The Preeminent Gospel

Before Paul can talk about resurrection, he has to nail down the gospel itself. In the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15, he hands the Corinthians back what was handed to him — a gospel of first importance, rooted in history, confirmed by witnesses, and powerful enough to transform even the least likely of apostles. This Sunday we ask: are you holding firmly to this gospel, or has it slowly lost its footing in your life?

Transcript

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Now, let me start off by saying this. There's a real difference between knowing that what's beneath your feet is solid and steady, and actually trusting the fullness of your weight to it. Right? There's a gap there. And here's what I know. Every time we go hiking as a family, which isn't often, right? Don't think we're not that family. But when we do, inevitably, here's what we come across: a creek or a ravine that has some type of fallen log spanning it, right? And I don't know why Ohio is just filled with these little spots in hiking, but it's just we always come across it, and there's always a question that comes out of my children's mouth. Well, at least some of them. Dad, can I walk across it? Right? And so I have to do the necessary work of assessing risk and like, do I think that this log can hold them? And if they did fall, how far are they gonna fall? And it will be serious injury and blah, blah, blah, right? But but here's what happens. No matter how confident my yes is to them, I always watch them approach that fallen log with caution. And I and I see them carefully assess whether it will actually hold them once they put their full weight on it. They're scared. They're timid. That once they trust their footing to this fallen log, it will actually collapse beneath them. I think that Paul opens 1 Corinthians chapter 15 with that kind of moment. Is the resurrection of Jesus something that we can put the fullness of our weight on and not have it collapse beneath us? You see, the church at Corinth, they confess the resurrection. Paul says that they have received the gospel, they stand in it, but somewhere along the way they have not trusted their full weight to it. And there's a gap that he identifies. They believe in the resurrection, they give mental assent to it, but they fail to have it hold them in this life. And so Paul works to kind of correct this gospel drift that he's seen taking place in the church in Corinth, and he takes them back to what they have been standing in. And he doesn't try to coldly rebuke them, he doesn't come at them with anger, but he does so to remind them that what they're standing on is solid ground, that it will actually hold the full weight of their life now and the one promised to come. And so over these next five weeks in this series, that's what we're going to do together to try and rediscover the sure ground of the resurrection of Jesus. We're going back to the foundation of the gospel, the whole gospel of Jesus, the death of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sin and the resurrection of Jesus for a new spiritual life now and a glorified physical life in the one to come. How the fullness of the finished work of Jesus accomplishes once and for all the death of death. Here's what Athanasius of Alexandria from the fourth century says about the resurrection. He says, Take away the resurrection, and you have taken away Christianity. So what does this mean? It means that we're doing this work in this series because everything stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus. So let's look at how Paul opens this chapter in verse 1. He says this He says, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you. That opening word for I would remind you. It's a very solemn word. And here's what he's doing. It's the kind of word that you reach for when you're about to say something that demands careful attention from your audience. He wants all eyes on him, all ears open to what he's proclaiming. The important thing to consider is that he's not introducing something new to the church. In fact, what Paul's doing is he's calling them back to something that they already have received, but yet haven't fully reckoned with in their heart. And notice what he does say about the content or the effect of this gospel in verses 1 and 2. He says that they received it. He's talking about this past tense of this completed act. He preached it, they had received it. But then he also says that they stand in it. Talking about this present reality, the ground beneath them, right now, in this moment. They are standing in the fullness of the gospel. And through it, they are being saved. Paul speaks to this active, ongoing reality of the gospel's presence in their life. And so here's why this is important for us to look at it from a historical past tense of receiving a present tense standing in, and something that is actively happening in the midst of our life, but we are being saved. It tells us that the gospel is not just a transaction. It's not just a one-time prayer where we're able to achieve for ourselves fire insurance and we just move beyond it into greater and better and deeper things. We see that the gospel is not something that we move on from, but it's actually the present living ground on which our entire lives are built. And so, church, we never move beyond the gospel. We stand in it every single day. But then Paul he adds this warning in the passage, and I think it really shows the heart of the urgency or the reason for why he's going to work to write this for the church. He says this in verse 2. He says, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you unless you believed in vain. And so the danger