1 Corinthians 15
15
The “heart and soul” of Paul’s gospel
1Now for the fundamental truth of my teaching, — not mine, but what I received, the same that was given to me, and that I handed on to you, — 2the Gospel which supports you and is saving you, and will save you to the end, if your faith fail not! 3This is the heart and soul of that Gospel as I received it and gave it to you, and the whole of it is contained in this, that according to the meaning of the Scriptures 4the Christ died for our sins and was buried, and then according to the same truth of the Scriptures the Christ rose on the third day. 5The witnesses of this resurrection are first Cephas, then the twelve, 6then over five hundred brethren most of whom are alive at the present day, 7then James, then all the Apostles. These all saw him alive and triumphant after death, and the appearances were in the order I have mentioned. 8And last of all I myself saw the risen Christ, 9last as though I were the least and unworthiest of all, the persecutor that is to say of that divine Church of God, which is His infinite body. 10But the grace of God pierced even down to those depths where I lay, and made me such as I am, and abode with me, in my labours, labours exceeding those of all the others; for the grace of God has worked with me in an extraordinary manner in every way, not only in my first conversion from the lowest depths of opposition to God but in my subsequent labours. 11This then is the gist and burden of the message, I care not who it be that preaches it, whether I or they.
The Christ did conquer death
12Then what means this contention amongst some of you that the dead do not rise? 13-16But the Christ did rise. For death came through Adam, it came through a man, and through a man must come eternal life. If in Adam all die, then must death be conquered where it began, in a man. So rose the Christ from the dead. But if you say there is no resurrection from the dead, then neither did the Christ rise from the dead, and the whole of our teaching collapses, 17it falls to earth, empty, void, a perfect nothing, a falsity. 18The testimony we bear concerning God, namely, that He raised the Christ-man from the dead, has no meaning in it. 19If the Christ exists for this world only and has no eternal existence, we are the most miserable of all the dwellers on this planet!
20But the Christ has risen, and his rising is the commencement of a similar resurrection for the whole world. 21-22His re-appearance after death is like the first fruits of a mighty harvest. 23The increase and growth of this vast divine process will first include all who belong to him, when his eternal presence will become apparent throughout the world; 24and this process will continue till “the end” when there shall exist not one single power, influence or authority that moves contrary to His will, but everything will be subordinate to the infinite God and Father of All, the Creator. 25-27Everything that opposes must be reversed and subdued just there where it arose, namely in man on earth, until there be nothing left that opposes, and until death itself has been completely obliterated. That will be the end, when death is ended, and God is All-in-all, and even the Christ that saves and redeems exists only as the eternally perfect son subject to the infinite Father, there being no more enemies from which to save and redeem us, thus fulfilling the meaning of the Scriptures. For the reign of the Christ will continue on earth for a finite period, namely, until “He has made his enemies his foot-stool” (Ps. 110:1), until all finite death-conditioned things are overruled. “He hath put all things under his feet” (Ps. 8:6). 28All things, but not the Christ himself, for though the Christ has appeared amidst these things, he is not their subject, he is not conditioned by them, he is eternally, spiritually royal, existing only as subject to God, the All-in-all. 29That is the only significance of that practice which obtains amongst some of you, whereby the living are baptised on behalf of those already dead. It means that this progressive victory over death will ultimately include all who have died. The purpose of the Christ penetrates far beyond the little sphere of this life. But if you think that the Christ only comes to you on earth and for this life, what significance has this rite of baptism on behalf of those already beyond its pale? Unless they too are changed by the infinite operation of the Christ life, the rite is meaningless. And if the dead rise not, if there be no such victory and struggle at work, what is the significance of present struggles? 30-32I have faced the beasts in the circus before the crowd at Ephesus, I have run every risk, endured every danger, and won through them successfully — that is your boast, and the glory which you accord me for my service of the Christ; but if in this daily death of mine there is no underlying meaning, if it does not mean that even now Christ in me is fighting his victory over death, and successfully putting it under his feet and rescuing me from it, then what is the use of it all? I would rather say with the disobedient “Let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we shall die” (Is. 22:13) for there is no longer any meaning in my struggles. Beware! Do not let sleep overtake you, and your spiritual perception be cheated and fade. 33This is the result, as the tragic poet says, of that “bad company that doth corrupt the good.” 34There are those in your midst who have no knowledge of God. Protect yourselves against their influence.
