It is interesting reading all of the different perspectives. Thanks to everyone who has commented.

Just thought I would note some of my current “speculations”

1 At this stage, some passages in the bible that I used to think were about the future, I now see as speaking of life here and now or about events occurring in AD 70.
But 1 Cor 15, in speaking of death and resurrection, and our earthly, perishable, weak, natural, mortal bodies being changed to heavenly, imperishable, powerful, spiritual, immortal bodies in the twinkling of an eye, at the sound of the last trumpet (as in 1 Thes 4:16) - still sounds to me like Paul is speaking of our resurrection bodies after death, rather than something at 70 AD. But hey, I could be wrong. and I admit that I have not done enough thinking on this subject.

2 1 Cor 15 is only referring to believers receiving immortal bodies and doesn’t refer to unbelievers. (Thanks Paidion).

3 Believers will be given immortal, imperishable bodies when Christ returns. Does this still leave the possibility that God will have more work to do in us for such things as making us more mature (thanks Cindy, Steve), or for us to be properly reconciled to those we have wronged in this life? Perhaps so.
Cindy, you said

I was wondering if you might elaborate on why you feel certain of this?

4 Some people will be condemned at the judgement (after death) that Heb 9:27 refers to. But their condemnation is not final. God will work to bring those who are condemned to life in Christ. For some unbelievers this may be a long process.

5 Regarding those who die while still unbelievers - when will they receive imperishable bodies?? Perhaps when they repent after death?? I don’t know - and I am not sure that the bible really tells us this detail. I can see that the ultrauniversalist position is much tidier on this question (thanks Geoffrey), but raises other questions for me at this stage.

Hi, Craig

For several reasons. First, Jesus told His listeners, “You will all be salted with fire.” To me, that sounds like a fairly quick process. Second, for those who hate the sin that so easily besets us and don’t cling to it, the death of the flesh might even BE that destruction of the weaknesses of the flesh. Paul speaks of this when he says (more or less) “Now if I do that which I hate it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.” Those who truly love God hate sin. That’s part of the package. When you buy a cow you get the head and the tail both. Love God; hate sin. These are a package.

It’s those who cling to their sin who “get burned,” not those who long to be free of it. That’s my reasoning–hopefully it clarifies my position and why I hold it.

Cindy

Thanks Cindy for your thoughts.

One side of me hopes you’re right. It sounds a lot easier if it is true.

I don’t pretend to understand the details, but Paul does seem to associate the tendency to sin with our flesh, or our mortal bodies. If we are given immortal bodies in the twinkling of an eye, free of “the flesh”, then I can understand how God’s purifying fires might work in an instant along with this.

On the other hand, some of God’s deepest work in my life here and now has taken time and patience on God’s part, and so if he wants to do it that way instead I’m all for it.

I sometimes wonder about people I have offended in some way that I have no idea about, and other relationships that are not what they ought to be even after doing what I can now to be at peace with them. It seems to me that as God brings about right relationships between all of us (whether believers or unbelievers at death) that this may take some time. Although I suppose this could come under our growth in maturity (which I think you agreed could be more of a process), rather than necessarily purifying from sin.

Anyway, thanks again for helping in my “wonderings".

In reading 1 Corinthians 15:29-34 Paul is asking why people are baptized for the dead. Why was Paul fighting "wild beasts in Ephesus? What were they dying for? Verse 34 says this “Awake to righteousness and do not sin; for some do not have the knowledge of God.” This sounds to me like they were fighting for something more than a resurrection of the dead in the afterlife.
All those that have gone before us in righteousness have fought and died for the truth of God, so that people, in having this knowledge and being raised in the word of God may live better lives here on Earth. This is why missionaries go into poverty stricken areas such as Haiti, gang infested inner cities, etc. Many people gave their lives in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War etc. for the truth, because they believed in a better tomorrow.

Hi LLC

I think that I see it more of a both and, rather than an either or. Both the life here now and the afterlife are important - not just one or the other.
The way I understand what Paul is saying here is that this life is important. What we do now affects things in this life - but not only this life - it affects life that goes on after death as well. As important as this life is, if death was the end of us all - if we are just mortal beings who will return to dust when we die and that’s it - this life would lose some significance. If I do something that is good for others and pleases God, at great hardship and cost, it is encouraging to know that there is lasting significance for me and others who are affected by it. If I or they die in the process or soon after, it was still worthwhile - not just for the moment of this life but has significance for the life to come as well.

The idea that this passage is not speaking of death and resurrection as I have always understood it is a new and strange concept for me in this thread. It was not what I was expecting. It will take me some time to process. It sounds weird to me at this stage. I have thought about passages like Matt 24 and I can see a preterist understanding there - but I have never considered this for 1 Cor 15.

How do you understand Christ being “raised from the dead" ?(1 Cor 15:12, 15, 16,20 etc)
What do you understand by the term “fallen asleep”? (1 Cor 15:18,20)
How do you understand “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men”? (1 Cor 15:19)
What does being "baptised for the dead” mean? (1 Cor 15:29)

Well yours is not that unusual a response to having your traditional paradigm pushed a little… been there.

