Paul is sure that the final victory over death is impossible without the complete transformation of the human being, without a qualitative change of human nature itself. This change must make it possible for the person...
Paul is sure that the final victory over death is impossible without the complete transformation of the human being, without a qualitative change of human nature itself. This change must make it possible for the person to live in that transfigured world which will become reality after the Savior's return at the end of time. The transfigured person will no longer remain under the power of sin; his nature, damaged by the fall, will be completely healed.
More than that: renewed human nature will change even in comparison with what the human being had before the fall, becoming like the human nature of the risen Christ. But this is impossible if a person does not become a living Torah. The point, of course, is not to memorize the text of the Pentateuch. Nor is it even only that the Torah should become for a person an absolute inner imperative, spiritual and moral; that is still only the inner Torah, whose existence every believing Jew in Gospel times knew.
The living Torah is a state of a person in which his every thought, every word, and every action are determined only by the inner Torah and by nothing else. For this to become possible, the person must be completely free from the power over himself of the sin that entered our life after the fall. It is no accident that the first and second generations of Christians saw the only example of the living Torah in the person of Jesus Christ Himself: apart from Him, no one was free from sin.
But for the first Christians, imitation of Christ was connected with the necessity of becoming oneself, with Christ's help and in Christ, the same living Torah; and this is possible only at the end of the path, at the end of time, with the complete transformation of human nature. Until then, the striving to become a living Torah will inevitably call forth in fallen human nature the resistance of the sin that rules it after the fall, and the more clearly the inner Torah manifests itself in a person, the more strongly the damaged condition of that human nature is revealed.
Thus the Torah gives strength to sin: as long as a person rolls along by inertia, not trying to live according to the inner Torah, the power of sin in him is scarcely revealed. But as soon as he tries to change the spiritual vector of his life, it manifests itself more strongly the more he strives to follow the inner Torah. The Torah reveals in a person the energy of sin, and the Savior helps overcome the sin thus revealed, transfiguring the person's nature together with him so that at the end of time the person is completely freed from the power of sin. Such is the dynamic of Christian life described by the apostle.
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15:51 A mystery - A truth hitherto unknown; and not yet fully known to any of the sons of men. We - Christians. The Apostle considers them all as one, in their succeeding generations. Shall not all die - Suffer a separation of soul and body. But we shall all - Who do not die, be changed - So that this animal body shall become spiritual.
15:52 In a moment - Amazing work of omnipotence! And cannot the same power now change us into saints in a moment? The trumpet shall sound - To awaken all that sleep in the dust of the earth.
15:54 Death is swallowed up in victory - That is, totally conquered, abolished for ever.
15:55 O death, where is thy sting? - Which once was full of hellish poison. O hades, the receptacle of separate souls, where is thy victory - Thou art now robbed of all thy spoils; all thy captives are set at liberty. Hades literally means the invisible world, and relates to the soul; death, to the body. The Greek words are found in the Septuagint translation of Hos 13:14. Isa 25:8
15:56 The sting of death is sin - Without which it could have no power. But this sting none can resist by his own strength. And the strength of sin is the law - As is largely declared, Rom 7:7, etc
15:57 But thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory - Over sin, death, and hades.
15:58 Be ye steadfast - In yourselves. Unmovable - By others; continually increasing in the work of faith and labour of love.Knowing your labour is not in vain in the Lord - Whatever ye do for his sake shall have its full reward in that day. Let us also endeavour, by cultivating holiness in all itsbranches, to maintain this hope in its full energy; longing for that glorious day, when, in the utmost extent of the expression, death shall be swallowed up for ever, and millions of voices, after the long silence of the grave, shall burst out at once into that triumphant song, O death, where is thy sting?O hades, where is thy victory?