1 Corinthians 15:1-11 Commentary

1 Corinthians 15’s stirring recap of Christ’s resurrection and its impact is one of the great chapters of Scripture. This Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson’s portion of it introduces Paul’s teaching about the coming resurrection of Jesus’ followers. Countless preachers and others used it to proclaim Christian hope in face of dying and death.

But toward the end of this Lesson, Paul makes what may seem like a surprising “detour” on his road to the empty tombs. In verses 9-11 he doesn’t even explicitly mention Jesus’ resurrection. What’s more, in verse 10 he speaks no less than three times about “grace” [chariti, charis*]. In doing so, the apostle hints at a link between Jesus’ resurrection and God’s grace that I admit I’ve seldom made.

What is perhaps especially intriguing about this grace to Paul is, as the apostle insists there, God’s grace “was not without effect [kene]” on him. The NRSV translates this as “God’s grace toward me has not been in vain.” The ASV translates this grace as “not found vain.” The Message lyrically paraphrases verse 10 as the apostle’s assertion that “I’m not about to let his grace go to waste.”

One reason why preachers might proclaim 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 through this “lens” is that making such a profession is a fitting goal for all of Jesus’ friends. We long to be able to join countless numbers of Christians, including Paul, in professing that God’s grace has made and still makes a difference in our lives.

Paul, however, was among the last of Jesus’ contemporaries to understand the gracious impact of Jesus’ resurrection. In verse 3 he speaks of as of “first importance” [protois] that “Christ died [apethanen] for our sins [hyper ton hamartion hemon] according to the Scriptures [graphas], that he was buried [etaphe], that he was raised [egertai] on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Here Paul calls Jesus’ crucifixion, burial and resurrection of protois (“first importance”). They are, in fact, so central to the Christian faith that any worship service and message that doesn’t make them central can be little more than of secondary importance. Before all else, preachers and the Church proclaim Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Paul’s emphasizes how Christ’s death and resurrection is kata tas graphas (“according to the Scriptures”). He, in other words, insists that what we call the Old Testament — the New Testament did not yet exist in his day – predicted that Jesus would be crucified and resurrected. While it can be hard to identify those specific predictions, some biblical scholars like F.W. Grosheide (The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Eerdmans, 1984) see Isaiah 53 and Jonah 1:17 as at least alluding to Jesus’ death and resurrection respectively.

Yet in this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson Paul goes on to note that Jesus wasn’t just crucified, buried and raised from the dead. The risen Christ also opthe (“appeared”) to people. Instead of keeping his resurrection a secret, Christ first revealed his resurrected person to Peter and the rest of the disciples (5). The risen Christ then also appeared, according to verse 6, to “more than five hundred of the brothers [adelphoi] and sisters at the same time [ephapax], most of whom are still living [menousin], though some have fallen asleep [ekoimethesan].” He next, Paul writes in verse 7, “appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”

It’s not easy to know why the Spirit inspired Paul to present this “witness list.” However, Christ’s resurrection was so unprecedented that the apostle probably assumed that people wouldn’t believe him if he didn’t present a list of eyewitnesses to its aftermath. What’s more, because some of those witnesses were “still living,” Paul’s contemporaries might have the opportunity to ask those witnesses abut Jesus’ resurrection veracity. On top of all of that, of course, religious leaders had spread the rumor that Jesus was, in fact, not alive, but that his disciples had stolen and hidden his corpse. Such denial of Jesus’ resurrection is still very much alive to this day.

The final eyewitness to the resurrected Christ was, of course, none other than Paul himself. “Last of all [eschaton],” as he writes in verse 8, the risen Christ “appeared [opthe] to me also [kamoi], as to one abnormally born [ektromati].” It’s an extraordinary profession, laden with both God’s amazing grace and Paul’s desperate need for it.

While Paul’s reference to himself as ektromati (“one abnormally born”), literally a miscarried or prematurely born child, may seem insensitive to 21^st century ears, it reflects his ugly early history with Christ and his followers. Paul (nee Saul) was one of the early Church’s most powerful and virulent enemies.

He seemed like an unlikely candidate for apostleship because he’d both witnessed and approved of Stephen’s martyrdom (Acts 7:58-8:1a). In 1 Corinthians 15:9 Paul himself grieves that he “persecuted [edioxa] the church of God.” Later, what’s more, Paul had sought and received the religious leaders’ approval to capture Jesus’ followers in Damascus. It was, in fact, on his way to do precisely that that the risen Christ appeared him. On the road to Damascus the ascended Christ appeared to and graciously knocked the notorious Christian-baiter off his horse and into God’s glorious kingdom.

