1 Corinthians 15:2
Ye are saved, if ye hold fast — Your salvation is begun, and will be perfected, if ye continue in the faith. Unless ye have believed in vain — Unless indeed your faith was only a delusion.... [ Continue Reading ]
Ye are saved, if ye hold fast — Your salvation is begun, and will be perfected, if ye continue in the faith. Unless ye have believed in vain — Unless indeed your faith was only a delusion.... [ Continue Reading ]
I received — From Christ himself. It was not a fiction of my own. Isaiah 53:8.... [ Continue Reading ]
According to the scriptures — He proves it first from scripture, then from the testimony of a cloud of witnesses. Psalms 16:10.... [ Continue Reading ]
By the twelve — This was their standing appellation; but their full number was not then present.... [ Continue Reading ]
Above five hundred — Probably in Galilee. A glorious and incontestable proof! The greater part remain — Alive.... [ Continue Reading ]
Then by all the apostles — The twelve were mentioned 1 Corinthians 15:5. This title here, therefore, seems to include the seventy; if not all those, likewise, whom God afterwards sent to plant the gospel in heathen nations.... [ Continue Reading ]
An untimely birth — It was impossible to abase himself more than he does by this single appellation. As an abortion is not worthy the name of a man, so he affirms himself to be not worthy the name of an apostle.... [ Continue Reading ]
I persecuted the church — True believers are humbled all their lives, even for the sins they committed before they believed.... [ Continue Reading ]
I laboured more than they all — That is, more than any of them, from a deep sense of the peculiar love God had shown me. Yet, to speak more properly, it is not I, but the grace of God that is with me — This it is which at first qualified me for the work, and still excites me to zeal and diligence in... [ Continue Reading ]
Whether I or they, so we preach — All of us speak the same thing.... [ Continue Reading ]
How say some — Who probably had been heathen philosophers.... [ Continue Reading ]
If there be no resurrection — If it be a thing flatly impossible.... [ Continue Reading ]
Then is our preaching — From a commission supposed to be given after the resurrection. Vain — Without any real foundation.... [ Continue Reading ]
If the dead rise not — If the very notion of a resurrection be, as they say, absurd and impossible.... [ Continue Reading ]
Ye are still in your sins — That is, under the guilt of them. So that there needed something more than reformation, (which was plainly wrought,) in order to their being delivered from the guilt of sin even that atonement, the sufficiency of which God attested by raising our great Surety from the gra... [ Continue Reading ]
They who sleep in Christ — Who have died for him, or believing in him. Are perished — Have lost their life and being together.... [ Continue Reading ]
If in this life only we have hope — If we look for nothing beyond the grave. But if we have a divine evidence of things not seen, if we have "a hope full of immortality," if we now taste of "the powers of the world to come," and see "the crown that fadeth not away," then, notwithstanding" all our pr... [ Continue Reading ]
But now — St. Paul declares that Christians "have hope," not "in this life only." His proof of the resurrection lies in a narrow compass, 1 Corinthians 15:12. Almost all the rest of the chapter is taken up in illustrating, vindicating, and applying it. The proof is short, but solid and convincing, t... [ Continue Reading ]
As through Adam all, even the righteous, die, so through Christ all these shall be made alive — He does not say, "shall revive," (as naturally as they die,) but shall be made alive, by a power not their own.... [ Continue Reading ]
Afterward — The whole harvest. At the same time the wicked shall rise also. But they are not here taken into the account.... [ Continue Reading ]
Then — After the resurrection and the general judgment. Cometh the end — Of the world; the grand period of all those wonderful scenes that have appeared for so many succeeding generations. When he shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, and he (the Father) shall have abolished all adverse... [ Continue Reading ]
He must reign — Because so it is written. Till he — the Father hath put all his enemies under his feet. Psalms 110:1.... [ Continue Reading ]
The last enemy that is destroyed is death — Namely, after Satan, Hebrews 2:14, and sin, 1 Corinthians 15:56, are destroyed. In the same order they prevailed. Satan brought in sin, and sin brought forth death. And Christ, when he of old engaged with these enemies, first conquered Satan, then sin, in... [ Continue Reading ]
Under him — Under the Son. Psalms 8:6... [ Continue Reading ]
The Son also shall be subject — Shall deliver up the mediatorial kingdom. That the three — one God may be all in all — All things, (consequently all persons,) without any interruption, without the intervention of any creature, without the opposition of any enemy, shall be subordinate to God. All sha... [ Continue Reading ]
Who are baptized for the dead — Perhaps baptized in hope of blessings to be received after they are numbered with the dead. Or, "baptized in the room of the dead" — Of them that are just fallen in the cause of Christ: like soldiers who advance in the room of their companions that fell just before th... [ Continue Reading ]
Why are we — The apostles. Also in danger every hour — It is plain we can expect no amends in this life.... [ Continue Reading ]
I protest by your rejoicing, which I have — Which love makes my own. I die daily — I am daily in the very jaws of death. Beside that I live, as it were, in a daily martyrdom.... [ Continue Reading ]
If to speak after the manner of men — That is, to use a proverbial phrase, expressive of the most imminent danger I have fought with wild beasts at Ephesus — With the savage fury of a lawless multitude, Acts 19:29, &c. This seems to have been but just before. Let as eat, &c. — We might, on that supp... [ Continue Reading ]
