Mark 16:6 and 1 Corinthians 15:12

And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.

Mark 16:6 — King James Version

But he said to them, “Do not be afraid. You are seeking Yeshua the Nazarene, who was crucified; he has arisen; he is not here. Behold the place where he was laid.”

Mark 16:6 — Aramaic Bible in Plain English

But he said, “Don’t be so surprised! You’re looking for Yeshua from Natzeret, who was executed on the stake. He has risen, he’s not here! Look at the place where they laid him.

Mark 16:6 — Complete Jewish Bible

Context

The Resurrection
…5Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right, wearing a white robe; and they were amazed. 6And he said to them, “Do not be amazed; you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who has been crucified. He has risen; He is not here; behold, here is the place where they laid Him. 7“But go, tell His disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see Him, just as He told you.'”…

Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary

Mark 16:1-8 Nicodemus brought a large quantity of spices, but these good women did not think that enough. The respect others show to Christ, should not hinder us from showing our respect. And those who are carried by holy zeal, to seek Christ diligently, will find the difficulties in their way speedily vanish. When we put ourselves to trouble and expense, from love to Christ, we shall be accepted, though our endeavors are not successful. The sight of the angel might justly have encouraged them, but they were affrighted. Thus many times that which should be matter of comfort to us, through our own mistake, proves a terror to us. He was crucified, but he is glorified. He is risen, he is not here, not dead, but alive again; hereafter you will see him, but you may here see the place where he was laid. Thus seasonable comforts will be sent to those that lament after the Lord Jesus. Peter is particularly named, Tell Peter; it will be most welcome to him, for he is in sorrow for sin. A sight of Christ will be very welcome to a true penitent, and a true penitent is very welcome to a sight of Christ. The men ran with all the haste they could to the disciples; but disquieting fears often hinder us from doing that service to Christ and to the souls of men, which, if faith and the joy of faith were strong, we might do.

 

Thoughts on Today’s Verse

By Elizabeth Haworth

Were it not for the cross, we could never have been forgiven of our sins and delivered from our offenses against God, but were it not for the resurrection we would have no proof of Christ’s claims to be our Saviour.

By His sinless life and substitutionary death He was victorious over death and by His resurrection he broke the power of sin and death in the lives of all who believe in Him – for as our risen and glorified Saviour, we have been given His own resurrected life – our new, born-again life in Christ.

Though ‘weeping endured for a night’, what joy must have filled the heart of those faithful women, when very early in the morning they saw that the very large stone had been rolled away, and discovered the empty tomb. What amazement must have filled their hearts as trembling.. they entered inside and saw that young man, dressed in a white robe sitting where the dead body of the Lord Jesus Christ had been laid.

No wonder he quickly told them: don’t be alarmed – don’t be afraid”. But image the thrill and anticipation that must have pounded their heart as they heard those words of encouragement for the very first time: You seek Jesus of Nazareth, Who was crucified. He has risen; He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.

Imagine the rush of thrilling anticipation and wonder, when they discovered that Jesus was not dead but alive. They had expected to find a dead Messiah but instead they rejoiced to hear news of their risen Saviour.

It was 2000 years ago that those earth-shattering words were heard for the very first time, but too frequently in our age and generation those profound words are taken for granted and the eternal significance is lost in the echo of their familiarity.

Let us never forget that the resurrection is as much a part of the glorious gospel of Christ as is His Substitutionary Death:- where He paid the price for our sin – His Deity, whereby He alone was good enough to pay the price for sin and redeem the race of fallen sinners – and His Humanity, without which He could never have become our Kinsman-Redeemer, by becoming the only perfect, human substitute for the accumulated sin of all humanity.

Don’t Be Aftaid, He Is Risen, are words that we should reflect upon in our heart by faith with thanksgiving, until we are flooded with the thrilling joy that must have been the experience of those faithful women.. 2000 years ago.

My Prayer

Heavenly Father, forgive me for too often taking for granted.. all that Christ’s substitutionary death and glorious resurrection means to me. Thank You Lord for sending Your only begotten Son to die on the cross to pay the price for my sins and that He rose again so that I could receive His resurrected life. May I grow in grace and in a knowledge of my risen and glorified Saviour Jesus Christ – until His life is lived through me and I can say with the apostle Paul – it is not I that live, but Christ that lives in me. To You be all praise and glory for ever and ever, AMEN
 

Cross References

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?

1 Corinthians 15:12 — King James Version

But if The Messiah who arose from among the dead is preached, how are there some among you who say there is no life for the dead?

1 Corinthians 15:12 — Aramaic Bible in Plain English

If we have told you that Christ has been brought back to life, how can some of you say that coming back from the dead is impossible?

