1 Corinthians 15:1-58

CHAPTER 15

SYNOPSIS OF THE CHAPTER

He proves the resurrection of the dead against the false teachers who denied it:

i. From the fact of Christ's resurrection. Thus (ver. 12) he gives the bearing of it on our resurrection.

ii. He proves the resurrection by the authority of those who are baptized for the dead (ver. 29).

iii. He declares what the body will be like in the resurrection (ver. 35), and then names the four endowments of the glorified body (ver. 42).

iv. He shows that we shall all rise again, but shall not all be changed, and that in the resurrection which shall take place, in a moment, when the trumpet shall sound, death will be completely swallowed up (ver. 51).

Ver. 1. I declare unto you, i.e., recall to your memory. Vers. 3, 4. How that Christ died for our sins.. . according to the scriptures. Hosea 6:2 : "After two days will He revive us; in the third day He will raise us up," i.e., when He shall on the third day Himself rise from death to life; for the resurrection of Christ was the cause of our rising from the death of sin, and of our future resurrection from bodily death, so that we are to rise like Christ on the Judgment Day to everlasting life. See notes on Romans 4:25. So Anselm, Dorotheus, in the beginning of his Synopsis, and also the Jewish writers of old in Galatin. lib. viii. c. 22. Theophylact, following S. Chrysostom, says that it was prophesied under an allegory that Christ should rise again on the third day; for Jonah brought from the whale's belly on the third day, was a type of Christ brought back to life from death and hell on the third day.

Isaac, too, typified the same event in his being rescued from death when about to be sacrificed by his father, and restored to his mother alive and well on the third day. So Christ was given by His Father and sacrificed, and raised again on the third day. But these two instances are drawn from the allegorical sense, that of Hosea is from the literal.