Take your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15.
As you are turning there, I have to confess to you that I am not going to get very far into this tonight. I’ve been dealing with a headache today, I tried to sleep it off this afternoon, and I didn’t get nearly as far as I wanted to in study, so we are just going to look at the first few verses of this very long chapter.
1 Corinthians 15 is one of the greatest chapters in the whole Bible. Doctrinally, its one of the most important chapters in the Bible. It’s also a very, very long chapter. It’s all about the resurrection. I don’t want to rush through it so we may be in this chapter for a couple of sermons.
Let’s start by diving in and just reading verses 1-11 tonight:
[1] Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; [2] By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. [3] For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; [4] And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: [5] And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: [6] After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. [7] After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. [8] And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. [9] For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. [10] But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. [11] Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so ye believed. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 (KJV)
So far in out study of 1 Corinthians, we’ve seen Paul deal with all kinds of issues:
- interpersonal issues of them fighting with one another and choosing favorites and dividing into cliques.
- legal issues of them taking each other to court
- moral issues of them not taking sin seriously in the church
- issues with liberty and charity in how they were thinking about meat offered to idols
- issues with how they observed the Lord’s supper and took advantage of the poor
- issues with how they were thinking about spiritual gifts.
Now, in chapter 15, Paul is going to deal with a doctrinal issue and it’s a pretty major one. Apparently there were people in the church of Corinth who claimed to be Christians, but who were starting to doubt the resurrection of Christ.
They wanted a Christianity without the resurrection and a gospel without the resurrection - this whole chapter is going to deal with this problem.
Now, it’s actually an understandable problem if you understand a little bit about Greek and Roman culture. In the minds of Greek and Roman people, they thought of the body as a prison. They had this view that the body was bad and the spirit was good. So why would anyone want to be put back in a body after they were sprung? Why would you go back to prison?
When Paul was preaching to Festus in Acts 26, Festus was tracking with him, until he started talking about the resurrection - and then Festus said “much learning hath made you mad.”
The greeks and Romans didn’t like the idea of a resurrection and there were a lot of jews who didn’t either. Remember the group in the gospels called the “Sadduccees” - they were materialists who didn’t believe in a resurrection. Remember they tried to trick Jesus and asked him this complicated question about a woman who marries a bunch of brothers and they all die and asks “whose husband is she in the resurrection”
And Jesus said “ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God.”
So it shouldn’t really surprise us that this false doctrine had slipped into the church at Corinth. But it is a major false doctrine and once you give into the idea that there is no resurrection - you really lose the whole plot of Christianity. We’ll get to all that in the next couple of weeks.
But Paul starts this chapter by talking about the gospel. And in these verses, I think Paul gives us five things about the gospel that are important to understand.
So that will be my message this evening, five truths about the nature of the gospel.
The first truth we are going to see in these verses about the gospel is...
The gospel is received.
Look at verse 1 again:
[1] Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; 1 Corinthians 15:1 (KJV)
I think a key word in this whole section is the word “received.”
You see the same word in verse 3 “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.”
You don’t see the word “received” in verse 11, but you see the idea.
There is a very clear idea here and that is that the gospel is not something that they were making up as they went along, it is something that was given to them.
Imagine there are no copy machines, there are no printing presses. I want to give a classroom full of students something specific to memorize. I would take out my paper copy and I would say “write this down, word for word.” And they would take out their quills and their parchment and very carefully write it down word for word - they would receive it.
Paul is saying that the gospel is like that. It isn’t something he was making up. It wasn’t something they were free to mess with. It was something he was given and that he carefully passed on, and they weren’t to mess with it.
The clear lesson for us here is that the gospel is not something we are free to mess with. The teachings of the scripture in general are not for us to mess with. They aren’t given for our private interpretation. We are to take them, understand them and then pass them on unchanged to the next generation.
We don’t get to say “that doesn’t fit us anymore” or “what about the victims?” We don’t get to have a modern gospel, or a postmodern gospel, or a social gospel. There is one gospel, and we didn’t make it up, and we don’t get to change it.
