1 Corinthians 15:12-20 Commentary

In 1 Corinthians 15:3 Paul refers to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection as being “of first importance.”  Christians generally assume that the primary importance is to our faith that receives God’s grace. But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson suggests that Christ’s resurrection in particular is also central to our hope for life, including life after death.

After all, in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul asserts that if God didn’t, in fact, raise Christ from the dead, our faith is what the apostle calls “futile” [mataia*] (17). If Christ is still dead, our faith is literally unreal or empty. In fact, one translation of the Greek word mataia is “an idol.” So if Christ is nothing but the dust of some part of Middle Eastern ground, we might think of Christian faith as like a false god that we worship.

Paul insists Christ’s resurrection is not some optional part of Christianity that Jesus’ friends are free to take or leave as we choose. Christians don’t get to lump in Christ’s resurrection with what many of us consider optional practices such as things like our covering our heads in worship or greeting our fellow Christians with a holy kiss. Christ’s resurrection is so central to our faith that if it didn’t take place, we’d be just as well off if we were Buddhists or Hindus.

Part of Jesus’ resurrection’s centrality relates to the close link Paul makes between it and Jesus’ friends’ coming resurrection. “If it is preached [keryssetai],” he writes in verses 12-13, “that Christ has been raised from the dead [ek nekron egergetai], how can some of you say that there is no resurrection [anastasis] of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead [anastasis nekron], then not even Christ has been raised.” The apostle makes a similar profession in verse 16: “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.”

The Spirit inspired Paul to link Jesus’ resurrection to his followers’. You don’t, in fact, can’t have one without the other. Of course, God raised Jesus from the dead at least 2000 years before God will raise God’s dearly beloved people from the dead when Christ returns. But God makes an unbreakable connection between those resurrections.

Paul professes that since God raised Christ from the dead, God will also certainly raise God’s adopted children from the dead. In fact, if God won’t raise us, then God hasn’t raised Christ either. God has graciously linked both our eternal fate and hope for the future to Christ’s resurrection.

Some Christians have so long heard of and believed in Jesus’ resurrection that we no longer find this assertion to be especially startling. But for Christians like those in Corinth, this was all brand-new. What’s more, at least some Christians who have received notice of a terminal illness or stand at the grave or urn of a dead loved one find Paul’s profession of Christ’s resurrection to be if not brand-new, at least meaningful in a new way.

But the apostle goes on to assert that Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just an end-of-life issue. It also has everything to do with how we live and believe here and now. In verse 14 Paul professes, “If Christ has not been raised, our preaching [kerygma] is useless [kene].” If Christ is just a corpse, Paul admits his preaching is, as The Message lyrically paraphrases him, just “smoke and mirrors.”

In fact, if Christ is still dead, it’s not just Paul who was wasting his time. It’s also preachers who proclaim the hope of the gospel who are wasting both our energy and time. If Christ is nothing more than a pile of Palestinian dust, both preaching and listening to it are a colossal waste of everyone’s time. If Christ is nothing but a nice story that ends horribly, then preachers should find something more impactful to do with our time and worshipers’ resources.

What’s more, according to verse 15, if Jesus is still dead, preachers aren’t just wasting others and our time. We’re also “false witnesses [pseudomartyres] about God.” If Christ is nothing but a heap of Palestinian dust, Christians aren’t just wasting our time and energy. Then we’re also using our time to lie about God. If Jesus is still dead, his friends are, as The Message paraphrases verse 15, “guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God … sheer fabrications.” Then we aren’t just liars in general. If God didn’t raise Christ from the dead, we are nothing but liars about God.

If, in fact, as the apostle continues, Christ is still dead, so is our faith. Our “faith” [pistis] is, according to verses 14, “dead” [kene]. In verse 17 the apostle professes something similar. If Christ is nothing but a pile of Palestinian dust, our faith is “futile” [mataia]. Our Christian faith is worthless. It’s a belief that has no real content. If Christ is nothing but a pile of Palestinian dust, our faith in Jesus Christ is the equivalent of believing that the moon is made of cheese, or Santa Claus personally delivers all Christmas presents. If Jesus is still dead, we are delusional.

