I am the least of the apostles, because I persecuted, &c. True believers are humbled all their lives for the sins they committed before they repented and believed. But by the grace of God I am what I am A Christian and an apostle; and his grace upon Or toward me, in raising me to so high a dignity, and so happy a state; was not in vain But produced, in a great measure, its proper fruit. For I laboured more abundantly than they all That is, more than any of them, from the peculiar love God had showed me; yet To speak more properly; not I, but the grace of God which was with me This it was which at first qualified me for the work, and still excites me to zeal and diligence in it. As to Paul's labouring more than any of the other apostles, it must be observed that they confined their preaching, for the most part, to the Jews, Galatians 2:9: but Paul preached the gospel to all the Gentile nations, from Jerusalem, round about to Illyricum, Romans 15:19, and also to the Jews who lived in those countries; and by his labours he converted great numbers both of the Jews and Greeks. Moreover, as his success in spreading the gospel exceeded the success of the other apostles, so his labours, if we may judge of them from his own account, 2 Corinthians 11:23-28, greatly exceeded theirs likewise. Therefore whether it were I or they Whose doctrine you own and adhere to; so we preach, and so ye believed We agreed in our doctrine concerning the particulars above mentioned: all of us spake, and still speak the same thing.
1 Corinthians 15:12. Now if Christ be preached, By all of us, and that upon such infallible grounds as I have mentioned; that he rose from the dead, how say some of you Or rather, how can some among you say; that there is no resurrection of the dead? With what face can any who allow of Christ's resurrection, pretend to deny the resurrection of his disciples, whether it be from an attachment to Sadducean or philosophical prejudices? For, if there be no resurrection of the dead If that doctrine be, in the general, altogether incredible; then is Christ not risen “The apostle hath not expressed the ideas, by which the consequent in this hypothetical proposition is connected with its antecedent. But when these ideas are supplied, [as follows,] every reader will be sensible of the connection. Christ promised, repeatedly, in the most express terms, that he would raise all mankind from the dead, Matthew 16:27; John 5:28-29. Wherefore, if there is to be no resurrection of the dead, Christ is a deceiver, whom no person in his right senses can suppose God to have raised, and to have declared his Son. And if Christ hath not been raised, the gospel being stripped of the evidence which it derives from the resurrection of its Author, the whole of the preaching of the apostles, as is observed 1 Corinthians 15:14, is absolutely false; and the faith of the Corinthians in the divine original of the gospel, and of all Christians, from the beginning to the present hour, is likewise false. Such are the consequences of denying the resurrection of the dead.”