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1 Corinthians 15:20-22 vs. “Come Behold the Wondrous Mystery”

Matt Boswell & Matt Papa · checked 2026-08-21

What we checked

Passage1 Corinthians 15:20-22 chapter ↗ 3 more proofs on 1 Corinthians 15 →
Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)
Presents itself asinspired-by
Categorynot a quote
AlbumHis Mercy Is More: The Hymns of Matt Boswell and Matt Papa · 2019
Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)
Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

  • Walks the gospel in order across four stanzas: incarnation, obedient life, cross, resurrection. Few congregational songs give Christ's obedient life a stanza of its own, and most go from manger to cross
  • Names Adam and sets Christ against him. That pairing is Paul's, and it is made twice in his letters
  • The last stanza does not stop at Christ's own rising. It turns forward to what the singers will be at His coming, which is exactly where verse 23 goes
  • Christ is the subject of nearly every line. The singers appear as beneficiaries and as the ones being told to look
  • Getty Music's own product page prints a scripture list for the song, so a singer can check the hymn against passages the rights holder names rather than guessing

⚠ Cautions

  • Paul's joining word is firstfruits, and it appears nowhere in the hymn. The closing line makes the singers' future a likeness to the risen Christ, where verses 20 and 23 make it a harvest He has already begun
  • Getty Music's scripture list names Romans 5:12-14 for the Adam material and 1 Corinthians 15:51 for the title's mystery. This passage, 15:20-22, is not on it
  • The words cite no reference themselves, so a singer has nothing to check the sequence against except memory
  • Sources differ on the copyright year. The Getty Music chart, PraiseCharts and Sovereign Grace Music print 2013; the CCLI SongSelect chart and Word to Worship print 2012. The publisher lists differ too, with The Village Church named on some and Bleecker Publishing on others

Verse Proof

1 Corinthians 15:20-22

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, where some were saying there is no resurrection of the dead (verse 12). The verses just before this one run that denial to its end: if the dead are not raised, Christ was not raised, the preaching is empty, the faith is futile, and the Corinthians are still in their sins. Verse 20 is the turn, and Paul makes it with a harvest word. Christ is the firstfruits. Under the law the first sheaf of a harvest was brought to the priest and waved before the LORD (Leviticus 23:10-11), and it was not a sample of the crop but the crop's opening. Verses 21 and 22 then set two men against each other: death came through a man, resurrection comes through a man, and what is true of all in Adam is true of all in Christ. Three verses later Paul spells out the order the harvest word implies: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Him.

What the song says, described not quoted

Four stanzas, each opening with the imperative that gives the hymn its title. The first is the incarnation: the King's dawning, heaven's own subject of praise now in a body that can die. The second is Christ's obedient life, and it is the one place the hymn names Adam, setting Christ against him as the one who does what the first man did not. The third is the cross: the body given, the wrath of God dealt with, the curse taken in the singer's place. The fourth is resurrection morning, the grave beaten, the Lord risen and reigning, and it closes with a single line that turns forward, saying that the risen Christ is what those singing will one day be, at His return. No chapter or verse is cited anywhere, and nothing is introduced as a quotation. The song's second person is the hearer rather than God: the imperative is aimed at a congregation, and Christ is spoken of in the third person from first stanza to last.

Nothing is attributed, because nothing is quoted. Two points of contact with this passage are real and checkable. The hymn names Adam once and sets Christ against him, which is the pairing verses 21 and 22 make. And its closing line reaches the believers' own future, which is where verse 23 goes. What the hymn does not carry is the word that binds those two together. Paul's term is firstfruits, and it is doing work rather than decorating: a first sheaf is not merely earlier than the harvest, it is the harvest begun, which is why Paul can move from Christ raised to all in Christ made alive. The hymn's closing line makes the connection a likeness. Christ risen is what the singers will be. Paul's makes it an order of events with a cause under it: Christ the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Him.

· Not a quote: The hymn cites no chapter or verse and presents nothing as a quotation. It names Adam once and reaches the believers' future rising in its last stanza, but the word that joins those two here, firstfruits, appears nowhere in it.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Paul does not say we will resemble the risen Christ. He says Christ is the first sheaf of the harvest we are in.

Why it matters

1 Corinthians 15 is an argument, not a summary. Paul is answering people who granted that Christ rose and denied that the dead are raised, and his whole reply turns on one word. If Christ is the firstfruits, His rising is not an isolated wonder but the opening of a harvest that includes the people singing about it. A hymn can hold both ends of that, Christ raised and the singers raised at His coming, and still leave the two sitting beside each other rather than fastened. The difference shows at a graveside. A resemblance consoles. A first sheaf commits the field.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a shape: four looks at Christ, in the order the gospel happened, ending on a rising and a return. Sung for a season, that order becomes the way a person tells the story, and it is a good order, with the obedient life left in where most retellings skip past it. The dwelling tag is God because the singers are almost never the subject. They are told to look, and the looking is at Christ. What a year of singing it will not plant is the reason Paul gives for hope, which is not that our future will resemble Christ's present but that His rising has already started the harvest we belong to. The remedy is the chapter itself. One read of 1 Corinthians 15 supplies the guarantee the hymn leaves implicit.

