1 Corinthians 15:12-34

2. The certainty of resurrection 15:12-34

In the preceding paragraph Paul firmly established that the gospel the Corinthians had believed contained the fact that God had raised Jesus Christ bodily, along with other equally crucial facts. Next he proceeded to show the consequences of rejecting belief in the resurrection of the body.

"Paul uses reductio ad absurdum: if there is no resurrection (i.e., of believers in the future), then Jesus did not rise (1 Corinthians 15:12-13), a point on which he dwells at length (1 Corinthians 15:12-19, where Paul provides rhetorical emphasis through a series of seven if-then statements)." [Note: Keener, 1-2 Corinthians, p. 126.]