1 Corinthians 15:30-31

“And why stand we also in jeopardy every hour? 31. I protest, brethren, by that glorying in you, which I have in Christ our Lord, I die daily.”

The transition from the bloody death of the martyrs (1 Corinthians 15:29) to the daily life of the apostles, which is a constant menace of martyrdom (1 Corinthians 15:30), is easily understood. The force of the καί, also, which, in the other explanations, always presents some difficulty, is perfectly simple. The we includes Paul, Silas, Timothy, who laboured together at Corinth; then the other apostles, who live like Paul in perpetual danger of death. This 1 Corinthians 15:30 reminds us of the passages 1 Corinthians 4:9; 2 Corinthians 4:10-11; 2 Corinthians 11:23-27; Romans 8:35-36.

Vv. 31. Comp. Romans 8:36: “For thy sake are we killed all the day.” There is no day nor hour of the day when they may not expect to be seized and brought to execution.

The classical phrase νή with an accusative of person or thing, as an affirmation on oath, occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, yet Paul might have had the opportunity of using it 2 Corinthians 1:23. The reading ἡμετέραν (our), which signifies: “the cause of glorying which we may have in you,” is condemned not only by the authority of the documents, but by the two verbs in the singular, between which this adjective would stand. According to the reading ὑμετέραν, your, the subject is still the ground of glorying which Paul finds in them: “the cause of glorying you are to me by your faith.” What labours had not this work cost him! What dangers had he not had to run to accomplish it! The last words: in Christ our Lord, soften what might be too self-exalting in these expressions. If all these successes have been gained by him, it is only because of his communion with Christ.

The apostle finally takes from his present stay at Ephesus an example of that daily death in the midst of which he passes his life.