1 Corinthians 15:29

"Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?" (NIV)

This is one of the most difficult Bible verses to understand. That makes it a good Bible verse to help us learn how to gain a correct understanding of Scripture.

One of the common mistakes many people make in coming to an understanding of a Scripture verse is to interpret that verse based on contemporary culture. Think about that for a moment. What does that do?

It places our current culture in the position of being the highest authority. Our current culture is telling us what the Bible means!

Do you understand what that means? Culture continually changes and is subject to fads, crazes and continually shifting desires. If we use our culture to tell us what the Bible means, then our understanding of the Bible continually changes. You can never know what truth is!

In addition, since different areas of the world have different cultures, the Bible will mean different things in different parts of the world. Scripture becomes nothing more than the shifting sands of opinion in a local area. There is no longer any truth. We no longer have the solid foundation God gave us.

In reality what is the highest and best authority we have?

The Bible.

So where should we turn for help in understanding Scripture? The Bible. Our first choice is to always use Scripture to explain Scripture. Start with the immediate verses that are around the verse you are trying to understand. Then look at the paragraph, the chapter, the book and finally the whole Bible. Only after we have looked at the verse in all of these contexts may we then look at history--the circumstances that existed when the verse was written--not our current culture.

The immediate context of 1 Corinthians 15:29 is the validity of the Christian hope of bodily resurrection. Paul is explaining that the bodily resurrection of Christ guarantees the bodily resurrection of believers. This sheds some light on verse 15:29, which I'll explain shortly, but we need to expand our view and look at the larger context.

Some, such as Mormons, interpret this verse to mean that a living person can be baptized so that that baptism is credited to someone who has died. But when we look at the entire Bible we find that this interpretation is not supported. Scripture is clear and consistent in saying that eternal life is only given through God's grace on the basis of the believer's personal faith. Gleason Archer writes:

"No first-century believer reading Paul's epistle could possibly have misinterpreted the expression hyper ton nekron ("for the sake of the dead") to mean that the faith of a living believer could possibly be reckoned to the benefit of a dead unbeliever, whether he was genealogically related to him or not. Throughout Scripture it is clear that saving grace is granted to no one except the believer himself, on the basis of his personal faith. Faith can never be imputed from one person to another."*

We see that the Bible clearly tells us what this verse does not mean. So what is going on here? Let's look at some first century history.

The Believer's Bible Commentary (by William MacDonald) tells us that because of severe persecution many believers were martyred soon after their baptism. But this did not deter new converts from believing in Jesus; being publicly baptized; and facing martyrdom themselves. As soon as one believer was martyred, another took their place--being baptized as the replacement for the martyred believer. In many cases it was the words and spiritual actions of the martyrs as they died that led people to become new converts. This resulted in a close connection between new believers and those who had been martyred, resulting in believers saying they had been baptized in honor of those who had died. They had been baptized for the dead.

Paul, in writing about the guarantee of bodily resurrection given to us by Jesus, was telling believers that their having been baptized in honor of those who had died was not something done in vain, because--although their bodies may die, they will be resurrected to eternal life.

* Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties by Gleason L. Archer, 1982, page 402