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The Core of the Gospel and the Reality of the Resurrection
Thanks, Jesse. It’s one of my favorite songs. Great.
This morning, as we continue in worship, we’ll turn our attention to 1 Corinthians 15. This is, you know, probably the most clear passage in scripture discussing the resurrection. And it’s not just speaking about our resurrection, but it starts with the resurrection of Jesus, the resurrection of the dead, and moving on through there. And we mentioned some of those things last week and yesterday, some of those things were mentioned at Drew’s service. But as my plan—I told the session this last week was that I was going to go through 1 John for the next couple weeks, but I think we’ll take three weeks to look at the resurrection. And so today, we’re going to look at the fact that we can believe in the resurrection of Jesus.
As we consider the Christian life, as we consider the Christian faith, the core of it is the gospel. And the gospel is not good news if the resurrection isn’t there. If Jesus doesn’t rise from the dead, then what we believe makes no sense, and Paul gets into that later on in the chapter. But resurrection, this theme of resurrection is something that, in my life, as I talk about the gospel, we talk about the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the crucifixion of Jesus, the blood of Jesus, but often we kind of skip past the resurrection.
So today, we’re just going to look at that. We’ll be reminded of the truth of the resurrection. It’s hope for us as believers, just as the Corinthians needed to be reminded of it. Each of us needs a reminder of the reality of the resurrection. And so with that in mind, let’s turn our attention to the word of God. We’ll be looking at 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 1.
Reading from 1 Corinthians 15:1-11
Hear the word of the Lord:
“Now, brothers and sisters, I want you—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.
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.
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.”
This is the word of God. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your grace to us. Remind us, not just intellectually this morning, but remind us deeply into our hearts, into our souls, the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. That it’s trustworthy, that it’s true, that it’s believable, and that it is the foundation for your transformation of all things. We ask these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Need for Consistent Reminders
I don’t know about you, but for me, as I live my life, the gospel and the reality of resurrection ebbs and flows. There’s moments where it’s acute, and it’s deeply moving and transformative in my life. And then as time goes on, as we get into the monotony of life, the power of the resurrection fades from my thinking and from my belief structures. Maybe it’s the TV I watch, maybe it’s the clips on my phone that pop up, maybe it’s the reality of death that surrounds us. And you almost start to fade, you say, “Yes, I believe in the resurrection, I believe in the gospel,” but we start to live functionally without much hope. We live without much certainty that the resurrection of Jesus occurred and actually changed things in the universe.
I think the Corinthians were in the same spot. And Paul really wanted to remind them, and as he reminds them, he’s reminding us 2,000 years later that the resurrection is central to the gospel and it’s central to the Christian faith. It’s central to reality itself.
One of my friends in ministry, who I’ve known for a long time—I was roommates with his brother in college—we were having a conversation once at a planning meeting, and we were chatting about our children’s birthdays. And I asked him, “Oh, well, when’s your son’s birthday?” And he looked at me nervously and said, “I have no idea.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, well, that’s odd, but all right. Well, when’s your anniversary?” He’s like, “Can’t tell you.” “When’s your wife’s birthday?” “No idea.”
And as we kept going, he’s like, “Yeah, I have very severe ADHD and cannot remember dates to save my life.” And it’s become a comical thing as we’ve gone along, because you’ll ask him something, he’s like, “I don’t know,” and doesn’t explain it, and just kind of moves along. But he lives in this weird world where he doesn’t remember these important dates and facts just even in his immediate family.
And it’s a bit of a humorous story to think about, especially for me because I’m like, “You just know the dates,” you know? But his brain doesn’t work that way. Most of us, when we come to the gospel in particular, but also even more to the resurrection, that’s how we are. The story of the resurrection in the gospels, every around Easter, goes in one ear and out the other. We read 1 Corinthians 15 and we think, “Yes, this is true, this is powerful. This is what we believe.” And then we go about our daily life the next day.
And my point of saying that’s not to shame, but to say we need the reminder. We need the resurrection and the reality of the work of Jesus on our behalf in front of us because we forget.
Foundations of the Gospel
And so in order to believe in the resurrection of Jesus, we first start with that reality of we need to be reminded of the foundational realities of the gospel. Part of that is the resurrection itself. Because sometimes too, we think about Christianity and we start to think that it’s all sorts of other things. We think it’s about programs, we think it’s about music, we think it’s about being Presbyterian. But none of those things are the foundational aspects of Christianity. None of those things are part of the good news that makes us right with God himself.
As Paul starts there, he says, “I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.” The gospel is the foundation of the Christian life. When I say the Christian life, I don’t mean you have your secular life over here, quote-unquote, and your Christian life over here. I mean your holistic life, everything that is yours, everything that you experience. As a believer, the gospel is the foundation. It’s the place on which you take your stand. If you trust in Jesus, you’re saying, “This is where I am.” And so it’s important that we are reminded of what that is, and it’s important that we get it right. It’s a life-or-death situation.
And yet often times, as I talk to believers, whether teenagers or young adults or even adults, “Can you tell me what the gospel is?” I’m greeted with blank stares of anxiety and fear as they’re trying to come up with something in their mind to tell the pastor about the gospel. And I think most of us know it intuitively, but we have a hard time getting it out.