Paul explains the resurrection
35And now you ask me, How? What is that body which dies not, but comes again? 36How can flesh and blood not perish for ever, but live on immortal? Does it seem so impossible? 37Yet even in nature we see the seed buried in the ground, becoming a shrivelled extinct husk, 38and out of that decay and dissolution springs the new body which the eternal power of God shapes and forms.
Different kinds of bodies
39We see every type and pattern of shape and form given to various existences as their bodies, we see the elements of flesh and blood taking on the form of every type of being, man, beast, fish, bird — all distinct and separate entities with appropriate bodies. 40On the same principle the form of body appropriate to the heavenly and spiritual things of God’s creation is quite other than those which we see clothing things on earth. The things on earth all have their own special beauties, forms, types and their own splendour. And when we come to that which is spiritual and heavenly, we find that that too has its own appropriate expression and glory. 41The sun, moon and stars are glorious bodies, each with its own distinct glory and splendour. 42-44And the Spirit has in a similar manner its own appropriate distinct body, the spiritual species can by no possibility overrun into and mix with a distinct species of earthly things. Hence the contrast so difficult to grasp in the resurrection of the dead, whereby the spiritual species with its appropriate body appears in substitution of the former human expression of life. On the one hand weakness, corruption, dishonour, comparable to the body of a seed which rots and dissolves beneath the layer of soil; and on the other hand power, glory and incorruption, of which the green shapely stalk of corn may be taken as a simile. But the absolute distinctness of species on earth is a lesson to us, whereby the mind grasps the significance of the great spiritual category of things wholly distinct from the earthy. These things possess spiritual bodies and have no connection with earthy bodies. Their glory is distinct.
The distinction between Adam and Christ
45This is the distinction implied by the Bible between Adam, “formed of the dust of the ground,” who became “a living soul,” and that other man who is wholly spiritual with a spiritual body, 46and is conditioned by Spirit only, who gives him his appropriate form. 47This man is of heaven, not of earth, a different order of being, in a different state of existence from that of Adam. 48Now we have known the former man, and we shall also know that distinct and separate man who is a spiritual being. 49We have borne that image which is the appearance of an earthy physical man, we shall also bear that distinct heavenly stamp, the peculiar spiritual mode of being. 50-51For physical flesh and its laws are remote from the life and laws of the kingdom of God. Do not think that one can pass over into and inherit the other. Nature knows of no such amalgamation as that throughout her infinite being. 52Rather there must be a total and absolute change, a complete reversal of the mode of being, which is what the Scriptures imply by “the sounding of the last trump,” when in a timeless instant the spiritual order of being, 53the incorruptible and the eternal comes as a new order of life, a new dress, a new clothing, a new body for man. 54That is the moment at which death draws back its foot; it is at the coming of that new body and life and organism which declare and express the immortality and being of Spirit. Then is it that the words come true: “He hath swallowed up death in victory” (Is. 25:8). 55“Where is thy sting, O death? Where is thy victory, O grave?” (Hos. 13:14), 56because the law which constituted the peculiar life of the old flesh, the law which made that life perishable, and which was in itself the power of sin, antagonistic to the new law of life, that law has given place to the new nature governed by God. 57He gives us the victory through Jesus Christ, and to him arise our thanks and praise therefore. 58Hence no labour of ours is vain, hence we remain steadfast and unmoved, because the work is that of the infinite God, and His action is irrepressible, abounding and never vain.
Currently Selected:
1 Corinthians 15: GWC
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
Translated in 1916, published in 1937.
1 Corinthians 15
15
Jesus Christ died, then he came alive again
1My Christian friends, I want you to remember the good news that I taught you. You listened to that message and believed it, and you still strongly believe it. 2And if you keep on believing that good news, God will save you. If you don’t keep on believing it, I reckon you didn’t believe it properly in the first place.
3You know, God told me that message, and then I taught it to you. And, you know, a long time ago, God got his men to write about some of those things, and they are in God’s book. Now I’ll tell you the important part of that message again. Everybody did bad things. We are all bad, but Jesus Christ died instead of us. That message is in God’s book.#Isaiah 53:5-12 4People buried Jesus. Then after 2 nights, on the 3rd day, God made him alive again. That message is in God’s book too.#Psalm 16:8-10; Matthew 12:40; Acts 2:24-32 5After that, Jesus showed himself to Peter. Then later he showed himself to all of his 12 special workers.#Matthew 28:16-17; Mark 16:14; Luke 24:34, 36; John 20:19 6After that, he showed himself to more than 500 of his followers at the same time. Most of those 500 people are still alive, but some of them have died. 7Then he showed himself to James, and later he showed himself to all of his special workers.
