What Does It Mean to Be “Baptized for the Dead”?

Let’s read the verse in question:

Now if there is no resurrection, what will those do who are baptized for the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized for them?

1 Corinthians 15:29

The topic is the resurrection of the dead, which some believers in Corinth doubted due to the spread of false teaching.

While there are a few theories on what being “baptized for the dead” means in this verse, the most obvious one is that some in Corinth were concerned about the salvation of believers who had passed away without being water baptized; as such, these Corinthians were baptized in their place.

This was a religious belief that some believers in Corinth embraced yet Paul never endorsed it because it’s not biblical. So why does he recognize the practice in this passage? Because he was revealing an inconsistency in their logic: If they didn’t believe in the future resurrection, there was no point in their proxy baptisms.

Again, Paul didn’t sanction this belief — which isn’t mentioned anywhere else in Scripture — he simply used the religious practices of his opponents to make a persuasive point concerning the scriptural doctrine of the resurrection of the dead.

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