O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?
1 Corinthians 15:53-57, the resurrection, as the early church read it
Paul's great resurrection chapter ends in a war-cry. The early church took it literally and gladly: this very body, corruptible and mortal, will be raised, the same body, but clothed in incorruption, and death itself not merely defeated but destroyed. Chrysostom can hardly contain himself preaching it, he pictures Paul trampling death underfoot and shouting over it. The Father in his own words below, with a plain restatement.
The Father's words are verbatim and attributed (Chrysostom, Homilies on 1 Corinthians, NPNF, public domain; selected from the running prose, footnote apparatus omitted). The box marked "In plain terms" is our own restatement, never the Father's words.
1 Corinthians 15:53-54 · KJVFor this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption… then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.
"Lest any… should suppose that our bodies do not rise again; he adds, 'this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.'… so that the body indeed remains, for it is the body which is put on; but its mortality and corruption vanish away, when immortality and incorruption come upon it."
St. John Chrysostom"'Death is swallowed up in victory:' i.e., utterly; not so much as a fragment of it remains nor a hope of returning, incorruption having consumed corruption."
St. John ChrysostomThis is not the soul escaping the body; it is the body itself raised and transformed. The same body that died is the body that rises, but its mortality and decay are gone, swallowed up by incorruption. Chrysostom is emphatic against any spiritualizing away of the resurrection: "the body indeed remains."
1 Corinthians 15:55-56 · KJVO death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.
"Seest thou his noble soul? how even as one who is offering sacrifices for victory… he leaps and tramples upon death fallen at his feet, and shouts a cry of triumph over its head where it lies… 'O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?' It is clean gone, it is perished, it is utterly vanished away… For He not only disarmed death and vanquished it, but even destroyed it, and made it quite cease from being."
St. John ChrysostomDeath's "sting" was sin, and sin's strength was the law that exposed and condemned it, but Christ took away sin, and so drew the sting. Chrysostom will not let it be a quiet doctrine: Paul stands over a defeated enemy and mocks it. Death is not merely beaten; it is abolished, "made quite to cease from being."
1 Corinthians 15:57 · KJVBut thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
"For the trophy He Himself erected, but the crowns He hath caused us also to partake of. And this not of debt, but of mere mercy."
St. John ChrysostomThe victory is entirely Christ's, He won it, He raised the trophy, and yet He shares the crowns with us. And He shares them, Chrysostom notes, not because He owes us anything, but out of "mere mercy." Even our triumph over death is a gift.
Where this stands among the traditions
This is shared confession, not a point of division. The bodily resurrection, "this corruptible" raised incorruptible, is in every ancient creed ("I believe in the resurrection of the body," "the resurrection of the dead"), and Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant hold it together. If there is any drift, it is the modern tendency, in and out of the church, to soften the resurrection into "the soul going to heaven" or a vague spiritual survival. The early church, with Paul and Chrysostom, meant something far more solid and far more glad: the grave emptied, the body raised, death itself destroyed, the whole creation's enemy "made quite to cease from being."
Patristic text from Chrysostom's Homilies on 1 Corinthians (NPNF, public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; 1 Corinthians 15 at BibleHub.