1 Corinthians 15:29-41
29 Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them? 30 And as for us, why do we endanger ourselves every hour? 31 I face death every day—yes, just as surely as I boast about you in Christ Jesus our Lord. 32 If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
33 Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.” 34 Come back to your senses as you ought, and stop sinning; for there are some who are ignorant of God—I say this to your shame.
35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body will they come?” 36 How foolish! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. 38 But God gives it a body as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. 39 Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another. 40 There are also heavenly bodies and there are earthly bodies; but the splendor of the heavenly bodies is one kind, and the splendor of the earthly bodies is another. 41 The sun has one kind of splendor, the moon another and the stars another; and star differs from star in splendor. [1]
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What struck me today was Paul’s comment about people being baptized for the dead. Now, if you’re thinking, “Oh good, Pastor Mike is going to explain that weird comment,” I’m going to disappoint you. What struck me is that I still have no idea what Paul is talking about here, and neither do most scholars. Was it some idiomatic expression that is lost to the ages? Was it a memorial or dedication that was part of the baptism ceremony? Who knows? I don’t.
And this is the point that my mind focused on today. There are things in Scripture that I don’t understand, and that I expect I won’t understand until Christ reveals them in eternity. In fact I consider that to be one of the blessings of the resurrection, that all will be revealed.
Speaking of which, later in this passage, Paul is struggling to describe the resurrection body. He is making analogies and comparisons to earthly and heavenly bodies, and different kind of species, but the main point is that the resurrection body is different, more splendid, but beyond that words fail us. This too is one of the things we just don’t understand.
Even Peter acknowledged that there are things in Paul’s writings that are hard to understand. He said in 2 Peter 3:16 “His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.” There’s a quote attributed to Luther in which he says that when he comes across something in Scripture that was beyond his understanding, he would just remind himself that the Holy Spirit is more intelligent than he is, and keep on reading.
That’s good advice, because after all it is the Holy Spirit who gives understanding of the Scriptures. So my prayer today is that the Holy Spirit would enlighten me and all who read the Word today, that, even though we may not understand all we read, we would be drawn to the Truth of the Word, our Lord Jesus Christ.
What is the Word leading you to pray about today?
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[1] The New International Version. (2011). (1 Co 15:29–41). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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