Because this chapter is already well known for its
defence and explanation of the future physical resurrection of God’s people it
is probably unnecessary to quote it in its entirety. It is also very long, so I
will only discuss some parts.
Moreover,
brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you
received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast
that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered
to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and
that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures (1st Corinthians
15:1-4)
What is ‘the
gospel’ according to Paul in this chapter? I have heard the above verses
interpreted as a summary of ‘the gospel’
that we should be sharing with the world: Christ died for them, was buried and
rose again. Taking this set of verses as one unit of thought I can understand
why it is interpreted in such a way but I do not agree. Paul did not change the
subject after verse four. How can we be dogmatic that Paul ceased to define ‘the gospel’ in verse five? There is a
clear continuation in his definition of the good news:
...and
that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was
seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to
the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by
James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me
also, as by one born out of due time. (1st
Corinthians 15:5-8)
If Paul were defining the ‘gospel’ that we should be
sharing with the world then we should also be telling them about the
chronological order of people who saw the resurrected Christ. But I do not see
any of this chapter as Paul giving us information for ‘world evangelism’. Paul
is declaring ‘the gospel’ to the
Corinthian church (v1), ‘those who are
sanctified in Christ Jesus’ and ‘called
to be saints’ (1:2). This ‘gospel’
was good news for saints, so,
instead of using these verses as tools for speaking to those outside the church,
ought we not to be contemplating them ourselves? If so, we ought to contemplate
all the details that Paul was about to share. The ‘gospel’ was not ‘how to become a Christian’ but ‘the reality of our
future bodily resurrection’.
Christ died and was buried (vv3-4). I must briefly
digress because this phenomenal truth of the Son of God’s sacrifice cannot be
compromised. All in the church would agree on this. But the discussion in the
previous section, where I argued that death had to mean death in every sense,
is very relevant indeed to the Cross. Did Jesus really die? Did His immaterial
soul live on? If so, it could surely be argued that He did not really
die. That ought to cause great trouble to our understanding of what God has
said. Not only would He have failed to carry out the warning of death to Adam
but any continued existence of the Son of God’s ‘true self’ (i.e. His ‘soul’)
would make a half-truth of His death, and consequently we are still in our sins
(v17).
His death (which ought to be understood as a complete death) and burial had to happen
in order for physical resurrection to occur. The good news – our ‘gospel’ – is that
this is a process through which the believer will pass. But the saint’s passing
out of death and into life is only possible because Christ died ‘for our sins’. Jesus’ sacrificial death
has made it possible for Him to act as the saint’s heavenly High Priest, making
it possible for the saint to attain to that resurrection that Paul sought
(Philippians 3:11).
Now
if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among
you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? (1st Corinthians 15:12)
Some of God’s people were saying that there was no
resurrection of the dead. Presumably this is what prompted Paul to write this
part of the epistle. Note that Paul does not accuse those outside the church of
sharing this false doctrine, but those within. I find this interesting because
there is an extract from a second-century correspondence between Justin Martyr
and Trypho which shows that resurrection-denial was linked to belief in going
to Heaven:
For I choose to follow not men or men’s doctrines, but God and the doctrines
[delivered] by Him. For if you have fallen in with some who are called
Christians, but who do not admit this [truth regarding resurrection]
and venture to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and
the God of Jacob; who say there is no resurrection of the dead, and that
their souls, when they die, are taken to heaven; do not imagine that they
are Christians (Justin Martyr. Dialogue
with Trypho, chapter 80, ca. 150 A.D.)
I do not include this quote as if it should be
accepted with the same reverence as biblical evidence, nor as an effort to
label today’s prevailing belief about Heaven as ‘blasphemy’; but I quote it as
I believe it warrants serious consideration. A warning in an historical
document written by a famous early church father showed there to be a link between belief in the soul
going to Heaven and denial of the resurrection of the dead.
I do not know if the Corinthian saints who were
denying the resurrection were also saying that the soul went to Heaven at
death. If they were, perhaps this served as a precursor to the doctrine that
was popular at the time of Justin Martyr. But Paul makes no mention of it. He
neither attacks nor defends the doctrine.
However, by not mentioning the doctrine in a chapter
containing newly revealed details of what happens at the resurrection, Paul
would be omitting how we, as partakers of a continuous conscious state, leave
our home in Heaven to be reunited with a physical experience. In other words, I
am suggesting that if the doctrine of ‘going to Heaven when we die’ were true
it should have been included in 1st Corinthians 15.