1 Corinthians 15:12 — God’s Word Translation

1 Corinthians 15 Complete Jewish Bible (CJB)

1 Now, brothers, I must remind you of the Good News which I proclaimed to you, and which you received, and on which you have taken your stand, ² and by which you are being saved — provided you keep holding fast to the message I proclaimed to you. For if you don’t, your trust will have been in vain. ³ For among the first things I passed on to you was what I also received, namely this: the Messiah died for our sins, in accordance with what the Tanakh says; ⁴ and he was buried; and he was raised on the third day, in accordance with what the Tanakh says; ⁵ and he was seen by Kefa, then by the Twelve; ⁶ and afterwards he was seen by more than five hundred brothers at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, though some have died. ⁷ Later he was seen by Ya‘akov, then by all the emissaries; ⁸ and last of all he was seen by me, even though I was born at the wrong time. ⁹ For I am the least of all the emissaries, unfit to be called an emissary, because I persecuted the Messianic Community of God. ¹⁰ But by God’s grace I am what I am, and his grace towards me was not in vain; on the contrary, I have worked harder than all of them, although it was not I but the grace of God with me. ¹¹ Anyhow, whether I or they, this is what we proclaim, and this is what you believed.

¹² But if it has been proclaimed that the Messiah has been raised from the dead, how is it that some of you are saying there is no such thing as a resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then the Messiah has not been raised; ¹⁴ and if the Messiah has not been raised, then what we have proclaimed is in vain; also your trust is in vain; ¹⁵ furthermore, we are shown up as false witnesses for God in having testified that God raised up the Messiah, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. ¹⁶ For if the dead are not raised, then the Messiah has not been raised either; ¹⁷ and if the Messiah has not been raised, your trust is useless, and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Also, if this is the case, those who died in union with the Messiah are lost. ¹⁹ If it is only for this life that we have put our hope in the Messiah, we are more pitiable than anyone.

²⁰ But the fact is that the Messiah has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have died. ²¹ For since death came through a man, also the resurrection of the dead has come through a man. ²² For just as in connection with Adam all die, so in connection with the Messiah all will be made alive. ²³ But each in his own order: the Messiah is the firstfruits; then those who belong to the Messiah, at the time of his coming; ²⁴ then the culmination, when he hands over the Kingdom to God the Father, after having put an end to every rulership, yes, to every authority and power. ²⁵ For he has to rule until he puts all his enemies under his feet. ²⁶ The last enemy to be done away with will be death, ²⁷ for “He put everything in subjection under his feet.”^[a] But when it says that “everything” has been subjected, obviously the word does not include God, who is himself the one subjecting everything to the Messiah. ²⁸ Now when everything has been subjected to the Son, then he will subject himself to God, who subjected everything to him; so that God may be everything in everyone.

²⁹ Were it otherwise, what would the people accomplish who are immersed on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not actually raised, why are people immersed for them? ³⁰ For that matter, we ourselves — why do we keep facing danger hour by hour? ³¹ Brothers, by the right to be proud which the Messiah Yeshua our Lord gives me, I solemnly tell you that I die every day. ³² If my fighting with “wild beasts” in Ephesus was done merely on a human basis, what do I gain by it? If dead people are not raised, we might as well live by the saying, “Let’s eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!”^{[b] 33} Don’t be fooled. “Bad company ruins good character.” ³⁴ Come to your senses! Live righteously and stop sinning! There are some people who lack knowledge of God — I say this to your shame.

³⁵ But someone will ask, “In what manner are the dead raised? What sort of body do they have?” ³⁶ Stupid! When you sow a seed, it doesn’t come alive unless it first dies. ³⁷ Also, what you sow is not the body that will be, but a bare seed of, say, wheat or something else; ³⁸ but God gives it the body he intended for it; and to each kind of seed he gives its own body. ³⁹ Not all living matter is the same living matter; on the contrary, there is one kind for human beings, another kind of living matter for animals, another for birds and another for fish. ⁴⁰ Further, there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the beauty of heavenly bodies is one thing, while the beauty of earthly bodies is something else. ⁴¹ The sun has one kind of beauty, the moon another, the stars yet another; indeed, each star has its own individual kind of beauty.

⁴² So it is with the resurrection of the dead. When the body is “sown,” it decays; when it is raised, it cannot decay. ⁴³ When sown, it is without dignity; when raised, it will be beautiful. When sown, it is weak; when raised, it will be strong. ⁴⁴ When sown, it is an ordinary human body; when raised, it will be a body controlled by the Spirit. If there is an ordinary human body, there is also a body controlled by the Spirit. ⁴⁵ In fact, the Tanakh says so: Adam, the first man, became a living human being;^[c] but the last “Adam” has become a life-giving Spirit. ⁴⁶ Note, however, that the body from the Spirit did not come first, but the ordinary human one; the one from the Spirit comes afterwards. ⁴⁷ The first man is from the earth, made of dust; the second man is from heaven. ⁴⁸ People born of dust are like the man of dust, and people born from heaven are like the man from heaven; ⁴⁹ and just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, so also we will bear the image of the man from heaven.

