New Testament in a Year

15 Let me remind you, brothers and sisters, of the good news that I preached to you when we first met. It’s the essential message that you have taken to heart, the central story you now base your life on; ² and through this gospel, you are liberated—unless, of course, your faith has come to nothing. ^3-4 For I passed down to you the crux of it all which I had also received from others, that the Anointed One, the Liberating King, died for our sins and was buried and raised from the dead on the third day. All this happened to fulfill the Scriptures; it was the perfect climax to God’s covenant story. ⁵ Afterward He appeared alive to Cephas^[a] (you may know him as Simon Peter), then to the rest of the twelve. ⁶ If that were not amazing enough, on one occasion, He appeared to more than 500 believers at one time. Many of those brothers and sisters are still around to tell the story, though some have fallen asleep^[b] in Jesus. ⁷ Soon He appeared to James, His brother and the leader of the Jerusalem church, and then to all the rest of the emissaries^[c] He Himself commissioned.^{[d] 8} Last of all, He appeared to me;^[e] I was like a child snatched from his mother’s womb. ⁹ You see, I am the least of all His emissaries, not fit to be called His emissary because I hunted down and persecuted God’s church. ¹⁰ Today I am who I am because of God’s grace, and I have made sure that the grace He offered me has not been wasted. I have worked harder, longer, and smarter than all the rest; but I realize it is not me—it is God’s grace with me that has made the difference. ¹¹ In the end, it doesn’t matter whether it was I or the other witnesses who brought you the message. What matters is that we keep preaching and that you have faith in this message.

¹² Now if we have told you about the Anointed One (how He has risen from the dead and appeared to us fully alive), then how can you stand there and say there is no such thing as resurrection from death? ¹³ Friends, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then even the Anointed hasn’t been raised; ¹⁴ if that is so, then all our preaching has been for nothing and your faith in the message is worthless. ¹⁵ And what’s worse, all of us who have been preaching the gospel are now guilty of misrepresenting God because we have been spreading the news that He raised the Anointed One from the dead (which must be a lie if what you are saying about the dead not being raised is the truth). ¹⁶ Please listen. If you say, “the dead are not raised,” then what you are telling me is that the Anointed One has not been raised. Friends, ¹⁷ if the Anointed has not been raised from the dead, then your faith is worth less than yesterday’s garbage, you are all doomed in your sins, ¹⁸ and all the dearly departed who trusted in His liberation are left decaying in the ground. ¹⁹ If what we have hoped for in the Anointed doesn’t take us beyond this life, then we are world-class fools, deserving everyone’s pity.

²⁰ But the Anointed One was raised from death’s slumber and is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep in death. ²¹ For since death entered this world by a man, it took another man to make the resurrection of the dead our new reality. ²² Look at it this way: through Adam all of us die, but through the Anointed One all of us can live again. ²³ But this is how it will happen: the Anointed’s awakening is the firstfruits. It will be followed by the resurrection of all those who belong to Him at His coming, ²⁴ and then the end will come. After He has conquered His enemies and shut down every rule and authority vying for power, He will hand over the Kingdom to God, the Father of all that is. ²⁵ And He must reign as King until He has put all His enemies under His feet. ²⁶ The last hostile power to be destroyed is death itself. ²⁷ All this will happen to fulfill the Scripture that says, “You placed everything on earth beneath His feet.”^[f] (Although it says “everything,” it is clear that this does not also pertain to God, who created everything and made it all subject to Him.) ²⁸ Then, when all creation has taken its rightful place beneath God’s sovereign reign, the Son will follow, subject to the Father who exalted Him over all created things; then God will be God over all.