Write-up1 (as at 16/08/2026 18:31:41): Todman - Review - Sylvia Penny - The Resurrection Chapter: 1 Corinthians 15
Introductory Notes
Full Text
- The Subjects in 1 Corinthians 15
- Verses 1-11: The resurrection of Christ
- The gospel and Paul's personal testimony (vs 1-4)
- Personal testimonies of the resurrection of Jesus (vs 5-8)
- A declaration of Paul's unworthiness and the grace of God (vs 9-11)
- Verses 12-34: The resurrection of believers
- The all-importance of the resurrection of Christ (vs 12-19)
- The resurrection of believers at the return of Christ (vs 20-23)
- The destruction of death itself (vs 24-26)
- A future time when God will be “all in all” (vs 27-28)
- Arguments for the truth of the resurrection of Christ (vs 29-34)
- Verses 35-58: The nature of the resurrection body
- The natural body compared with the spiritual resurrection body (vs 35-44)
- The first man, Adam - a physical being compared to the second man,
- the risen Lord Jesus - a Spirit Being (vs 45-50)
- The change in believers who are alive when Christ returns (vs 51-53)
- The victory of the Lord Jesus Christ over death (vs 54-57)
- Working for the Lord (v 58)
- Introduction
- Easter is the time of resurrection - the time of all things new. But what do we know about resurrection? Although the concept of resurrection is found throughout the Scriptures2, the word itself only occurs in the New Testament, and one of the most important passages on resurrection is found in 1 Corinthians 15. There Paul devotes fifty-eight verses to the subject.
- This is the last major subject Paul discusses in his first letter to the Corinthians, and it is one of my favourite passages in Scripture. Paul manages to explain neatly and concisely, in relatively few verses, much of the theology and the practical outworking we need for our on-going Christian faith and walk.
- In summary, he starts with the gospel and shows how the resurrection of Christ is an essential part of it. This is followed by Paul’s answers to certain questions and objections raised by some in the Corinthian church. Then, in the last verse (v58), there is an exhortation to work hard for the Lord because it will not be in vain3 as we look forward to our resurrection life in the future.
- Verses 1-11: The resurrection of Christ
- We will concentrate on what we can learn from the verses referring to resurrection but will briefly consider the other verses as we go along. In this section, (verses 1-11) Paul prefaces everything he says about resurrection by starting with the gospel and reminding them of their salvation and that unless they held to what he had taught them about this, they had no ground for their faith. Here, he repeated what he had said to them when he was with them in person - that Christ had died for their sins, He was buried and He rose from the dead on third day according to the Scriptures. He then appeared to many witnesses, the last of whom was Paul himself. All this was the gospel in a nutshell, without any part of which their faith was in vain.
- It was important that Christ had really died on the cross and not simply recovered from a death-like state. This was essential for their salvation (and ours) as it was by His death on the cross that the penalty for all our sins was paid.
- The passage of three days, sealed in the tomb, and guarded by Roman soldiers until His resurrection was the proof of this. After this period there would normally have been decay, but there wasn’t (Acts 13:34-374).
- They also had to believe that He had risen from the dead. There were over 500 eye-witnesses5 to Jesus' resurrection, as well as Paul himself, who all testified to His resurrection. This was the proof of His power over death. Without His resurrection their faith would be useless (vl4) and futile (v17) - and so would ours be today.
- Paul follows this up by saying how unworthy he was to be called an apostle because he had persecuted the church of God in the past (and some believers had died as a result). This was always a painful memory for Paul as he recognised that, but for the wonderful grace of God towards him, he would be as nothing; he considered himself to be the worst of sinners (1 Timothy 1:12-16).
- Verses 12-34 The resurrection of dead Believers
- Paul then turns to the resurrection of believers. Some in the Corinthian church appear to have said that dead believers would not be raised, and in verses 12-19 Paul gives his arguments against this incorrect teaching and the consequences of not believing this important truth.
