What does 1 Corinthians 15:14 mean?

Paul is building a series of logical connections to make clear the implications of believing there is no bodily, physical resurrection from the dead for Christians. He wrote in the previous verse that if Christians can never, one day, be raised from the dead, then Christ could not have been raised from the dead, either. Paul does not allow for any possibility that Christ was raised back to physical life and those in Christ will not be. Either both resurrections are true or neither is.

Earlier in this chapter, Paul carefully laid the groundwork for his next point. He showed both that he and the other apostles taught that Christ was, indeed, raised from the dead. In fact, they saw Him alive after he was dead. He also showed that faith in Christ's resurrection is as essential to the gospels as faith in Christ's crucifixion (1 Peter 1:21). Both must be believed for someone to be saved.

But if there is no resurrection from the dead, then Christ was not raised, Paul began. If Christ was not raised from the dead, then the gospel message itself is false. Paul says that, in that case, his own teaching would have been vain or worthless. In fact, it would have been false, a lie. That being so, the Corinthians would have placed their faith in a falsehood, believed a lie, making their faith worthless.

This verse marks a unique aspect of the Christian faith. Followers of Jesus ground their belief in real-world events, with objective measures of truth. "Blind faith" is a ridiculous charge to throw at a belief system rooted in eyewitness accounts, and one which makes statements such as the one found in these verses.