Yes, and we are found false witnesses of
God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not
raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your
faith is futile; you are still
in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished [ἀπώλοντο (apōlonto)]. If in this life only we have hope in
Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. (1st Corinthians 15:15-19)
I think that these five verses raise questions that
challenge both views: the doctrine I am challenging and the one I am
defending. The question I would direct
against the accepted doctrine is this: how is any human being dependent upon
Christ’s resurrection for continued existence? If the soul exists in an
immortal state, and this was the way it was created, then Christ’s resurrection
was surely unnecessary, at least in the sense of preserving the soul from
perishing.
In fact, if the soul exists in an immortal state then
verse nineteen is undermined. We are not
‘of all men the most pitiable’ if the
dead do not rise, for we share in a blissful conscious state of immaterial
existence in Heaven. Unfortunate as it may be that the dead do not rise, we
nonetheless are certainly not in a ‘pitiable’
condition in the presence of God.
I would venture to guess that the doctrine of an
immortal soul was therefore introduced at some point to undermine the victory
achieved by Jesus Christ on the third day. ‘Perished’
ceases to mean ‘perished’. Death
ceases to mean death. Irrespective of what Christ’s resurrection obtained for
His people they could have still existed in some sense without it. How then
would they have ‘perished’?
The intransitive verb ‘perished’ (apōlonto) in 1 Corinthians 15:18 is in the middle voice. The
middle voice signifies that those who ‘have
fallen asleep in Christ’ are in a ruin or a resultant destructive state;
that is, they are dead. The verb was used twice previously in 1
Corinthians 10:9, 10 pertaining to many of the Israelites in the wilderness who
were killed either by ‘the serpents’ or
by ‘the destroyer’. Therefore,
Paul’s argument in context concerning the importance of the resurrection
becomes all too clear. Unless the dead are resurrected, including Jesus,
then there is only one other possibility: they ‘have perished’. Paul does not hint at any other options.
The question that can be directed towards my viewpoint
is this: if Christ’s resurrection has removed the prospect of His people being
utterly destroyed, then why does my viewpoint continue to describe the dead
saint as being in a state of non-existence (which some could describe as ‘utter
destruction’)? Paul’s clear intent in verse eighteen is to say that ‘those who have fallen asleep in Christ’
have not perished – precisely because
Jesus Christ did rise from the dead.
How then can I argue that a dead saint ceases to exist until the resurrection
at the last day?
I believe that this question is answered in the verses
that follow:
If in this life only
we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable. But now Christ is
risen from the dead, and has
become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man
came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But
each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. (1st Corinthians 15:19-23)
First of all, Paul spoke of
a life that was to come – the saint does not have hope ‘in this life only’. When is that life? In the context, it is at the resurrection of
those who are Christ’s (v23). Physical death came through Adam; physical
resurrection comes through Jesus Christ.
But what about the interim?
Christ’s people, remember, cannot be spoken of as ‘perished’ so does this mean they continue to exist in some form? I
believe that the answer is found in Paul’s linguistic illustration of the hope
in a saint’s death: they have ‘fallen
asleep’. From the account of Lazarus’ resurrection, among others, we know
that ‘sleep’ is a euphemism for
death. As such, I would therefore argue that the dead believer is not ‘perished’ even though quite possibly
he/she is nothing more than dust. This is because the physical body that has
returned to dust will one day ‘awake’ again – just as the buried seed will one
day realise existence once again in a better sense than before (vv35-38).
Death, for the meantime, remains death, but it
is not permanent. This is how a dead believer can be referred to as
both dead and yet not utterly destroyed.
In the above portion of the chapter it is evident that the ‘life’ Paul uses in contrast to ‘perishing’
is not realised immediately at the point of physical death, but at Christ’s coming (v23).
The next portion brings us
back to an earlier discussion of the ‘soul’:
So
also is the resurrection of the
dead. The body is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised
in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a natural
body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body. And so it is written, “The
first man Adam became a living being.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1st Corinthians 15:42-45)
Verse forty five references
Genesis 2:7, where Adam (in the Hebrew) ‘became’
a living NEPHESH (soul).
Unsurprisingly, the Greek word that is used is ψυχὴν (psuchēn) – soul – and once again the verb is ‘became’ (ἐγένετο / egeneto – ‘came into
being/happened/became’). There can be no mistaking then
that the Bible portrays Adam as being
rather than having a soul.
Not only that, but here is
another occurrence where the ‘life’
that Jesus Christ gives is set in the context of physical resurrection. He ‘became a life-giving spirit’.
When ‘life’ is so often used in this
context, I assume that the bodily resurrection to come (that is, the ‘resurrection to life’ as opposed to the ‘resurrection to condemnation’) is
something that the saint should primarily focus upon when considering the gift
of God (Romans 6:23). How can the ‘hope of Heaven’ do anything but relegate
this truth in importance?
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