Worse yet, Paul adds in verse 17, if Christ is still dead, we too are spiritually dead. Christians are what he calls “still [eti] in our sins [hamartias].” If Christ is nothing but a pile of Palestinian dust, his followers aren’t just wasting our time and delusional. We’re also on a one-way road to eternal separation from God. If Jesus is still dead, we are what The Message calls “wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever,” both now and forevermore.

Paul’s news, however, just seems to get worse. At least those who are spiritually dead are still physically alive. However, if Christ is nothing but an inspiring memory, those who have already died are dead in every sense of that word.  In verse 18 the apostle mourns, “those who have fallen asleep [koimethentes] in Christ are lost [apolonto].”

Christians who die in a faithful relationship with God in Jesus Christ die with the hope of the resurrection. But if God didn’t raise Christ from the dead, they aren’t just physically dead. They also have no hope of eternal life in God’s glorious presence. If Jesus is nothing more than a dead role model and teacher, Christians who have died are eternally lost to everything but the memory of them that probably won’t survive their loved ones’ death. If God didn’t raise Christ, those who die are quickly obliterated.

And if all that’s true, Paul grieves in verse 19, Christians are what The Message paraphrases as “a pretty sorry lot.”  “If only for this life we have hope [elpikotes] in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied [eleeinoteroi].” If our hope in Christ expires with our death, we are more miserable and pitiful than any other person. If our hope in Christ has a short shelf life, we deserve peoples’ pity.

At this point preachers may realize something about this text. Many of us have been taught or learned to try to balance talk about sin and salvation, as well as comfort and misery in our preaching. Grace and its proclamation, after all, include our recognition of both our sinfulness and God’s merciful response to the plight we’ve created for ourselves. But this Sunday’s Epistolary Lesson is “lopsided” in that regard. It’s far heavier on the bad news than on the good. 1 Corinthians 15:12-20 talk far more about our misery than our comfort.

So under the Spirit’s leading and guiding, our text’s preachers may want to make a decision. Since we want to proclaim both our sin and God’s salvation of us, preachers might let the Spirit prompt us to move in one of several directions. We might choose to spend proportionally more time talking about the resurrection than Paul does in this text.

That might mean paying slightly less attention than Paul does to the implications of Christ’s eternal death and far more to the apostle’s assertion of Christ’s resurrection and Christians’ coming one. We might even consider including some or all of 1 Corinthians 15:13-34 in this Sunday’s Epistolary Reading and proclamation. Those verses, after all, go into some depth on Christ’s resurrection and Christians’ coming one – and are omitted from this year’s Lectionary cycle.

In any case, preachers want to trumpet 1 Corinthians 15:12’s trumpet call. “But! [de]” Paul almost shouts there, “Christ has indeed been raised [egergetai] from the dead [ek nekron], the firstfruits [aparchen] of those who have fallen asleep [kekoimemenon].” Since Christ is not a pile of Palestinian dust but alive, we too shall, by God’s grace, live even after we die. Since Christ is our risen Savior, we will survive our physical deaths in more than just people’s memory.

When God raised Jesus from the dead, God made that resurrection a kind of downpayment on Jesus’ friends’ own coming resurrection. The risen and living Jesus is what The Message calls “the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.” While others carried dead Christians to what we sometimes call their “final resting place” — a term deeply ironic to Jesus’ friends — God will raise God’s people out of those places and into God’s glorious presence in the new earth and heaven.

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

Illustration

Michael Connelly’s Resurrection Walk is in part the story of Micky Haller, a Los Angeles-area criminal defense attorney. In it the lawyer reflects on the pleasure of hearing not-guilty verdicts, offering good cross examinations and receiving the juries’ close attentiveness.

But, he adds, “nothing could beat the resurrection walk — when the manacles come off and the last metal doors slide open like the gates of heaven, and a man or woman declared innocent walks into the waiting arms of family, resurrected in life and the law. There is no better feeling in the world than being with that family and knowing you were the one who made it so.”