CRITICAL NOTES
1 Corinthians 15:12.—Cf. the strain of 1 Thessalonians 4:14, or Romans 8:11. Also see that it is “Christ” [and not first of all facts about Him] who is the burden and substance of the preaching. Cf. 2 Corinthians 4:5, “We preach Christ Jesus, as Lord.” Perhaps “denying” a resurrection in fact, whilst claiming still to “believe in it” in the (non-natural) sense of 2 Timothy 2:18. [Epicureans were practically Materialists; Stoics taught (a Nirvana-like or Pantheist) return of the individual into the Great, Central Being. So they laughed with polite contempt at Athens. “A new god and goddess: Jesus and Anastasis” (Acts 17:18). Common people believed that death was either extinction of the soul or a worthless shadow life, and this most likely the form of disbelief which would be prevalent in the Church at Corinth. (After all, in this, as in many similar cases, the philosophers only state more explicitly what common people with native shrewdness feel. E.g. the difficulties raised in 1 Corinthians 15:35 are recurrent perpetually amongst plain people who never heard of even the names of the philosophers.) Very important to notice in this discussion how the resurrection of the body is made to stand or fall with the after-life of the man. As in Mark 12:18 sqq. Christ enlarges the scope of the discussion from one merely concerning the resurrection, to an argument for the immortality of the man in covenant with God, and hence for his body also, as an integral part of his redeemed and covenanted manhood.]
1 Corinthians 15:12.—“If one, then all.”
1 Corinthians 15:13.—“All, or none at all.”
1 Corinthians 15:14.—Not this time “vain” through any fault or failure on their part, but because the very basis of faith and life has been an unreality.
1 Corinthians 15:15.—“We were chosen to be His witnesses of this very fact (Acts 10:41; Acts 2:32; Acts 3:15; Acts 13:31); it would turn out that we were God’s false witnesses!” Of God (second time) is “as to God, and what He has done.”
1 Corinthians 15:18. In Christ.—As Revelation 14:13; 1 Thessalonians 4:16. [But not 1 Corinthians 15:14, which is “through Jesus,” rendering the connection more probable “will God bring through Jesus with Him” (viz. Jesus).]
1 Corinthians 15:19.—Do not connect “hoped in Christ.” [Cf. for this, 1 John 3:3 (no longer ambiguous in R.V.). Yet see Ephesians 1:12.] Our whole life is “in Christ”; our “hope” is the hope of men who are “in Christ.” Miserable.—In the old sense (cf. “miserable sinners” in the Anglican Liturgy) “to be pitied, or compassionated, unhappy that we are!”
HOMILETIC ANALYSIS.— 1 Corinthians 15:12-19
1. “Does death end all?” Well, answer another question: “Did His death end all?” A popular illustrated edition of Renan’s Vie de Jésus has, as its last page, inserted even after the “Fin,” which closes the text, a woodcut of the Crucified. It is simply and only a crucified peasant, one before whose cross a man might pass with half-contemptuous pity, and cry in modern slang, “Poor beggar! Pauvre diable!” He is alone as he hangs in the picture; not even the raven of the classical quotation is yet wheeling around the gibbet; the sky behind is cloudy and angry; the head hangs slouched in death’s relaxation; the hair is the uncombed, matted mass of a wretched peasant who for twenty-four hours has been in the hands of enemies. The title of the picture might have been “Fin” too. The realistic page, the execution of a Jewish fanatic, is the last in Renan’s book. When He says, “It is finished,” Renan thinks it is finished too. The Vie de Jésus goes no further. Forsaken, a failure, finished,—so He hangs in the illustration. If that were all, if the life of Jesus did end there, what a difference! But is that the end of the story of the Incarnate Son? No. His life did not begin at Bethlehem; nor did it finish at Calvary. Yet such talk as was rife at Corinth, at least in some quarters, could only have one logical consequence, viz. that it did there finish, that Christ, like any other dear or great name of the past, is nothing but a memory.
2. Doubtless a good deal of such talk was the informal, loose, “liberal,” “intellectual” theologising on this particular topic, of which the first and last and only specimen was by no means that in Corinth. Some caught up, parrot-fashion, the current novelty of their circle: “No intelligent man, you know, believes in any resurrection of literally dead men. Nobody, you know, denies the Resurrection. Oh no; but of course it is agreed that nothing was ever meant but a moral rising again. ‘Awake to righteousness,’ for example.” Or a superficial, natural sharpness, in danger of making that native shrewdness which so generally proves right in common things, the arbiter of judgment in every sort of case which comes under its review, pronounces off-hand: “Cannot be, you know! The dead rise again? The dead? Why, look at them! Is not that enough?” (1 Corinthians 15:35). Or another of these exceedingly clever, reasonable people, with great wisdom propounds their pet difficulty: “Well, you see, our point is here. We cannot see where they are to get a body. What sort of body is conceivable for them? No, no; such a doctrine cannot pass muster with us.” Human nature is the same in all ages and Churches and lands. It likes to pose as the philosopher; it likes to be amongst the people “not quite so easily satisfied as some folks, you know!” And there may have been some in their hearts really half afraid of the doctrine; hardly caring to face the thought of having some day to confront in a restored life the past and its account.
