Praised be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an everlasting hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him.
I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
Then the end will come, when He hands over the kingdom to God the Father after He has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
For as far as this world is concerned, you have died and your new real life is hidden with Christ in God.
By His boundless mercy we have been born again to an ever-living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Not that I have now attained this ideal, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to lay hold of and make my own, that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me and made me His own