- If there is no resurrection of the dead, he says, then not even Christ was raised. They would then effectively be accusing the apostles of lying, and also faith in Christ was useless, and that they were still in their sins (vl17). He finishes by saying that if we have hope in Christ only for this life then we (believers) are to be pitied more than all other people for being deluded6. In other words, the belief in the resurrection of Christ, and in our own resurrection in the future after our death, is crucial to our faith. If there is no resurrection, (and therefore no eternal life7), Christianity would be pointless8. As it is, Christianity is not just an ethical system nor simply a philosophy for this life only - it is the answer to death and what happens afterwards. We have a “sure and certain hope” of eternal life (Hebrews 11:1).
- Paul then goes on to say emphatically, “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v20). Death came through one man, Adam, and so also, resurrection comes through a man, Christ. He was the first person to rise from the dead, never to die again.
- A few other people had been raised from the dead in the Scriptures, but they all went on to die again. John 3:13 clearly states that “No-one has ever gone into heaven except9 the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.” He is now seated10 in the heavenly realms, far above all, as Paul tells us in Ephesians 1:21.
- Returning to 1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul says, “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all11 will be made alive.” So, not only will every person die, but Paul also says every person in Christ will be raised from the dead. When will this happen?
- Verse 23 says, “when he comes, those who belong to him” will be raised referring to the return of Christ. This was a possibility at the time Paul wrote this letter but depended on Israel repenting and believing in Jesus (Acts 3:17-20).
- There is no mention of those who do not belong to Him here, i.e. those who are not believers. They are not part of Paul’s subject in this chapter and so neither have they been considered in this article. In verses 24 to 28 Paul looks forward to the time when “God may be all in all”, and in verses 29-34 he gives further answers to those in Corinth who had other detailed questions regarding the truth12 of resurrection.
- Verses 35-57 The nature of the resurrection body
- This last section is devoted, almost entirely, to explaining resurrection in more detail, and particularly what form this would take. The question the Corinthian believers asked Paul was, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” (v35). Paul doesn’t mince his words when he replies, “How foolish!”, (v36).
- However, many of the believers in Corinth would have been Gentiles - Greeks who believed in the survival of disembodied souls and who denied any resurrection of the physical body. Consequently, some of the Corinthian believers may have assumed Christianity taught that corpses were resus- citated and that resurrection life was simply a prolongation of material existence13. It was this view that Paul was keen to dispel.
- Using examples out of the natural world first he pointed out that seeds were planted and, by analogy, dead in the ground. He said, “What you sow does not come to life unless it dies” (v36).
- Then he pointed out the many differences between bodies given in the physical world - man, animals, birds and fish for example. He even used inanimate bodies as analogies too - the sun, moon and stars - and pointed out how different they are from one another. In all this he simply showed how God had created such a wealth of variety in both living and non-living things that we could not possibly second-guess what our resurrection bodies will be like, or how God will create these for us14.
- However, there was one thing he was very clear on - the body that is sown (dead in the ground) was perishable, but it is to be raised imperishable (v42). He went on, “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” (vs 43-44).
- It is also clear that the resurrection body was intimately linked with the old body15, but not identical to it16, like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis17. All of this had been revealed to Paul.
- There was little point in questioning how God would achieve this. This would be like Job18 when he famously questioned God and the Lord answered him in Job chapters 38-41, after which Job replied19, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” Most of us don’t understand20 advanced mathematics, nor the latest scientific theories and discoveries, so why should we think21 we will ever understand all that God has done in the past, let alone what He has promised He will do in the future!
- In verses 44-49 Paul continues with his description of the differences between our present earthly bodies and our future resurrection bodies culminating in saying, “just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven” (v49). We will have a resurrection body just like the one22 that the Lord Jesus had when He rose from the dead (Philippians 3:21). What an amazing thought that is!
- Finally, in verses 50-56 Paul talks about those who will be living at the time the Lord Jesus returns to earth, and how they will be changed23 from having a perishable body to an imperishable body, from being mortal to being “clothed with immortality24” by the Lord. He finishes in verse 57 by saying: “But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Let us echo that sentiment this Easter, when we focus on His resurrection!
- Advert25: The Resurrection Chapter 1 Corinthians 15 By Fred Heyman (£4.50)
In-Page Footnotes
Footnote 1:
- This is the write-up as it was when this Abstract was last output, with text as at the timestamp indicated (16/08/2026 18:31:41).