The gospel is received.
The second point I think Paul is making about the gospel here is...
The gospel is defined.
Look at verses 3-4 again:
[3] For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; [4] And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (KJV)
Paul defines the gospel here as three things:
- Christ died for our sins
- Christ was buried
- Christ rose again the third day
This isn’t all of the gospel. But this is the skeletal of the gospel. This is the bones of it. These three truths are what it all hangs on and if you take any of these truths away, then it isn’t the gospel anymore.
I like to watch cooking videos. There is a chef down in St. Louis who is my personal favorite, and he’s a good teacher. So you’ll imagine how excited I was when he did a video on a new take on one of my favorite foods: Apple pie. I went and bought the ingredients and then I had Audrey make it.
And it was good. But do you know what? It wasn’t Apple pie. For one, it wasn’t round, it was made in a sheet pan. For two, it didn’t have a pie crust. For three, it used different kinds of apples.
If you take away the pie crusts and the round shape, is it still pie? I don’t think it is.
There are truths in the gospel about how we are sinners and how we must believe and how it is by grace through faith, there is justification and sanctification and glorification. We’ll be learning about the gospel and singing about it for eternity.
But essentially, the three main elements that define the gospel are these three things:
- Christ died for our sins
- Christ was buried
- Christ rose again on the third day
If you take away any of those things - it isn’t the gospel anymore. It is something else.
So the gospel is received and defined. There is a third thing we see about the gospel in these verses and that is...
The gospel is consistent with the Old Testament.
Notice in verses 3-4 again, it repeats the phrase “according to the scriptures.”
Paul is saying that every part of the gospel - the death, the burial and the resurrection - were foretold by the scriptures.
Now, it’s not hard to see where Christ’s death was fortold. We have some very famous verses in the Bible about that:
[5] But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. [6] All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. Isaiah 53:5-6 (KJV)
And there are passages rich with details like Psalm 22. Just look at verse 16
[16] For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. Psalm 22:16 (KJV)
And 18:
[18] They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture. Psalm 22:18 (KJV)
There are also passages about the burial of Christ in the Old Testament, like
[9] And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. Isaiah 53:9 (KJV)
But what about the resurrection? That’s a little harder.
Well, we can look at what Peter preached when he preached about the resurrection. He used Psalm 16:10
[10] For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Psalm 16:10 (KJV)
Peter said, this can’t be talking about David, because David did die and his body did corrupt. His body is buried in Jerusalem where we are at. This has to be talking about someone else - the Holy one has to be Jesus.
I think if you expand this to predictions by type, you see more references to Christ’s resurrection in the Old Testament.
For instance, there is the type of Isaac. Remember, God told Abraham to offer his only son Isaac on a mountain. And Abraham obeyed, and it’s interesting, he walks with Isaac for three days. So in the mind of Abraham, Isaac is dead for three days. Then they get to Mt. Moriah, they get to the place of the sacrifice and Abraham says “God will provide himself a lamb.” And God stops Abraham from slaying Isaac and they walk down the mountain together.
There is some strong types there. Or you could look at the story Jesus used - the picture of Jonah who was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, and Jesus said that is going to be me.
But the point is - we don’t get to make up the gospel, it is clearly defined and has been given to us, and it clearly fits with the Old Testament scriptures. So we can’t just take parts of it away.
There is another thing Paul spends time on here, another truth about the gospel we have to know and that is...
The gospel is news of something that really happened (including the resurrection.)
In verses 5-8 Paul makes a very important point, he says the resurrection of Jesus wasn’t just some made up thing, there was eyewitnesses to it.
First Peter (that’s Cephas), then the 12, then more than 500 people at once saw Jesus, then James, then all the apostles and finally Paul himself.
That’s a lot of eyewitnesses. And Paul wanted the Corinthians to know - most of these eyewitnesses are still alive. Some are asleep (which is a nice way of saying they are dead) but most are still alive - you can travel to Jerusalem if you want to and ask them about it.
