“I protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily” (1 Corinthians 15:31). Few verses are quoted more often, or understood less. (“I protest” means “I solemnly declare.” Paul is saying, in effect: as surely as you are my joy in Christ, this is true: I face death every day.) What did Paul mean, and why daily?
What Paul meant first
Read the verses around it. “Why stand we in jeopardy every hour?” (15:30). “I have fought with beasts at Ephesus… if the dead rise not, let us eat and drink; for to morrow we die” (15:32). Paul’s first meaning is plain: he risked his life every day for the gospel, and he did it because he was sure of the resurrection. A man who knows he will rise can afford to die daily.
This was no figure of speech for self-discipline; the danger was real. At Lystra a mob “stoned Paul, drew him out of the city, supposing he had been dead. Howbeit, as the disciples stood round about him, he rose up, and came into the city” (Acts 14:19-20). “Once was I stoned” (2 Corinthians 11:25), he later wrote, among the beatings, shipwrecks and perils he faced “in deaths oft” (11:23).
The chapter is about decay
“I die daily” sits in the Bible’s great chapter on decay and what God does about it. Paul’s word is corruption: “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:42). “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality… Death is swallowed up in victory” (15:53-54). Everything in this world runs down; Paul could face death every day because he knew how God answers corruption.
And he ends the chapter with the cure for drift: “Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord” (15:58). Elsewhere he joins the two himself: “Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus… though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:10, 16). Dying daily and being renewed daily are, for Paul, one life.
The daily death Jesus asks of everyone
Many of us have heard “I die daily” preached as dying to the flesh, and some of us have taught it that way. The truth is real, but it is not what this verse means; 1 Corinthians 15 is about death and resurrection, not the flesh. The dying-to-the-flesh truth stands on its own verses: “If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live” (Romans 8:13); “they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24); “mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth” (Colossians 3:5).
The deeper call comes from Jesus: “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23). Paul lived it: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20). “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God” (Romans 6:11).
Why daily, and not once? Because the old self does not stay dead. It gets up every morning. That is why Jesus said daily, and it points to a law that runs through all of life. The rest of this page follows that daily call.
Everything left alone runs down
Paul called it corruption; science calls it the second law of thermodynamics: left to itself, everything moves toward disorder. Heat spreads out, machines wear down, and nothing gets more ordered on its own. Scripture saw it long before: the heavens and the earth “all shall wax old as doth a garment” (Hebrews 1:11).
- Strength: “though our outward man perish” (2 Corinthians 4:16). We do not get stronger over time naturally.
- Love: “the love of many shall wax cold” (Matthew 24:12). Relationships left untended cool down.
- Memory: “lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart” (Deuteronomy 4:9). Time works to erase.
- The garden: “I went by the field of the slothful… and, lo, it was all grown over with thorns” (Proverbs 24:30-31). No one planted the thorns. They are what happens when no one tends.
Lukewarm is the default
Set a hot cup and a cold cup on the same table and wait. Both end up at room temperature. Nobody has to do anything; that is simply where things go when left alone. Jesus said to Laodicea: “because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth” (Revelation 3:16).
And they did not notice: “thou sayest, I am rich… and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (3:17). Drift never announces itself. No one decides to become lukewarm. It is what faith becomes when nothing is added.
Neglect
That is why Scripture warns so often against simple neglect. “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?” (Hebrews 2:3). “Give the more earnest heed… lest at any time we should let them slip” (2:1). “Neglect not the gift that is in thee” (1 Timothy 4:14). To Ephesus, a busy and doctrinally sound church, Jesus said: “thou hast left thy first love. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works” (Revelation 2:4-5).
Stir up the gift
“Stir up the gift of God, which is in thee” (2 Timothy 1:6). Paul wrote it in his last letter, as he faced his own death: “I am now ready to be offered” (4:6). The Greek word means to rekindle a fire, to blow the coals back into flame. A fire left alone goes out. “Quench not the Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 5:19).
God built this into the tabernacle. “The fire upon the altar shall be burning in it; it shall not be put out: and the priest shall burn wood on it every morning… The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out” (Leviticus 6:12-13). The fire had come from God (9:24). Keeping it burning was the priest’s daily work.
But He never changes
We run down. We lose heart, lose faith, and change. He does not. The same passage that says the heavens and the earth “shall wax old as doth a garment” goes straight on: “But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail” (Hebrews 1:11-12).
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8). “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6). With Him “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). And when our faith runs low: “If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). Everything else in the universe is running down. The One who made it is not, and that is why coming back to Him always works.
And the same chapter that says “I die daily” ends with a different kind of change: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). Left alone, we change for the worse. The God who never changes will change us for the better, and for good.
The fire from outside
Here is the hope. The law of running down holds for a closed system, one that nothing from outside feeds. You are not meant to be a closed system. “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). “His compassions fail not. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22-23). “They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:31).
The daily habits of Scripture are how the fire is fed:
- Prayer: “Evening, and morning, and at noon, will I pray” (Psalm 55:17).
- The Word: the Bereans “searched the scriptures daily” (Acts 17:11).
- Each other: “exhort one another daily… lest any of you be hardened” (Hebrews 3:13).
- Dependence: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).
The faith that keeps growing, that “shineth more and more unto the perfect day” (Proverbs 4:18), is not the one that never weakens. It is the one renewed every day (see The Making of a Mind).
Where the fire begins
The fire on the altar came from God before any priest could keep it. So does this one. Jesus promised “rivers of living water” flowing from within the believer, “this spake he of the Spirit” (John 7:38-39). That fire is given once and fed daily: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38). Die daily, and you will live: “whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:24).