Be not deceived — By such pernicious counsels as this. Evil communications corrupt good manners — He opposes to the Epicurean saying, a well — known verse of the poet Menander. Evil communications — Discourse contrary to faith, hope, or love, naturally tends to destroy all holiness.... [ Continue Reading ]
Awake — An exclamation full of apostolical majesty. Shake off your lethargy! To righteousness — Which flows from the true knowledge of God, and implies that your whole soul be broad awake. And sin not — That is, and ye will not sin Sin supposes drowsiness of soul. There is need to press this. For so... [ Continue Reading ]
But some one possibly will say, How are the dead raised up, after their whole frame is dissolved? And with what kind of bodies do they come again, after these are mouldered into dust?... [ Continue Reading ]
To the inquiry concerning the manner of rising, and the quality of the bodies that rise, the Apostle answers first by a similitude, 1 Corinthians 15:36, and then plainly and directly, 1 Corinthians 15:42. That which thou sowest, is not quickened into new life and verdure, except it die — Undergo a d... [ Continue Reading ]
Thou sowest not the body that shall be — Produced from the seed committed to the ground, but a bare, naked grain, widely different from that which will afterward rise out of the earth.... [ Continue Reading ]
But God — Not thou, O man, not the grain itself, giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, from the time he distinguished the various Species of beings; and to each of the seeds, not only of the fruits, but animals also, (to which the Apostle rises in the following verse,) its own body; not only pecu... [ Continue Reading ]
All flesh — As if he had said, Even earthy bodies differ from earthy, and heavenly bodies from heavenly. What wonder then, if heavenly bodies differ from earthy? or the bodies which rise from those that lay in the grave?... [ Continue Reading ]
There are also heavenly bodies — As the sun, moon, and stars; and there are earthy — as vegetables and animals. But the brightest lustre which the latter can have is widely different from that of the former.... [ Continue Reading ]
Yea, and the heavenly bodies themselves differ from each other.... [ Continue Reading ]
So also is the resurrection of the dead — So great is the difference between the body which fell, and that which rises. It is sown — A beautiful word; committed, as seed, to the ground. In corruption — Just ready to putrefy, and, by various degrees of corruption and decay, to return to the dust from... [ Continue Reading ]
It is sown in dishonour — Shocking to those who loved it best, human nature in disgrace! It is raised in glory — Clothed with robes of light, fit for those whom the King of heaven delights to honour. It is sown in weakness — Deprived even of that feeble strength which it once enjoyed. It is raised i... [ Continue Reading ]
It is sown in this world a merely animal body — Maintained by food, sleep, and air, like the bodies of brutes: but it is raised of a more refined contexture, needing none of these animal refreshments, and endued with qualities of a spiritual nature, like the angels of God.... [ Continue Reading ]
The first Adam was made a living soul — God gave him such life as other animals enjoy: but the last Adam, Christ, is a quickening spirit — As he hath life in himself, so he quickeneth whom he will; giving a more refined life to their very bodies at the resurrection. Genesis 2:7... [ Continue Reading ]
The first man was from the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven — The first man, being from the earth, is subject to corruption and dissolution, like the earth from which he came. The second man — St. Paul could not so well say, "Is from heaven, heavenly:" because, though man owes i... [ Continue Reading ]
They that are earthy — Who continue without any higher principle. They that are heavenly — Who receive a divine principle from heaven.... [ Continue Reading ]
The image of the heavenly — Holiness and glory.... [ Continue Reading ]
But first we must be entirely changed; for such flesh and blood as we are clothed with now, cannot enter into that kingdom which is wholly spiritual: neither doth this corruptible body inherit that incorruptible kingdom.... [ Continue Reading ]
A mystery — A truth hitherto unknown; and not yet fully known to any of the sons of men. We — Christians. The Apostle considers them all as one, in their succeeding generations. Shall not all die — Suffer a separation of soul and body. But we shall all — Who do not die, be changed — So that this ani... [ Continue Reading ]
In a moment — Amazing work of omnipotence! And cannot the same power now change us into saints in a moment? The trumpet shall sound — To awaken all that sleep in the dust of the earth.... [ Continue Reading ]
Death is swallowed up in victory — That is, totally conquered, abolished for ever.... [ Continue Reading ]
O death, where is thy sting? — Which once was full of hellish poison. O hades, the receptacle of separate souls, where is thy victory — Thou art now robbed of all thy spoils; all thy captives are set at liberty. Hades literally means the invisible world, and relates to the soul; death, to the body.... [ Continue Reading ]
The sting of death is sin — Without which it could have no power. But this sting none can resist by his own strength. And the strength of sin is the law — As is largely declared, Romans 7:7, &c.... [ Continue Reading ]
But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory — Over sin, death, and hades.... [ Continue Reading ]
Be ye steadfast — In yourselves. Unmovable — By others; continually increasing in the work of faith and labour of love. Knowing your labour is not in vain in the Lord — Whatever ye do for his sake shall have its full reward in that day. Let us also endeavour, by cultivating holiness in all its branc... [ Continue Reading ]