1Cor 15:33-41 | Clarke | STEP | Verse 33 Be not deceived - Do not impose on yourselves, and permit not others to do it. Evil communications corrupt good manners - There are many sayings like this among the Greek poets; but this of the apostle, and which according to the best MSS. makes an Iambic verse, is generally supposed to have been taken from Menander's lost comedy of Thais. Φθειρουσιν ηθη χρησθ' ὁμιλιαι κακαι· Bad company good morals doth corrupt. There is a proverb much like this among the rabbins: תרי אורי יכישי ותר רטיכא אוקרן יכישי לרטיכא "There were two dry logs of wood, and one green log; but the dry logs burnt up the green log." There is no difficulty in this saying; he who frequents the company of bad or corrupt men will soon be as they are. He may be sound in the faith, and have the life and power of godliness, and at first frequent their company only for the sake of their pleasing conversation, or their literary accomplishments: and he may think his faith proof against their infidelity; but he will soon find, by means of their glozing speeches, his faith weakened; and when once he gets under the empire of doubt, unbelief will soon prevail; his bad company will corrupt his morals; and the two dry logs will soon burn up the green one. The same sentiment in nearly the same words is found in several of the Greek writers; Aeschylus, Sept. Theb. ver. 605: Εν παντι πραγει δ' εσθ' ὁμιλιας κακης κακιον ουδεν· "In every matter there is nothing more deleterious than evil communication." - Diodorus Siculus, lib. xvi. cap. 54: Ταις πονηραις ὁμιλιαις διεφθειρε τα ηθη των ανθρωπων· "With these evil communications he corrupted the morals of men." Ταυτα μεν οὑτως ισθι· κακοισι δε μη προσομιλο Ανδρασιν, αλλ' αιει των αγαθων εχεο· Και μετα τοισιν πινε και εσθιε, και μετα τοισιν Ἱζε, και ἁνδανε τοις, ὡν μεγαλη δυναμις. Εσθλων μεν γαρ απ' εσθλα μαθησεαι· ην δε κακοισι Συμμιχθῃς, απολεις και τον εοντα νοον. Theogn. Sent., ver. 31-36. Know this: Thou must not keep company with the wicked, but converse always with good men. With such eat, drink, and associate. Please those who have the greatest virtue. From good men thou mayest learn good things; but if thou keep company with the wicked, thou wilt lose even the intelligence which thou now possessest.

1 Corinthians 15:33-41

Verse 33

Be not deceived - Do not impose on yourselves, and permit not others to do it.

Evil communications corrupt good manners - There are many sayings like this among the Greek poets; but this of the apostle, and which according to the best MSS. makes an Iambic verse, is generally supposed to have been taken from Menander's lost comedy of Thais. Φθειρουσιν ηθη χρησθ' ὁμιλιαι κακαι·

Bad company good morals doth corrupt.

There is a proverb much like this among the rabbins: תרי אורי יכישי ותר רטיכא אוקרן יכישי לרטיכא "There were two dry logs of wood, and one green log; but the dry logs burnt up the green log."

There is no difficulty in this saying; he who frequents the company of bad or corrupt men will soon be as they are. He may be sound in the faith, and have the life and power of godliness, and at first frequent their company only for the sake of their pleasing conversation, or their literary accomplishments: and he may think his faith proof against their infidelity; but he will soon find, by means of their glozing speeches, his faith weakened; and when once he gets under the empire of doubt, unbelief will soon prevail; his bad company will corrupt his morals; and the two dry logs will soon burn up the green one.

The same sentiment in nearly the same words is found in several of the Greek writers; Aeschylus, Sept. Theb. ver. 605: Εν παντι πραγει δ' εσθ' ὁμιλιας κακης κακιον ουδεν· "In every matter there is nothing more deleterious than evil communication." - Diodorus Siculus, lib. xvi. cap. 54: Ταις πονηραις ὁμιλιαις διεφθειρε τα ηθη των ανθρωπων· "With these evil communications he corrupted the morals of men." Ταυτα μεν οὑτως ισθι· κακοισι δε μη προσομιλο Ανδρασιν, αλλ' αιει των αγαθων εχεο· Και μετα τοισιν πινε και εσθιε, και μετα τοισιν Ἱζε, και ἁνδανε τοις, ὡν μεγαλη δυναμις. Εσθλων μεν γαρ απ' εσθλα μαθησεαι· ην δε κακοισι Συμμιχθῃς, απολεις και τον εοντα νοον.

Theogn. Sent., ver. 31-36.

Know this: Thou must not keep company with the wicked, but converse always with good men. With such eat, drink, and associate. Please those who have the greatest virtue. From good men thou mayest learn good things; but if thou keep company with the wicked, thou wilt lose even the intelligence which thou now possessest. Verse 34

Awake to righteousness - Shake off your slumber; awake fully, thoroughly, δικαιως, as ye ought to do: so the word should be rendered; not awake to righteousness. Be in earnest; do not trifle with God, your souls, and eternity.

Sin not - For this will lead to the destruction both of body and soul. Life is but a moment; improve it. Heaven has blessings without end.

