'Do not be deceived. Evil companionships (or 'conversations') corrupt good morals. Awake to soberness righteously, and sin not. For some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to move you to shame.'
Paul finally uses his arguments to stress the need for right behaviour, and to declare that wrong doctrine produces wrong behaviour. Some Corinthians behaved badly because they considered that the body was not important, that only the spirit was involved in redemption. The others should recognise that mixing with the wrong people who teach such falsehood will corrupt their morals.
'Do not be deceived.' Compare on 1 Corinthians 3:18 where there was a danger that they would be deceived by false wisdom, the same situation as here. See also 1 Corinthians 6:9 where he warns against their being deceived about the fact that those who commit sin easily will not inherit the Kingly Rule of God. So, he says, let them be quite clear on the fact, that, as the proverb says, 'evil companionships (and their conversations) corrupt good morals (character, habits, moral attitudes)'. This latter comes from the Greek poet Menander's 'Thais' but had by this time become a popular saying. The word for companionships can also signify conversations. The principle is simple. Listen to the wrong people and you will be morally bankrupted.
'Awake to soberness righteously, and sin not.' The verb may mean simply to wake up, but can also refer to waking from drunken stupor, which is a play on the idea in 1 Corinthians 15:32. Thus Paul is saying 'awake to soberness, and in so waking be righteous and behave righteously, and sin not'. They should wake up from their folly and not behave with folly. This would confirm that those who rejected the resurrection of the body were also careless about morals.
'For some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to move you to shame.' And the result of their excessive so-called spirituality is that they are seemingly not aware that among their number are those who have no knowledge of God. They are too taken up with 'spirit' activity to recognise their own failings and lack. While boldly claiming divine knowledge they are failing to pass on that true knowledge to their adherents. There are now those in the church who, for all their outward manifestations, do not know God. And he seeks to move them to shame about it.
So in this important section Paul differentiates between his own Gospel and their Gospel, for they have fallen away from and have ceased to proclaim the true Gospel, so much so that some of their adherents do not even know God. They have not experienced the power of the Gospel. These Corinthians consider that they already talk with angelic speech and that they are one with the spiritual world, and the consequence is that they consider that that is all important and that the body and its behaviour is unimportant.
So he appeals for them to awake from their drunken stupor and recognise the truth. Let them consider his own endurance, and that of his fellow-teachers. Let them recognise from that the truth of the resurrection of the body, (for why else would Paul and his fellow-teachers endure what they do?), and that the consequence of that is that what the body does is important, and let them recognise that the spiritual experience they now have is at least partly spurious, and is actually leading them into sins in the body for which they will have to give account (1 Corinthians 4:5).
What Form Will The Resurrection Body Take? (1 Corinthians 15:35-49).
Up to this point Paul's emphasis has been on the resurrection of 'the dead'. Now he begins to deal with the related question, the resurrection of 'the body'. When we speak of the resurrection of the dead, with what kind of body will they rise? Paul answers that it is in some way connected with the old body, but is a spiritual body, arising out of the physical but not itself physical.