Now the sting of death [is] sin, and the power of sin the law;
Paul has just announced the moment when victory swallows up death. Now he stops to explain what made death so terrible. Two things answer it: sin, and the law. Both need an answer before the challenge "O death, where is your sting?" can be more than empty words.
Death and sin stand in a two-way relationship. Death is what sin earns; sin is what makes death sharp.
If death is sin's wages, sin is also death's sting. Without sin, death would be nothing more than a healthy sleep — if we could connect it at all in our thoughts with God's blameless image. But in fact death has no name and no existence except as the effect of sin. It is called a sting because of the lasting poison in it. That poison works death in this life. It also prepares the unrepentant sinner for the judgment that comes after death.
Most people meet this sting as fear, not as theology. One writer asks where that fear comes from.
Unconverted people and even unsettled Christians are afraid to die. Now, why is this? One verse from the New Testament supplies the answer. "The sting of death is sin" (1 Cor. 15:56). Conscience accuses. People fear to die because they know they are sinners, and that God must punish sin. Their conscience tells them this, however dimly. The Bible says it clearly when they read it — which is why they seldom read it.
The ESV says "the power of sin is the law." Older translations say "the strength of sin is the law." Either way the claim surprises: how can God's holy command make sin stronger? One writer gives two reasons.
The law gave sin its strength in two ways. First, because there is in it no power of deliverance, only power of condemnation. So sin, according to the law, reigned and had to reign in death. But again, law gave sin its strength by the very fact that in prohibiting it, it stirred up the whole evil nature of man to resist. The man who does his own will refused the restraint that held him back. Under that treatment the evil became not only more obvious but more intensely evil — open rebellion against God his Maker. Law for us is past, and the reign of sin with it. At the time described here, sin will have passed away entirely.
An everyday illustration shows how a rule provokes, and names what only Christ gives.
To put someone under law is to bring in sin, because you cannot keep it, and so it is "the strength of sin"... Suppose I had a drawer in this table with something in it, and I said, "Nobody is to know what is there." Plenty of heads in this room would want to know what it was straight away. The law is "the strength of sin" because it binds the soul down to guilt. This is not a fault in the law. It is because of what my nature is: law does provoke. Law gives no life, no power, no object; it provokes the desire, is the occasion of sin, and fastens my guilt on me. Christ gives me an object, and life, and power, and delivers me from all that was against me.
The Corinthian church was not Jewish. So why bring the law into the argument at all?
The Corinthian believers were Gentiles, not Jews. They had therefore never personally been under law. But they needed, just as much as anyone else, to know the true nature of the law and its effects... to keep them from the trap Satan is always trying to set for people who are off guard, by undermining grace through a pretended zeal for holiness.
Because the law is holy, many assume it must also be the engine of a holy life. One writer points somewhere else for that power.
His grace, not the law, is the strength of holiness, as we learn from Romans 6:14. So the apostle here bursts into thanksgiving. He sees God giving us the victory fully and for ever, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 56 names two problems, and the very next verse names one Person who met both.
God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the One who bore the sting when He was made sin on the Cross. He also "redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (2 Cor. 5:21; Galatians 3:13). The blessedness of this truth filled the Apostle's soul, and he breaks out into praise to God.
- Sting. Death is sin's wage. Sin is death's sting — a lasting poison that reaches past the grave to the judgment beyond.
- Strength. The law adds strength to sin two ways: it can only condemn, never rescue, and its prohibition stirs the will to rebel.
- Conscience. That is why people fear dying. Conscience accuses, and law fastens the guilt down instead of lifting it.
- Substitute. Christ bore the sting when He was made sin. He took the curse of the law in our place. One cross answered both halves of the verse.
- Strength restored. Grace, not law, is the strength of holiness, so the taunt over death ends not in fear but in thanks.
but thanks to God, who gives us the victory by our Lord Jesus Christ.
Paul has just described the moment when God raises and changes the bodies of believers, and death is swallowed up. His answer to that scene is not analysis but thanksgiving — and one word carries it: God gives this victory.
Verse 56 explains why death is dreadful, and why the law offered no escape. One writer follows both, then names what does produce holiness:
It is sin which gives death not only its occasion but its sting; and the law, however righteous, could work no deliverance for the guilty. In effect the law proves to be the strength of sin, because it stirs up rebellious will even more against God's commands. His grace, not the law, is the strength of holiness, as we learn from Romans 6:14. That is why the apostle breaks out into thanksgiving here. He sees God giving us the victory fully and for ever, through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Verse 56 names two things: sin and the law. Christ Himself dealt with both, which is why the thanks runs "through our Lord Jesus Christ":
The apostle reminds us that "the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." But God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He bore the sting when He was made sin on the cross, and He "redeemed us from the curse of the law, becoming a curse for us" (2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 3:13). With the blessedness of this truth filling his soul, the apostle breaks out into praise to God.
God took no shortcut. He won this victory in the same arena where the human race lost:
The victory has been achieved by Man in the person of Jesus, just as the ruin came in by man in the person of Adam. God did not shift the contest onto entirely fresh ground, and He did not settle everything by one stroke of pure Deity. Instead — if one may put it that way — He met the foe on the old battleground the enemy first chose in the garden of Eden, and there reversed everything. Man comes out of the contest in resurrection, covered with glory and not the shame of defeat.
The victory is God's own, yet the verse calls it ours. The same writer notes the handover:
One thing more. Though the victory is God's victory, He gives it to us who believe, as it is written: "Thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."
Christ rose first, and that changes how we should now describe death:
The great king of terrors has had to yield to One greater than himself. Death has met its Master. It is now a crownless king, without a sceptre and without a throne. Now Christ is risen, and death is defeated. The power of the devil is annulled, the grave has been robbed of its victory, and Christ has become the Firstborn from the dead. His being the Firstborn means that others are to follow and share in His triumph.
The full public proof of this victory is still future, yet the verb in verse 57 is present tense. One writer holds both together:
Resurrection is the public declaration of victory over death and the grave. When the saints stand in their risen condition, the saying "Death is swallowed up in victory" will be fulfilled in triumph. For this we wait; but while we wait we are already rejoicing in it, for God "gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (v. 57).
Another writer describes what that early rejoicing sounds like — praise that honours Christ before the day when His triumph is seen to be theirs as well:
Such is the present and eternal strain that they are taught to raise who sing with the spirit and with the understanding also. Knowing the truth as it is revealed to them in Jesus, they already celebrate the great triumph He has personally won, and whose honours He now wears in heaven, while waiting for the moment when His victory will openly become their own. They declare their own glory by praising Him.
Verse 57 does not end the chapter; verse 58 turns it into daily work:
What a deliverance! "Thanks be" indeed "to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" Meanwhile, the result of thinking on this is to turn with energy to the work of the Lord that lies in our hands. Every shadow has been removed from our path. Only the sure reward for everything done for Him remains for us.
- Cause. Death stings because of sin. The law was righteous, but it rescued no one; it stirred up rebellion and made sin stronger.
- Cost. Christ bore the sting when He was made sin. He took the curse of the law. He answered both powers behind death.
- Gift. The victory is God's. A Man won it on the ground where man fell, and God hands it to those who believe.
- Now. The verb is present tense. The full display waits for resurrection, but believers rejoice now, and death is already a crownless king without a throne.
- Result. Thanks does not stop at feeling. The chapter sends the thankful back to the Lord's work, with every shadow gone from the path.