⁵⁰ Let me say this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot share in the Kingdom of God, nor can something that decays share in what does not decay. ⁵¹ Look, I will tell you a secret — not all of us will die! But we will all be changed! ⁵² It will take but a moment, the blink of an eye, at the final shofar. For the shofar will sound, and the dead will be raised to live forever, and we too will be changed. ⁵³ For this material which can decay must be clothed with imperishability, this which is mortal must be clothed with immortality. ⁵⁴ When what decays puts on imperishability and what is mortal puts on immortality, then this passage in the Tanakh will be fulfilled:

⁵⁶ The sting of death is sin; and sin draws its power from the Torah; ⁵⁷ but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Yeshua the Messiah!

⁵⁸ So, my dear brothers, stand firm and immovable, always doing the Lord’s work as vigorously as you can, knowing that united with the Lord your efforts are not in vain.

Context

Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary

1 Corinthians 15:12-19 Having shown that Christ was risen, the apostle answers those who said there would be no resurrection. There had been no justification, or salvation, if Christ had not risen. And must not faith in Christ be vain, and of no use, if he is still among the dead? The proof of the resurrection of the body is the resurrection of our Lord. Even those who died in the faith, had perished in their sins, if Christ had not risen. All who believe in Christ, have hope in him, as a Redeemer; hope for redemption and salvation by him; but if there is no resurrection, or future recompense, their hope in him can only be as to this life. And they must be in a worse condition than the rest of mankind, especially at the time, and under the circumstances, in which the apostles wrote; for then Christians were hated and persecuted by all men. But it is not so; they, of all men, enjoy solid comforts amidst all their difficulties and trials, even in the times of the sharpest persecution.
 

Pulpit Commentary

1 Corinthians 15 — Verses 12-19. – The resurrection of Christ is the basis of our faith in the general resurrection. Verse 12. – Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead. St. Paul sees that if One has risen from the dead, the fact of that miracle, taken in connection with the rest of the gospel, furnishes Christians with a sufficient proof that they shall rise. “For,” he had already said to the Thessalonians, “if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him” (see the same argument in Romans 8:11). That there is no resurrection of the dead. These deniers of the resurrection are usually called “the Corinthian Sadducees.” After the state of social and moral laxity of which we have been reading, we can scarcely be surprised at the existence of any disorder or anomaly in the Church of Corinth. Yet it comes with something of a shock on our paralyzed sense of astonishment to read that some of these Christians actually denied a resurrection! The fact at once proves two remarkable truths, namely,

(1) that the early Christian Church had none of the ideal purity of doctrine which is sometimes ecclesiastically attributed to it; and

(2) that there was in the bosom of that Church a wide and most forbearing tolerance. We have no data to enable us to determine what were the influences which led to the denial of the resurrection.

1. They can hardly have been Jewish. The mass of Jews at this time shared the views of the Pharisees, who strongly maintained the resurrection (Acts 23:6). If they were Jews at all, they could only have been Sadducees or Essenes. But

(1) the Sadducees were a small, wealthy, and mainly political sect, who had no religious influence, and can certainly have had no representatives at Corinth; and

(2) the Essenes, though they had considerable influence in Asia, do not seem to have established themselves in Greece, nor are we aware that they were hostile to the doctrine of the resurrection.

2. Probably, then, they were Gentiles. If so, they may have been

(1) either Epicureans, who disbelieved in a future life altogether; or

(2) Stoics, who held that the future life was only an impersonal absorption into the Divine. Both these schools of philosophers “jeered” at the very notion of a bodily resurrection (Acts 17:32). In 2 Timothy 2:18 we read of some, like Hymenaeus and Philetus, who erred, saying “that the resurrection was past already.” These teachers were incipient Gnostics, who spiritualized the resurrection, or rather said that the term was only applicable to the rising from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. The Corinthian doubters seem from the arguments which St. Paul addresses to them, to have been rather troubled with material doubts which they may have inherited from their Gentile training.

Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Now if Christ be preached that he arose from the dead,…. As he was by the Apostle Paul, when at Corinth, and by all the rest of the apostles elsewhere.