Some have not the knowledge of God - The original is very emphatic: αγνωσιαν γαρ Θεου τινες εχουσι, some have an ignorance of God; they do not acknowledge God. They have what is their bane; and they have not what would be their happiness and glory. To have an ignorance of God - a sort of substantial darkness, that prevents the light of God from penetrating the soul, is a worse state than to be simply in the dark, or without the Divine knowledge. The apostle probably speaks of those who were once enlightened, had once good morals, but were corrupted by bad company. It was to their shame or reproach that they had left the good way, and were now posting down to the chambers of death. Verse 35

But some man will say - Αλλα ερει τις. It is very likely that the apostle, by τις some, some one, some man, means particularly the false apostle, or teacher at Corinth, who was chief in the opposition to the pure doctrine of the Gospel, and to whom, in this covert way, he often refers.

The second part of the apostle's discourse begins at this verse. What shall be the nature of the resurrection body?

1. The question is stated, 1Cor 15:35.

2. It is answered: first, by a similitude, 1Cor 15:36-38; secondly, by an application, 1Cor 15:33-41; and thirdly, by explication, 1Cor 15:42-50. Verse 36

Thou fool - Αφρον. If this be addressed, as it probably is, to the false apostle, there is a peculiar propriety in it; as this man seems to have magnified his own wisdom, and set it up against both God and man; and none but a fool could act so. At the same time, it is folly in any to assert the impossibility of a thing because he cannot comprehend it.

That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die - I have shown the propriety of this simile of the apostle in the note on Joh 12:24 (note), to which I must refer the reader. A grain of wheat, etc., is composed of the body or lobes, and the germ. The latter forms an inconsiderable part of the mass of the grain; the body, lobes, or farinaceous part, forms nearly the whole. This body dies - becomes decomposed, and forms a fine earth, from which the germ derives its first nourishment; by the nourishment thus derived the germ is quickened, receives its first vegetable life, and through this means is rendered capable of deriving the rest of its nourishment and support from the grosser earth in which the grain was deposited. Whether the apostle would intimate here that there is a certain germ in the present body, which shall become the seed of the resurrection body, this is not the place to inquire; and on this point I can with pleasure refer to Mr. Drew's work on the "Resurrection of the Human Body;" where this subject, as well as every other subject connected with this momentous question, is considered in a very luminous and cogently argumentative point of view. Verse 37

Thou sowest not that body that shall be - This is decomposed, and becomes the means of nourishing the whole plant, roots, stalk, leaves, ear, and full corn in the ear. Verse 38

But God giveth it a body - And is there any other way of accounting for it but by the miraculous working of God's power? For out of that one bare grain is produced a system of roots, a tall and vigorous stalk, with all its appendages of leaves, etc., besides the full corn in the ear; the whole making several hundred times the quantum of what was originally deposited. There are no proofs that what some call nature can effect this: it will ever be a philosophical as well as a Scriptural truth, that God giveth it a body as it pleaseth him; and so doth he manage the whole of the work, that every seed shall have its own body: that the wheat germ shall never produce barley; nor the rye, oats. See the note on Gen 1:12. Verse 39

All flesh is not the same flesh - Though the organization of all animals is, in its general principles, the same, yet there are no two different kinds of animals that have flesh of the same flavour, whether the animal be beast, fowl, or fish. And this is precisely the same with vegetables.

In opposition to this general assertion of St. Paul, there are certain people who tell us that fish is not flesh; and while their religion prohibits, at one time of the year, the flesh of quadrupeds and fowls, it allows them to eat fish, fondly supposing that fish is not flesh: they might as well tell us that a lily is not a vegetable, because it is not a cabbage. There is a Jewish canon pronounced by Schoettgen which my readers may not be displeased to find inserted here: Nedarim, fol. 40: הנודר מן הבשר יהא אסור בבור רגים והגים He who is bound by a vow to abstain from flesh, is bound to abstain from the flesh of fish and of locusts. From this it appears that they acknowledged that there was one flesh of beasts and another of fishes, and that he was religiously bound to abstain from the one, who was bound to abstain from the other. Verse 40

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial - The apostle certainly does not speak of celestial and terrestrial bodies in the sense in which we use those terms: we invariably mean by the former the sun, moon, planets, and stars; by the latter, masses of inanimate matter. But the apostle speaks of human beings, some of which were clothed with celestial, others with terrestrial bodies. It is very likely, therefore, that he means by the celestial bodies such as those refined human bodies with which Enoch, Elijah, and Christ himself, appear in the realms of glory: to which we may add the bodies of those saints which arose after our Lord's resurrection; and, after having appeared to many, doubtless were taken up to paradise. By terrestrial bodies we may understand those in which the saints now live.

But the glory of the celestial is one - The glory - the excellence, beauty, and perfection. Even the present frail human body possesses an indescribable degree of contrivance, art, economy, order, beauty, and excellence; but the celestial body, that in which Christ now appears, and according to which ours shall be raised, (Phi 3:21), will exceed the excellence of this beyond all comparison. A glory or splendor will belong to that which does not belong to this: here there is a glory of excellence; there, there will be a glory of light and effulgence; for the bodies of the saints shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. See Mat 13:43. Verse 41

There is one glory of the sun - As if he had said: This may be illustrated by the present appearance of the celestial bodies which belong to our system. The sun has a greater degree of splendor than the moon; the moon than the planets; and the planets than the stars. And even in the fixed stars, one has a greater degree of splendor than another, which may proceed either from their different magnitudes, or from the comparative proximity of some of them to our earth; but from which of these causes, or from what other cause unknown, we cannot tell, as it is impossible to ascertain the distance of any of the fixed stars; even the nearest of them being too remote to afford any sensible parallax, without which their distances cannot be measured. See the concluding observations, (1Cor 15:58 (note), points 1-8)