Sunday LinkUp – February 9, 2025 – 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Sunday LinkUp / By

 

 

 

CALL TO WORSHIP

 

OPENING COMMENTS  

  • Today  is the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
  • The theme for this week is FAITH.
  • The text for our sermon today, 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, outlines the gospel message that Paul reminds us to put our trust in.

OPENING SONG(S)

 

SCRIPTURE READING

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news[a] that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand,  2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.[b]  7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.  9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit 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 toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.  11 Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed.

 

FIRST MESSAGE

A  Speaking of Life  video presentation …

  • The Story Since Day One
  • Greg Williams

 

THOUGHTS ON THE FIRST MESSAGE

Program Transcript … 

Do you ever have a commercial jingle or a theme song from a tv show that you can remember perfectly years later?  Decades might pass, you will have forgotten libraries of information, but you can still flawlessly recite the opening song.  For example, the jingle from the old TV show, The Brady Bunch… “Here’s a story, of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls…”

Stories draw us in, they make us pay attention, they help us remember.

We see Paul using a story for the same reasons.  Though, his story is much more meaningful. In his first letter to believers in Corinth Paul wrote:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
1 Corinthians 15:3-6 (ESV)

At first glance, this may look like more of Paul’s theological writing — abstract concepts in the early formulation of faith.  But scholars have looked more closely at the language in the last hundred years or so and they saw an intrinsic rhythm and meter of the words: “that Christ died… he was buried… he was raised.”  What they found was an ancient credal formula — a compact, memorizable statement of faith that was probably around long before 1 Corinthians was written.

Notice how Paul set this up: I delivered to you what I received.  He was sharing something he had received — this creed, this jingle, this poem — something that was already in place and most likely part of his discipleship process.

We are seeing here some of the first “hymns” the church ever sang.  Remember there was no internet and a significant part of the first audience was illiterate.  This would be the way new believers learned faith, similar to a memory verse or a simple song, or a creed in today’s churches.

Just like we can sing some of the words to The Brady Bunch jingle, so the early believers could tell the story of Christ in song, or poem form.  The story was circulated in such a way that people could remember it and share it.  We still tell the story today — Jesus is of first importance.  His life, death, resurrection, and ascension are the story we share each year as we worship our way through the Christian Calendar.  Each year the calendar reminds us of the story of Jesus — the same story that has been shared since day one.

I am Greg Williams, Speaking of Life.

 

SECOND READING 

From Barclay’s commentary on 1 Corithians 15 …

JESUS’ RESURRECTION AND OURS    

1 Corinthians15 is both one of the greatest and one of the most difficult chapters in the New Testament.  Not only is it in itself difficult, but it has also given to the creed a phrase which many people have grave difficulty in affirming, for it is from this chapter that we mainly derive the idea of the resurrection of the body. 

The chapter will be far less difficult if we study it against its background, and even that troublesome phrase will become quite clear and acceptable when we realize what Paul really meant by it.  So then, before we study the chapter, there are certain things we would do well to have in mind.  

(i) It is of great importance to remember that the Corinthians were denying not the Resurrection of Jesus Christ but the resurrection of the body; and what Paul was insistent upon was that if a man denied the resurrection of the body he thereby denied the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and therefore emptied the Christian message of its truth and the Christian life of its reality.  

(ii) In any early Christian church there must have been two backgrounds, for in all churches there were Jews and Greeks.

First, there was the Jewish background. To the end of the day the Sadducees denied that there was any life after death at all. There was therefore one line of Jewish thought which completely denied both the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body (Acts 23:8).  In the Old Testament there is very little hope of anything that can be called life after death. According to the general Old Testament belief all men, without distinction, went to Sheol after death.  Sheol, often wrongly translated Hell, was a gray land beneath the world, where the dead lived a shadowy existence, without strength, without light, cut off alike from men and from God. The Old Testament is full of this bleak, grim pessimism regarding what is to happen after death.

