Baptism for the Dead - Christopher G. Brenyo

The Resurrection of Christ and the Necessity of the Gospel

First Corinthians chapter 15 beginning at verse 12. This is God's holy and infallible word. Now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ, whom he did not raise up, if in fact the dead do not rise.

For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins. That also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all died, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.

But each one in his own order, Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who were Christ at his coming. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.

For he must reign till he puts all enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. For he has put all things under his feet. But when he says all things are put under him, it is evident that he who put all things under him is accepted.

Now when all things are made subject to him, then the Son himself will also be subject to him who put all things under him, that God may be all in all. Now our text for today. Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead?

If the dead do not rise at all, why then are they baptized for the dead? And why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? I affirm by the boasting in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily.

If in the manner of men, I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantage is it to me? The dead do not rise, let us eat and drink. For tomorrow we die. Do not be deceived. Evil company corrupts good habits.

Awake to righteousness and do not sin. For some do not have the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. But someone will say, how are the dead raised up? And with what body do they come? Foolish ones, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies.

And what you sow, you do not sow that body that shall be but mere grain, perhaps wheat or some other grain. But God gives it a body as he pleases, and to each seed its own body. Please pray with me. Lord Jesus, we revel in your resurrection, which gives us great confidence in ours.

We thank you for your blessed gospel that makes us alive, your spirit who comforts us, the Father who has loved us with this great love. We ask that you be glorified as we consider your word today. It's in Jesus name that we pray.

Amen. Please be seated. Those of you who are with us always, you'll know that I skipped over verse 29 a few weeks ago because I wanted to do further study. I periodically do that in order to have greater clarity.

One of the great benefits about preaching expository manner is you know where the next exposition is coming from, the next verse, next section to work on. And I consider this text, and I thought I knew where I was going with it originally, and I've actually landed on essentially the same position after studying it for a few weeks.

But I want to be very careful, and I hope that's encouraging to you because I take the preaching of the word very seriously, and I don't want to go off half-cocked on crazy ideas about various interpretations of hard texts just to get through them.

I want to be careful what I preach. I know that I'm going to incur a stricter judgment, and so I know particularly when it comes to preaching, I want to be extremely careful with my words. So what about this being baptized for the dead?

Look again at verse 29. Otherwise, what will they do who are baptized for the dead if the dead do not rise at all? Why then are they baptized for the dead? Now when you read that, I think you'll have to agree that is a very perplexing verse of Scripture.

In fact, I believe it is the hardest text of Scripture to interpret in the whole of the New Testament. It's that hard. One commentator that I studied said there are at least 30 different distinct interpretations about what this means, and I'm pretty well acquainted with six or seven of those interpretations.

And today, I think the first question that has to be asked is, aren't we to be the kind of people that take the Scripture literally? Aren't we supposed to be able to just look at the text of Scripture and just take it at face value?

And in one sense, it's a very noble cause. We are to take the plain meaning of the Scripture and adopt it as our own. Well, the question has to be asked, does Paul teach here, or does he accept or tolerate baptizing living people on behalf of dead people?

And the answer is emphatically no. So what is this about? Well, as you may know, this verse of Scripture is where the Mormons get their entire doctrine of proxy baptism. Right by my house, there's the Mormon temple in Orlando.

I drive by it almost every day. And in that temple, so-called, there are living Mormons right now who are going through waters of baptism on behalf of people who have died in the Holocaust, the Jews, hoping to secure some future eternity for them.

Do you know why the Mormons are the world's best genealogists? Any idea why? So they can perform proxy baptism on behalf of dead people. This is an abomination in the sight of God, in my view, and they're clearly a cult.

So what do we do in the text of Scripture like this? Well, the first rule of interpretation is we have to put it in context. And the context is king here. The context enables us to demystify this very hard verse.

What is the subject that we're talking about here in 1 Corinthians 15? We're talking about the resurrection. We're talking about the gospel. We're talking about how essential the resurrection is to the Christian message.

And so what is Paul doing here? Well, look back at verse 18. There was a real concern. You can imagine the people coming to church, front into Christ, to faith in him. Verse 18, what about those people who died before us?

There's this great question about what about those who have died? You may remember several weeks ago, in some of the study I did for my dissertation, I learned that one of the greatest fears of the Jewish people was to be cut off from the living people of God.