3. By-and-by (1 Corinthians 15:36 sqq.) Paul deals fully with the objections raised by such “sharp,” “’cute” people, rather vain of their wisdom, and of their emancipation from old and foolish beliefs. Here he drives home at their Christianity. He gives them credit for being sincerely Christian, so far as they understood it. In 1 Corinthians 15:36 he is bitingly satirical: “Yes, you are exceedingly clever, no doubt, to perceive such difficulties. But you are really fools, with all your wisdom.” Here he takes the most favourable estimate: They do really care to be Christians; they do really prize their Christian hope; they would be distressed, he is willing to believe, if all ended in vanity and mocking emptiness. Then let them look where they are being led, before they commit themselves to such rash pronouncements. Are they prepared to go all the length of the path into which, with such a light heart and confident, they have begun to enter?
4. “No resurrection of dead persons” at all? Then take a choice; read the alternative in two directions: “All, or none at all.” All, or no risen Christ! (1 Corinthians 15:13; 1 Corinthians 15:16). “One and all.” A risen Christ, and therefore all! If no risen Christ, then all distinctively “Christian” preaching is folly (1 Corinthians 15:14), or falsehood (1 Corinthians 15:15), whether intentionally so or not. To recast, reconstruct, the Christian scheme, so as to leave out a Risen Christ, is to produce what is not Christianity at all. For what underlies this elimination of His rising again in the proposed scheme of doctrine? Naturalism; which presumes always against the breaking-in of the supernatural, and even the exceptional, upon the natural and ordinary in the world’s course. [“Are we then, by assuming this one event, to abandon the entire modern view of the world?” (A. Schweizer, quoted by Delitzsch). “So soon as I can convince myself of the reality of the resurrection of Christ, this absolute miracle, as Paul seems to declare it, I shatter the modern conception of the word. This breach in the order of nature, which I regard as inviolable, would be an irreparable breach in my system, in my whole world of thought” (H. Lang, apud Delitzsch, Expositor, January 1889).] And that is no “Christianity” which is not full of God’s present-day, active, wise, loving operativeness in His world, especially as incessantly “elaborating” its Redemption by His Son, Christ. As well, moreover, delete the Cross as the Resurrection, and hope to call the expurgated story the story of Christ. It may be an imitation of the story; like some clever historical novels, making use of known facts, and keeping in many parts fairly parallel with them. But though it may borrow the name, and try to pass as “a Gospel,” though with differences; it is a “different Gospel”; another there cannot be (Galatians 1:6-7). The old “preaching is vain” if this be true. A vexatiously restrictive code of ethics is left, without adequate motive or power, and encumbered with a good deal else besides the Resurrection which is “top-hamper,” some day to be thrown overboard to lighten the ship.
5. Nor has it only theological consequences. The practical consequences are many and serious. Faith in good testimony is seriously shaken (1 Corinthians 15:15); but of more consequence is it that Faith has been groping after, laying hold of, a shadow, a memory, a name, a vanished Christ. There may have been an offering of the Lamb of God on Calvary, but we have no token by which to differentiate that death from any other crucifixion. The offering may have been accepted, but we have no evidence of the fact. Behind the veil there is for a guilty soul no real, living, interceding High Priest drawing near to God with its burden of “sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Long ago that “High Priest’s” body was left to corrupt in its new grave in a garden near Jerusalem. Jesus is no more than the Lazarus now finally dead; He is only living as Paul is still living. The death on the cross may then well have been only the abortive end, unfortunately premature, of a life which might have done much more for its generation if it had been longer spared. But everything distinctive of the Christian hope, everything of a real Atonement on which a guilty conscience may stay itself, is gone. Christ is one of the world’s great names—perhaps the greatest. But “in Christ”? As well say “in Paul”?
6. “In Christ.” It is a restricted life. It has its joys and its compensations, whatever its value, or truth, or falsehood. But it has its restrictions, its sacrifices, its self-denial; it goes entirely against the “grain” of human nature; it entails heavy penalties, social and other. And if, after all, its eternal compensation is a delusion; if, above all, the guilty soul must pass into eternity without a Saviour and an Atonement, left eternally “in the lurch,” “made ashamed by our hope” (Romans 5:5); then Christians have lived in a fool’s paradise, and made a fool’s bargain. In the arena as they are, before a gazing world (1 Corinthians 4:9), they may well expect the laughter of the spectators, unless indeed these accord them pity. They are of “all men most pitiable.” “Nos perituri salutamus.” [And this is not much mitigated, if—seeing that the argument of the chapter assumes that no resurrection means no after-life at all, and so no judgment or (perhaps) hell—it be the earthly bargain of which account is alone taken by Paul.]
