15:10 While my own doing completely disqualified me; his doing now defines me. I am what I am by the grace of God. I am because he is! His grace was not wasted on me; instead I am inspired to labor beyond the point of exhaustion, more than anything I ever did under the law of performance; whatever it is that I accomplish now has grace written all over it. I take no credit for it. 15:11 Whether you came to faith through my preaching or someone else’s is not important. 15:12 What is important though is that you understand the revelation of his resurrection. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is the theme of preaching; for some to say that he is not also raised within you is to miss the whole point of the message. 15:13 If our co-resurrection is not proclaimed then the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is no longer relevant. 15:14 If Christ is not raised from the dead there is nothing left for us to preach and nothing left for you to believe. 15:15 We would be misrepresenting God since we declared that he raised Christ from the dead; when in fact he did not, so it would be man’s word against God’s! 15:16 If there is no global resurrection from the dead then there can be no individual resurrection from the dead; then Jesus did not really rise from the dead. 15:17 And if Jesus is still dead your faith has no relevance and you are still in your sins. (In Paul’s understanding the body of Christ on the cross was the document of mankind’s guilt and the resurrection was the receipt of their acquittal 15 and Rom 4:25]. If mankind was still guilty after Jesus died, his resurrection would neither be possible nor relevant! This explains Acts 10:28 and 2 Cor 5:14 and 16. Acts 17:31 says, “because God had fixed a day on which he would judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead.”) 15:18 No resurrection implies no hope for anyone beyond the grave; it makes no difference whether you believed that you were included in Christ’s death or not. 15:19 If our hope in Christ was restricted to only benefit us in this life then imagine the severity of our disappointment if it all had to come to an abrupt end when we died. 15:20 However this very moment the risen Christ represents everyone who has ever died; exactly like the first fruit represents the complete harvest. 15:21 The same mankind who died in a man was raised again in a man. 15:22 In Adam all died; in Christ all are made alive. 15:23 All are individually made alive in the order of Christ; he is the first fruit and in 1his immediate presence we are personally revealed as his own. (The word 1parousia was often translated to mean the coming of the Lord; however, the two components of the word are, para, a preposition indicating close proximity, a thing proceeding from a sphere of influence, with a suggestion of union of place of residence, to have sprung from its author and giver, originating from, denoting the point from which an action originates, intimate connection; and eimi, I am: his immediate presence realized in me[