How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? Who these were is not certain, whether Hymenaeus and Philetus, whose notion this was, were come hither, or any of their disciples; or whether they were some of the followers of Simon Magus and Cerinthus, who denied the resurrection; or rather, whether they were not Jews, and of the sect of the Sadducees, who though they believed in Christ, retained their old principle, that there is no resurrection of the dead, cannot be affirmed: however, it is certain that they were such as were then at Corinth, and went under the Christian name; and it is highly probable were members of the church there; and who not only held this notion privately, but broached it publicly, saying, declaring, affirming, and that openly, before the whole church, what were their opinions and sentiments: it was indeed but some of them, not all that were chargeable with this bad principle, which the apostle asks how, and with what face they could assert, then it had been preached, and so fully proved to them, that Christ was risen from the dead; and if so, then it is out of question that there is a resurrection of the dead; for their notion, as it is here expressed, was not only that there would be no resurrection of the dead, but that there was none, nor had been any: though the apostle’s view is also to prove the future resurrection of the dead, and which is done by proving the resurrection of Christ, for his resurrection involves that of his people; for not only the saints rose in, and with Christ, as their head representatively, and which is the sense of the prophecy in Hosea 6:2 but because he is their head, and they are members of him, therefore as sure as he the head is risen, so sure shall the members rise likewise; nor will Christ’s resurrection, in a sense, be perfect, until all the members of his body are risen: for though the resurrection of Christ, personally considered, is perfect, yet not as mystically considered; nor will it till all the saints are raised, of whose resurrection Christ’s is the exemplar and the pledge: their bodies will be raised and fashioned like unto Christ’s, and by virtue of union to him, and as sure as he is risen, for he is the first fruits of them that slept. Besides, as he became incarnate, obeyed, suffered, not for himself, but for his people, so he rose again on their account, and that they dying might rise also; which if they should not, one end at least of Christ’s resurrection would not be answered: add to this, that the same power that raised Christ from the dead, can raise others, even all the saints; so that if it is allowed that Christ is raised, it need not be thought incredible that all the dead shall be raised; and particularly when it is observed, that Christ is the efficient, procuring, and meritorious cause of the resurrection from the dead, as well as the pattern and earnest of it.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

12. if—Seeing that it is an admitted fact that Christ is announced by us eye-witnesses as having risen from the dead, how is it that some of you deny that which is a necessary consequence of Christ’s resurrection, namely, the general resurrection?

some—Gentile reasoners (Ac 17:32; 26:8) who would not believe it because they did not see “how” it could be (1Co 15:35, 36).

1 Corinthians 15:12 Additional Commentaries

Thoughts on Today’s Verse

By Elizabeth Haworth

The sacrificial death of the Lord Jesus on the cross, to pay the price for our sins.. are tidings of great joy. The free, unmerited gift of eternal life to all who believe in His name is the most wonderful addition to our redemption, but His glorious resurrection from the dead is beyond our comprehension, for through His bodily resurrection He broke the power of death in the mortal bodies of all who would trust His name – and because He lives we too will live, with a spirit, a soul and a glorified body.

The Corinthian Christians certainly believe in the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Himself. They believed that the He had risen, bodily from the grave, but they doubted that they too would received an actual, resurrected body. They believed in a spiritual resurrection but doubted the physical element that is embraced in the glorious gospel of Christ.

When the Lord Jesus rose from the grave in His glorified, human body of flesh and bone, He triumphed over sin, and Satan.. He was Victor over death and the grave and He removed the sting of death, from all who would trust in Him as Saviour. It is not a dead Saviour that we worship but our living, resurrected, glorified, heavenly Lord. There is a man today, seated on the right hand of the Father in power and great glory – Jesus Christ the righteous, Who is the First-Fruit from the dead.

The Old Testament Scriptures prophesized that Christ would be the First-Fruit from the dead, pointing to Jonah as one illustration of His glorious resurrection – after three days. The New Testament lists many eye-witnesses, occasions and numbers of believers who verified Him to be resurrected, as they handled the glorified wounds in His body, and listened to His reassuring voice as His open the Scriptures in their very hearing.

And having laid all the evidence before the Corinthians believer, Paul is able say with authority: 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? If there was no resurrection of our body as well as our spirit and soul we would spend eternity as a disembodied spirits. Praise God that NOW is Christ risen from the dead, and He has become the First-Fruits of all who die in the Lord – and that includes you and me

Down through the centuries many have heard the glad tidings of great joy – that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, that He died as our sin-substitute.. was buried, and rose again according to the Scriptures, breaking the power of sin and death in the lives of all who believe in His name and becoming the First-Fruit of all who sleep.

My Prayer

Thank You heavenly Father for the beautiful truth that Christ is the First-Fruit from the dead – of all who trust in Him and that we too will one day be clothed in a resurrected and glorified body. Thank You that we are not only clothed in His righteousness but will one day receive a new, glorified body. May God of peace Himself sanctify us completely, and may our whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name we pray, AMEN

Cross References