- Link to Latest Write-Up Note.
Footnote 2:
- Well, maybe, this comforting thought is correct, and the concept of resurrection is found in the OT, but if it had been that clear, the Sadducees wouldn’t have denied the doctrine. Why would you?
- Jesus’ choice of ‘proof text’ in Matthew 22:32 may seem slightly odd. On the surface, as far the language is concerned, the expression ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’ says no more than that ‘I am the God of your fathers – the same God that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob worshipped’. It’s not really talking about the present existence of those worshippers, though you could – as Jesus did – take it that way. You might choose a clearer text if you had one.
- Maybe Daniel 12:2 would do: “Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt” or alternatively Job 19:26 “I know that my redeemer liveth’ … discussed later on, with regard to what ‘flesh’ Job would see God in. However,
- The Jewish Study Bible claims that Dan. 12:2 is the only clear reference in the Bible to the doctrine of post-mortem survival, and even this isn’t clear on the form – spiritual or corporeal. The commentator takes the idea of resurrection to have arisen in the times of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, in whose reign many righteous and learned Jews were martyred, and is the time the commentator takes the pseudepigraphal Daniel to have been written, and it was felt – in Paul’s words – that they had died ‘in vain’ if they had no reward in an afterlife.
- The Jewish Study Bible takes the ‘redeemer’ (‘go’el’) to be a kinsman-redeemer – a family member who will take up Job’s case against God after his death. Job had just said that he wished his words of complaint could be written down indelibly. He would prefer – and expects to – continue his complaint directly to God ‘in his flesh’, but if not, a relative will do it. Maybe; these poetic books are capable of multiple interpretations.
- But, whatever the cogency or otherwise of such passages, they’d cut no ice with the Sadducees who gave much stronger prominence to the Torah than to the Prophets or the Writings (to which Daniel and Job are consigned).
Footnote 3:
- This idea that our ‘work’ is ‘in vain’ is important in this passage.
- I presume the idea is that – if there is no resurrection (or, strictly, no post-mortem survival) then we have no reward for our labours.
- This – or the idea that all our creativity and production ultimately turns to dust – is a popular theme in some nihilistic philosophers as well.
- However, we can take the view that life is for living and that what we do has significance and value at the time, irrespective of the fact that it has no eternal consequence.
- There is some OT support: Ps. 115:17-18. “It is not the dead who praise the LORD, those who go down to the place of silence; it is we who extol the LORD, both now and forevermore.” Presumably the ‘we’ here is the living and on-going people of Israel.
- Does a father who ‘takes a bullet’ to save his child ‘die in vain’ if he has no resurrection?
Footnote 4:
- I don’t think this is really talking about a ‘stink’ as with Lazarus – but ‘mouldering in the grave’. There would have to be some ‘corruption’ – eg. rigor mortis – or there would be no death.
- Acts 13:35 is a quotation from Ps. 16:10 (LXX) – with the comment that David did ‘moulder in the grave’.
Footnote 5:
- It’d be nice to know what the occasion was for this, and why the episode isn’t – I presume – recorded elsewhere.
Footnote 6:
- Lots of groups of people are – and were – deluded, so why should the early Christians be more pitied than others?
- Presumably because the transient benefits of being a Christian – at least then – weren’t as great as for other groups?
Footnote 7:
- Eternal life would be possible without resurrection if it were in disembodied form.
- So, the question is – just why is resurrection so important?
- Is resurrection important for evidential reasons – in Christ’s case – to demonstrate that he had survived death – or for metaphysical reasons – because eternal life will be in an embodied state – for Christ as well as for us?
Footnote 8:
- So, are all ethical or philosophical systems ‘pointless’?
Footnote 9:
- Well, John certainly says this.
- There is the question of Elijah and Enoch who were supposed to have ‘gone into heaven’ based on Biblical passages, with Elijah being expected back.