8All those people saw Jesus. But I was different from Jesus’s other special workers. He didn’t show himself to me until some time later.#Acts 9:3-6
9But before I ever saw Jesus, he sent out his other special workers. They were the first people to go out and tell his message, so they are all more important than me. You see, I used to make a lot of trouble for God’s own people, so I’m not really good enough for anyone to call me one of Jesus’s special workers.#Acts 8:3 10But God was very good to me. He changed me and made me the way I am now. And so more people heard the good news about Jesus. You see, I’ve worked harder than any of his other special workers. But it wasn’t really me that did that work. No. It was God that gave me the power to do his work, so he is the one that did it. 11So it doesn’t really matter who told you God’s message. Maybe it was me, or maybe it was one of his other special workers. We all tell people the same good news about Jesus Christ, and that is the good news that you believed. That is the important thing.
God will make dead people come alive again
12This is our message. Jesus Christ died, and then God made him alive again. But some of you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again. But you are wrong. 13You see, if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are also saying that God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again. 14And if you reckon that God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again, you are saying that our message is useless, and that you believed something that was wrong. 15If that’s what you reckon, you are saying that we lied to you about God when we told you that he made Jesus Christ alive again. But you are not right. 16You see, if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are saying that he didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again. 17And if God didn’t make Jesus Christ alive again, like you reckon, then you believed in Jesus for nothing, and it means that you are still guilty of the bad things you did. 18And if you reckon that God never makes dead people alive again, you are saying that the Christians that died are now lost and gone for ever. 19You reckon that we can only be sure that Jesus Christ will look after us here in this life. But we Christians get trouble in this life, and other people in the world are more happy than us. So if God will not make us alive again after we die, they can feel sorry for us. But that is not true.
20Listen, this is the true story. Jesus Christ died, and God made him alive again. Jesus was the first person to die and then come back to life again, and to live for ever.
21-22You see, it’s like this. God said that everyone that does bad things has to die. Remember the first man, called Adam. He did something bad, so he died. And we are all from Adam, so we are all in his family, and we all do bad things too, so we all have to die. But then another man came, and he only did good things. That man is Jesus Christ. So now, after people die, God can make them alive again. You see, everyone that believes in Jesus Christ is in Jesus’s family now, so God will make them alive again. 23But we each have to wait for our turn. The first one was Jesus Christ. He died, and then God made him alive again. He is the first one to live again. After he comes back, all his people will live again too. 24Then Jesus will finish up all the bad spirits. Some of them are bosses, and some of them have power. He will take away their power, and he will finish them all up. Then the end will come, and Jesus will give everything to God, the father, and God will be the biggest boss for everybody.
25You see, Jesus Christ will keep on being the big boss, until he wins against his enemies, and God makes all those enemies do what Jesus says.#Psalm 110:1 26In the end he will stop us from dying. He will keep everything alive, and nobody will die any more. 27God’s book says this,
“God will win, and he will make everything do what he says.”#Psalm 8:6
Those words tell us that God is the one that will make everything do what Jesus says. You see, Jesus will not be the boss over God, but he will be the boss over everything else. 28When God makes everything do what Jesus Christ says, then Jesus, God’s son, will have God as his boss. Then God will control everything everywhere. He will be the one and only biggest boss.
29You know, sometimes a Christian dies before anyone baptised them, so sometimes you mob try to help them, and you baptise another Christian instead of them. But think about it, if dead people will never live again, that is a useless thing for you to do.
30And think about me and the other people that work with me. We tell everyone God’s message, and some people get angry with us and they want to kill us. 31Every day, I worry that somebody might kill me. My Christian friends, I’m very happy that you are trusting our leader Jesus Christ, so I’m telling you this. 32At that town called Ephesus, I got trouble for telling people about Jesus. Some men there tried to kill me, and I had to fight back. I was like a man fighting wild animals. But, if God will not make me alive again after I die, it means I got all that trouble for nothing. Some of you reckon that dead people will never live again. If that is true, then we can be like the people that say this,
“We are going to die tomorrow, so today we will have fun.
We will eat and drink as much as we like, and we will not worry about tomorrow.”#Isaiah 22:13
That is what they say, but it is not true.
