📖WEB · 1 Corinthians 15:17
What does 1 Corinthians 15:17 mean?
"If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins."
— 1 Corinthians 15:17 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
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.
Then they also who are fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
If we have only hoped in Christ in this life, we are of all men most pitiable.
But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep.
Explanation
1 Corinthians 15:17 states a straightforward but weighty conditional: if the resurrection of Christ did not actually happen, then the entire Christian faith collapses, and believers remain trapped in their sins with no remedy. Paul is not hedging or speculating here—he is drawing out the logical consequence of denying a bodily resurrection, showing that this doctrine is not a peripheral add-on to Christianity but its very foundation.
This verse comes from Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, a congregation he had founded but which was struggling with various theological confusions, including doubts about the resurrection of the dead. Some in Corinth apparently accepted that Christ had risen but denied that believers would be raised in the future, perhaps influenced by Greek philosophical ideas that viewed the physical body as inferior or that dismissed bodily resurrection as implausible. In chapter 15, Paul systematically dismantles this position by tying the resurrection of believers inseparably to the resurrection of Christ. He argues that you cannot logically affirm one while denying the other, and in verses 12-19 he walks through a chain of "if not" statements, showing what would be lost if Christ had not risen: preaching would be empty, faith would be futile, the apostles would be false witnesses, and—as stated in verse 17—believers would still be in their sins.
Theologically, this verse anchors salvation directly to a historical, bodily event rather than to an abstract idea or moral teaching. Paul's point is that Christ's death on the cross dealt with s
Compare translations
Go deeper with ScriptureCompanion AI
Ask questions about any verse, follow reading plans, write personal prayers, and track your daily habit — all grounded in verified scripture text.