Have a look HERE where I give my understanding of this particular topic from the fulfilled perspective.

Craig, I couldn’t agree more with what you’ve said. I believe both lives are important as well. The people of ancient times also believed in an afterlife. Since it is really beyond our human minds to comprehend, they didn’t write much about it. Their main focus was this life. They believed that God gave them life on Earth for a purpose, and they were working to fulfill that purpose. This is pretty much why I tend to read the bible as speaking about the life we know. Besides, I figure that if we can learn to follow what God has prescribed for us in the here and now, what comes next shouldn’t be an overwhelming concern.
So, back to the questions at hand. What does it mean to be raised from the dead? To me, it means knowing God, seeing things from a spiritual perspective, and living life according to Him. The following verses tell us this:

Ephesians 4:22-24 “put off concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man which was created according to God, in righteousness and true holiness.”

Ephesians 2:1 “And you He made alive, who were dead from trespasses and sin.”

Ephesians 2:5-6 “even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up together.”

Colossians 3:9-10 “Do not lie to one another, since you have put off the old man with your deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him.”

Romans 6: 11-13 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in it’s lusts, and do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead.

Romans 8:11 “If the spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.”

Now in 1 Corinthians 15:31 Paul mentions that he dies daily. And as in 1 Corinthians 15:53 when it says that this corruptible must put on incorruption, it is not the mortal body that is the cause of corruption. The heart and mind are the problem, which must be changed. The resurrection that Paul is speaking of seems to be the spiritual awakening of the people, to the knowledge of the one true God, His word and His ways. Resurrection being defined as the act of bringing back to practice, notice or use/returning to life.

Thanks Davo and LLC for your thoughts on my questions. I can see that there is more to your perspective than I would have at first thought and that there are also quite a few threads on this forum about this subject for me to investigate.

I can also see that it is another subject that there are different opinions on. I am glad that God has got it worked out and I can trust him with the details.

I don’t think Paul’s use of the term “the flesh” always referred to our mortal bodies. I think Paul often used the term to refer to our self-serving natures. I understand “a sin” to be any act that harms other people or oneself. I think most often sinful acts originate more with mental activity rather than physical activity.

The mind is part of the body, though, Paidion–though I don’t disagree that most, or at least many of our sins originate in our thoughts. Of course, I’m understanding “mind” as “brain,” and maybe that’s not what you mean by it. I really think that quite a large part of the reason we commit sins we hate has to do with our physical bodies, and most particularly with our higher nervous systems (mind/brain) and the things that affect our thought processes (many of which are outside the brain proper–such as physical stress, hormonal imbalances, natural animal reactions and desires, etc.)

The trick for us is to yield as the Father is forming us into the image of the Son via the leading of the Holy Spirit–the key (imo) to this formation being the rising dominance of our spirits over our physical brains and other physical selves. The body is a wonderful servant, but it is a horrible master.

Craig, In answer to your question about 1 Corinthians 15:19 “If our hope in Christ has been for this life only, we are the most unfortunate of all people.”:
The type of world that these people were living in at the time was upside down. Those practicing evil were living in luxury while the rest had pretty much become slaves. The people in power had set up their own laws, and one either joined in or else. Even Israel had fallen to the ways of the world, replacing God’s laws and ways with that of men. It was pretty brutal. The people baptized (purified) in the word of God, the apostles and disciples (leaders), were sent out to speak the truth and bring others to Christ, teaching and showing them the way of the one true God. This was very dangerous and most likely meant a death sentence in a lot of the areas. Why would one want to do this? It seemed like an impossible task. It would have been easy for them to lose hope and faith, to just give up and say, “The world is an evil place, nothing is going to change it. Why try? What do we have to gain by this?” They did it not for themselves but for the love of God, their fellow man and for the children of the future (the world to come); this so that we would know God, His word and His way of life. God (Jesus) gave His life for us, and they gave theirs in return. For Jesus said this: “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.”

Hi LLC. When I asked the questions

I was trying to see how you understand terms like “raised from the dead”, “fallen asleep”, and “this life”.

For example, I think of Christ being ‘raised from the dead’ as referring to his actual death on the cross and rising after three days. I think of “fallen asleep” as physical death, and ‘this life’ as life before physical death.

I do not think Christ being “raised from the dead” means say …Christ put off the old man and put on the new, or those who have “fallen asleep” are those who are asleep in their sins and not awake to God, or “this life” is something other than life before physical death.

So how do you understand these expressions so as to fit in with the way you understand what Paul is talking about in the whole chapter? Davo has explained the expression “baptism for the dead” so I can understand how he understands that one. Thanks.

I think a physician could thoroughly examine a human being and never find the mind. However, you then wrote of the brain as if it were another word for the mind. Somehow there exists a metaphysical ego which is not part of the body, but yet is a function of the body.

