15 

15:29 Who are baptized for the dead - Perhaps baptized in hope of blessings to be received after they are numbered with the dead. Or, "baptized in the room of the dead" - Of them that are just fallen in the cause of Christ: like soldiers who advance in the room of their companions that fell just before their face.

15:30 Why are we - The apostles. Also in danger every hour - It is plain we can expect no amends in this life.

15:31 I protest by your rejoicing, which I have - Which love makes my own. I die daily - I am daily in the very jaws of death. Beside that I live, as it were, in a daily martyrdom.

15:32 If to speak after the manner of men - That is, to use a proverbial phrase, expressive of the most imminent danger I have fought with wild beasts at Ephesus - With the savage fury of a lawless multitude, Act 19:29, etc This seems to have been but just before. Let as eat, etc - We might, on that supposition, as well say, with the Epicureans, Let us make the best of this short life, seeing we have no other portion.

15:33 Be not deceived - By such pernicious counsels as this.Evil communications corrupt good manners - He opposes to the Epicurean saying, a well - known verse of the poet Menander.Evil communications - Discourse contrary to faith, hope, or love, naturally tends to destroy all holiness.

15:34 Awake - An exclamation full of apostolical majesty.Shake off your lethargy! To righteousness - Which flows from the true knowledge of God, and implies that your whole soul be broad awake. And sin not - That is, and ye will not sin Sin supposes drowsiness of soul.There is need to press this. For some among you have not the knowledge of God - With all their boasted knowledge, they are totally ignorant of what it most concerns them to know. I speak this to your shame - For nothing is more shameful, than sleepy ignorance of God, and of the word and works of God; in these especially, considering the advantages they had enjoyed.

15:35 But some one possibly will say, How are the dead raised up, after their whole frame is dissolved? And with what kind of bodies do they come again, after these are mouldered into dust?

15:36 To the inquiry concerning the manner of rising, and the quality of the bodies that rise, the Apostle answers first by a similitude, Co1 15:36-42, and then plainly and directly, Co1 15:42-43.That which thou sowest, is not quickened into new life and verdure, except it die - Undergo a dissolution of its parts, a change analogous to death. Thus St. Paul inverts the objection; as if he had said, Death is so far from hindering life, that it necessarily goes before it.

15:37 Thou sowest not the body that shall be - Produced from the seed committed to the ground, but a bare, naked grain, widely different from that which will afterward rise out of the earth.

15:38 But God - Not thou, O man, not the grain itself, giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, from the time he distinguished the various Species of beings; and to each of the seeds, not only of the fruits, but animals also, (to which the Apostle rises in the following verse,) its own body; not only peculiar to that species, but proper to that individual, and arising out of the substance of that very grain.

21 

21:23 When he was come into the temple, the chief priests came - Who thought he violated their right: and the elders of thepeople - Probably, members of the sanhedrim, to whom that title most properly belonged: which is the more probable, as they were the persons under whose cognizance the late action of Christ, in purging the temple, would naturally fall. These, with the chief priests, seem purposely to have appeared in a considerable company, to give the more weight to what they said, and if need were, to bear a united testimony against him. As he was teaching - Which also they supposed he had no authority to do, beingneither priest, nor Levite, nor scribe. Some of the priests (though not as priests) and all the scribes were authorizedteachers. By what authority dost thou these things - Publicly teach the people! And drive out those who had our commission to traffic in the outer court? Luk 20:1; Mar 11:27.

21:24 I will ask you one thing - Who have asked me many: The baptism, that is, the whole ministry of John, was it from heaven or from men? - By what authority did he act and teach? Did man or God give him that authority? Was it not God? But if so, the consequence was clear. For John testified that Jesus was the Christ.

21:25 Why did ye not believe him - Testifying this.

21:27 Neither tell I you - Not again, in express terms: he had often told them before, and they would not believe him.