Basil of Caesarea — Commentary on Scripture

1 Corinthians 15:7

We believe and confess that, rising on the third day from the dead, according to the Scriptures, he was seen by his holy disciples and others, as it is written. He ascended into heaven and sits on the right hand of the Father when he will come at the end of time to raise up all men and to render to each according to his works.

CONCERNING FAITH

1 Corinthians 15:10

This is the perfect and consummate glory in God: not to exult in one’s own righteousness, but recognizing oneself as lacking true righteousness, to be justified by faith in Christ alone. Paul gloried in despising his own righteousness. In seeking after the righteousness by faith which is of God through Christ, he sought only to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable to his death, so as to attain to the resurrection from the dead.… It is God who grants efficacy to our labors.

ON HUMILITY 20

1 Corinthians 15:10

He who spends his time in softness and all laxity because of his luxurious living, who is clothed in purple and fine linen and feasting every day in splendid fashion and who flees the labors imposed by virtue has neither labored in this life nor will live in the future, but he will see life afar off, while being racked in the fire of the furnace.

UNTO THE END 19.5

1 Corinthians 15:21

If the sojourn of the Lord in the flesh did not take place, the Redeemer did not pay to death the price for us. He did not by his own power destroy the dominion of death. If that which is subject to death were one thing and that which was assumed by the Lord another, then death would not have ceased performing its own works, nor would the sufferings of the God-bearing flesh have been our gain. He would not have destroyed sin in the flesh. We who had died in Adam would not have been made alive in Christ.

LETTER 261, TO THE CITIZENS OF SOZOPOLIS

1 Corinthians 15:24

For us the end for which we do all things and toward which we hasten is the blessed life in the world to come.

HOMILY 19 ON PSALM 48

1 Corinthians 15:27

He makes your subjection his own, and because of your struggle against virtue, he calls himself subjected.… He calls himself naked, if any of you are naked.… When one is in prison, he said that he himself was the one imprisoned. For he himself took up our infirmities and bore the burden of our ills. And one of our infirmities is insubordination, and this he also bore. Therefore, even the adversities which happen to us the Lord makes his own, taking upon himself our sufferings because of his fellowship with us.

AN APOLOGY TO THE CAESAREANS, LETTER 8