Helpful comparison

Two things here are worth checking for yourself.

First, which Adam. Paul pairs Adam and Christ twice, and the two pairings do different work. Romans 5:12-19 sets one man's disobedience against one man's obedience, and its subject is how righteousness reaches many. 1 Corinthians 15:21-22 sets one man through whom death came against one man through whom resurrection comes, and its subject is bodies raised. The hymn's Adam sits in the stanza about Christ's obedient life, which is Romans 5's ground, and Getty Music's own scripture list for the song names Romans 5:12-14 and not this passage. Hymnary and Word to Worship list 1 Corinthians 15:22 instead. Both readings can be argued from the words. Knowing that there are two, and that the people who publish the song took one of them, is the useful part.

Second, the mystery in the title. The Greek word behind it, mystērion, is not a warning that the subject cannot be known. It names something once hidden and now disclosed, which is why a hymn can pair it with an imperative to come and look. The scripture lists that catalogues attach to this song are built largely from Paul's uses of that word: Colossians 1:27, Ephesians 3:6, Ephesians 5:32, 1 Timothy 3:16, Romans 11:25-26, and 1 Corinthians 15:51, which stands thirty-one verses past the passage checked here and opens Paul's account of the resurrection body.

Getty Music's own scripture list for the song points the Adam line at Romans 5:12-14 rather than at this passage, so even the rights holder does not route the hymn through 1 Corinthians 15.

Hymnary and Word to Worship do list 1 Corinthians 15:22 for the song, so the catalogues disagree about which Adam text is in view.

Sources

Corrections

No corrections to this proof yet.

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Where the text survives the song

Not a ranking, and not a swap. If what you came for is the passage sung whole, these proofs found it kept: word-for-word verified, or paraphrase that says so and names its source.

✓ VERIFIED “Movement II (V.4-10)” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 Sing it without a caveat. It is the middle of a whole chapter set word for word in a named translation, and it keeps the clause about prophecies and tongues that ties the love chapter to the letter around it.

✓ Every word sung is the passage's own: verses 4-10 in order, with the repeats drawn from the text itself

⚠ The track title names the verses but not the version, so a streaming listener has to find the ESV credit on the album page or in the video description

 ~ FAITHFUL “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” Reawaken Hymns 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 Sing it. The stanza that taunts death and the grave is Paul's own pair of questions, kept in the King James wording and reshaped only for meter. Nothing is added that the passage does not carry.

✓ The taunt stanza keeps both of Paul's questions whole: death asked about its sting, the grave asked about its victory, nothing softened

⚠ No translation is named. The grave-address tracks the King James specifically, so a singer checking the stanza against most modern Bibles will find both questions put to death and no grave addressed at all. The hymn did not err; its Bible was the KJV

 ✓ VERIFIED “Psalm 16” The Corner Room (Adam Wright) Psalm 16:1-11 You can sing this one straight through. It is all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, in a named version. What you repeat is the psalm.

✓ The printed sung text carries all eleven verses of Psalm 16, in order, with no line printed twice and no refrain added

⚠ The track title alone will not tell you which Bible you are singing. On Apple Music and Spotify it is just "Psalm 16". The version is named on the album page and in the video description.

More songs like this

NOT A QUOTE “Victory in Jesus” E. M. Bartlett (recorded by Carrie Underwood) 1 Corinthians 15:57 Sing it. Nothing is quoting. Just know that Paul's victory in this verse is over death, undone by resurrection, while the hymn's is redemption from sin and the hope of heaven.

✓ Honest about what it is. The hymn is a first-person testimony, it never presents itself as scripture, and it cites no verse to be checked against

⚠ The refrain names where the victory is found, not what it is over. Careful readers fill the gap differently, which means the object is being supplied by the reader

 NOT A QUOTE “His Mercy Is More” Matt Boswell & Matt Papa Micah 7:18-19 Sing it. It never says it is quoting. What it says of God, Micah 7:18-19 says first: pardon, mercy delighted in, sins thrown where they cannot be retrieved. And it never says “sea of forgetfulness,” because no Bible does.

✓ Every verse is a question about who God is, which is Micah 7:18's own move and the prophet's own name

⚠ No reference or translation is given, so a listener has nothing in the song to check the sea image against

 NOT A QUOTE “The Solid Rock (My Hope Is Built)” Edward Mote (recorded by Reawaken Hymns) 1 Corinthians 3:11 Sing it. Nothing here is quoting. The refrain is two passages welded: the rock-and-sand picture is Matthew 7, the no-other-foundation line is Paul in 1 Corinthians 3.

✓ Never says it is quoting: no reference, no verse framing, nothing presented as scripture

⚠ The refrain reads as one verse and is two. Matthew 7 never says there is only one possible foundation; Paul does, and the seam is invisible when sung

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