8:1 With regard to food sacrificed to idols, we know that “we all have knowledge.” 1 Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
9:24 Do you not know that all the runners in a stadium compete, but only one receives the prize? So run to win.
12:12 For just as the body is one and yet has many members, and all the members of the body – though many – are one body, so too is Christ.
15:29 Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? 2 If the dead are not raised at all, then why are they baptized for them?
1 sn “We all have knowledge.” Here and in v. 4 Paul cites certain slogans the Corinthians apparently used to justify their behavior (cf. 6:12-13; 7:1; 10:23). Paul agrees with the slogans in part, but corrects them to show how the Corinthians have misused these ideas.
2 sn Many suggestions have been offered for the puzzling expression baptized for the dead. There are up to 200 different explanations for the passage; a summary is given by K. C. Thompson, “I Corinthians 15,29 and Baptism for the Dead,” Studia Evangelica 2.1 (TU 87), 647-59. The most likely interpretation is that some Corinthians had undergone baptism to bear witness to the faith of fellow believers who had died without experiencing that rite themselves. Paul’s reference to the practice here is neither a recommendation nor a condemnation. He simply uses it as evidence from the lives of the Corinthians themselves to bolster his larger argument, begun in 15:12, that resurrection from the dead is a present reality in Christ and a future reality for them. Whatever they may have proclaimed, the Corinthians’ actions demonstrated that they had hope for a bodily resurrection.