The uncertainty about the resurrection, as we know, at the time of Jesus, was pervasive. The majority position was there was no resurrection. That was the position of the Sadducees. You might remember that dispute toward the end of Acts when Paul set the Pharisees against the Sadducees over this issue of the resurrection.

So this question of what about the people who died before us? What about them? Well, Paul is essentially saying if there is no resurrection of Christ, if there is no resurrection, there's no hope. But his point is, there is hope in Christ.

There is a resurrection. Therefore, we can have confidence that those who have died in Christ before us will be with Christ and will be with us in the future. Here in our text today, Paul is not advocating any form of proxy baptism or baptism for the dead.

Now, what does context tell us? Well, let's remember that this letter was written to a real church. And apparently, this reference to baptism of the dead was not unfamiliar to the Corinthians. It seems kind of out of left field to us.

But they, with their own eyes or with their own ears, heard something about this doctrine of baptizing for the dead. I do know in my research, there was a town not many miles from Corinth that practiced a pagan form of baptism for the dead.

And we know with great factual accuracy that the Corinthians had a tendency to adopt some of the pagan practices of the people of that group just a few miles away. So what is it? What happened here? Well, here's my best guess, my best thoughts about what this verse is about.

I believe that there were either A, exclusively, pagans in a town not too far away performing this proxy baptism for the dead, and that Paul says, why would they do that if there is no resurrection from the dead?

Why would there be this concern about doing something about the future for these dead people if there isn't a future, if there isn't a resurrection? As we went on in this section, we learned a second component may be that the false teachers who were denying the resurrection, and I think this is the strongest argument, had adopted some form of baptizing the dead.

And we're teaching it at the church. We're influencing those at the church. So Paul is saying, why would they do that? How could they, on the one hand, say there is no resurrection and perform this abominable practice of baptizing for the dead?

Now, how does this all fit into this section? How does this all make sense? Well, there's something else to look at. Look again at verse 29. One of the ways we can see that Paul was not witnessing baptisms for the dead in Corinth, and how he's distinguished it is a very simple grammatical device that he employs here.

It says, otherwise, what will they do? He's not saying this is us. He's saying this is some other people. So it's either the pagans or it's the false teachers who are trying to bring this doctrine into Corinth.

What will they do who are baptized for the dead if the dead do not rise at all? Then look down at verse 30. What does he say? He says, and why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? Paul's saying, we stand in jeopardy every hour.

We're about to be killed every day because we preach the resurrection of Christ. Because we preach Christ in him crucified, buried, and risen, and ascended, sitting at the right hand of God the Father.

And so in this case, I believe he's saying, effectively, these people are baptizing people for the dead. They're denying the resurrection. How can they deny the resurrection if they're baptizing people for the dead?

They're saying the resurrection doesn't mean anything, but they still continue to baptize for the dead. And in this, of course, he's trying to drive home the point there really is a resurrection. Now, there are several other conclusions that can be drawn from this.

There were Old Testament washings. I'm not going to get into that for the sake of time. There were washings connected to when you touched a dead body. And there's maybe a valid argument there to say that may be part of why this verse is saying this.

Contextually, I don't think it works. Contextually, there's something going on in Corinth. There's something that Paul sees, and he's using what's happening there in Corinth to articulate the greater point that Christ is risen.

The Grain of Wheat That Dies and Bears Fruit

Now, what's interesting when you think about those who have fallen, verse 18, perishing in the future, let's skip back over to verse 35. Let's take a look there. It says, but someone will say, how are the dead raised up?

And with what body do they come? Foolish one, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. Let's start to John chapter 2 really quickly. John chapter 12, excuse me. Jesus here is anticipating his own death.

We are running the heels of the raising up of Lazarus out of the dead. We have the instance where Jesus very lavishly poured out perfume on his head. And of course the disciples were concerned that she spent the money in a frivolous way, and it could have been used for other things.

I'm going to skip down to verse 22 of John 12. And there's a very important teaching here of Jesus. It's kind of found its way into our text of first Corinthians 15. Philip came and told Andrew, and in turn, Andrew and Philip told Jesus, these are men who said, sir, we wish to see Jesus.

And this is what Jesus responds saying verse 23, the hour has come that the son of man should be glorified. Most assuredly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone.

But if it dies, it produces much grain. I remember being a little kid at school and seeing a time-lapse video, do you remember this? It showed a picture of what looked like a hard seed and they put it into the ground, to the soil.

