortal” is thnētós, liable to die, and it must put on “immortality”, athanasía, a word formed from a negative prefix and thánatos, death, so that it means deathlessness. The two clauses run side by side, one promising freedom from decay and the other freedom from death.

“Put on” is endýō, to put on clothes or to be clothed with. Paul pictures our bodies being clothed with qualities that come from God, the way a person puts on a garment. It is “this” corruptible body that is clothed, so the person who rises is the same person, now made imperishable. Paul uses the same picture in 2 Corinthians 5:1–4, where our earthly tent gives way to “a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens”, and we long to be “clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life”.

The Greeks knew the idea of immortality, though they gave it to the soul alone. Paul applies it to the raised body, and he grounds it in the power of God.

Verse 54 repeats verse 53 as something finished: “when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality”. The word “then”, tóte, means “then, at that time”. “Shall be brought to pass” renders gínomai, to become or come into being, so at that time the old saying will come true. The saying is from Isaiah 25:8: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the rebuke of his people shall he take away from off all the earth: for the LORD hath spoken it.” The defeat of death was promised long ago, and it belongs to the one plan of God that runs through both Testaments.

“Swallowed up” is katapínō, to drink down or gulp entire. Death, thánatos, is pictured as an enemy swallowed whole so that its power is gone. “In victory” uses nîkos, victory or conquest. Death came into the world through sin, “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), and here God himself overcomes it.

With the victory in view, Paul speaks to death and the grave directly, as if they stood in front of him, and he asks two questions that are really shouts of triumph. His words echo the prophet Hosea: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction: repentance shall be hid from mine eyes” (Hosea 13:14).

Death, thánatos, comes from the verb thnesko, to die. It means the end of physical life, and in Scripture it also speaks of separation from God. Paul pictures it as an enemy armed with a “sting”, kéntron, a word for a sharp point, such as the goad used to drive animals or the venomous sting of a scorpion. Figuratively it is whatever wounds or kills. Asking where the sting is declares that it has been taken away, and in the next verse Paul says what it was.

“Grave” renders háidēs, Hades, the realm of the dead, a word traditionally explained as “unseen”. It answers to the Hebrew Sheol, the common abode of the dead in the Old Testament. The grave once held every person who died, and its “victory” was that hold. Paul asks where that victory has gone, because those who belong to Christ will rise.

Christ won this by going into death himself. He suffered death “that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man” (Hebrews 2:9), and on the third day he rose. Paul tells Timothy that our Saviour Jesus Christ “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10).

Verse 56 explains the picture. Death is deadly because of sin, hamartía, which here means sin in the abstract, the whole condition that separates us from God, more than any single act. From the beginning God warned, “in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Genesis 2:17). Paul writes elsewhere, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Romans 5:12), and “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23). So death is far more than the end of a biological process. It is the enemy that sin brought in.

“The strength of sin is the law.” Strength is dýnamis, power or force, and law is nómos, here the law of Moses. The law sets out what is right and wrong, and so it makes transgression plain, “for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). Paul says of himself, “I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet” (Romans 7:7), and he works the point out in Romans 7:7–13. The chain runs from law to sin to death. The law gives sin its power to condemn, and sin gives death its sting.

Paul’s argument ends in praise. “But”, dé, is a connective that here marks contrast, turning from the defeated enemies to the God who defeated them. “Thanks” is cháris, the word often translated grace, favour or gift, and here it means gratitude. The thanks fits the gift, because the victory is something God gives.

“Which giveth us the victory” names God as the giver. The verb is dídōmi, to give, and “giveth” is in the present tense, with God as the one who gives it. The victory, nîkos, is the conquest of death and sin that Paul has just proclaimed, and “us” makes it ours personally, shared by grace. In a culture that prized victory in athletic contests and in war, Paul gives the credit for this victory to God alone.

“Through our Lord Jesus Christ” names the one through whom the victory comes. The full title speaks of his authority as Lord, his saving work as Jesus and his place as the Messiah. His death conquered sin and his resurrection conquered death.

Everything in these verses rests on Christ. His resurrection is the firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:20), the first of the harvest that guarantees the rest. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” (15:21–22), and Christ, the last Adam, undoes the curse the first Adam brought. The power that will raise the dead and change the living is the same power that raised Jesus (Romans 8:11), and our new bodies will be fashioned “like unto his glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). So he is both the source of our resurrection and its model.

Christ took flesh and blood “that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Hebrews 2:14–15). He is “the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25), and he promised, “because I live, ye shall live also” (John 14:19). He is “the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), and the resurrection of believers brings his church into full likeness to him.

We share his victory because we are joined to him. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4–11). Jesus told his disciples, “be of good cheer; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33), and his people overcome “by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony” (Revelation 12:11).

Paul’s last word on the resurrection is a call to live by it. “Therefore”, hōste, marks what follows as the result of all he has said: because death is defeated and our resurrection is certain, here is how we live now. He calls the Corinthians “my beloved brethren”. The words are adelphós, brother, agapētós, beloved or dear, and moû, my. After a letter full of correction, Paul speaks to them with warmth.

“Be ye stedfast” uses hedraîos, from a root meaning “to sit”, so firmly seated, settled, established. “Unmoveable”, ametakínētos, means unable to be shifted from one’s place. The two together call for firmness in faith and in conduct, in the face of false teaching, temptation and opposition, anchored in the certainty of the resurrection.

From standing firm Paul moves to working hard: “always abounding in the work of the Lord”. “Always” is pántote, at all times, on every occasion. “Abounding” is perisseúō, to abound, overflow or excel, which goes beyond doing the bare minimum. “The work of the Lord” joins érgon, work, to kýrios, Lord, and it takes in everything done in obedience to Christ and for his glory, from evangelism and teaching to acts of charity and the way we live each day.

The reason is something they know: “forasmuch as ye know”. The verb eídō properly means to see, and here it means to know. “Your labour” is hymōn, your, and kópos, toil that costs effort and brings weariness. Paul admits that serving Christ is hard work. The words behind “is not in vain” are ou, “not”, estí, “is”, and kenós, empty or fruitless. The labour he means is labour “in the Lord”, en and kýrios, and its worth comes from our union with him.

Paul hoped the same for his own work, “that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain” (Philippians 2:16). Scripture gives the same assurance elsewhere: “For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name” (Hebrews 6:10), and “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not” (Galatians 6:9). Paul always ties sound teaching to holy living, as when he prays that we “walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work” (Colossians 1:10) and urges us to “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Ephesians 4:1).

Christ himself was steadfast first. He “became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8), unmoved in his resolve to redeem us, and his resurrection guarantees that our future will be glorious. Our work bears fruit because it is done in him: “He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15:5).

This passage gives us a way to face death. When someone we love dies in Christ, we grieve with hope, because they have fallen asleep and they will be raised incorruptible. Aging, illness and weakness are real, and they are temporary, because a body free from decay is waiting for us. Christ came to deliver those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage, and so we can face even our own death with courage.

It also gives worth to the body we live in now. Since God means to raise these bodies in glory, we honour him with them today.

And it gives us a reason to keep going. Work for the Lord is often slow, and its results can look small. Every prayer offered, every word spoken for Christ and every sacrifice made in his name is held by the Lord who rose from the dead, and the day is coming when the trumpet will sound and we will see it. Until then we stand firm, keep at his work and give thanks to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.