This is a section of the chapter in which Paul puts the resurrection of Christ in a cosmic perspective. He is talking about Christ’s resurrection and our resurrection, and as we look at that within the framework of history, at least from the perspective in which he was writing, he is talking about a relatively small span of years. There is the Lord Jesus Christ, who died and rose again in what I believe was A.D. 30. There is Paul writing somewhat later in the 50’s to these Christians in Corinth. It is a small span of years, and it would be a tendency, I suppose, on the part of some people to say, “Well, this is nice, but it’s just a little incidental phenomenon of history.”
But Paul says that this fits into the scope of it all. He takes us, on the one hand, back to Adam and to the fact that we fell in Adam and were united to Adam in the Fall, God counting our sin along with Adam’s sin. Then he comes to the present, and he says that just as God judged us as sinners in the fall of Adam, letting him be the corporate representative of the race, so has God counted alive in Christ all those who are united to Him by saving faith.
Then he goes ahead to the future when he speaks of the time that is coming when Christ, who is going to be victorious over all, will subdue that last enemy, which is death. And then, finally, Christ will submit everything to the Father. The essence of the flow of history and where it is going, and also how we as Christians fit into it, is based on the resurrection because we are united to Jesus with our whole being—body, soul, and spirit. Moreover, one day even death itself is going to be destroyed. We are going to be part of the victory as we stand with Christ in our resurrection bodies.
He talks about a particular problem in verse 29, that of the baptism for the dead. There are all sorts of peculiar interpretations of this. Some of them are wrong; some of them are possibly right. The problem with this phrase, of course, is that it does not occur anywhere else. Paul is probably referring to something that they did, but he does not explain what it is. Let me give you just two views that people have had about this.
Some have taken this in a very literal way and said that being baptized for the dead means being baptized for people who have died in order that they might be saved by your being baptized for them. The problem with this is that it imparts a mystical property to baptism. It is saying that salvation is merely by the performance of a rite. It you observe the rite, or have it observed in your behalf, then you are safe. But then faith evaporates; it does not make any difference at all.
There is a second explanation, which is that baptism for the dead has nothing to do with salvation. Instead, when a new believer makes a public identification of himself with Jesus Christ through baptism, he then takes his place among the ranks of Christians, and replaces somebody who has died beforehand. This is the way Harry Ironside understood the passage, and he had an interesting story that he used to explain how it happened. There had been a much-venerated saint in their congregation in Chicago who had died. He had lived an exemplary life, had been a great blessing to the church, and had witnessed to his family. Nevertheless, there were some who had not come to Christ.
When the funeral was held, most of these relatives, including some of the children who were not believers, were there. When they came to the end of the service and the family was invited to take a last look at the face of the one who had died, Ironside intervened and said, “I really feel constrained before we close this casket to pause a minute and just say this. We have lost a pillar in the church, and I know there are people here who have not come to Christ. I’m wondering if among this gathering, there is anybody who would like to step forward and make profession of faith in Christ and so indicate his or her willingness, if God would so bless, to take the place of this one that we’ve lost here in these days.”
Ironside proceeded to give a Gospel invitation. In response, one of the relatives, a son, came forward and confessed Christ and said that he would like to try to begin to fill the shoes of his father who had lived in such an exemplary way for God. The next Sunday this man was baptized, and this story was made known to the congregation. Ironside took that story about an individual’s family and said that this is what happens when any Christian is baptized: he takes the place of another Christian who has died and has gone on to receive his heavenly reward.