      • For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in Sheol who can give thee praise? (Ps.6:5).
      • What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy faithfulness? (Ps.30:9).
      • The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence. (Ps.115:17).
      • For Sheol cannot thank thee, death cannot praise thee; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness. (Isa.38:18).
      • Look away from me, that I may know gladness, before I depart and be no more. (Ps.39:13).
      • But he who is joined with all the living has hope; for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they will die; but the dead know nothing … Whatever your hand finds to do do it with your might; for there is no work, or thought, or knowledge, or wisdom, in Sheol to which you are going. (Ecc.9:4-5,10).
      • Who shall give praise to the Most High in the grave? (Ecc.17:27).

It is true that in the Old Testament there are some few, some very few, glimpses of a real life to come.  There were times when a man felt that, if God be God at all, there must be something which would reverse the incomprehensible verdicts of this world.  So Job cries out,

        • Still, I know One to champion me at last, to stand up for me upon earth. This body may break up, but even then my life shall have a sight of God. (Jb.19:25-27. Moffatt).
      • The real feeling of the saint was that even in this life a man might enter into a relationship with God so close and so precious that not even death could break it.
      • It is also true that in Israel the immortal hope developed. Two things helped that development.
        • (a) Israel was the chosen people, and yet her history was one continued tale of disaster.  Men began to feel that it required another world to redress the balance.
        • (b) For many centuries it is true to say that the individual hardly existed. God was the God of the nation and the individual was an unimportant unit.
      • But as the centuries went on religion became more and more personal. God became not the God of the nation but the friend of every individual; and so men began dimly and instinctively to feel that once a man knows God and is known by him, a relationship has been created which not even death can break.

(iii) When we turn to the Greek world, we must firmly grasp one thing, which is at the back of the whole chapter.  The Greeks had an instinctive fear of death … But, on the whole, the Greeks, and that part of the world influenced by Greek thought, did believe in the immortality of the soul.  But for them the immortality of the soul involved the complete dissolution of the body.  

      • They had a proverb, “The body is a tomb.”  
      • “I am a poor soul,” said one of them, “shackled to a corpse.”  
      • “It pleased me,” said Seneca, “to enquire into the eternity of the soul — nay! to believe in it. I surrendered myself to that great hope.”  
      • But he also says, “When the day shall come which shall part this mixture of divine and human, here, where I found it, I will leave my body, myself I will give back to the gods.”  
      • Epictetus writes, “When God does not supply what is necessary, he is sounding the signal for retreat — he has opened the door and says to you `Come!’ But whither? To nothing terrible, but to whence you came, to the things which are dear and kin to you, to the elements. What in you was fire shall go to fire, earth to earth, water to water.”  
      • Seneca talks about things at death “being resolved into their ancient elements.”  
      • For Plato “the body is the antithesis of the soul, as the source of all weaknesses as opposed to what alone is capable of independence and goodness.”  We can see this best in the Stoic belief.  To the Stoic God was fiery spirit, purer than anything on earth.  What gave men life was that a spark of this divine fire came and dwelt in a man’s body.  When a man died, his body simply dissolved into the elements of which it was made, but the divine spark returned to God and was absorbed in the divinity of which it was a part.
      • For the Greek, immortality lay precisely in getting rid of the body.  For him the resurrection of the body was unthinkable.  Personal immortality did not really exist because that which gave men life was absorbed again in God the source of all life.  

(iv) Paul’s view was quite different.  If we begin with one immense fact, the rest will become clear.  

      • The Christian belief is that after death individuality will survive, that you will still be you and I will still be I.  Beside that, we have to set another immense fact.
      • To the Greek the body could not be consecrated. It was matter, the source of all evil, the prison-house of the soul.
      • But to the Christian the body is not evil. Jesus, the Son of God, has taken this human body upon him and therefore it is not contemptible because it has been inhabited by God.
      • To the Christian, therefore, the life to come involves the total man — body and soul.  

