Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Corinthians 15:18

"Then they also that are fallen asleep in Christ have perished." — 1 Corinthians 15:18 (ASV)

Then they also, etc. This verse contains a statement of another consequence that must follow from the denial of the resurrection—that all Christians who had died had failed to obtain salvation and were destroyed.

Which are fallen asleep in Christ. This means those who have died as Christians. See Barnes on 1 Corinthians 15:6; see also Barnes on 1 Thessalonians 4:15.

Are perished. This means they are destroyed, not saved. They hoped to be saved by the merits of the Lord Jesus; they trusted in a risen Savior and fixed all their hopes of heaven there. But if He did not rise, of course, the whole system was a delusion, and they have failed to obtain heaven and have been destroyed.

Their bodies lie in the grave and return to their native dust without the prospect of a resurrection, and their souls are destroyed.

The argument here is mainly an appeal to their feelings: "Can you believe it possible that the good people who have believed in the Lord Jesus are destroyed? Can you believe that your best friends, your relatives, and your fellow Christians who have died have gone down to perdition? Can you believe that they will sink to woe with the impenitent, the polluted, and the abandoned? If you cannot, then it must follow that they are saved. And then it will follow that you cannot embrace a doctrine that involves this consequence." This argument is still sound.

There are multitudes who are made good people by the gospel. They are holy, humble, self-denying, and prayerful friends of God. They have become such by the belief in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Can it be believed that they will be destroyed? That they will perish with the profane, licentious, and unprincipled?

That they will go down to dwell with the polluted and the wicked? Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? (Genesis 18:25). If it cannot be so believed, then they will be saved; and if saved, it follows that the system that saves them is true and, of course, that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead.

We may remark here that a denial of the truth of Christianity involves the belief that its friends will perish with others, that all their hopes are vain, and that their expectations are delusive.

Therefore, anyone who becomes an unbeliever believes that his pious friends—his sainted father, his holy mother, his lovely Christian sister or child—are deluded and deceived. He believes that they will sink down to the grave to rise no more, that their hopes of heaven will all vanish, and that they will be destroyed with the profane, the impure, and the sensual.

And if unbelief demands this faith of its adherents, it is a system that strikes at the very happiness of social life and at all our convictions of what is true and right. It is a system that is withering and blighting to the best hopes of people.

Can it be believed that God will destroy those who are living to His honor, who are pure in heart and lovely in life, and who have been made such by the Christian religion? If it cannot, then everyone knows that Christianity is not false, and that unbelief is not true.