Christ Died, Was Buried, and Rose

…superior to sin itself, and to have run beyond the snares of death. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3).

He says that he delivered to them, not something that had simply come into his mind and been accepted without testing, but the gospel that he received, since the one who became man for our sake put the knowledge of it into him. For the same apostle says again of the gospel, “For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12). If, then, the one who hands it on is taught by God, how can what he preaches not be true: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3), that is, both the Old and the New?

For the witnesses of Christ’s death and resurrection are very many, so that it can no longer be doubted in any way that Christ Jesus died for us according to the flesh, to take away the sin of the world (John 1:29), and that he rose again, trampling on death, so that we too might gain this. Here he necessarily says not only that he died but also that he was buried (1 Corinthians 15:4). For Emmanuel was laid in a tomb to confirm that he had truly died; yet he came back to life, as I said just now. By dying in the flesh he gave full assurance that the Word, though he is God, had become flesh (John 1:14); and by trampling on death he showed plainly that he is God by nature.

Yet the Word who is from God the Father does not give life to a temple foreign to him, nor simply to that of someone else, but rather to his own body, through which he is also said to have died for us, so that the good of the resurrection too might be found to have truly come about for us. For the whole of human nature was in him, trampling on death; this is how we are said to have been buried with him and raised with him (Colossians 2:12), and seated with him “in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 2:6).

So he says that he was raised in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:4), and that he appeared to the holy apostles, to some of them separately, as chosen ones, and also to a great number at once (1 Corinthians 15:5–7). “And he appeared also to me,” as to the one untimely born among the apostles (1 Corinthians 15:8). He speaks very humbly: he insists that he persecuted the church, but that he received mercy from Christ and was called to be an apostle (1 Corinthians 15:9–10). And he shows that the great mystery of the resurrection was not unknown either to the saints of old, for it had been foretold, or to those chosen for apostleship, who also “became eyewitnesses and ministers of the word” (Luke 1:2).

“Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:12). He is astonished at those who, I do not know how, have been persuaded to set themselves against the holy and divine Scriptures and dare to think something other than this. For if Christ died, not to remain dead, but so that, proving stronger than death and corruption, he might become a kind of way and door for human nature (John 14:6; John 10:9), so that it could prevail over corruption and run back to life, then how, now that he who for our sake was among the dead has been raised, so that we too might rise with him to life, can they still bind in the snares of death those for whose sake Emmanuel, who is God by nature, is said to have died and come back to life?

Why do they rob the human race of the good things that come from the resurrection, and slander the goal of his saving work in the flesh? For if Christ has become “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20) and “the firstborn from the dead” (Colossians 1:18), then surely what remains will follow its own firstfruits and will go along with the firstborn, and with good reason, in keeping with what a firstborn is understood to be. And the inspired Paul himself will bear witness, saying, “For if…” (Romans 6:5).