When people indulge in such mental activities as result in hate, putting others down, gossiping about the wrongdoing of others, false accusations, plans for revenge, murder, etc. can these activities be described as “sins of the flesh”? Every time I have ever heard anyone talking about “the sins of the flesh” he was restricting the domain to sexual sin only.

Sins of the flesh to me would be the list in Galatian’s… Gluttony, fits of rage, hate, malice, pleasure seeking, sex, etc…

Right, Gabe. Paul lists such things and calls them “the desires of the flesh.” That is why I do not think he is talking about the physical flesh but rather is using the word “flesh” to refer to the self-serving nature.

Craig, To me, being raised from the dead means to live according to God’s word, in the spirit, following the example Jesus set for us. You are right in that Jesus was sinless and therefore had no need to put off the old man and put on the new. Jesus was also the eternal word, and spirit of God in the flesh. These being eternal, never die. So, how is it that Jesus was raised from the dead? From what I understand, when we come to know God, and live in the spirit of God according to His word; He then dwells in us and we in Him. Thus we become the “body” or the image of Christ. As 1 Corinthians 15:17 says “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” To me, this means that if one is still sinning, then one hasn’t fully conformed to the image of Christ yet.

Thanks LLC.
So if I understand you correctly, “Christ being raised from the dead” doesn’t refer to his physical resurrection but to his life dwelling in his body, the church.
Davo sees “baptism for the dead” as Christ’s disciples suffering for the sake spiritually dead old covenant Israelites.
How about "those who have fallen asleep”. Who are they?

I usually translate “fallen asleep” as those who know the way of the Lord but have become preoccupied or deceived by the ways of the world and are too busy “living it up” to notice what is going on. Oftentimes when things are going good, we forget God. It is only when everything goes south that our eyes and ears are opened, and we become receptive to the truth. In other words we wake up and smell the coffee.

In reading through Corinthians once again, my guess would be that those “baptized for the dead” are those who were sent to preach to the Gentiles/pagans(the people who believed in other gods) as compared to those of Israel who knew God but had simply “fallen asleep”.

Paul never prescribes “baptism for the dead.” He merely mentions it as support for his thesis that the dead are in fact raised. The simplest interpretation of Paul’s words, in this letter which is written not to theologians, but to fairly new believers, is that he speaks of bodily resurrection. It’s possible to interpret him differently of course, and nobody will go to hell for an honest mistake (not even me, should I be the one who’s wrong–but naturally, I think I’m right).

There may be (and I suspect there is) a spiritual resurrection that precedes the bodily resurrection. It’s possible that both happen at once, at the final resurrection. I honestly don’t think it matters, nor that it’s worth (to me) even a friendly argument. Soul sleep or soul death adherents often disagree, but I don’t like participating in such (to me) unnecessary arguments. Scripture can be seen to support either soul sleep or a wakeful soul in the presence of the Lord until bodily resurrection with no violence to its teachings, imo.

Romans 8 in particular (as well as this passage in Corinthians under discussion) seems to me to render significant support to the expectation that there WILL ultimately be redemption for our physical bodies in the form of a physical resurrection–in the same way that Christ was raised, the Firstborn from among the dead ones. Jesus was never spiritually dead–not even after his crucifixion–and there is a great deal of support for the thesis of His bodily resurrection, just as it is presented in the gospels. For one thing, His resurrection was universally disbelieved by those who did not follow Him. This in itself seems to me to indicate that THEY at least understood His resurrection to be a bodily resurrection and not a platitudinous “resurrection” in the form of living on through His followers. THAT is not difficult to believe at all. This sort of thing is said of many, many who die-- “She will always live on in our hearts and in our memories of her.” “As long as we remember dear little Fred, he will never truly be gone.” “We keep these heroes alive by our yearly remembrance of their valor and sacrifice for us.”

For me, the best explanation of the “baptism for the dead” is this one I found in a commentary: The various religious sects of the region apparently used baptism as an entry rite to their disciplines, similar to the usage of the followers of the Way (of Christ). Adherents to these sects were accustomed to practice baptism for the dead in order to induct their relatives into the sect they believed would save them or swell the ranks of their fellow followers, or whatever benefit they expected to accrue from this practice. Those Corinthians who became adherents of the Way did not cease to be Corinthians. They naturally extended the rite of baptism to baptism for the dead, as their cultural custom prescribed. Paul doesn’t give an opinion of this practice. He merely uses it to make his point. “Why do you bother to be baptized for the dead if the dead do not rise?”

It’s difficult to say for certain whether Paul meant the resurrection literally or metaphorically, because any literal statement by him could also be taken metaphorically. It seems to me though, from studying these passages, that Paul is laboring to make himself understood as giving assurance that our physical bodies will physically rise–changed, as a seed that sprouts is changed–incorruptible not corruptible–but still directly descended (ascended) from our corruptible physical bodies. Real, tangible bodies. Different, spiritual bodies, yet bodies nonetheless. The physical/material world is not evil. God made it and He saw that it was good. I believe He intends to perfect it, not to dispose of it.