that's being readdressed here in this moment isn't that they outright rejected the gospel from the beginning. The danger is that they received it carelessly, without letting it fully land and settle within them and bring transformation to the moment of their present life. It's kind of like the seed Jesus warns about. Well, the soil Jesus warns about, where the seed is thrown on this shallow soil. It sprouts, it shows some semblance of life, but it has no roots to hold it. It confesses this faith, but it doesn't hold. And so Paul takes them where? To the content of the gospel in verses 3 through 5. This is what you received. This is what you stand in. This is what you are being saved by. And he gives us the oldest creed in the entire New Testament. Now, if you're asking what a creed is, it's the church's way of saying this content is a non-negotiable for the faith. We don't get to just subjectively pick and choose whether we believe it to be true or not. It's not something that we can bypass or dismiss. It is an essential aspect, a non-negotiable of our faith. It's not just a summary of some subjective spirituality, but it's a fixed declaration of what has been true, what's been tested by the community of faith, and handed down as the core of what Christians confess together. The word itself, creed, comes from the Latin credo, which means I believe. And so the church, we should love the creeds. In fact, we confess the apostles in Nicene's Creed. Because what is the creed there for? The reality is you and I were prone to drift from the truth and beauty and essential nature of the gospel. And the creeds are like these guardrails on the life on our road of faith. They keep us on track, they keep us pursuing Jesus. It's the anchor of faith that we return to. When confusion creeps in about what was what we ought to believe and what we believe is true, when suffering makes faith feel unstable, when the culture tries to renegotiate what Christianity actually is, we have the creeds to be able to give us confidence. No, this is what Christianity is and has always been. The creeds help us to establish a sure and solid ground to come back to. And so he says plainly in verse 3 for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Why is that important for us to focus on? Well, Paul's not just making something up. This didn't originate with Paul. The gospel had been received by him and passed on by him. This is the exact same language that he uses in chapter 11 of this very same letter when referring to the Lord's Supper. This truth, this testimony, has been handed down through eyewitness tradition, traceable to the very earliest community of disciples. And so we're talking about facts passed down within only 20 years of the actual events taking place. Paul's not speaking of something from ancient history. He's allowing the church to be confronted with the reality of the resurrection. And so this isn't folk legend or lore. This is a credible testimony that can be pursued for its credibility. And so the creed itself that he gives us in verses three through five, it has these kind of four movements in it, right? We see Christ died for our sins, movement one, he was buried, movement two, was raised on the third day, that's the third movement, and then his appearance, his public appearance being the fourth. Remember, he's speaking to the church, trying to affirm their understanding and kind of reestablish this confidence in the resurrection of Jesus. And so he purposely puts the burial of Christ smack dab in the middle. And notice he doesn't include this theological footnote. Before it he says, remember, Christ died for your sins in accordance with the scriptures, was buried, and then he raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. So why put the burial there? It's doing real work. Placed between Jesus' death and resurrection without a qualifier. Because here's what Paul is trying to say. If Christ was buried, he was really dead. If Christ was buried, he was really dead. This wasn't just part of a spiritual vision. This wasn't just symbolically something that happened, or some type of metaphor to help them live in a world of suffering. No, a real body went into a real tomb, which means that what came out was a real physical body raised from the dead. And so the resurrection is not a metaphor for new life, it's a historical event that happened in a physical world. And it changes everything about what happens in this physical world, including to you and to me. And then he goes on to talk about the witnesses, right? This appearance is so important to Paul's work. He mentions Peter and the 12. He says more than 500 people at once, most of whom Paul says they're still alive. You can actually go and ask them if they solve these things. Paul's not trying to just lean on himself or his own personal credibility. He's inviting a host of witnesses into the conversation and say, if you don't believe me, will you at least believe them? He even includes James in there, Jesus' younger brother, who wasn't the biggest fan. He was much more of a skeptic during Jesus' life and ministry, but he becomes a pillar of the New Testament church. He says even James saw him risen from the dead. All the apostles were witnesses to this. And last of all, Paul includes himself. But look at what he calls himself: one untimely born. In the original language, it's actually pretty crude what that is emphasizing or portraying. It's actually referring to a miscarriage or an abortion. Paul's saying that I was almost accidental in the way of which I came into this world, in this new life, as a gospel minister and apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. What Paul's saying is that it's only by the grace