Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and in which you stand;
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Paul is showing the Corinthians that if they have been led away from his teaching, especially from belief in the resurrection of the dead on which it is based, they will lose everything they have believed. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
s35 , 36.—But some man will say . . . except it die. The Apostle strikes here at the root of their disease and the cause of their error, which was that some were despairing of and denying the resurrection of the body, because they saw that it rotted in the ground, and they thought therefore it was incredible and impossible for it to be raised again and refashioned. S Paul here answers this objection by pointing to a grain of corn which is sown. It first rots and dies away in the earth, and then as it were is born again and springs up, and brings forth, not merely one grain, but many grains from the one. In this way the one grain which is sown is clothed and laden at the harvest with many ears and grains, so that it seems to rise with greater glory. In the same way our bodies will rot in the ground, and thence rise to greater glory.
s3 , 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. c22. 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 aliv...
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 (ver12) 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 (ver29).
iii. He declares what the body will be like in the resurrection (ver35), and then names the four endowments of the glorified body (ver42).
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 (ver51).
When Paul calls the Corinthian Christians his brothers, he establishes the basis for most of his subsequent assertions. For we became brothers through the work of Christ in his earthly life and death. After all, what is the gospel but the message that God became man, was crucified and rose again? This is what the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary, what the prophets preached to the world and what all the apostles truthfully proclaimed.
Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand; by which also you are saved: in what words I preached it unto you.
Having finished the discourse of spiritual gifts, he passes to that which is of all most necessary, the subject of the resurrection. For in this too they were greatly unsound. And as in men's bodies, when the fever lays actual hold of their solid parts, I mean the nerves and the veins and the primary elements, the mischief becomes incurable unless it receive much attention; just so at that time also it was like to happen. Since to the very elements of godliness the mischief was proceeding. Wherefore also Paul uses great earnestness. For not of morals was his discourse henceforth nor about one man's being a fornicator, another covetous, and another having his head covered; but about the very sum of all good things. For touching the resurrection itself they were at variance. Because this being all our...
