1 Corinthians 15:1-11 - The Beginning of the End
Marc Minter
1 Corinthians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 40 viewsMain Point: The gospel is a true story about Christ, and all who graciously receive the gospel and believe it will discover that neither God’s grace nor their faith is vain.
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
If you’ve ever been for a visit to the emergency room, then you’ve practiced something called “triage.” You’ve looked around the room and tried to guess where your ailment ranked in line with the rest of the poor folks there. You’ve thought “I’m not as bad off as this guy… but I definitely should get back to see the doc before that guyover there.”
Triage is a word that became common in the English language on the battlefield during World War 1, and it refers to that job of the medical professional to assess which wounded or injured person is most urgently in need of help. On the battlefield and in the emergency room, the most effective medical professionals are those who know how to quickly decide where to focus their time and attention.
It was back in July of 2005 when Al Mohler popularized the phrase “theological triage,” and he applied this same sort of emergency-room assessment to theology or doctrine.[i] He wasn’t the first to argue for this type of categorized ordering of Christian doctrine, but I think he might have been the first to use that phrase “theological triage.”
In summary, Mohler argued that there are three tiersor orders or categories of Christian doctrine. First-order doctrines are those fundamental truths of the Christian faith. These divide Christians from non-Christians. If you believe that Jesus is the only God-man, that He lived and died and rose again, and that a sinner is justified by faith alone in Christ alone, then you are likely a Christian. If you denyor dispute any one of these doctrines, then you are not a Christian.
Second-order doctrines are those that require agreement for churching together. These don’t divide Christians from non-Christians, but they do divide Presbyterians from Baptists and Anglicans from Methodists. Good Christians can disagree about baptism, about church polity (or government), and about who should be counted among the membership of a church, but Christians must have agreement on these doctrines before they can form a church together.
What kind of church are we going to form? Who will our members and leaders be? Who will we baptize? These are questions of second-order doctrines.
Third-order doctrines are those that don’t have to divide at all. These are important (no biblical doctrine is unimportant), but these doctrines don’t press on the fundamentals of the faith or the nature and practice of a church. Two Baptists will agreethat Jesus is the only Savior for sinners and that only believers should be baptized, but they can disagree about the meaning of the millennium and the identity of the two beasts in Revelation 13… and even with such disagreement, they can still church together.
There are all sorts of things we might disagree about that do not have to divide us from one another as church members. In fact, one of the signs of a healthy local church is the ability the members have to disagree without being disagreeable. I’m thankful that many of us can do this pretty well, and I pray that the Lord will only make us (as a whole church) better at it.
Now, the reason I’m bringing up this concept of theological triage today is because it is important to where we are in our study of 1 Corinthians. We’ve been reading and studying this book of the Bible for right at a year now, and we’ve covered the full range of all three theological categories – first, second, and third-order doctrines. And if you have questions about which doctrines in 1 Corinthians fit into which category, then let’s talk after the service… or maybe you can discuss that with another church member over lunch today.
We’ve come now to the beginning of the end of this letter, and the Apostle Paul says that the stuff he’s talking about in this passage most definitely fits into the category of first-order doctrine. These are doctrines of “first importance,” as the text itself says (v3), and so we want to sit up and pay attention.
Of course, all doctrine is important (as I said before), and we ought not dismiss any of it. But there are some teachings in the Bible that demand our upmost care and consideration. And when our souls hang in the balance, it is only appropriate that we tilt our ears in just a little further than we normally might do.
Let’s read this passage together, and let’s consider how it is immediately applicable to us today.
Please stand with me as I read 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.
Scripture Reading
Scripture Reading
1 Corinthians 15:1–11 (ESV)
1 Corinthians 15:1–11 (ESV)
1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, 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 at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 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, unworthy 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 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. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Main Idea:
Main Idea:
The gospel is a true story about Christ, and all who graciously receive the gospel and believe it will discover that neither God’s grace nor their faith is vain.
