And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.
Vain. Ye are, if the case be as the sceptics maintain, frustrated of all which "your faith" appropriates: ye are still under the everlasting condemnation of your sins (even in the disembodied state here referred to), from which Christ's resumption is our justification (Romans 4:25: "saved by his life," Romans 5:10). His death atones for our sin; but we could not have had faith in, and so be saved by, that atonement, but for his resurrection.