Why Does Paul Write That Christians Are “to Be Pitied” in Corinthians?

Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “if we have put our trust in Christ for this life only, we should be pitied more than anyone” (1 Corinthians 15:19). What did the church at Corinth believe and why were they to be pitied?

Strong’s Greek Concordance explains that “eleeinos” describes being “deserving of pity or compassion due to one's unfortunate or miserable condition [and] is often used to highlight the contrast between one's current state and a more blessed or desirable condition.” There is mercy inherent in this word, not merely rebuke, and certainly not the put-down intended by Gnostics who thought Christians were unenlightened.

Paul’s audience was in a dire situation and he longed for them to wake up. What are the implications of his statement in 1 Corinthians 15:19, both for Paul’s original audience and for us?

Their Doctrine Was Distorted

In 1 Corinthians 15:12, Paul wrote “now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say ‘There is no resurrection from the dead’”? Some if not all of his readers were preaching and believing a false message: that Christ was still dead.

If he was dead, then so were his followers. “Those, then, who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished” (v.18). That is, anyone who had already died as a follower of Jesus was not going to inherit the eternal Kingdom of God if Christ had not first risen to go and make a place ready for them (John 14:3). Not only was Jesus dead, but he was certainly not One with God and the Holy Spirit if he had not risen. Teaching about the Trinity would have also fallen apart.

Tobin Perry explains: “The Corinthian church battled several theological problems. The most important was false teaching about the resurrection. While it’s not clear exactly what false teachers were saying about the resurrection, it’s likely that they were denying the reality of a bodily resurrection.” Jesus’ Spirit might have left his body when he died, ascending into heaven, but not his body. Maybe neither, Paul is not clear as to the exact nature of the problem.

Perhaps a Spiritual Rising?

Dan Grave explains that the Gnostics thought they possessed certain secret knowledge, and only that knowledge could unlock a spiritual “spark” which, if one was fortunate enough to be endowed with it, had been enslaved to the evil of a material body which was also made by an evil god. There was also a good god who made and could release that “spark” through knowledge.

“Gnostics quoted from or alluded to most of the writings which entered our New Testament and wrote in opposition to them or distorted them.” They aimed to lure believers away from the Christian faith by saying their texts were also “written by apostles or other famous figures from the Gospels and Acts. In other words, they forged them. No major scholar of any persuasion I know of accepts that any of them were written by those they name as authors.”

Although Christ’s teachings, his life, death, and resurrection are the story of what we call “the gospel,” he supposedly reflected the nature of that good god. Yet, Jesus could not have been good if he lived a lie. Did he tell the truth to only an initiated few? Gnostic writings suggest that only Judas was truly enlightened among the Apostles, yet all of Christ’s life represents a different truth. Gnostic implications could not be squared with either the Old Testament or apostolic writings, which is why early Christians rejected them. Not only were they heretical propositions, but they were inconsistent within themselves.

A Reasonable Faith

Despite claims that Christians enjoy a silly fantasy, Glen Scrivener makes the point that “if [Jesus] is this God of resurrection, then of course he conquered death. If he’s Lord, the truly remarkable thing would be if he rotted in some Jerusalem tomb.” Either he is God, or he is not. Either he is alive in body, seated at the right hand of God, or we cannot subscribe to any faith or religion in which he is involved. It would be fantasy. Christ is not “good” if he has lied. Christ is not powerful to conquer sin and death if he is not risen. And he is not seated anywhere if he is detached from his body. The gospels are only true if they are consistent with the rest of Scripture, and throughout Scripture God has preached resurrection.

Without that resurrection life, Christians would be proponents of a dead man’s teachings. They could not call him “good” because, as Jesus said, only God is good (Mark 10:18). They would have fallen into the foolishness of asserting that a man who either lied or was a lunatic could be worth following.

And as far as proclaiming that the body is evil, as the Gnostics did, they would have forgotten God’s own words about his creation. God was satisfied that everything he made was good. When he created man, He declared what he made “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Material existence is not inherently evil; sin has broken and continues to break God’s creation, but creation is not evil in its own right. In fact, God’s good creation is so precious to him that Adam and Eve’s original job in the Garden was to look after it (Genesis 2:15).

Suffering And Hope

When we die, God has promised to take believers to himself. As we read in 2 Peter 3:13, “according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.” In other words, there is a place for both body and spirit where we will dwell with God forever. This is our hope, and it was the hope of those Corinthians who bravely professed Christ as Lord and Savior.

The life of a Christian in Corinth, a city Tobin Perry reminds us was wealthy and debauched, was full of risk and hardships. Joseph Benson commented that the Corinthian Christians “were subjected to more trials than any other class of people. They were persecuted and reviled, and subjected to toil, and privation, and want, on account of their religion.”