Now it is easy to misinterpret and to caricature the doctrine of the resurrection of the body … But Paul never said that we would rise with the body with which we died.  He insisted that we would have a spiritual body.  What he really meant was that a man’s personality would survive.  It is almost impossible to conceive of personality without a body, because it is through the body that the personality expresses itself.  What Paul is contending for is that after death the individual remains.  He did not inherit the Greek contempt of the body but believed in the resurrection of the whole man.  He will still be himself; he will survive as a person.  That is what Paul means by the resurrection of the body.  Everything of the body and of the soul that is necessary to make a man a person will survive, but, at the same time, all things will be new, and body and spirit will alike be very different from earthly things, for they will alike be divine.

 

With the above insights in mind, let’s read the text again …

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.  7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 

8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.   9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit 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 toward me has not been in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.  11 Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed.   

 

SPECIAL MUSIC 

 

 

SERMON (Interactive)

But Then He Appeared

1 Corinthians 15:1-11   

Now I want you to understand, brothers and sisters, the good news[a] that I proclaimed to you, which you in turn received, in which also you stand, 2 through which also you are being saved, if you hold firmly to the message that I proclaimed to you — unless you have come to believe in vain.  

 

  • We also noticed that this gospel Paul wants to bring to their memory is one that had already come to them by the preaching of Paul.  Not only that but they had originally received it and placed their trust in it.  This is where they once took their stand.  So, we see that Paul’s effort is not to create a clever logical argument to prove the resurrection of the body.
  • He’s not trying to convince them of something they do not know, or at least once knew; he is trying to remind them of what they once knew and believed.
  • Paul also reminds them that it is this gospel that saved them. If they continue to hold loosely to what they once received, they run the risk of having their faith be “in vain.”  These believers, as we have seen in the past few weeks in this letter, have placed their trust elsewhere and it has eroded the life of the church.  They need to return to what’s of first importance and stop their flirtation with the latest “spiritual” fad that makes them feel significant or special.  They have forgotten who they are in Jesus Christ.

 

From Barclay’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 …

Paul is recapitulating the good news which he first brought to the Corinthians. It was not news which he had invented but news which had first been delivered to him, and it was news of a Risen Lord.

In 1 Corinthians 15:1-2, Paul says an extremely interesting series of things about the good news.

(i) It was something which the Corinthians had received. No man ever invented the gospel for himself; in a sense no man ever discovers it for himself. It is something which he receives. Therein indeed is the very function of the Church. The Church is the repository and the transmitter of the good news. As one of the old fathers had it, “No man can have God for his Father, unless he has the Church for his mother.” The good news is something that is received within a fellowship.

(ii) It was something in which the Corinthians stood. The very first function of the good news was to give a man stability. In a slippery world it kept him on his feet. In a tempting world it gave him resistance power. In a hurting world it enabled him to endure a broken heart or an agonized body and not to give in. Moffatt finely translates Jb.4:4, “Your words have kept men on their feet.” That is precisely what the gospel does.

(iii) It was something in which they were being saved. It is interesting to note that in the Greek this is a present tense, and not past. It would be strictly correct to translate it not, “in which you have been saved,” but, “in which you are being saved.” Salvation goes from glory to glory. It is not something which is ever completed in this world. There are many things in this life which we can exhaust, but the meaning of salvation is something which a man can never exhaust.

(iv) It was something to which a man had to hold tenaciously. Life makes many an attempt to take away our faith. Things happen to us and to others which baffle our understanding; life has its problems to which there seems no solution and its questions to which there seems no answer; life has its dark places where there seems to be nothing to do but hold on. Faith is always a victory, the victory of the soul which tenaciously maintains its clutch on God.

(v) It was something which must not be held haphazardly and at random. The faith which collapses is the faith which has not thought things out and thought them through. For so many of us faith is a superficial thing. We tend to accept things because we are told them and to possess them merely at secondhand. If we undergo the agony of thought there may be much that we must discard, but what is left is really ours in such a way that nothing can ever take it from us.

