What Does 1 Corinthians 15:14 Mean?
And if the Anointed One has not been awakened, then our heralding is empty, and empty too is your trust.
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
And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.THE KEY
Both the preaching and the faith are called “vain”; the raised Christ is what keeps both from being empty.
THE MEANING
The verse places the substance of the message and of trust on Christ being raised. If he is not raised, the proclamation is empty and the trust has no living ground.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that Christian proclamation and trust can remain sound even if Christ has not been raised.
THE ROOT
ἐγήγερται
egēgertai
GROWS FROM
ἐγειρ-
egeir-
To wake or raise up.
“risen” in this verse is egēgertai. This perfect passive form presents the raising as accomplished with a continuing result: he has been raised and remains raised. The message’s substance is bound to this living result.
ALSO GROWS
egersis: Raising; resurrection.
ἔγερσις
Matthew 27:53 uses this related noun for “resurrection,” naming the raising as an event.
egeire: Wake up; rise.
ἔγειρε
In Ephesians 5:14, this form calls a sleeper to wake, showing how the same word family holds waking and raising together.
κενὸν
kenon
GROWS FROM
κεν-
ken-
Empty, without content.
“empty” in this verse is kenon. The same Greek adjective describes both the proclamation and the trust. English repeats “vain,” while the shared word shows that both lose their substance together if Christ is not raised.
ALSO GROWS
kenoō: To empty or make void.
κενόω
In Philippians 2:7, the same word family appears in “made himself of no reputation,” extending the sense of being emptied.
kenodoxia: Empty glory; vainglory.
κενοδοξία
This compound uses the same “empty” seed for glory without substance, echoing the emptiness of proclamation and trust here.
πίστις
pistis
GROWS FROM
πειθ-
peith-
To persuade, trust, or come to rely on.
The word translated “faith” is trust: leaning your full weight on what is trusted. Here that trust has its ground in the raised Christ; without him, it is empty.
ALSO GROWS
peithō: Persuade; trust.
πείθω
This related verb shows the movement from being persuaded to placing trust.
pistos: Firm, steady; trustworthy.
πιστός
This related word brings out the steadiness trust seeks in the one it leans on.
THE PATTERN
The raised one turns death into the threshold of living hope and new life.
For you do not leave my living soul to Sheol; you do not give your faithful one to see the pit.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.So we were laid in the ground with him through immersion into death, that as the Anointed One was raised from the dead through the weight of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life.THE THREAD
They came out of the tombs after his raising, went into the set-apart city, and appeared to many.The word translated “risen” here is a form of ἐγείρω (egeirō), “to raise”; Matthew’s “resurrection” is the related noun ἔγερσις (egersis), “raising.” The shared word family makes the raising Paul makes central to the message concrete as an event.
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