1 AND NOW let me remind you [since it seems to have escaped you], brethren, of the Gospel (the glad tidings of salvation) which I proclaimed to you, which you welcomed and accepted and upon which your faith rests, 2 And by which you are saved, if you hold fast and keep firmly what I preached to you, unless you believed at first without effect and all for nothing.
3 For I passed on to you first of all what I also had received, that Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One) died for our sins in accordance with [what] the Scriptures [foretold], 4 That He was buried, that He arose on the third day as the Scriptures foretold, 5 And [also] that He appeared to Cephas (Peter), then to the Twelve. 6 Then later He showed Himself to more than five hundred brethren at one time, the majority of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep [in death]. 7 Afterward He was seen by James, then by all the apostles (the special messengers), 8 And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one prematurely and born dead [ 1 no better than an unperfected fetus among living men]. 9 For I am the least [worthy] of the apostles, who am not fit or deserving to be called an apostle, because I once wronged and pursued and molested the church of God [oppressing it with cruelty and violence]. 10 But by the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not [found to be] for nothing (fruitless and without effect). In fact, I worked harder than all of them [the apostles], though it was not really I, but the grace (the unmerited favor and blessing) of God which was with me. 11 So, whether then it was I or they, this is what we preach and this is what you believed [what you adhered to, trusted in, and relied on].