📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 15:14
What does 1 Corinthians 15:14 mean?
"If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain."
— 1 Corinthians 15:14 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Whether then it is I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.
Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised.
If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain.
Yes, we are also found false witnesses of God, because we testified about God that he raised up Christ, whom he didn’t raise up, if it is so that the dead are not raised.
For if the dead aren’t raised, neither has Christ been raised.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.
Explanation
1 Corinthians 15:14 states a simple but weighty conditional truth: everything about Christian preaching and Christian faith hinges on the actual, historical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul is saying that if it turned out Christ had not truly been raised from the dead, then the message the apostles proclaimed would be empty, hollow, meaningless — and the faith that people placed in that message would likewise be worthless. The verse is not hedging or expressing doubt; it is a logical statement meant to show how central the resurrection is to the entire Christian message.
The context is Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, written around AD 53-54 to a congregation he had founded but which was now struggling with various problems, including some members who denied that there would be a future resurrection of the dead. In chapter 15, Paul addresses this directly. He begins by reminding them of the gospel he preached to them — that Christ died for sins, was buried, and was raised on the third day, appearing to many witnesses, including Peter, the twelve, over five hundred believers at once, James, and finally Paul himself. Having established this eyewitness testimony, Paul then reasons out the implications: if some in Corinth are claiming there is no resurrection of the dead in general, then logically Christ himself could not have been raised either — and if that is so, the whole gospel collapses.
Theologically, this verse teaches that Christianity is not merely a philosophy, a moral code, or a set of inspiring ideas — it stands or falls on a historical event. Paul goes on in the following verses to
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