And what happens over the passage of time is that outer shell breaks apart and falls away. And the connection here I believe that Jesus is making, that Paul is making, is we have to die in order to get to that next place.

We have to die in order to go to heaven. We have to die in order to be glorified. And Jesus himself had to die on the cross. And in this video, when I was a little kid, you could see it, the grain goes into the black dark soil, the rich soil, and it disintegrates and it looks like it decays, but then something else happens.

A little sprout comes out of it. And in the passage of time, the sprout pushes through the soil and then it begins to grow very rapidly. And this is a very beautiful picture of the gospel. Christ had to die.

He had to be put into the ground. But think about the fruit bearing of that event. What has happened as a result of something, someone being put into the ground? Well, he's borne all the guilt and shame of his people on the cross.

Satisfaction of God's wrath, which was just and should be poured out on sinners, falls on Christ. And what happens? You and I are made alive. You and I are the exponential hundredfold increase of the death of Christ on the cross and his resurrection.

And so we can't have a baptism for the dead. And I think one of the reasons this is such a dangerous idea is you're like last week, tinkering with the gospel. If there's baptism for the dead, then people don't have to believe in Christ and his gospel.

They can just die and someone else can come along and say, I'm going to get baptized for you and make you alive. It's really inconsistent with the biblical message, isn't it? And so in our text today, there's no possibility that prophecy baptism is valid.

And in fact, it's unheard of in Christian history. It's never been accepted. It's never been tolerated. So that can't be what it means. Let's go back now to our text. I'll read that. Let me finish a couple more verses just to get a sense of this.

Verse 25, he who loves his life will lose it. He who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, let him follow me. And where I am there, my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, him my father will honor.

My soul is troubled and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour. But for this purpose, I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name. Then a voice came from heaven saying, I have glorified it and I will glorify it again.

Let's turn back over to 1 Corinthians. One of the lessons of reading over a difficult passage is we have to go to work. We have to spend some time really peering deeply into these things and say, what could they possibly mean?

Is Paul teaching something that sounds so contradictory? And the answer is emphatically no. If he distinguishes between the Orthodox and the unorthodox by saying in verse 29, what will they do who are baptized from the dead?

If the dead do not rise in verse 30, he says, and why do we stand in jeopardy every hour? Why is Paul's life on the line every hour? Why are the disciples being martyred? Why are these people dying for Christ?

Well, because they believe in Christ and his resurrection. What about us today for what you and I really believe? Do you remember that list of Paul's, all the things that he suffered for Christ? What about that message that Jesus just said?

He said, all those who love life must lose it. How much do you and I really love this life? Do we really want to be with Christ in heaven? That's something we really want. I don't know anybody who wants to die.

I did know somebody who wanted to die and he's dead and he's with Christ now, my good friend, Fred. And there's something I think that God does for us and in the normal course of things, young people can die.

If you're a young person here today, you say, I'll never have to worry about death. It's not certain. Young people can die. We have to repent and believe the gospel. There may not be a tomorrow. You say, well, I'm 40 and I'm in good health or I'm 35 and I'm in good health and I don't have to worry about dying.

You have to worry about dying because it's going to come. And I believe the Lord in his graciousness does something for old folks in the normal course of events. And he's done it for young people who are suffering things like cancer.

I've seen it. He gives them a sense of they don't want to be here anymore. They're tired of fighting that battle. And we say, oh, they're giving up on life. Isn't that sad for the Christian? They've come to terms that they're not going to be here forever.

They've come to terms with it and they're very comfortable because they know that being with Christ is far better, that they have to die to put to death this body of sin. I mentioned this before and recently in this section, do you know that and does it, does your heart long for the day when you won't sin against your God anymore?

Do you long for that day? That day will not happen until you die. But as a child of God, at your death, you will no longer sin against him. You will no longer transgress any of his righteous laws. You will no longer be slack in your devotion and worship of him.

All of that will be taken away. So this message in first Corinthians has real application for us, doesn't it? Foolish ones, what you sow is not made alive unless it dies. When a person comes to Christ, they're making the commitment to be dead to their old ways.

And in fact, the whole of the Christian life is a repeating of that mantra, isn't it? I die to the ways of the world, the sins of the flesh, the world of the devil. I die to them. I choose to follow Christ.

I want to walk with him. So Paul's message here is very powerful. The resurrection of Christ assures us of our resurrection. The resurrection of Christ makes it possible for us to put away the body of sin.

