My Favorite Bible Verse

I’m sure every Christian has their favorite Bible verse or verses. Mine is 1 Corinthians 15:19: “If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

For me, that verse says it all. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the very foundation of Christianity. Without Christ’s resurrection, Christianity loses all credibility and all of its appeal.

Paul wrote this because some in the church in Corinth actually denied that the dead can be raised back to life. Paul insisted that without the resurrection, Christianity is worthless. Christ would still be dead and Christians would be suffering for nothing.

Another reason 1 Corinthians 15:19 is my favorite verse is that until I became a Christian I thought Christ’s resurrection was simply a matter of faith—which to me meant it was a fairy tale. How wrong I was.

Christ’s resurrection is a fact of history. It was consistently preached by Jesus’ followers from the beginning—from the year of his crucifixion onward. They never recanted, and many died for spreading the story. Just as important, and perhaps more important, none of Jesus’ followers received anything the world considers valuable as a result of this preaching—no fame, no wealth, no power, no earthly glory. Instead, they were persecuted, first by the Jews and later by the Romans. So they had no reason to make up this story or to lie. Yet they insisted that Jesus Christ had truly come back to life after being crucified, dead, and buried.

And if Jesus Christ truly rose back to life from death, then he was who he said he was—the Son of God.

There are many reasons to believe Christ’s resurrection really happened. For a quick and free discussion of some of the evidence, read my blog entry on “The Resurrection” from about three years ago. For a more detailed and expansive discussion, see Chapter 2 of my first book, Beyond Blind Faith, which is available in either paperback or e-book (the e-book is cheap!).

If you are not a Christian, please read “Why Reasonable People Should Consider Christianity,” free on this website.