3 For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures 4 and that he was buried and that he was raised on  the third day  in accordance with the scriptures 

 

  • Notice how Paul does not claim that he had some new teaching that he came up with for others to believe in.  No, Paul clearly states that what he passed on was established before him.  He merely seeks to pass on what was given to him.  He is not the originator of this good news.  That’s an important reminder for the church today.  How often are we presented with some new-fangled idea, method, strategy, or program that will amount to some form of salvation?  Maybe someone has a new approach that will save our church from decline.  Or maybe it’s the newest program for our youth that will keep them in the pews.  Or it could be any number of things that do not rely on the once delivered good news of Jesus Christ.  How often are we tempted to place our trust in something other than Christ, or at least in something in addition to Christ?  Paul is forceful here as he states that the foundation of the Christian faith that he passed on was of “first importance.”  Everything else is secondary at best.
  • Paul then proceeds to remind them of what is of “first importance” since they seem to have forgotten.  First, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”  There’s no way to hear this without also hearing that we were once sinners in need of forgiveness.  This would be a good and hard reminder for a group of Christians who boasted about their own spirituality.  It’s always a good reminder to know that we are saved, not just from some past sins, but from our own sinful nature.  We really have nothing to boast about.
  • Also, notice Paul added “according to the Scriptures.”  At the time of Paul’s writing, “Scripture” was the Old Testament, which pointed ahead to the coming of the Messiah.  This gospel reminder has been revealed in the Scriptures and has culminated in Jesus Christ.  We can never detach the Scriptures from our proclamations of the gospel.  This too is a matter of faith.  Do we trust that God’s word is sufficient to bear witness to Christ?  Do we trust that God’s way of changing hearts and minds through His written word is sufficient?  Or do we have a better plan, one that we can take credit for?
  • Paul continues with his reminder with “he was buried” and “he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Again, Paul was clear that what he was saying was nothing beyond what the Scriptures were saying.  Paul emphasized that Jesus did objectively die by including the fact that He was buried.  Jesus didn’t experience some “spiritual” transformation or higher plain of thinking that got branded as a “resurrection.”  No, Jesus experienced a real death in a real body just like you and I will.  But He was raised.

 

5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.  6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.[b]  7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.  8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 

 

  • Now Paul comes to his point that aims to correct the Corinthian believers who criticized the message of the resurrection.  For extra measure, he grounds this claim in real historical events.  He reminds the Corinthian believers that Peter, the Twelve, and then five hundred other brothers and sisters gave witness to the fact that Jesus had indeed been risen from the dead.
  • Paul doesn’t leave them with only an account of all these witnesses who experienced seeing Jesus alive after the resurrection.  He goes on to include his own experience as well.  And he qualifies, saying “and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”  Paul has certainly not elevated his witness as the key witness involved, but neither does he leave it out.  Why would one argue for a belief that wasn’t true for them personally?  Paul makes it personal.

 

In Paul’s list of appearances of the Risen Lord two are specially interesting.

  1.   There is the appearance to Peter. In the earliest account of the Resurrection story, the word of the messenger in the empty tomb is, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter.” (Mk.16:7). In Lk.24:34 the disciples say, “The Lord has risen indeed and has appeared to Simon.” It is an amazing thing that one of the first appearances of the Risen Lord was to the disciple who had denied him. There is all the wonder of the love and grace of Jesus Christ here. Others might have hated Peter forever, but the one desire of Jesus was to set this erratic disciple of his upon his feet. Peter had wronged Jesus and then had wept his heart out; and the one desire of this amazing Jesus was to comfort him in the pain of his disloyalty. Love can go no further than to think more of the heartbreak of the man who wronged it than of the hurt that it itself has received.
  2.   There is the appearance to James. Without doubt this James is the brother of our Lord. It is quite clear from the gospel narrative that Jesus’ own family did not understand him and were even actively hostile to him. Mk.3:21 tells us that they actually sought to restrain him because they believed him to be mad. Jn.7:5 tells us that his brothers did not believe in him. One of the earliest of those gospels which did not succeed in getting into the New Testament is the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Only fragments of it remain. One fragment, preserved by Jerome, reads, “Now the Lord, when he had given the linen cloth unto the servant of the priest, went unto James and appeared unto him (for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from that hour wherein he had drunk the Lord’s cup until he should see him risen again from among them that sleep).” So, the story runs, “Jesus went to James and said, `Bring ye a table and bread.’ And he took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it unto James the Just and said unto him, `My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen from among them that sleep.'” We can only conjecture what lies behind this. It may well be that the last days turned James’ contempt into wondering admiration so that when the end came, he was so torn with remorse for the way in which he had treated his brother that he swore that he would starve unless he came back to forgive him. Here once again we have the amazing grace and love of Christ. He came to bring peace to the troubled soul of the man who had called him mad and who had been his opponent.

