I Corinthians 15:51-58

I Corinthians 15:51-58

⁵¹ Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed, ⁵² in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. ⁵⁴ When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: "Death has been swallowed up in victory." ⁵⁵ "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?" ⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. ⁵⁷ But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

            I Corinthians 15:51-58 has the theme of the eschatological transformation that awaits the people of God. This passage presents several challenges, in translation, theology and hermeneutics. The central question is whether one needs to buy into an apocalyptic mindset to understand fully this passage. Must one picture resurrected bodies leaping to life when a trumpet sounds on judgment day? The difficulties of apocalyptic images are that they need to be vivid enough to convey the reality of Christian hope - yet they are figurative and imprecise, leaving space for improvisations and situations that emerge over time. Paul seems compelled to reflect on these end-time issues because of the Corinthians' confusion of Jesus' resurrection and their own. In I Thessalonians 4:13-17, Paul has provided reassurance that those who "fall asleep" before the second coming would not be at a disadvantage: They would rise first. The Corinthian Christians have presented him with a different set of problems.

⁵¹ Listen, a word not often used by Paul, I will tell you a mystery! Paul refers to a secret truth that God has revealed to and through Paul about what is to happen at the second coming. We (Paul and his readers) will not all (believers or all humanity) die, but God will change us all, ⁵² in a moment (atomos), an indivisible fragment of time, in the twinkling of an eye, a split-second of transformation combined at the last trumpet.[1] Paul speaks of the "last trumpet," a familiar image from the Hebrew Scriptures. Isaiah 27:13 speaks of the trumpet blown for return of the exiles; Leviticus 23:24 describes a blowing of a trumpet to usher in the civil New Year as a penitential season that will conclude in the Day of Atonement. The last trumpet does not equal the last in a series of trumpets. It is simply the trumpet call that accompanies the End. The question that Paul is not attempting to address, but one that has attracted the attention of modern readers further complicates this. Paul is talking about believers: Living and dead that God will change to conform to conditions of the resurrection age. Modern readers have focused on "all." All believers? All humanity? Does this say anything about the fate of the wicked? Again, we see the challenge of the difficulty that these apocalyptic images have presented across the ages. Paul does not give us the details of how all this will happen, just that it will happen quickly. This provides Paul's audience with a standard feature of the Day of the Lord in Jewish literature (cf. Zephaniah 1:16; Joel 2:1). Paul also indicates that he expects that he will not be among those who are dead, for he speaks of them in the third person. He believes he will be among the living, whom he speaks of in the first person. This was a challenge in early Christian eschatology. John deals with this issue differently than does Paul by holding the present and the future in tension with each other, with more attention given to the present. For Paul, the focus here is on the future, the Parousia. Whether Paul changes his belief remains disputed by scholars, however; it seems likely that if Paul's perspective changes, it is because Paul found his death nearer, rather than that he saw the second coming further off. Another significance of this passage is that it clearly envisions a finite life without death. This life in fellowship with God does not involve total absorption of our creaturely existence in God. Rather, it expects its renewal and definitive establishment. Participation in divine life will not set aside the finite quality of creaturely life. The significance of this point is that death and finite life do not have a necessary connection.[2] For the trumpet will sound, and God will raise the dead as imperishable, and God will change us. What is important in this passage is not the last trumpet or the rising of the sleeping dead, but the confidence of Christians in the power of God who raised Jesus. It is crucial that readers neither severely isolate these images in an unyielding timetable, nor simply dismiss them as primitive fantasy. The work of the Spirit is fundamental for the eschatological salvation event of the resurrection of the dead. Resurrection means change into a new life resulting in a relation between the work of the Spirit and theme of judgment. This mortal cannot acquire immortality without a change. The whole notion of this “change” has a link to judgment as well.