1 Corinthians 15:16Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

If Christ were not going to accomplish this, He would not have come. Yet the Apostle does not say this. He points only to the end, to His Resurrection, and by this persuades all.

Again he defends the same proposition. For He rose in order to arrange the universal resurrection.

If a lie directed against someone’s passing life is hateful, how much more abominable is a lie against eternal life. Such is every lie in religious teaching. Therefore the Apostle reckons as false witness every lie about Christ, even if it seems to contain praise of Him.

For baptism is an image of the Master’s death. But the image is useless if it does not lead to the forgiveness of sins. Therefore the burden of sins is still upon us. This is what the Apostle added to what he said above: “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (1 Cor 15:3).

“Moreover, we are found false witnesses of God, because we testified of God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise… For if the dead do not rise, then, as noted above, Christ has not risen.” Is this not a new absurdity? Could it be, the Apostle seems to say, that everything I have from above was given to confirm falsehood and deception? And such falsehood would fall upon God Himself, since none other than He armed me with miraculous gifts.

Having established the truth of Christ's resurrection as undoubted, the Apostle Paul boldly proceeds to every kind of conclusion from it. He shows with complete clarity that this truth leads to the indisputable recognition of another truth, namely, the universal resurrection.

All conclusions opposed to this must undermine this most important of Christian truths, and together with it overthrow all Christianity. Therefore whoever is a Christian must necessarily be free from every doubt concerning the future resurrection of the dead.

Thus, if some, such as Hymenaeus and Philetus (2 Tim), and also the unbelieving Greeks (Acts 17:12), say that there is no resurrection of the dead, then they do not believe in the risen Christ.

For this must already follow necessarily, as I said: if the dead do not rise, neither has Christ risen. The Apostle often repeats this reasoning in order to fix it in the mind. It is very impressive, and in this partly dreadful, but even more absurd form, it presents the thought that the dead do not rise. Through this, that thought is set against the manifest fact of Christ’s Resurrection, so irrefutably proved. Its witness is the very man who established faith among the Corinthians and now writes these exhortations.