And one of the commentators I was reading this week said that anxiety would really be dispelled if you just looked at 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 to 5. Look at those verses; there’s the gospel right there.
A Matter of First Importance
And so, what is the gospel? Well, as we’re reminded of the foundational reality of the gospel, that it’s the central thing in our lives that we often forget, we also need to be reminded that the resurrection is central to that reality. But before we get there, the gospel. The gospel is the matter of first importance.
Where is it? “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.”
The gospel is of first importance. This is the most crucial message that the apostles had to share. That’s what all the scriptures point to is the gospel. And what is the gospel? Well, Paul just walks right on through it: Christ died for our sins, he was buried, and after three days, he rose again.
That’s the gospel. And we often settle on “he died for our sins, he was buried.” We talk about the resurrection, but it isn’t as crystallized in our thinking at times. But as you think about sharing the gospel with folks, that’s all—that’s all it is. Christ died for your sins, he was buried, and he rose again.
In Romans, Paul says this: “He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification” (Romans 4:25). Without the resurrection, we don’t have the gospel. Right? That’s what Paul says in verse 19 of chapter 15: “If only in this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
What Paul’s saying there is that if we come to church every week, if we go to Bible studies and we’re reading our Bibles every day, and we’re going about all the Christian activity, and we’re believing that it’s true, but Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead, then it’s meaningless. It’s all just pointless activity.
So the hope of the gospel is, yes, that he died for our sins, but also that he rose for our justification. Because without Jesus rising, he doesn’t conquer death. Instead, he would just be dead in a tomb somewhere to this day. And so the power of the gospel is, in large part, to the resurrection. Right? I don’t think you can really divide up the parts of the gospel, but as we think of that aspect of the work of Jesus, it’s crucial. Just as his death and his burial, his resurrection is completely necessary to our salvation. Yet, we often forget it.
The Concrete Wall Analogy
As I think about this and the importance of the resurrection in our lives, I think of a wall. Say you’re building a cinder block wall, a retaining wall of some sort. You do a really good job, you lay—you grade everything out, you lay down the gravel, you take the time to stack all the blocks neatly and squarely. You do a great job, but then you don’t cement any of it together. What’s going to happen to that wall in a very short amount of time? It’s going to fall apart, because it’s missing a key aspect of what makes it strong and lasting.
So a key part of the power of the gospel is the reality of Christ’s resurrection—that he defeated death, that he rose again, displaying his power over sin and death, that our sins have been washed away through his blood and through his resurrection, and that in his resurrection, he empowers us to live for him and brings us from death to life.
And so Paul is very clear: like, remember the gospel. Remember the gospel, remember the resurrection is a key part of that.
The Historical Reality of the Resurrection
And then as we continue in the last part of the passage, he then shifts into kind of what Jesus did after he rose from the grave. Sometimes we gloss over that. We’re like, “Yeah, he just went and visited a bunch of people, all this stuff happened.” But it’s quite the substantial list there that he gives us.
“And then 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.”
And that points us to the fact that the resurrection was a historical event. That Jesus was seen by hundreds of people. That he revealed himself, that he went and he spoke to the apostles—all the stories that we remember from the gospels of him speaking with Peter, on the road to Emmaus, appearing in the locked room to the disciples. It was a historical reality that Jesus rose from the dead. And there’s witnesses to that in the scriptures that we have been drawn by.
And the reality of him appearing to these individuals is also important for us as we consider the resurrection because it’s not just that he appeared to those individuals—”Oh, that’s a nice fact”—but as he appeared to them and established the reality of his resurrection, those individuals then went on to write the scriptures that we are reading today. Right? And the scriptures that Paul references—”that this is what the gospel that you’ve read in the scriptures.” Those scriptures were written by those people that Jesus appeared to.
As we think about the books that make up the Bible, there’s a discussion called canonicity, meaning what makes it that a book can be in the Bible. And one of the tests for canonicity is that it was written by an apostle or a close associate to an apostle, somebody who had firsthand knowledge of the resurrection of Jesus. So without Jesus rising, we don’t have the scriptures. Without the scriptures, we don’t have a clear message of the gospel. Without the scriptures, we don’t have 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 6, that show us a clear description of the gospel.
God Working Through Ordinary Means
So the resurrection is necessary in terms of our salvation, but it’s also a necessary historical reality that has rippled out through God’s work so that we would be drawn to faith in Jesus through the firsthand knowledge of the folks who wrote the scriptures.
And God does that not through magical ways, either. That’s another important fact to remember as we look at this. It’s a historical reality. It’s not this—because I think sometimes when we talk about the power of God and the fact that he created everything from nothing, that he’s outside of space and time, that he’s infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, power, wisdom, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth… woah, that’s a lot. That’s way out there. And we kind of build this separation between us and the activity of God in ways that are maybe not accurate.
