1 Corinthians 15:17

Memory Verse

“And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!” (1 Cor 15:17; NKJV)

When Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, one of the issues that he addressed was that some of them were saying “there is no resurrection of the dead” (verse 12). Paul’s response, before describing how our resurrection will work later in the chapter, is to make the point that Christ’s resurrection is absolutely necessary for our salvation. He calls our faith “useless” if Christ did not raise from the dead.

Christ died on behalf of our sins on the cross (verse 3). This death paid the price for our sins (Isaiah 53:11; 1 John 4:10). We no longer need to provide anything to God to deal with our sins (Eph 2:8,9; Acts 16:30,31; Gal 2:16; Titus 3:5); they have been dealt with on the cross. Because of this, God now considers us to no longer be “in our sins” (Eph 2:1). Instead, He sees us “in Christ” (Eph 2:5,6), and what Christ accomplished on the cross is applied to us, and there is nothing more to be done in order to be saved from our sins.

But in Romans 4:25 Paul writes that Christ “was delivered up because of our trespasses, and was raised because of our justification.” Christ’s resurrection is crucial, not because it caused our justification, but because our justification caused His resurrection. If His sacrifice on the cross was successful, it would cause His resurrection; if it was unsuccessful, there would have been no resurrection.

Christ’s resurrection is part of the gospel for salvation (1 Cor 15:3,4) because demonstrates that Christ truly did successfully die on behalf of our sins. We know that our future is guaranteed to include this kind of resurrection (Rev 20:6), because it has already happened to Christ (1 Thess 4:14; 1 Peter 1:3), and we are inseparably identified with Christ (Gal 2:20; Rom 6:5; Col 3:3,4; Eph 2:5) and in Christ (Rom 3:24; 6:23). Nothing can take this away from those who believe (Eph 1:13,14; Rom 8:39).