SEPARATE HOMILIES
1 Corinthians 15:19. “If … of all men most miserable.”
I. A few of the facts which this implies.—
1. There is misery among men upon earth. Obviously. But remember three things:
(1) Not so great misery as man’s sin deserves.
(2) Not so great as man’s happiness. Days, weeks, of affliction; years of health and happiness.
(3) Not so great as the good it will ultimately work out. Suffering in perdition works no good; here, under Mediatorial rule, it is disciplinary and corrective.
2. Misery amongst men exists in different degrees.—Some are “most miserable.” Calm and sunshine in one lot; storm and darkness in another. One knows nothing of sickness or poverty; another nothing of health and sufficiency. Some followed by consequences of sin, lashed by guilty conscience; some sin and suffer nothing; some have the Christian peace. A day is coming when eternal justice must balance the accounts, for earth’s inequalities.
3. The degree of misery is sometimes regulated by hope.—Hope directed to right objects, and rightly founded, will bear a man up under all the ills of life, make him calm in the tempest and valiant in the fight; will give him such a grasp on the future as will prevent him from sinking under the present. It will be a firm anchor, holding his ship securely amidst the tumultuous billows of his stormy life. Yet does not all disappointment grow out of hope? What is disappointment but a hope lost? And this, but a kind of life lost? Loss of hope is hell.
4. The hope of a Christian, if false, will make him “of all men most miserable.”—These words must not be taken to teach:
(1) That apart from the resurrection of Christ man has no [kind or measure of] evidence of a future state. “It is said that the Emperor Frederick III., hearing of the death of a very wicked man, who had lived in prosperity, without having had at any time his health or fortune impaired, and died at the age of ninety-three, said, ‘See here a proof of another life.’ ” So whispers the rational instinct of all.
(2) That, on the supposition that there is no future life, the practice of virtue here would place man in a worse condition than vice. Virtue, as embodied in Christianity, would give a man considerable advantage even in this world. “Ways of pleasantness,” etc.
(3) That, apart from a future state, a godly life is not binding on man. So long as man and his Maker exist in relation to each other, so long his obligation to love Him “with all his heart,” etc., must continue. What, then, do they mean? [The writer then greatly limits the truth of the text to the Apostle and his “evangelical contemporaries.” (But query this?) Also (he says) remember “that he supposes the disappointed to survive the discovery of the delusion.” Else existence would terminate in, or the next moment after, the discovery of the delusion, and there would be no misery at all. (Query, this over subtle?)] The misery of a tremendous disappointment. [Is not the usual, “superficial” view truer, that it is that present loss and unhappiness which to the outside world seems in varying degree always to be the price of being a Christian? “The game not worth the candle.”]
II. Several things will tend to aggravate this disappointment.—
1. The hold which the blighted hope had obtained over the whole soul. Solomon speaks of the loss of a hope as “the giving up of the ghost.” His idea was that the dissolution of a soul from hope was as terrible and distressing as the dissolution of soul from body. Imagine the case of a man who had thrown his whole being into Christianity, who had allowed its doctrines to absorb his thoughts, its precepts to rule his life, its promises to fire his aspirations, and who sanctified all the comforts, advantages, and honours of this life for its sake, being met at the moment when his hopes were at their zenith, and when his death was at hand, with the conviction that all was a delusion; and you have a man “of all men most miserable.”
2. The deception which this blighted hope prompted [Query, “led”?] its subjects to practise.—“False witnesses of God.” The deception of a hearty and practical believer in Christianity is earnest. If he believes in the leading subjects contained in the Gospel, he must become an enthusiastic propagandist; the desire to make men believe as he does becomes the dominant passion. His deception is systematic, not an occasional attempt, a spasmodic effort, a desultory endeavour; it is the organised purpose of his life. It is influential. No system has proved itself more victoriously aggressive. By it these workers “turned the world upside down.” To think, then, that not only themselves had been the victims of delusion, but had helped to make others such, would intensify the disappointment, and render them “most miserable.”
3. The destitution in which the departure of the hope would leave the soul.—Christianity makes a most radical change in a man: what he once loved he loathes, what he once sought he shuns, once valued now despises, what seemed gain to him counts loss. On the discovery of the delusion, he would be left with tastes and desires for which there was no pleasure correspondent. Nothing in the old to meet the new proclivities, and the new has melted away into thin air.
Conclusion.—Add these things together, and then—“most miserable.” Thank God all this only hypothetic. “But now Is Christ risen,” etc.—Adapted from “Homilist” New Series, 4:61.
HOMILETIC SUGGESTIONS
1 Corinthians 15:14. Reverse the Proposition.
I. Preaching is not in vain.—It has power. It effects moral miracles.
II. Faith is not vain.—It brings comfort, pardon, life. Therefore—
III. Christ is risen.—[J. L.]