of Jesus that I am here today doing the work of gospel ministry. You see, the glorified physical risen Christ appeared to Paul after his ascension. He showed himself and revealed himself to Paul outside of the normal order of which he revealed himself to all the others. And so Paul sees and identifies it as an act of sovereign grace. Truly, he was last and least by every measure possible. Yet, even he saw the risen Lord. And so the wis, the the the list that Paul uses here, I don't think it's fuel for a debate. I think it's an invitation for the church to find credibility and to reckon with in their very soul the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, its authenticity, and what it demands of their life today. You see, these people that Paul mentions truly witnessed something miraculous. And it changed their lives. But it didn't just change theirs, it changed the lives of so much of the known world. The gospel is transformative because the resurrection is real. And so Paul closes this section in 15, 1 through 11 with verse 11, this kind of statement that unites everything together. He says, whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed. One message, one gospel, one crucified and resurrected Lord. It could have been Peter or Paul himself or Apollos or any person in your life who told you about the good news of Jesus. The message is the same. And it's always been the same. It's the one foundation on which everything stands or falls. And that's the weight that Paul desires for us to feel in this passage. If we lose the resurrection, we lose Christianity. The floor falls from beneath us, and we have nothing to hold us. That's the weight that this passage carries. Not just that the resurrection happened, but that it is the very ground we stand upon. And so to pull it from out beneath our feet, it causes everything to collapse. Your forgiveness of sin, it collapses beneath you. Your hope in death and loss collapses beneath you. Your reason to suffer for anything beyond yourself collapses. And so we're gonna trace over these next five weeks ahead the truth of this and the beauty of this, but it begins here with the recognition that we are not standing on our sincerity, we're not standing on our spiritual experiences or our subjective view of truth, or even on our theological commitments. We are standing on the death and resurrection of Jesus. Because as we've said, church, everything stands or falls on that. And so the question that the rest of this series is going to press on in us is simply this. Do you actually know what you're standing on? Does the truth you confess have transformative power in your everyday life? Not whether you just believe it, give mental assent to it, or argue it in a conversation. The Corinthians, they believed it intellectually. They had received it from Paul himself. But the question that we have to wrestle with is have we let it hold the full weight of our life? Whether the resurrection of Jesus has actually gotten all the way down into the way that you live, the way that you grieve, the way that you risk, the way that you suffer, the way that you face death. Because here's what Paul's about to show us. You can confess the resurrection and still live every day like death wins. You can confess the resurrection and still live every day like death wins. And that gap between what we say we believe and how we live everyday life is what the rest of this chapter, I believe, is written to close. For us. You see, many of us we confess the resurrection, but we live like death still wins. We say we believe it. We'll defend it. But look at the way in which we actually live every day of our life. We cling to this one. Grasping for whatever immediate pleasure is standing before us. Many of us we grieve loss as if there is no hope. We make decisions as though only the next three weeks or 30 years is all that there is in this life. We hold loosely to eternal things while we grip tightly to temporal ones. You see, the Corinthian church, they weren't outright rejecting the resurrection. They were failing to reckon with it. They were failing to have it transform their everyday life. And often we can be the exact same way. And we've received the gospel, we stand in it, but we haven't trusted our full weight to it yet. And so there exists this gap between what we confess and the reality that we live. You see, many of us, our lives are quietly organized around one question that we've been driven by for most of our life. What do I want right now? What do I want right now? We live like there's only today to live for. It's shocking how much our appetite drives our daily life. Nobody necessarily thinks of themselves as hedonistic, but there's this pool, there's this torrent in life toward comfort and experience and pleasure. And it's strong enough that any call to sacrifice or delayed gratification or long obedience often gets dismissed because the moment matters more than eternity. What I want right now is most important. The body's appetite sets the agenda for life for so many of us. And Paul's going to name this logic very clearly in verse 32. We'll get there in weeks to come, but just so we can see it together, he says this if the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. Like Paul is at least naming the logic to be consistent here. It's not just some hypothetical outcome of a life lived in happenstance. No, it's the logical reality of a life already being lived without the hope of a soon coming day promised to us in Christ. Without the promise, assurance, and guarantee of resurrection. It's a life that's lived for one experience at a time in this moment. And so when the resurrection has no real grip on your life, when it has no transformation