It is one of the most heart-moving things in all the story of Jesus that two of his first appearances, after he rose from the tomb, were to men who had hurt him and were sorry for it.

Jesus meets the penitent heart far more than halfway.

 

9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit 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 toward me has not been in vain.  On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God that is with me.  

11 Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you believed.  

 

From Barclay’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 15 …

Finally, in this passage we have a vivid light thrown on the character of Paul himself.  To him, it was the most precious thing in the world that Jesus had appeared also to him. That was at one and the same time the turning point and the dynamic moment of his life.  But 1 Corinthians 15:9-11 tell us much about him.

  1.   They tell us of his utter humility. He is the least of the apostles; he has been glorified with an office for which he is not worthy. Paul would never have claimed to be a self-made man. It was by the grace of God that he was what he was. He is perhaps even accepting a taunt made against him. It would seem that he was a little and an unhandsome man (2 Cor.10:10). It may be that the Jewish Christians who wished to impose the law upon Christian converts and who hated his doctrine of free grace, declared that, so far from being born again, Paul was an abortion.  He, for his part, was so conscious of his own unworthiness that he felt no one could say anything too bad about him.  Charles Gore once said, “On a general review of life, we can seldom feel that we are suffering unmerited wrong.”  Paul felt like that.  His was not the pride which resented the criticisms and the taunts of men, but the humility which felt that it deserved them.
  2.   They tell us at the same time of the consciousness of his own worth.  He was well aware that he had laboured beyond them all. His was not a false modesty. But even at that, he spoke always, not of what he had done, but of what God had enabled him to do.
  3.   They tell of his sense of fellowship. He did not regard himself as an isolated phenomenon with a message that was unique.  He and the other apostles preached the same gospel.  His was the greatness which bound him closer to the Christian fellowship; there is always something lacking in the greatness which divides a man from his fellows.

 

  • Paul was not held in high esteem by those in the Corinthian church who took issue with some of his teachings. They felt they knew more than him and that Paul wasn’t even an apostle. It’s interesting how Paul deals with this. He does not argue by way of virtue or “spirituality” for being an apostle. He states that he is the “least of the apostles” and does not even deserve the title. However, in doing so, he does not deny that he is an apostle. Rather, he bases his calling on the grace of God, and not by some measure of “spirituality” that the Corinthians favored. He takes the Corinthian believer’s argument against him and uses it as a witness of God’s grace, and therefore a more solid foundation for his appointment as an apostle.
  • Note also how Paul referred to his past experience of persecuting the church. What he thought was correct and zeal for God, was, in reality, an enemy of God. Perhaps he hopes the Corinthian church will reflect on their own self-acclamations of being “spiritual” and exercise some caution. Paul does mention that he “worked harder than all of them,” but that does not mean he seeks to compare his work ethic to theirs. Instead, he is points to the grace of God at work in him.  Grace had a deeper work to do in Paul seeing that he was the “least of the apostles.”  And that lands us on a final note of the good news we are to be reminded of today.

 

 

WHAT CAN WE TAKE AWAY?

  • For staff at our Home Office …
      • God’s grace does not cease to work in any of us, no matter our past or how bull-headed and arrogant we may behave in the present.  God’s grace will never give up on any of us.  We can trust He will complete the good work He has set out to do.  Our response is to trust in God’s grace, letting it work out of us all that needs to be repented of so we to can pass on to others what we once received.
  • For me … it’s the appearances of Jesus after His death.
  • His appearances were PROOF of His resurrection, which is at the heart and core of the Gospel message.
  • As we’ve said before … It was NOT enough that Jesus died … We have to also believe that He was raised from the dead.
      • Notice what Paul went on to say right after …
        • 1 Corinthians 15:12-14  Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?  13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, 14 and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain.
  • The appearances proved that He had been raised “in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:4).

