On Resurrection Sunday, this message examines 1 Corinthians 15:12–20 and what life would look like without a risen Savior. Paul takes the question seriously enough to follow it all the way down: if Christ has not been raised, then the preaching is empty, the faith is empty, the apostles are found to be false witnesses, and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
Then comes the turn the whole chapter has been building toward — “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.” The resurrection is not a footnote to the gospel but the ground of it, and this sermon presses both the emptiness of a faith without it and the hope secured by it.
