Albert Barnes Commentary 1 Corinthians 15:17

"and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." — 1 Corinthians 15:17 (ASV)

Your faith is vain (1 Corinthians 15:14). The meaning of this passage here is that their faith was vain because, if Christ was not raised up, they were still unpardoned sinners. The pardon of sin was connected with the belief in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus; and, if He was not raised, they were still in a state of sin.

Ye are yet in your sins. Your sins are still unpardoned. They can be forgiven only by faith in Him and by the efficacy of His blood. But if He was not raised, He was an impostor; and, of course, all your hopes of pardon by Him, and through Him, must be vain. The argument in this verse consists in an appeal to their Christian experience and their hopes. It may be expressed this way:

1. You have reason to believe that your sins are forgiven. You cherish that belief on evidence that is satisfactory to you. But if Christ is not raised, that cannot be true. He was an impostor, and sins cannot be forgiven by Him. As you are not, and cannot be, prepared to admit that your sins are not forgiven, you cannot admit a doctrine that involves this consequence.

2. You have evidence that you are not under the dominion of sin. You have repented of it, have forsaken it, and are leading a holy life. You know this, and cannot be induced to doubt this fact. But all of this is to be traced to the doctrine that the Lord Jesus rose from the dead.

   It is only by believing that doctrine, and the doctrines connected with it, that the power of sin in the heart has been destroyed. You cannot doubt that under the influence of that truth you have been enabled to break off from your sins. Therefore, you cannot admit a doctrine that would imply you are still under the condemnation and dominion of sin.

You must believe, therefore, that the Lord Jesus rose; and that, if He rose, others will also.

This argument is also good now, insofar as there is evidence that, through the belief in a risen Savior, the dominion of sin has been broken. Every Christian is, therefore, in an important sense, a witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus—a living proof that a system that can work such great changes, and produce such evidence that sins are forgiven (as is provided in the conversion of sinners), must be from God.

Consequently, the work of the Lord Jesus was accepted, and He was raised up from the dead.