[3] ⁵³ For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality. Now, in contrast to his emphasis in dealing with the problem presented to him by the congregation in Thessalonica, Paul is saying that the dead in Christ will rise with spiritual bodies and those who are still alive will have their mortal bodies changed. The finite quality of the perfected life toward which God is bringing us, when this corruptible will have put on incorruption, will no longer have the form of a sequence of separated moments of time. Rather, it will represent the totality of our earthly existence. The totality toward which we now move will become reality, in a moment, in a change. [4] Nothing will be put in place of this present life. No matter how pitiable, this finite existence will share in eternal salvation. Rebirth to a very different existence can accomplish this. Such a rebirth would not redeem this earthly existence. It would have been left behind.[5] ⁵⁴ When this perishable body puts on imperishability and this mortal body puts on immortality. Plato taught that the soul was immortal. It never died. Such is not the case in this passage. Mortal must “put on” immortality. The mortal must pass through genuine death before “immortality” becomes a gift of grace. Then the saying that we find written in Isaiah 25:7 finds its fulfillment, "Death has been swallowed up in victory." If the interpretation offered is correct, Gordon D. Kaufman[6] is quite unfair to the traditional interpretation of Christian hope. It has never suggested that the resurrection of the body of Jesus means for us everlasting continuation of this finite life. He rightly uses the comment of Paul Tillich[7]  to the effect that such “an infinity of the finite could be a symbol for hell.” What Kaufman wants to do is place Christian hope in creativity and freedom in such a way that it swallows up death in victory, that there is victory over despair. The difficulty with this belief is that one could come to such an optimistic notion without reliance upon the specificity of faith in Jesus Christ. Of course, this is precisely what Kaufman wants to do. He wants to separate Christian hope from Christ, placing in a “theocentric” notion of the love and mercy of God. As he puts it, “it is no longer necessary for Christians to concern themselves with old myths purporting to have special gnosis in regard to life beyond the grave.” In Paul's emphasis on God changing mortal bodies, Paul concludes that if flesh and blood were appropriate for this world, it would be inappropriate for the world to come. Once God clothes the believers in immortality, death can no longer touch them. Further, in Hosea 13:14 we read, ⁵⁵ "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"  The point of these passages from the Hebrew Scriptures is that they invite Death and Sheol to bring forth their terrors and apply them. Here we have Paul mocking these powers as already defeated. God has swallowed up death. He states this in the past aorist tense, which translates into the present perfect in English. Paul's emphasis is on what happened rather than the time of its happening. Paul uses these words as a taunt. He is putting himself at the end of time and he mocks a powerless death, as one might a fallen dictator. ⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. Death remains an enemy for Paul, as it does for us. The hard fact is that death is not "natural"; it is not a process eased by therapy. As humans, we live for life and the sting of having to die is sin. Death is our enemy. ⁵⁷ Nevertheless, thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. In Paul, gratitude for the saving action of God in Jesus Christ forms the starting point and context of all Christian prayer.[8] Death is now a disabled enemy. When Christians die, they are no longer prisoners of death, but sleeping in the certainness of waking in the resurrection. The reign of death rests on the power of sin, but since sin has been overcome in Jesus' death and resurrection, it loses its power to terrorize (cf. Romans 5:12, 21). Paul does not allow his eschatology to carry him away into unreality.  He recognizes that Death is the last enemy God will overthrow. Death still prevails between us and still has a sting. Paul does not come to the end of chapter-long discussion of resurrection with the type of optimism that some personalities simply possess. His optimism arises from an event that has given him knowledge of a victory already won.  The victory of Jesus the Christ was a victory over sin, because he died to sin, a death to which this life summons all human beings to share (cf. Romans 6:10f). The sting of death is now, but in Christ, it will become a victory. Christian faith does not deny death, but rather celebrates a Living God, a God that is greater than death.

