A new question is now introduced, What will happen to those who are alive when Christ returns? (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-17). The principle that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God finds with them as with the dead its illustration. They will not all die, but all alike will be transformed instantaneously when the last trump (1 Thessalonians 4:16; Matthew 24:31; Revelation 11:15) sounds. The dead will be raised incorruptible, those still living (Paul thinks of himself and most of the readers as among the number) will be transformed. It lies in the very nature of things that the corruptible and mortal should put on over them as a garment incorruption and immortality, that they may be transmuted or absorbed by them (2 Corinthians 5:4). Then the prophecy of Isaiah 25:8 will be fulfilled. Triumphantly Paul quotes Hosea 13:14; death has lost its victory and its sting. Its sting is sin, sin's power is the Law. But thank God for the Christian's victory through Christ! The long theological argument, in noble rhetoric, fitly closes with a practical exhortation.
1 Corinthians 15:56. Some regard this verse as an interpolation, breaking with a prosaic bit of theology the lyrical movement of the passage. But though it may be a gloss intended to explain what death's sting is, yet it is so terse and original, and at the same time so characteristic of Paul's central doctrine, that the phrases are not likely to have been coined by anyone else, nor is their presence in this context at all surprising. Death received its power through sin, but sin itself would have been powerless apart from the Law. This had lent sin its power and provided its opportunity. For the Law stimulated into active rebellion the sin that, till it came, lay sleeping in the flesh (Romans 7:7-11). The Christian died with Christ to the Law; hence sin lost that which conferred on it its strength, while with the paralysis of sin, death lost its power to sting. And the powerlessness of death came to light especially in its reversal in the resurrection.