- I had thought that Moses was popularly supposed to have been ‘assumed’ into heaven based on the ‘assumption’ that Jude 1:9 is referring to the pseudepigraphal book ‘the assumption of Moses’ and that ‘assumption’ is a bit like an ascension (as in the Roman Catholic belief in the ‘assumption’ of Mary; Wikipedia: Assumption of Mary). But things may be more complicated (see Wikipedia: Assumption of Moses).
- Maybe there are supposed to be different ‘heavens’. The Greeks and other ancient civilisations thought there were seven (see Wikipedia: Seven heavens; the ‘seven’ comes from the ‘spheres’ of the then seven known planets, which included the sun and the moon – see Wikipedia: Classical planet), but the popular ‘Berean line’ on Paul (presumably) being caught up to ‘the third heaven’ (in a vision, presumably, 2 Corinthians 12:1-5; Paul is unsure whether it’s in the body or not) is that it’s the third in time rather than space.
- It seems the contemporary exegesis is that it’s in some sense ‘spatial’ but not entirely so: the ‘first heaven’ is the sky; the ‘second heaven’ is ‘outer space’ and the third heaven is where God dwells, wherever that is. See, for instance, Got Questions: What does it mean that Paul went to the third heaven?. Doubtless more scholarly accounts are available.
Footnote 10:
- I spent 3 hours seated at the opera the other evening and towards the end I had a very sore bum. So, no doubt, would the apostles sitting on their 12 thrones, unless spiritual thrones are more comfortable or spiritual bums more resilient.
- I say the above merely to suggest that Biblical pictures of the future life, such as they are, cannot be taken literally. Quite what they are supposed to signify is somewhat at the whim of the expositor.
Footnote 11:
- There’s a parallelism here, but – at first sight – the two ‘all’s aren’t the same. All human beings who die die ‘in Adam’ but only those ‘in Christ’ will be brought back to life ‘in Christ’.
- Maybe the excursion about the final ‘end’ rounds this out, but it’s not clear (to me, at any rate).
Footnote 12:
- Paul seems to pick up on their worries about the state of the resurrection as well, which may have caused them to worry about the truth. They didn’t want to be resurrected into their old bodies. The author goes on to discuss this.
Footnote 13:
- There’s a shift in philosophy from equating naturalism with materialism to equating it with physicalism.
- Because of the equivalence of mass and energy in that famous equation, not all that exists is matter – especially not the sort of matter we’re familiar with (and the same goes for energy).
- But, in the prospectus of 1Cor. 15, we would seem to have an eternal corporeal existence. We have bodies. Is this, therefore, a version of physicalism?
- Our future bodies are described as ‘spiritual’, but what sort of idea is ‘spiritual’ in this context. Is it some form of super-duper matter, some extra life-force, or something of which we’re given no clue to form a conception of?
Footnote 14:
- This idea is reminiscent of Hebrews 10:5, which alludes to the LXX version of Ps. 39:7. ‘A body you have prepared for me’.
- Question 1: The quotation above implies either that the pre-incarnate Christ had a different body to that of his incarnation, or was incorporeal. Was his resurrection body ‘created for him’, and is he now eternally corporeal?
- Question 2: If our resurrection bodies are ‘created for us’, what sort of thing are we? What is it of us that can be given a new body?
Footnote 15:
- Well, I agree that this linkage would need to be made, but where is this stated?
- There are three proposals by modern Christian philosophers who are ‘materialists’ – in denying the existence of incorporeal souls – not put forward as ‘actual’ but to show the logical possibility:-
- Body Snatching (Peter Van Inwagen): God miraculously swaps out our pre-mortem ‘corpse-to-be’ with a simulacrum and whisks away the original to the future world where it repaired and ‘spiritualised’.
- ‘Falling Elevator’ (Dean Zimmerman; think ‘Looney Tunes’): God sets up a miraculous mechanism that causes the dying body to connect to – and be continuous with – the future resurrection body in the next world. This is really a slightly less ludicrous version of the above.
- Luz Bone (Roderick Chisholm): there is some ‘atom’ or other small particle that survives corruption and is the ‘continuity particle’ on which the resurrection body is built (much like a pearl on a grain of sand). Some ancient Jews equated this, absurdly, with the Coccyx.