⁵⁸ Therefore, my beloved, be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Paul tempers his euphoria somewhat by the reminder that the return of Christ is still in the future. In the end, however, Paul does not emphasize "good behavior" as we await Christ's return. He emphasizes ministry. No timetable, no lame excuses, no attempt to second-guess God. Instead, Paul leaves us with instructions to serve the Lord by spreading the good news of Christ's resurrection and ours and a reminder that such labor will never be in vain.

Part of what Paul may be saying here is that the crucifixion of Jesus is the end of our time, while the resurrection of Jesus ushers in the last day. The believer in Jesus lives a life hidden with Christ in God. Beyond this end, Paul can see only one other prospect. God will be all in all (verse 28). The end is a historical and temporal event. Yet, it is a present without a future. We have no more information or promise, other than the sounding of the last trumpet in verse 52. This moment is when corruption becomes incorruption, dishonor becomes honor, and weakness becomes power. Time will be no more, as Revelation 10:6 put it. There is no question of the continuation into the indefinite future of a somewhat altered life. The New Testament hope for the other side of death looks forward to the Eternal. God will divest this corruptible and mortal life of its character as “flesh and blood.” It will then be eternal life in God and in fellowship with Christ. Our time will undergo a transition and transformation by participating in the eternal life of God. This transition and transformation is the unveiling and glorifying of the life that in its time humanity has already in Christ. Whatever happens in a twinkling of an eye is an unveiling of the eschatological life already present throughout our lives. It is the resurrection of the dead, which according to the indication given after the resurrection of Jesus is our participation in His future revelation. This is our hope in the time that we still have.[9]

An indication of the validity of this approach is the struggle we find in the New Testament regarding these matters. In the first-century church, Christians believed that Jesus was coming back in their lifetime. Paul certainly believed it. The Church described in the book of Acts believed it to the point that they sold their houses and everything in their houses without regret because they believed to their toenails that Jesus was coming back almost immediately to retrieve them. Who needed jewelry, silverware, and real estate if they were leaving to join Jesus in heaven in a matter of days or months or even years? This was Paul's message to the first Christians in Corinth, Greece, in the first century. "We will not all die," he wrote, "But we will all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet." Eventually, of course, all those who first received Paul's letter did die. Jesus did not return in their lifetime. In addition, while most of us are not assuming that Jesus will return today or tomorrow, there are many Christians, usually pre-millennialists, who urge us to consider the possibility as a reality. What would happen if Jesus comes again in our lifetime? Are we ready? Some Christians still hang on to the first-century notion that, if Jesus could return at any moment, we may as well sell our possessions to those faithless folks who will need them after we are enraptured up to heaven with the Lord.

This is not the whole story! Jesus is coming again. But we do not have a clue about when or how that will happen, and in spite of all the cool predictions we might glean from biblical prophecy, Scripture repeatedly warns us that no one knows exactly when Jesus will return - not even the Son of Man himself (see Mark 13:32). Granted, the descriptions of the transfiguration of Jesus spark our imaginations, but ours is a God of boundless creativity, and God good dazzle us with the sight of our glorious Savior in countless ways. 

In the meantime, God left us behind 2000 years ago, not to scare each other about The End Times, not to judge each other, but to serve in the likeness of Christ. Jesus left us with several warnings about watchfulness, about readiness in the course of human life. He left us with many instructions, and they did not include scaring our neighbors with hellfire and brimstone. They include not only listening to God's living Word through Jesus Christ, but living that Word ourselves and sharing the Good News with others.

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[1] There are several textual problems and variants in verse 51. This is largely due to the number and position of the negatives in the sentence.

[2] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 2, p. 271)

[3] (ibid., Volume 3, p. 623)

[4] (ibid., Volume 3, p. 561)

[5] (ibid., Volume 3, p. 574)

[6] (Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective, p. 465-474)

[7] (“Frontiers,” Journal of Bile and Religion, 1965, 33:22)

[8] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Volume 3, p. 207)

[9] Barth (Church Dogmatics, III.2, p. 624 [47.5])