Because the way God works in the world is through ordinary means. Right? He appears to the disciples. What do they do? They share that reality. They write it down on paper, and they send it in the mail to churches. Churches collect it, and then churches for thousands of years have been gathering and reminding themselves of the truth of the gospel using those same words that those individuals wrote down and recorded for our sake. And God used that. That’s pretty astounding, isn’t it? That God would use those ordinary means from thousands of years ago to communicate the gospel to us today.
But that also declares God’s power. God is so powerful that he doesn’t need to use big, magical things to bring his people to himself. Have you ever thought of that? God is so powerful that he can use the ordinary things. He can use pen and paper, he can use conversation, and preserve all the truth necessary for our faith and salvation perfectly throughout the years to draw his people to himself.
Paul’s Transformation: One Abnormally Born
He even uses imperfect people, because how does Paul finish that section of all the people that Jesus appeared to? He speaks of himself as one abnormally born. That’s a great turn of phrase. Maybe that’s something we would say to ourselves in middle school—”I’ve been abnormally born.”
But Paul is recognizing that he was one who persecuted the church. He was one who, though he had much learning and he had much knowledge, he had devoted his life to being against Jesus. He devoted his life to killing and imprisoning Christians. And it is Paul that God makes the apostle to the Gentiles. It’s Paul who God sends out so that you and I, who are Gentiles, would come to faith in Jesus, that we would hear the gospel clearly.
God could have sent any of the other apostles. He could have sent—who were also fishermen, tax collectors, imperfect men, men who fled from the crucifixion because they were afraid of being associated with Jesus. God uses imperfect means, limited means, to reveal himself to us. And the reality of that highlights his power—that he doesn’t need to use these big, brash, amazing things to bring us to faith. He uses ordinary things.
And so when the scriptures, when the gospel, when sitting in church gets boring, when it gets mundane, and we wonder, “Why are we doing this?”—this is where God shows up. This is where God meets with his people. This is where God gives himself to us. He encourages us to meet with him this morning, to rest in the work of Jesus, rest in the resurrection.
The Cosmic Supremacy of Christ
So we need to be reminded of the fundamental reality of the gospel, reminded the resurrection is central to that gospel, we need to be reminded that the resurrection is also central to history in this historical sense, and the spread of the gospel.
But also recognizing that the resurrection is central to the fundamental reality of the universe after the death and the resurrection of Jesus—that when Jesus rose from the dead, nothing was ever the same again.
In Colossians, one of my favorite books—and it just relates so much to Jesus, and you hear me quote it constantly, but here we go again—chapter 1, verse 18:
“And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that…”
Why is he the firstborn from among the dead?
“…so that in everything he might have the supremacy.”
In Jesus’ resurrection, he has the supremacy over all things. There is nothing that is outside of the power of Jesus. And to us, as we think about our lives, you know, sometimes what we’ll say to each other, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”—that we die, that we get cancer, that we lose someone we love. Jesus is more powerful than each of those things. Jesus has the supremacy over war, over pestilence, over famine, over death, over everything that comes against us. In Christ’s resurrection, he has supremacy. There is nothing that overpowers Jesus in his resurrection.
And that makes the resurrection not just a historical event, but the historical event. It is the thing that has transformed not just our lives as believers, but it is the reality that is reconciling all of creation to the Lord himself. That in the resurrection of Jesus, all things are being made new and have already been made new.
The Shockwaves of the Cross
When I was in Bible college, there was a chart that one of my professors put up where it was kind of—the cross was in the middle, and on the right-hand side, you had the New Testament and all the way up to today, and then you have the Old Testament and all of history before the cross the other direction. And there’s kind of like shockwaves going out in either direction. And the point of that was to say the death of Jesus is effectual in both directions. Because Jesus transcends space and time. The crucifixion and the resurrection transcends space and time. And so as Jesus dies and as he rises again, nothing is ever the same again.
And that means we can be crazy people who look at death and recognize that death does not have the final word. That death is not the thing that defines our reality. It’s not—not the limit to our reality. Death is not the cap. It’s not the ceiling to what we experience. Instead, the reality of Jesus having supremacy over all things, making all things new, that is the reality in which we inhabit.
And that’s partially why Paul is reminding the Corinthians of the resurrection of Jesus. Our realities get so warped so easily. We get so focused on the wrong things. And we need to be reminded that the gospel is true, that Jesus really died, and that Jesus really rose again. And in his resurrection, he has victory over all things. And as he has victory, he gives us the victory through his blood. That as he draws us to him by faith, we share in his supremacy over all things.
Looking Ahead with Anticipation
So Jesus this morning bids us to look to him, to remember the resurrection, and also to look ahead with anticipation. The reality that, whether the Lord returns and we rise to meet him in the air, or if we go to meet him through death, death does not have the final word. And we can look ahead to the resurrection where we will behold him face to face, where all things will be made new and be made right.
Paul desires us to fix our eyes on our Lord Jesus, the resurrected king. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for your grace that you love us. Open our hearts and our minds to you that we would remember the resurrection in our daily lives, that we would not be so swayed towards these things that distract us. That we would live in light of eternity each day. That it is truly better—that one day is truly better in your courts than thousands elsewhere. That being in your presence for just mere moments is far better than anything else. May you help us cling to that hope. May we love Jesus more. We ask all these things in his mighty name. Amen.