- The important point at issue is that there has to be something that makes the resurrection body an appropriate continuant of the earthly body, as distinct from an arbitrary creation of a new individual.
Footnote 16:
- ‘Identical’ is a slippery term.
- I am the same human organism as I was yesterday despite ‘my body’ having lost and gained various bits of matter in the course of metabolism, growth, decay and repair. The ‘persistence conditions’ for organisms differ from those of ‘masses of matter’.
- So, ‘bodies’ are not self-identical from day to day despite being ‘the same body’.
- I’d like to know just what the continuity is between the mortal and eternal bodies and what makes them bodies of the same individual.
Footnote 17:
- This butterfly metamorphosis is a natural suggestion, but not one Paul himself adopts.
- It is the most challenging example of metamorphosis.
- Usually, there’s an obvious continuous development of structures – much as is human development from an embryo onwards.
- Egg to tadpole to frog involves the reabsorption and repurposing of body parts to remove a tail, add legs and replace gills with lungs … but it all looks somewhat continuous.
- But the development of an egg to caterpillar to pupa to butterfly seems to involve a complete loss of structure during the latter metamorphosis.
- However, the popular view that the caterpillar is converted into amorphous goo is overly simplistic. It seems that there are ‘imaginal discs’ (‘imaginal’: from ‘imago’, the adult form of an insect, in this case, the butterfly) in the body of the caterpillar that are not broken down like the rest of its body but are built upon to form the body-parts of the adult butterfly. See Wikipedia: Pupa and Wikipedia: Imaginal disc.
- So, the ‘amorphous goo’ analogy isn’t available to explain how a human being can be reduced to dust and dispersed and yet be resurrected as the very same being.
Footnote 18:
- There’s a passage in Job, much popularised by Handel’s Messiah – that Job would see God ‘in his flesh’ (biblegateway: Job 19:26; biblehub: Job 19:26 (Hebrew)). What ‘flesh’ – in the light of Paul’s discussion – is he thinking of? Is he thinking of a resurrection into the same – ‘his’ – flesh or some new flesh that will then be his. What sort of flesh might this be?
- There are alternative translations that make this passage in Job have nothing to do with resurrection.
Footnote 19:
- In Job, somewhat as in Ecclesiastes, the narrator or lead character seems to win all the sceptical arguments and then he – or a redactor – ‘bottles it’ at the end.
- I find this disappointing. The final response doesn’t actually answer any of the sceptical points but gives an ‘appeal to authority’ normally taken as a logical fallacy in philosophical circles.
Footnote 20:
- Well, yes, but ‘most of us’ as a fairly elite group do understand a lot of what ‘most people’ don’t understand, and quite a lot of people do understand advanced mathematics and all that.
- It is true that God’s revelation would need to be accommodated to what could be understood at the time of revelation. That’s why we shouldn’t take a lot of what we read in Scripture literally.
Footnote 21:
- Well, I doubt we’ll understand ‘all’, but we can have a go at understanding ‘some’ and try to come to some rational view.
- I imagine most people have some view of what the future life may be, so it’s worth discussing the matter.
Footnote 22:
- Strictly, Paul says our body will be ‘like’, not ‘just like’ Christ’s resurrection body.
- I find Christ’s resurrection body – if eternally and essentially ‘inhabited’ – somewhat problematical. Can ‘God’ really be essentially embodied? It seems like an eternal ‘humiliation’, however ‘glorious’ that body might be.
- I had previously construed the idea of Christ’s resurrection body as demonstrative of his survival after death, and his ascension as demonstrative of his leaving this earth, rather than blasting off and going somewhere. What do others think?
Footnote 23:
- Paul had earlier argued that death was essential for the transformation from this life to the next (the seed must die).
- This ‘mystery’ sounds like a forehead-slapping moment. What about those still alive at the Lord’s return? Would they need to die? No – but they would need to be ‘changed’.
- Well, yes … but doesn’t this contradict the earlier argument?
Footnote 24:
- This ‘clothing’ is analogous to the idea of our bodies as a ‘tent’ in 2 Cor. 5:4 and thereabouts.
- But just what sort of thing is the being that inhabits a tent of whatever sort?
Footnote 25:
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