 

SONG of RESPONSE   

 

CLOSING PRAYER

 

BENEDICTION 

 

 

MAIN MESSAGE from Home Office … 

 

Remembering the Gospel

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 NIV

 

For the last three weeks we have covered Paul’s concern over the believers in the Corinthian church who had fixated on spiritual gifts in an unhealthy way.  They saw themselves as “spiritual” on account of some charismatic gifts that they felt were a badge of spirituality.  This seemed to give them cover for the many issues the Corinthian church faced that Paul had to address concerning sexual immorality, divisions, litigations between fellow Christians, idolatry, abuse of the Lord’s Table, and more.  In this section, Paul will lay the groundwork to address another issue concerning the resurrection.

Some in the church denied a bodily resurrection.  This distorted view of one of the most basic understandings of Christianity seems to be related to the “spirituality” issue Paul has been dealing with up to this point.  These Corinthian believers felt they had already attained the pinnacle of spirituality and were not concerned about the body.  Since they saw themselves as already fluent in the language of angels, they devalued and dismissed the body, and hence ridiculed the idea of a bodily resurrection. (The belief that the body was evil and the spirit was good is described as Gnosticism and was present at the time Paul was writing to the Corinthians.)  This belief would also contribute to their lack of concern with what they did with their bodies in the present.  This would set up another justification for many of the sexual sins of which they approved.  What does it matter what you do with your body, they may have reasoned, if it is only temporary?  Paul constructs three arguments to counter this, and we will cover two of them, one today, and one next week.

In today’s reading, we will see much more than Paul’s attempt to address this issue on the resurrection of the body.  In this first section of Paul’s argument, he lays the foundation of what all believers hold in common — the reality of Jesus’ death and resurrection.  In short, we are reminded of the gospel message that is distinct to the Christian faith and worship.  This is a message about Jesus, in whom we are called to place our trust for all things.

Let’s see how Paul chooses to begin laying the groundwork:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.  By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you.  Otherwise, you have believed in vain. 1 Corinthians 15:1-2 NIV

Notice as Paul begins, he addresses them as brothers and sisters.  By doing so he already appeals to a common belief they share.  He does not pit himself against them but identifies with them as a brother.  And the first thing he does is “to remind you of the gospel.”  That’s what brothers and sisters in Christ should always be in the habit of doing.  Each Sunday when we gather for worship, we gather to remind each other of who God is and what he has done in Jesus Christ.  Perhaps these believers had gone too long without being reminded of the foundations of the Christian faith and they were susceptible to believing all kinds of distortions.  Paul’s strategy here speaks to the need to continually remind each other of the gospel.

We also noticed that this gospel Paul wants to bring to their memory is one that had already come to them by the preaching of Paul.  Not only that but they had originally received it and placed their trust in it.  This is where they once took their stand.  So, we see that Paul’s effort is not to create a clever logical argument to prove the resurrection of the body.  He’s not trying to convince them of something they do not know, or at least once knew; he is trying to remind them of what they once knew and believed.

Paul also reminds them that it is this gospel that saved them. If they continue to hold loosely to what they once received, they run the risk of having their faith be “in vain.”  These believers, as we have seen in the past few weeks in this letter, have placed their trust elsewhere and it has eroded the life of the church.  They need to return to what’s of first importance and stop their flirtation with the latest “spiritual” fad that makes them feel significant or special.  They have forgotten who they are in Jesus Christ.

