¹⁷ If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

²⁵ who was handed over for our trespasses and was raised for our justification.^(A)

¹⁴ and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain.

A Living Hope

³ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead^(A)

²¹ Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your trust and hope are in God.

³³ Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.^{(A) 34} Who is to condemn? It is Christ^[a] who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.^(B)

⁴ For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.^{(A) 5} Consequently, when Christ^[a] came into the world, he said,

⁸ When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), ⁹ then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. ¹⁰ And it is by God’s will^[c] that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.^(D)

¹¹ And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins.^{(E) 12} But when Christ^[d] had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,”

²² Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.^(A)

Christ’s Sacrifice Takes Away Sin

²³ Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these. ²⁴ For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf.^{(B) 25} Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the holy place year after year with blood that is not his own, ²⁶ for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself.^{(C) 27} And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once and after that the judgment,^{(D) 28} so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.^(E)

² through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you—unless you have come to believe in vain.^(A)