What Does 1 Corinthians 15:13 Mean?
But if there is no rising of the dead, then not even the Anointed One has been awakened.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:THE KEY
If the dead cannot rise, the Anointed One cannot be a private exception.
THE MEANING
Your hope is tied to the fate of the dead: if no dead can rise, then the Anointed One has not risen either. This verse holds those claims together, leaving no room to affirm his rising while declaring resurrection impossible for everyone else.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the Anointed One can be risen while the dead remain forever beyond rising.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασις
anastasis
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι (histēmi), with ἀνά (ana)
Stand, set in place; with ana, stand up or rise.
“rising” in this verse is anastasis. The Greek word pictures a standing-up. Here, resurrection is not an abstract idea reserved for one person: the verse tests whether the dead can rise at all, and applies that same possibility to the Anointed One.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: stand up, rise
ἀνίστημι
This verb shares the word family and makes the image of resurrection concrete: rising to stand.
anastasis: a rising, resurrection
ἀνάστασις
This noun names the shared rising whose possibility the verse puts into question.
ἐγήγερται
egēgertai
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω (egeirō), stem ἐγερ- (eger-)
Awaken, rouse, raise.
“awakened” in this verse is egēgertai. The verb translated “risen” also means to awaken or rouse. English can make resurrection sound like a separate category; this word links it to waking, and the verse applies the raising to the Anointed One and the dead alike.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: wake, rouse, raise
ἐγείρω
The verb can describe waking someone or raising the dead, joining awakening and resurrection in one word.
egersis: a rising, resurrection
ἔγερσις
This related noun names a raising, showing the same word family at work in language about resurrection.
THE PATTERN
Scripture presents resurrection as a shared raising that includes the dead and the Anointed One.
And many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground shall awake, some to the life of the ages, and some to exposure and contempt for the ages.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.And I hold my hope toward God, which they themselves also take hold of, that there shall be a standing up of the dead, both of the aligned and of the unaligned.THE THREAD
But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.The same Greek verb, ἐγείρω (egeirō), describes raising Jesus and raising the reader’s mortal body. That shared word opens this verse further: his rising and the raising of the dead belong to one movement.
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