1 Corinthians 15:30-31 - Homiletics

Daily dying.

"Why stand we," etc.? The apostles, in their efforts to extend the gospel, endured great afflictions and involved themselves in terrific perils, and if there be no future life, Paul asks, why should they have done so? "Why stand we in jeopardy every hour?" Why should we thus "die daily"? But there is a daily dying in the case of every man.

I. There is a daily dying that is INEVITABLE to humanity.

1. There is a daily dying of our corporeal frame. In each human body the seed of death is implanted, the law of mortality is at work. The water does not more naturally roll to the ocean than the human frame runs every moment to dissolution. Life streams from us at every pore. This fact should teach us:

2. There is a daily dying of our social world. We live not only with others, but by them. Without society we might exist, but live we could not. Our contemporaries are the objects of our sympathies, the subjects of our conscious life; they engage our thoughts, they affect our hearts, they originate our motives, they stimulate our conduct, and all this is much of our life. But this social world in which we live., and by which we live, is dying daily. The social circumstances which feed our life are changing every day. The thoughts, the love, the grief, the anger, the fear, the hopes, which were once elements of life to us, have passed away because the objects of them have gone.

3. There is a daily dying of our mental activity. The motives that influence us to action are elements of life, and they are constantly dying. For example, the leading purpose that a man has is, for the time, one of his strongest motives of action, but the leading purpose of every man is a dying thing. It is dead as a motive both when it is frustrated, as is constantly the case, and also when it is fully realized. A realized purpose has lost its motivity. Thus we die daily in mind.

II. There is a daily dying that is OPTIONAL to humanity. This optional death is of two kinds, the criminal and the virtuous.

1. There is the criminal. There are noble things in man that are dying daily, for which be is responsible. In the depraved soul, sensibility of conscience, generosity of impulse, elasticity of intellect freedom of thought, spirituality of feeling—these, that constitute the highest life of man, die daily in the corrupt soul. The sinner is constantly murdering these, and their blood cries to Heaven for vengeance. "To be carnally minded is death."

2. There is the virtuous. There are certain things that men should and ought to crucify—selfishness, sensuality, love of the world, etc. The highest life of man is a daily dying to all that is mean, false, mercenary, unspiritual, and uncharitable. The apostle felt this when he said, "I," that is, my carnal self, "am crucified with Christ;" nevertheless, "I," that is, my spiritual self, "live," etc.