33Listen, don’t let anyone trick you with that sort of talk. Remember that wise people say this, “Don’t have friends that do bad things, or they will get you to do bad things too.”
34So start thinking properly, and do what is right. Stop doing bad things. I think that some of you don’t really know God. I’m saying this to make you feel shame.
We will get new bodies
35Somebody might hear me say that dead people will come alive again, and they might ask me, “How can that happen? What sort of bodies will they have?” 36That’s a stupid question. You know, all sorts of things die and then they get new bodies. Think about seeds and plants. If you plant a seed in the ground, that seed dies. But that is not the end. A new plant grows up. That seed comes alive again and grows up into a new plant. 37The thing you put into the ground was just a seed (maybe a wheat seed, or whatever). You don’t put the body of the plant in the ground, but just the seed. 38Then God makes it grow up and become a new plant, with its own sort of body. God gives every sort of seed its own sort of body.
39Every sort of thing that is alive has a different sort of body from every other sort of thing. People have one sort of body. Animals have a different sort of body. Birds have another sort of body, and fish have another sort of body. 40And other things have different sorts of bodies too. There are bodies in the sky, and there are bodies here on the earth. They are all beautiful in their own way. The bodies in the sky are beautiful in a different way from the bodies on the earth. 41The sun is bright and beautiful. And the moon is beautiful too, in a different way from the sun. The stars are bright and beautiful too, but they are different again, and some stars are brighter than other stars.
42Well, it will be like that for us when God makes us alive again. The bodies we have now will die. But after God makes us alive again, our new bodies will never die. 43The bodies we have now are weak and not very good. But after God makes us alive again, our new bodies will be beautiful and strong. 44The bodies we have when we die are normal bodies. But after God makes us alive again, we will have new bodies, and they will be spiritual bodies. You see, there are normal bodies, and there are spiritual bodies. 45This is what God says in his book,
“The 1st man, Adam, became a living person.”#Genesis 2:7
But we can think of Jesus, that he is the last Adam. You see, he is the spirit that makes people alive. 46It is like this. Right now, each of us has a normal body. They are the bodies we got at first. But later we will each get a new spiritual body. 47And think about Adam. He was the 1st man, and he came from the ground. But Jesus, the 2nd man, came from heaven. 48Everyone on earth has a body like the man that came from the ground. But the people that belong to heaven will have a body like the man that came from heaven. 49You see, the bodies that we have now are like Adam’s body. He was the 1st man, and God made him out of the ground. But our spiritual bodies will be different. They will be like Jesus’s body. He is the man that came from heaven.
50My Christian friends, this is what I’m telling you. We can’t go to God and live for ever in his family in our normal bodies. They are made of meat, blood, bones, skin, and all that. These bodies that we have now have to die. They can’t go on for ever.
51Listen, I’m telling you something new. God didn’t tell other people this message before, but it is important. He will change all of us. Some of us will still be alive at that time, but maybe some of us will be dead. It doesn’t matter, God will change all of us. 52It will happen like this. We will hear the sound of somebody blowing the last trumpet, then straight away God will change us. It will be quick, as quick as you can blink your eyes. You see, as soon as that trumpet makes its sound, God will make his dead people alive again. At that time, he will give us new bodies that will never die. God will change all of us, those of us that are alive and those of us that are dead at that time.#1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 53You see, the bodies we have now will die, but they will get new life. God will change our normal bodies into bodies that can never die.
54-56You know, whenever we do bad things, we break God’s law, and God’s law says we have to die for doing those bad things. There is a power that gets us to go wrong and die like that. It is like a cheeky scorpion that stings us and kills us. But God will change our bodies into bodies that will never die, and at that same time God will finish up that power that makes us go wrong. You know, a long time ago, one of God’s men wrote about this, and it is in God’s book. He wrote,
“God will finish up that power that makes everything die.”#Isaiah 25:8
“It will be gone. It will not sting us any more,
and people will not die any more.”#Hosea 13:14
And it will happen just like those men wrote.
57You see, our leader Jesus Christ has won the fight. So with Jesus we win too. And we say, “Thank you God.”
58So always remember those things, my Christian friends. I love you, and I want you to stay strong for God. Don’t let anything take you away from him. Keep on working hard for our leader Jesus. Remember, he will help you, so that everything you do with him will be good. It will not be useless.
Currently Selected:
:
Highlight
Share
Copy
Want to have your highlights saved across all your devices? Sign up or sign in
© 2021, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Inc. All rights reserved.