¹Brothers and sisters, I’m making known to you the Good News which I already told you, which you received, and on which your faith is based. ²In addition, you are saved by this Good News if you hold on to the doctrine I taught you, unless you believed it without thinking it over. ³I passed on to you the most important points of doctrine that I had received:

Christ died to take away our sins as the Scriptures predicted.

⁴He was placed in a tomb.

He was brought back to life on the third day as the Scriptures predicted.

⁵He appeared to Cephas.^aNext he appeared to the twelve apostles. ⁶Then he appeared to more than 500 believers at one time. (Most of these people are still living, but some have died.) ⁷Next he appeared to James. Then he appeared to all the apostles. ⁸Last of all, he also appeared to me.

I’m like an aborted child ⸤who was given life⸥. ⁹I’m the least of the apostles. I’m not even fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted God’s church. ¹⁰But God’s kindness^bmade me what I am, and that kindness was not wasted on me. Instead, I worked harder than all the others. It was not I who did it, but God’s kindness was with me. ¹¹So, whether it was I or someone else, this is the message we brought you, and this is what you believed.

We Will Come Back to Life

¹²If we have told you that Christ has been brought back to life, how can some of you say that coming back from the dead is impossible? ¹³If the dead can’t be brought back to life, then Christ hasn’t come back to life. ¹⁴If Christ hasn’t come back to life, our message has no meaning and your faith also has no meaning. ¹⁵In addition, we are obviously witnesses who lied about God because we testified that he brought Christ back to life. But if it’s true that the dead don’t come back to life, then God didn’t bring Christ back to life. ¹⁶Certainly, if the dead don’t come back to life, then Christ hasn’t come back to life either. ¹⁷If Christ hasn’t come back to life, your faith is worthless and sin still has you in its power. ¹⁸Then those who have died as believers in Christ no longer exist. ¹⁹If Christ is our hope in this life only, we deserve more pity than any other people.

²⁰But now Christ has come back from the dead. He is the very first person of those who have died to come back to life. ²¹Since a man brought death, a man also brought life back from death. ²²As everyone dies because of Adam, so also everyone will be made alive because of Christ. ²³This will happen to each person in his own turn. Christ is the first, then at his coming, those who belong to him ⸤will be made alive⸥. ²⁴Then the end will come. Christ will hand over the kingdom to God the Father as he destroys every ruler, authority, and power.

²⁵Christ must rule until God has put every enemy under his control. ²⁶The last enemy he will destroy is death. ²⁷Clearly, God has put everything under Christ’s authority. When God says that everything has been put under Christ’s authority, this clearly excludes God, since God has put everything under Christ’s authority. ²⁸But when God puts everything under Christ’s authority, the Son will put himself under God’s authority, since God had put everything under the Son’s authority. Then God will be in control of everything.

Read in Logos

1 Corinthians 15:10: But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

Footnotes

a 15:5 Cephas is the Aramaic name for the Apostle Peter.
b 15:10 Or “grace.”