Paul now aims to remind them:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 NIV

Notice how Paul does not claim that he had some new teaching that he came up with for others to believe in.  No, Paul clearly states that what he passed on was established before him.  He merely seeks to pass on what was given to him.  He is not the originator of this good news.  That’s an important reminder for the church today.  How often are we presented with some new-fangled idea, method, strategy, or program that will amount to some form of salvation?  Maybe someone has a new approach that will save our church from decline.  Or maybe it’s the newest program for our youth that will keep them in the pews.  Or it could be any number of things that do not rely on the once delivered good news of Jesus Christ.  How often are we tempted to place our trust in something other than Christ, or at least in something in addition to Christ?  Paul is forceful here as he states that the foundation of the Christian faith that he passed on was of “first importance.”  Everything else is secondary at best.

Paul then proceeds to remind them of what is of “first importance” since they seem to have forgotten.  First, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”  There’s no way to hear this without also hearing that we were once sinners in need of forgiveness.  This would be a good and hard reminder for a group of Christians who boasted about their own spirituality.  It’s always a good reminder to know that we are saved, not just from some past sins, but from our own sinful nature.  We really have nothing to boast about.

Also, notice Paul added “according to the Scriptures.”  At the time of Paul’s writing, “Scripture” was the Old Testament, which pointed ahead to the coming of the Messiah.  This gospel reminder has been revealed in the Scriptures and has culminated in Jesus Christ.  We can never detach the Scriptures from our proclamations of the gospel.  This too is a matter of faith.  Do we trust that God’s word is sufficient to bear witness to Christ?  Do we trust that God’s way of changing hearts and minds through His written word is sufficient?  Or do we have a better plan, one that we can take credit for?

Paul continues with his reminder with “he was buried” and “he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” Again, Paul was clear that what he was saying was nothing beyond what the Scriptures were saying.  Paul emphasized that Jesus did objectively die by including the fact that He was buried.  Jesus didn’t experience some “spiritual” transformation or higher plain of thinking that got branded as a “resurrection.”  No, Jesus experienced a real death in a real body just like you and I will.  But He was raised.  Now Paul comes to his point that aims to correct the Corinthian believers who criticized the message of the resurrection.  For extra measure, he grounds this claim in real historical events.  He reminds the Corinthian believers that Peter, the Twelve, and then five hundred other brothers and sisters gave witness to the fact that Jesus had indeed been risen from the dead.

Paul doesn’t leave them with only an account of all these witnesses who experienced seeing Jesus alive after the resurrection.  He goes on to include his own experience as well.  And he qualifies, saying “and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.”  Paul has certainly not elevated his witness as the key witness involved, but neither does he leave it out.  Why would one argue for a belief that wasn’t true for them personally?  Paul makes it personal.

Paul will conclude this portion of his argument.  He explains why he referred to his own witness of the resurrected Lord in such self-deprecating terms.

For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.  No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.  Whether, then, it is I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed. 1 Corinthians 15:9-11 NIV

Paul was not held in high esteem by those in the Corinthian church who took issue with some of his teachings. They felt they knew more than him and that Paul wasn’t even an apostle. It’s interesting how Paul deals with this. He does not argue by way of virtue or “spirituality” for being an apostle. He states that he is the “least of the apostles” and does not even deserve the title. However, in doing so, he does not deny that he is an apostle. Rather, he bases his calling on the grace of God, and not by some measure of “spirituality” that the Corinthians favored. He takes the Corinthian believer’s argument against him and uses it as a witness of God’s grace, and therefore a more solid foundation for his appointment as an apostle.

Note also how Paul referred to his past experience of persecuting the church. What he thought was correct and zeal for God, was, in reality, an enemy of God. Perhaps he hopes the Corinthian church will reflect on their own self-acclamations of being “spiritual” and exercise some caution. Paul does mention that he “worked harder than all of them,” but that does not mean he seeks to compare his work ethic to theirs. Instead, he is points to the grace of God at work in him. Grace had a deeper work to do in Paul seeing that he was the “least of the apostles.” And that lands us on a final note of the good news we are to be reminded of today.

God’s grace does not cease to work in any of us, no matter our past or how bull-headed and arrogant we may behave in the present. God’s grace will never give up on any of us. We can trust He will complete the good work He has set out to do. Our response is to trust in God’s grace, letting it work out of us all that needs to be repented of so we to can pass on to others what we once received.

 

 

 

 

 

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