Reflecting on his murderous history, the transformed Paul confessed to be “the least [elachistos] of the apostles [apostolon]” who did not “even deserve [hikanos] to be called an apostle (9).” The Message paraphrases him as admitting there, “I don’t deserve to be included in that inner circle, as you well know, having spent all those early years trying my best to stamp God’s church right out of existence.”

Paul’s story is a good reminder that no living person is outside of the long reach of God’s amazing grace. Christians can hope, pray and work for God’s rescue of even the most vigorous and violent anti-Christian who’s still alive. If, after all, God’s grace could reach murderous Saul, it can reach anyone who lives and breathes.

Paul spends much of this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson marveling at the stunning impact God’s grace has had on him. “By the grace of God,” he marvels in verse 11, “I am what I am [eimi ho eimi], and his grace to me was not without effect [ou kene].” Paul certainly worked hard at what he thought of as service to Yahweh. He also worked diligently in service to the living God after he received God’s grace with his faith.

Yet Paul insists that just as his hard work didn’t transform him into a follower of Jesus, his hard work as a Christian also didn’t make him Jesus’ disciple. For the apostle, as for each of God’s dearly beloved people, it was, is and always will be all grace. Christians are God’s adopted children not because of our hard work, spiritual discernment or even orthodox faith, but because of God’s amazing grace alone.

That grace, Paul can wonder in verse 10, was ou kene (“not in vain”), literally not “void” or “empty.” God’s amazing grace had, in other words, an amazing impact on Paul’s life and ministry. It equipped him to “preach [euengelisamen] … the gospel [euangelion] to” the Christians in Corinth (1). God’s grace empowered the apostle to literally “good news the good news” to Corinth’s Christians. What’s more, by that same amazing grace of God, Jesus’ friends in Corinth faithfully “received” [parelabete] and “took their stand” [hestekate]” (1) on Paul’s best of all news.

Yet Paul at least implies that the Corinthians are in danger of abandoning that gospel. That, at least, appears to be the force of verse 2’s warning: “By this gospel you are saved [sozesthe], if you hold firmly [katechete] to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed [episteusate] in vain [eike].”

Preachers might say so many good things about this text. But we might point to Paul’s repeated use (vv. 1, 10) of some form of the Greek root eike (“in vain”). Just as God’s grace to Paul had the impact of making him a faithful gospel messenger, Paul desires that God’s grace to Corinth’s Christians impact them by preserving them as Jesus’ faithful followers.

The Spirit might make that a good “landing place” for a faithful proclamation of God’s grace near the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15. By raising Jesus from the dead, God graced God’s adopted children with both hope and an eternal future. Now as God’s grace impacted Paul, God longs for God’s amazing grace to impact the lives of Jesus’ 21^st century friends. God’s grace is such a precious gift that the Spirit uses it to motivate Christians to more fully love God above all and our neighbor as ourselves. We long for the Spirit to use our reflections on God’s amazing grace to open all of us to the Spirit’s promptings to let that grace impact every moment and area of our lives.

*I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his book, One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation, Daniel Silliman writes, “Losing everything can lead some people to finally, fully throw themselves on divine mercy. When there’s nothing left to show, nothing left that you can claim as merit, nothing to cite as evidence of your worth, you just have to ask God to love you.

“This is what alcoholics talk about as the hope that can be found at ‘rock bottom.’ It’s what Billy Graham meant when he ended every evangelistic service with the song, ‘Just As I Am.’ When you have nothing, everything is up to God. And in that state, you can accept that all you have comes as a gift. The day is unearned. The warmth of the sun on your face, unearned. The breath in your own body is just there.

“Because God loves you. That’s it. There’s nothing else. In personal devastation, some finally see this truth and respond with an old, old prayer, dug up from deep, and say, simply, ‘thank you.’ It’s a hard kind of mercy, but a sweet revelation. As the great American novelist Robert Penn Warren once wrote, ‘It is a terrible thing to fall into the Grace of God.’

“But [Richard] Nixon, to the end, refused to fall. In the days after his resignation, he dwelled in self-pity and despair. The humiliation seemed as if it would crush him.  Then, deep inside, he found a reservoir of anger and resentment. It gave him strength.

“He ‘would go on,’ he said, out of spite. Spite for his enemies and the elites who had always thought they were better, spite for all those who had slighted and snubbed him, the hypocrites who judged him, everyone who booed him along the way, everyone who tried to kick him when he was down. He would get up again, he decided. He would tell them all to [get lost].”