in your heart, maximizing the present moment. If there is no resurrection hope, then what are we suffering for? What are we sacrificing for? What are we serving others for? As Paul says, why should we not just seek the ultimate pleasure that we can experience in this life for all that the world has to offer? The torment many of us live in this life is because we have our feet in two worlds. One where we want our appetites to drive us, and we find some sense of joy and delight in the present moment. And one where we know there's a life to come. And we've convicted ourselves or made ourselves guilty, or our conscience has been somehow affected that we should not say yes to the now. We should defer gratification, we should sacrifice, we should suffer, we should go through these trials. Do you see where it feels like the whole person is being split in two? Some of our own suffering is self-caused. Because we're like my child at the edge of that canyon with a log spanning it. We've got one foot on the sure ground of what we know is true because we've experienced it day after day, and we're seeing if I don't know if the risk is worth it. They feel in this moment, and for most of us, the resurrection feels so distant if it's even real at all. So why sacrifice for long obedience? Why persevere through trial and temptation? Why suffer for the sake of the gospel? If there is no resurrection, you would be a fool to. You see, many of us, we live this life doing everything we can to make death feel as far away as possible. Why do you think we live in the moment so frequently with the pursuit of joy that stands right in front of us? Because deep down it's it's a desperate effort to make death feel so far away and distant. But it's inevitable. It's coming for each and every one of us in this room. And so that's the core desire of the heart of a hedonist. Do everything I possibly can to make death feel as distant as it possibly could be. And so the tragedy isn't actually the pleasure seeking in the hedonist life. The tragedy is the smallness of what they're seeking pleasure in. You see, church, you were made for resurrection life. And that resurrection life promises pleasure that is eternally greater than anything we could ever find in this world. And so you've settled for the next good moment. You've cheapened your joy and delight for things that cannot satisfy. Church, hear me say this. Today, the moment, now, is too small of a God to sacrifice your life to. It's too small of a God to sacrifice eternity for. Because today cannot hold the weight of what life demands you put on it. Others of us, we live like the resurrection is true, but it's irrelevant. We give mental assent to it, but how does it actually affect today? Think about the person in this room or in your life that you would recognize as faithful, right? Someone who's consistent, grounded, steadfast. You see them practice spiritual disciplines. They always have some theological clarity and depth to add to conversations at mission group. By every visible measure. This looks like someone who takes faith seriously. But here's the question that Paul's creed and this letter actually places before that individual. What is driving that? What is powering that in your life? Because here's what we discover: it's possible to maintain every outward form of faithfulness and have it not be powered by resurrection. You see, the resurrection of Jesus isn't denied consciously, verbally, it's just dismissed as the power for the transformed life that they're called to. They're busy trying to create a disciplined, put-together, self-righteous life in their own strength and power. You see the disciplines running on habit and identity, self-confidence. These typically are someone, uh aspects of someone whose life has never really fallen apart. Or if it has fallen apart, they were able by their own strength to put it back together in such a way that they were at least able to be content for the moment, and that felt like enough. They don't need the resurrection. Because they've seemed to manage and excel at life all on their own until it doesn't. Because what do we know about suffering? Suffering doesn't negotiate with self-sufficiency, right? Death doesn't make exceptions for a life that's disciplined. And so for many of us, when the diagnosis comes, or the marriage falls apart and fractures, or you're filled with grief of loss that no spiritual habit can absorb, the foundation that you've built your life on, it gets tested. And here's what we know a life that's been built on personal accomplishment, it ironically seems to crack always at the very moment you so desperately need it to be held together. For a lot of us, I think that's God's grace to us. That our self-constructed foundation cracks in the very moment we so desperately need it. Because it draws us closer to Him. It shows us that He alone and the finished work of His Son is the only true foundation that our life can stand upon. You see, for that person, the resurrection is not the power of life. It's just a cold doctrine placed perfectly in the statement of faith that they would always defend if pressed. And you know what often gives this type of person away? Joylessness. People who are puffed up in knowledge and so full of pride. People who give mental assent to Christian orthodoxy and who will contend for sound doctrine. And this isn't always, but there's so many times I've experienced those people with just absolute absence of joy in their life. Because I believe that the grace of God is the fountain of joy. And so if your life is built on your work, of course it's going to be cold. Of course, you're going to want to protect it with everything that you have. Of course, you're going