8. And last of all I myself saw the risen Christ,
9. last as though I were the least and unworthiest of all, the persecutor that is to say of that divine Church of God, which is His infinite body.
10. But the grace of God pierced even down to those depths where I lay, and made me such as I am, and abode with me, in my labours, labours exceeding those of all the others; for the grace of God has worked with me in an extraordinary manner in every way, not only in my first conversion from the lowest depths of opposition to God but in my subsequent labours.
11. This then is the gist and burden of the message, I care not who it be that preaches it, whether I or they.
12. Then what means this contention amongst some of you that the dead do not rise?
13-16. But the Christ did rise. For death came through Adam, it came through a man, and through a man must come eternal life. If in Adam all die, then must death be conquered where it began, in a man. So rose the Christ from the dead. But if you say there is no resurrection from the dead, then neither did the Christ rise from the dead, and the whole of our teaching collapses,
17. it falls to earth, empty, void, a perfect nothing, a falsity.
18. The testimony we bear concerning God, namely, that He raised the Christ-man from the dead, has no meaning in it.
19. If the Christ exists for this world only and has no eternal existence, we are the most miserable of all the dwellers on this planet!
20. But the Christ has risen, and his rising is the commencement of a similar resurrection for the whole world.