Sermon
Sermon
1. Back to the Beginning (v1-2)
1. Back to the Beginning (v1-2)
As we concluded our passage last Sunday, we saw that the Apostle Paul emphasized the importance of “the word of God” (1 Cor. 14:36) or the “command of the Lord” (1 Cor. 14:37). And Paul even placed his own “writing” on the same level as any other “word” or “command” from God (1 Cor. 14:37).
I argued last week that what Paul was doing there was reinforcing the idea that the written word of God should always exercise the highest authority in the life of a Christian and in a local church. And this is true whether we are talking about first, second, or third-order doctrines. The various instructions Paul lays out in 1 Corinthians can fit into each of these categories, and all of it should be considered thoughtfully and applied as faithfully as we can understand it and apply it.
But here in our passage today, as Paul begins the conclusion of his letter, he returns to the central doctrine of Christianity and the church… he returns to the gospel of Christ, which is where he began this whole letter.
Paul says, in v1, “Now I would remind you, brothers [i.e., Christians] of the gospel I preached to you…” (v1). At the beginning of this letter Paul said that “Christ” sent him “to preach the gospel” in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:17). And it was this message (and not the style or personality of the preacher) which has the power to save sinners. Paul said that his preaching was “not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power” (1 Cor. 1:17).
At the beginning of this letter, Paul’s emphasis was on the unique “power” of the gospel, but now at the end of the letter, Paul’s emphasis is on the centrality of the gospel. It was this gospel – that central message which Paul preached among them for 18 months and which “many… Corinthians… believed” (Acts 18:1-11) – it was this gospel “which [they] received” and “in which [they now] stand” (v1).
And this speaks not only to the individual salvation of the Corinthian Christians but also of their unity and communion with one another. Their “standing” before God was dependent upon their “standing” upon the promises of the gospel; and their “standing” with one another was dependent upon their shared belief or conviction that the gospel was true and that they all believed it to be so.
This was Paul’s point at the beginning of the letter – that Christ Himself is not divided, and therefore those who share in believing Christ together cannot be divided or factious or quarreling among themselves. And here again, Paul is calling the Corinthian church to unity, and especially unity on these particular doctrines that are most central to their existence as a Christian church.
Paul says, in v2, that the gospel is the message “by which [they] are being saved” or delivered from God’s judgment(v2). Friends, the biblical reality is that the gospel is not just a call or an invitation that saves sinners once in their lives. The gospel is the message about Christ – the story to which converted sinners cling throughout their lives. It is the story about Christ that reorients a person’s life entirely, bringing sinners out of judgment and into blessing; and it unites believers with others who are also believing that same good news.
This is why Paul says, in v2, that they “are being saved, if [they] hold fast to the word [he] preached to [them]” (v2). Again, the life of a Christian is an ongoing“holding fast” to the “word” or substance of that central story of the whole Bible… Jesus Christ is the long-awaited and repeatedly-promised Savior of sinners!
A Christian is not someone who merely “believed” the gospel at some point in their lives… maybe they prayed a prayer, maybe they walked an aisle, and maybe they even joined a church. But a Christian is someone who is “believing” or “holding fast” to the gospel right now!
Paul says as much in his implicit warning at the end of v2. He says, “you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you – unless you believed in vain” (v2). Friends, there is a kind of “belief” that is “vain” or “empty” or “powerless” or “futile,” and it’s the kind of “belief” that does not last. Remember the parable of the soils that Jesus talked about in Mark’s Gospel (Mark 4:1-20)!
There is a kind of person who hears the good news about Jesus but the word they hear is immediately silenced because of distractions or indifference. These are like the soil that is constantly trampled along the path. Nothing of God’s word or the gospel has time to take root because they never give it any further thought.
There is another kind of person who hears the gospel, and they immediately receive it with joy. But soon they face difficulty or affliction of some kind – a bad doctor’s report, the loss of a loved one, some injustice against them, or maybe the ridicule of a friend – and they think to themselves, “This is not what I signed up for! If this is what Christianity is about, then I’m out!”
And there is still another kind of person who hears the gospel (and they may even appear to be following Christ for a time) but eventually the cares of the world, the temporal pleasures of life, and their desire for those things which God forbids become greater than any desire to believe or follow Jesus… so, they leave.