The point is, this isn’t a fable. It isn’t a fairytale. This really happened. It’s a historical fact.
If it isn’t a fact, it’s a giant conspiracy. Hundreds of people would have had to be in on it, and would have to take it to their graves. And what did they get for saying Jesus was resurrected? They got persecuted. They got barred from their families and their towns. They got hunted down. They were the enemies of the jews and the Romans for this.
If the whole thing was a hoax, surely someone would have made a deal with Pilate or with Herod or the jews and produced Jesus’ body. Surely someone would have cracked while being tortured and changed his mind and wrote a best selling memoir about how they made the whole thing up. But no one did. The death, burial and resurrection of Jesus is one of the best attested facts in all of ancient history.
So we don’t get to ignore it. We don’t get to mess with it. It really happened.
And there is a final thing Paul talks about here related to the gospel and that is...
The gospel transformed the life of the apostle Paul.
He says in verses 8-9:
[8] And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time. [9] For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 1 Corinthians 15:8-9 (KJV)
Listen, Paul had no business being a Christian. Paul was a persecutor of Christ. He was set to destroy Christians. He was there was Stephen was stoned, probably egging them on. He was a man who went around lying to courts to get Christians killed. He led missions to persecute Christians personally.
And yet, Paul saw the resurrected Christ himself on the road to Damascas and Paul couldn’t do anything else besides believe the gospel.
And Paul says:
[10] But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 1 Corinthians 15:10 (KJV)
He says by God’s grace I am what I am, I am an apostle and because of it, I have labored. I haven’t stopped.
There was once a secular lawyer who was determined to expose Christianity. This man said that their are two things that would undermine Christianity and cause it to lose all of its credibility:
- The resurrection of Christ
- The conversion of the Apostle Paul
So this man set out to study those two things and to prove them wrong - do you know what happened? He ended up converting to Christianity and writing a book about how it is true.
The gospel is received and defined - we don’t get to mess with it. The gospel wasn’t new, it grew out of the Old Testament and was predicted by it. The gospel isn’t some made up fable - it is the good news of events that actually happened. And as evidence they actually happened - look at Paul.
Now, I hope all of us can say as evidence of the reality of the gospel, look at my life. Look at what I was before Christ and how Christ has changed me.
Now, I hope all of us can say as evidence of the reality of the gospel, look at my life. Look at what I was before Christ and how Christ has changed me.
Paul could point to his life as proof. He went from a persecutor of the church to a planter of churches. He went from hunting Christians to helping Christians. He went from holding the coats of those who stoned Stephen to being stoned himself for preaching Christ.
That kind of transformation doesn't happen because of a myth. It doesn't happen because of a good story. It happens because the gospel is real and it has real power to change real lives.
And that's what makes this so convicting for us. Can we point to our lives as evidence of the gospel? Can our family, our coworkers, our neighbors look at us and see that something real happened to us?
They should be able to see the difference Christ has made. They should be able to see how we were before and how we are now. Not perfect - none of us are perfect - but changed. Transformed. Different.
Your life is the best argument for the gospel you have. People might argue with your theology. They might debate your Bible verses. But they can't argue with a changed life.
Paul says in verse 10, "by the grace of God I am what I am" - can you say that? Not "by my willpower" or "by trying harder" but "by the grace of God I am what I am."
And can you also say what Paul says next - "his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured" - are you living a life that shows the gospel is real? Are you laboring for Christ? Serving? Growing? Or has the gospel been in vain in your life?
Because here's the thing - the world is watching. They're looking for evidence. And the best evidence they're going to see isn't an argument or a debate - it's your transformed life.
So let me ask you tonight - what does your life say about the gospel? Does it say "this is real, this changed me"? Or does it say "this is just another religion, just another Sunday thing"?
The gospel we've received is powerful. It's defined. It's consistent with scripture. It really happened. And it transforms lives.
Let it transform yours. And let your life be the evidence that points others to Christ.
