One In Jesus

Paul has now finished the serious theological part of his epistle, and so he moves to some practical concerns.

One recurring feature of many of Paul’s letters is his collection of funds for the saints in Jerusalem. We aren’t ever told exactly why this is needed, but Paul sees this sort of inter-congregational charity as at the core of the gospel.

(1Co 16:1-4 ESV)  Now concerning the collection for the saints: as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do.  2 On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come.  3 And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.  4 If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

Paul is soliciting a freewill offering, not a levy like the Temple tax. Continue reading →

Paul next returns to an earlier theme, the comparison of Adam and Jesus.

(1Co 15:45 ESV) 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

Paul quotes Gen 2:7 to show the superiority of Jesus (the last Adam or last human being) as the giver of life (through the Spirit) rather than a mere recipient of life.

[Jesus] is not just a soma pneumatikon [Spiritual body] in his own right, so to speak, the first example of the large number of such beings the creator intends to make through resurrection, but he is also the one through whom the creator will accomplish this—because he is the one who, as ‘life-giving Spirit’, will perform the work of raising the dead. Genesis 2:7 is thus not so much a proof-text, more a part of the larger story which the Christian, looking at Jesus’ resurrection, can now tell; and the good news which emerges from this is that Jesus has pioneered the way into the long-awaited future, the new age which the creator has planned (verse 46). The pneumatikos [Spirit-empowered] state is not simply an original idea in the mind of the creator, from which the human race fell sadly away; this model of humanity is the future reality, the reality which will swallow up and replace merely psychikos [mortal] life.

N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 2003), 355. Continue reading →

Paul next begins to deal with much more serious objections — the sort a Greek philosopher might ask — beginning with, “With what kind of [dead] body do they come?” After all, the ancients weren’t stupid. They knew that the body rotted away. If there’s to be a resurrection, what replaces the decayed corpse? How could such a thing be re-animated?

(1Co 15:35-41 ESV) But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

Paul does not give much in the way of detail regarding our resurrection bodies. Rather, he analogizes to several things to illustrate that a body can “die” and come back in a new a better form. A grain of wheat goes into the ground and rises up a new plant. There are, he says,”heavenly bodies and earthly bodies” — and all with glory but with different kinds of glory. In short, we’ll have bodies but different kinds of bodies. Continue reading →

We now come to one of the most puzzling passages in all of scripture —

(1Co 15:29 ESV) 29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?

The Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) take this quite literally, undergoing immersions for the sake of deceased ancestors  (“vicarious baptism” we’ll call the practice). But that seems just too far removed from the rest of all of Christianity to be right. It’s Christianity, not magic. But then, Paul’s words really need to mean something.

There are nearly as many theories as there are commentators. Some believe that the Corinthians engaged in vicarious baptisms for deceased loved ones who’d not been baptized during life, but it’s hard to imagine that this was a real need in the early church. Acts records converts being baptized essentially immediately! Of course, many, many years later, converts were sometimes required to wait years, even until near the point of death, for baptism, but there is no evidence that the Pauline congregations ever delayed baptism. Continue reading →