to be distant relationally and not found in intimate community or willing to be vulnerable or able to express an uncontainable joy. Because grace received, resurrection known, that produces a joy that the body can't contain. But the person running on self-discipline alone, they tend to be cold, distant, not warmed by the joy of grace. And so, church, the truth is both the one running from death and the one trying to build their own fortress to protect them against it, they're distant from the resurrection of Jesus. One spending his life running, the other foundation found crumbling. And neither has anywhere else to turn except for here. And here's where the creed that Paul lays out stops being just ancient history and becomes the ground beneath our feet that we stand upon. Church, Christ died for your sins, was buried, and was raised. And that changes everything. Everything. Let's start with Christ died for your sins. He died for them. Your rebellion against his lordship and kingdom, your self-sufficiency, your cold orthodoxy, your desperate, hedonistic, driven grasping for today, all of that required death. And Christ took it with joy. He died for your sin. It wasn't just some unfortunate tragedy that God had to try to scramble to be able to make something good out of it, to recover from. No, Christ's death for our sin was always the plan of God the Father for the redemption of his people, for the glory of his name. The entire sacrificial system found in the Old Testament. Every lamb and dove, every altar that was built, every day of atonement that was celebrated was pointing to Jesus, revealing for us what his death would mean for his people. Forgiveness of sin, the fulfillment of everything that God had ever promised. And then he was buried. A real body in a real tomb. The burial of this dead body is there. So that we understand the weight of not just his death, but what comes next. Because he was raised on the third day. God vindicating everything that Jesus had accomplished. The debt paid in full, death defeated, its sting removed, the verdict announced there is a champion standing. The resurrection is not a metaphor, it's not symbolic. It's God's declaration that sin has been atoned for in full. Death has been defeated. And those who are in Christ will never truly taste the sting of death. This is the ground, church, that we stand on. But it's also the ground that some of us have been running from. This is the ground that our discipline and self-determination could never build. Christ alone. Christ alone did what we could never have done. He faced death. The inevitable reality of death, he faced it. And he walked out the other side as the victor. You see, Jesus is the conquering king who cannot be defeated even by death itself. Here's my prayer for us as we wrap this up. If we, right, you and I, by the grace of God, give our full weight to that sure footing, then we will be living in resurrection power by his grace for his glory. At the end of this passage, this is what Paul does. He actually gives himself as the example of what the resurrection accomplishes in the life of an individual. What grace does. Let's look at verses 9 through 10. He says this, for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy 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 toward me was not 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. This is the effect of resurrection life. And I love what Paul does. He doesn't minimize or dismiss his past. He looks it head on. He faces it honestly. I don't even deserve to be here. I persecuted the church. But he doesn't let his past be the final word in this moment because the same grace that raised Jesus from the dead reached into Paul's chest while he was persecuting the church, while he was in rebellion from him, driven by his own self-righteousness. And it changed him. It brought that dead man into resurrection life. And his grace toward Paul, it produced something in him. What did it produce? A joy-filled labor. I worked harder than any of them. It was this effort, this labor that flows from gospel truth, from a person who has been truly grasped by the fullness of the whole gospel. You see, the church has to come to grip with. We have to grasp that the resurrection of Jesus isn't just theological information that we have to check the box to or not our head yes at. It is the power of God over sin and death made available to you by grace. To us right now. That's the life that Paul's describing. It's the life he's going to describe in this chapter. A life that grieves differently at the reality of loss because death doesn't win. A life that suffers for the sake of others' good, because you know that your good day is coming. A life that labors relentlessly for the gospel. And then declaring with your final breath, it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. This is what we're called to be together. A community of people who actually live like the resurrection is true. A people who don't find contentment with the reality of a chasm between what we say we believe and how we actually live our life. We should be gospel-centered in how we grow. A church community in how we love one another, city focused in how we serve others. It's not because we're trying to escape something that seems to be chasing us down, like the inevitability of death, or because we're trying to prove something in all of our self-determined work. But it's because the ground beneath our feet of the whole gospel of Jesus is sure and steady. Church, the resurrection changes everything. That's what Paul's putting before us. That's what the resurrection demands we face with honesty. And if it does change everything, then let's start living like it does. Amen.