With each of these different kinds of people, the end result is the same. Whatever “belief” or “faith” they thought they had… or whatever “belief” they appeared to have… it was/is “vain.” It is futile. It is worthless. It is hollow.
The Apostle Paul wrote all sorts of commands and instructions to the Christians in Corinth, and they were required to obey. But all these instructions were based upon the central claim of Christianity – the gospel of Christ. And if they had any hope of getting themselves and their church back into order (the kind of order that the Bible describes), then they needed to remember the gospel that was first preached to them… and they need to “hold fast” to it… and so do we.
2. The Central Word (v3-7)
2. The Central Word (v3-7)
Here in these 5 verses, we come to the fundamental basis… the bedrock… the essential conviction of this whole letter (i.e., this book of the Bible). There is a sense in which every truth-claim and every command of this entire letter rests upon or springs from this doctrinal source. Everything from the historical reality and biblical context of the life and death of Christ to the apostolic commission which made it possible for there to be a church in Corinth and which provoked a letter like to be sent from Paul to the church he’d left behind… it is all articulated here or drawn out from what it articulated here.
That said, I won’t be able to show you this morning just how significant these five verses are to the rest of the letter.
I’m also not going to be able to say much about the significance of these 5 verses in the history and development of Christianity. It is very likely that what we have here is one of the earliest Christian creeds or confessions of faith… a short summary of what Christians believe. The existence of these verses in our Bibles (along with others like them) shows us that the Bible is not opposed to creeds and confessions… but in fact the Bible so heartily endorses such things as to include a few right in the text of Scripture itself.
And there’s yet a third disappointment I have with my sermon today, and that is the fact that I won’t be able to show you all the glorious scenic routes we might take through the storyline of the whole Bible in order to unpack what Paul means here when he says “in accordance with the Scriptures” (v3-4). The death and resurrection of Jesus is like the dramatic climax of an epic story that had been unfolding for centuries… and that thrilling moment of the story of God’s plan to save will only be surpassed by the finale that is yet to come at the end of the story.
Though my sermon is bound to disappoint in at least these three ways, I trust that we will still be able to thoroughly enjoy what we can see and say about these 5 verses today. Let me highlight three things I think we ought to see: (1) that the gospel is a first-order doctrine, (2) that the person and work of Christ are facts of real history, and (3) that the gospel displayed in the person and work of Christ is exactly as God has planned it to be from the very beginning.
First, the gospel is a first-order doctrine. Or to say it more precisely, all of the doctrines which comprise (or come together to form) the story of Christ’s death and resurrection on behalf of sinners are first-order doctrines. These are those truths or doctrines which we must believe and hold fast to in order to be numbered among the ones who will be saved on the last day.
Friends, the Bible says that several truths here are explicitly “of first importance” (v3). Whatever else we may learn from the Bible, whatever else we may come to believe, and whatever else we may try to obey, we must (so far as we can) know and understand and believe these truths!
Paul had told the Corinthian church how to live and how to church, even specifically how to observe the Lord’s Supper… but here he says, “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” as an apostolic witness commissioned by Christ (v3; cf. Acts 9; Gal. 1:12). And what was the content of the message Paul had “received” and “delivered”? There it is in the following text.
And we see four “thats” here (which are all in the original Greek as well). The first is “that Christ died for our sins…” (v3). This tells us not only that Christ died, but the purpose for which He died, namely “for our sins” (v3)… for the sins of all who would turn from their disobedience and rebellion and trust Him. The fancy title of this doctrine is penal substitutionary atonement – it is the teaching that Christ died as the substitute for sinners – God imputing our sin or counting our sin against Christ… and condemning Jesus as the guilty one upon the cross… in order to satisfy the demands of divine justice against sinners.
Friend, this is the greatest news of all time! You and I both know that we are sinners, and we both know that we deserve nothing from God except for judgment. But there is one who has died on behalf of guilty sinners like you and me! And we may lay hold on this glorious offer of forgiveness by simply trusting Him for it.
