'For if the dead are not raised, neither has Christ been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain, you are yet in your sins.'
But to declare that the dead are not raised is to declare that the dead Christ cannot have been raised. And if that is so their faith is vain and worthless and without purpose, it is meaningless, and they are still dead in their sins. Christ's death can then offer them nothing because His death has no seal on it and He has been proved a fake. All His promises and His insights are shown to have been in vain. He still lies cold in the grave.
And yet that is the whole uniqueness of the Christian message, that it puts forward as factual the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ on the basis of solid witnesses and the subsequent effectiveness of their message. And intrinsic in that is that the resurrection is the hope of every believer because their sins have been forgiven through Christ's death for them.