15:17
“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile”. Any attempt to make Christianity about good behaviour, or good works, social action, fighting injustice etc is not gospel at all. The church will be concerned about all these things, but they are the fruit and not the root. Worst of all, if Christ has not been raised then we “are still in our sins”. Without the resurrection we have no grounds whatsoever for believing that our sins have been paid for. Indeed, you will find that all parodies of the gospel (social justice warriors etc) tend to not take our sin seriously. They may well take the sins of others seriously (e.g. “sins of the oppressors”), but not the inherent sinfulness of all mankind, including you and me, and including the oppressed.
15:18
Without the resurrection death has not been defeated. Death is something we all face, as far as this life is concerned it brings every life to an end, it ultimately renders everything pointless. One might say that we live for the good of the human race (or the good of the planet, if you are an econut). But the earth will one day be swallowed up in the heat death of the universe, rendering all that pointless. And it means that everyone who has died is lost, and that when we die we are lost. “Liberal” and “progressive” Christianity do not take sin or death seriously enough.
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