The death of Christ made it possible for us not to suffer the just punishment of God. If Christ doesn't go to the cross, if he doesn't die there, you and I are still in our sins. And if he doesn't stand up again out of the grave, you and I have no hope.

But Christ did go to the cross. He did die for us. He did rise from the dead on the third day. Therefore, we have exponential, infinite, unlimited hope in what Christ has done. So the ties for the dead?

The answer is emphatic. Should we believe in the resurrection of Christ from the dead and our future resurrection from the dead? Yes. Well, now what do we do in way of application? What do we take away from it?

Well, one of the things that occurs to me is that we should be filled with hope. First thing again is to be filled with the hope. I think the people who are interested in proxy baptism are getting very desperate because I think I've got to do something to help my dearly departed loved one or someone I'm concerned about.

And for the Christian, all of our hope is placed in Christ. It's not placed in another man or woman to do something on our behalf, but we entrust all of our lives to him. The whole, the whole of it, the entirety of it, we trust to Christ.

Be filled with hope, people. Christ has made us alive. We're not dead. We're walking in newness of life. We should live as new creatures and walk in that newness. We should walk as those who have been forgiven and have the favor of God on us in Christ.

There's something else that the Christian life is without a doubt, a continuous striving against the old man and his ways and to put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him, Colossians 3.

Finally, number four, rejoice. Rejoice because we don't have to do crazy religious rituals like getting baptized for the dead because Christ has done this work on our behalf. So there's always something in us.

There's always a religious tendency in us to want to do something, to perform something, to make us right with God. Our baptism didn't make us right with God. Do you know what made us right with God? Christ did.

We didn't do anything. Our Bible reading doesn't make us right with God. Our coming to church doesn't make us God. Christ has made his people right with God. He's reconciled us to God. So in this we take great comfort and in this we rejoice.

You remember in that section, verse 22, it said, or starting in verse 21, for since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. And you remember that sermon during that time I said Adam was a perfect representative for us.

You look back at that story, how could you do it Adam? Adam was the perfect representative. But God sent a more perfect representative in order to give us resurrection and salvation, to give us life. Today, the Lord's day, this is the Christian Sabbath.

Today our hearts and our minds entirely should be given over to remembering what Christ has done for us. We should give ourselves entirely to this today. Our worship, we were singing earlier, we might have forgotten, no chance to sing again.

Our singing should be energized and motivated by the reality of our life in Christ and the great hope we have in his gospel. Please pray with me. Oh Lord Jesus, I thank you for the hard text of scripture.

We say to ourselves this text seems inconsistent with the Word of God. We wonder if there may be some kind of error or something in the Bible. And we thank you for your inscripturated Word. We thank you for the easily discerned parts, the parts with greater perspicuity, greater clarity.

We also thank you for the hard verses which cause us, drive us to our knees and drive us to search the scriptures and cause us to seek out wiser men to discern its meaning. Oh Lord, I pray that we would never entertain nonsense like baptism for the dead.

And I pray that we would clearly see its apostasy, its wickedness. I pray that we would see that you perform the work. We never perform the work for someone else. That's you who do the saving. It's you who have made it possible for men to be saved.

And we can never merit that for ourselves or for another. What an abomination it is for us to think in those terms. Oh Lord, I thank you for your gospel which is a pride-crushing truth. We've contributed nothing positively to our salvation.

And yet in Christ we are made alive. Lord, I pray that we would see the error of our ways and that we would always run to you in faith knowing that you are the one who has performed this work. I thank you for your gospel.

It's so much better than anything we could have devised on our own. Thank you for saving sinners. Thank you for Holy Spirit for applying the work of Christ to our account, to make us righteous, to sanctify us, to consecrate us, to set us apart as holy in him and him alone.

All of our boasting, we say with Paul, is in Christ alone. Oh Lord, I pray that we would be a boasting in Christ kind of people. I pray they would be ever on our lips and in our minds and in our hearts that Christ has done it.

He saved sinners. And this we rejoice. Oh Lord, I pray that you would move our hearts as we approach your table, that we would come with great thanksgiving and joy in our hearts because of what Christ has done.

And that in some strange way we are alive though we were dead and we do not yet fully see what it means to be eternally alive in Christ, but we have the promise, we have the sealing of the Spirit, and we have the great hope that we will taste it, that we will see it face-to-face.

We ask these things in Jesus' name.