There is also hidden here in plain sight the title of “Christ” or “Messiah” or “anointed one” (v3). There are many doctrines packed into this title, but the short of it is that we must believe that Jesus is the God-man, the promised Savior of old, who is both the Son of God and God the Son in human form… the prophet, priest, and king that God promised to send in order to reverse the curse of Genesis 3… but more on this in just a bit!
The second “that” is “that he was buried…” (v4). This teaches us that the death of Christ was no mere illusion. Jesus really did die, and His body was laid in the grave. The historical reality that in Christ the Sovereign over all creation tased real death is a mystery that is hard for our minds to get around, but here we see (and in many other places in the bible) the direct affirmation of what we sing, “Alas! And did my Savior bleed and did my Sovereign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I? Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned upon the tree? Amazing pity, grace unknown, and love beyond degree! Well might the sun in darkness hide and shut His glories in, when Christ the mighty Maker died for man the creature’s sin. Thus, might I hide my blushing face while His dear cross appears. Dissolve my heart in thankfulness and melt my eyes with tears.”
Friends, there is bitter-sweetness here… in this historical fact that Jesus was buried in the grave… but all our mourning is turned to joy in the third “that” of our text – “that he was raised on the third day…” (v4) Oh, where to start on the joy of this phrase! This is the central theme of the remainder of the chapter!
Did Jesus die as every sinful man has died since Adam? No, He was raised! Did Jesus die as just another false prophet? No, He was raised! Did Jesus die just to leave behind a good moral teaching? No, He was raised! He died to conquer death itself.
Did Jesus really have the authority to forgive sin and heal sinners and bring the time of God’s curse to an end?! Yes! He was raised! I don’t know how much the audience understood when Jesus walked into a synagogue on a Sabbath day and took up the scroll of Isaiah to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk. 4:18-19; Is. 61:1-2). But never was the statement He made after that reading more glorious than the day Jesus arose from the grave! You may know that Jesus rolled up the scroll after reading from Isaiah and said, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Lk. 4:21).
And the fourth “that” is repeated in v5-8. Paul says, “that he appeared…” to various witnesses who would bear testimony of what they saw (v5). This fourth “that” of our text this morning leads us into the second feature I want to highlight in these five verses.
Second, the person and work of Christ are facts of real history. All of the “thats” we’ve just explored are claims of historical fact. Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Christ or Messiah of the OT. Jesus, son of Mary and Son of God, died upon a Roman cross. That same Jesus who died and was buried arose from the grave, never to die again. And then He also “appeared to Cephas” (or Peter), and to “the twelve” (a reference to the original disciples, Judas having been replaced by Matthias), and the risen Jesus “appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive” (v6)… which is Paul’s way of saying, “You can go and ask any one of them, and they will tell you what they saw!”
Friends, this is the way a first-century person would make a legal defense. Paul is not just listing here a number of people who all believe the same way he does about Jesus. Paul is saying that Jesus is the crucified and risen Christ, and this is a fact of real human history… a fact that hundreds of witnesses can corroborate.
This is a vital point to Christian evangelism… Christians are not just trying to tell others how to live or what to do. Christians are pointing back to a historical reality that God did actually send the Savior for sinners, and Jesus died and was raised so that all who believe in Him might have life and forgiveness in His name.
If you are a sinner, then look! See here! There is a Savior, and He really did step into human history to do the work of saving sinners and to proclaim the message of salvation for all who repent and believe!
This is also a vital point to Christian perseverance… We who believe are not just trying to hold on to a philosophy or an antiquated list of dos and don’ts. We are living one day at a time, with one eye looking backward toward the cross, where our sin-debt was paid in full, and with one eye looking forward, toward that coming day when the resurrected Christ shall come again to finally and ultimately bring to completion all that He said He would do.
If you are a Christian, then look! See that Christ has died for you… see that He has been raised… and hold on just a little while longer… One day He will raise you too… just as He promised.
The third feature I want to highlight about these five verses is that the gospel or good news displayed in the person and work of Christ is exactly as God has planned it to be from the very beginning. Paul says, in v3 and 4, that Jesus’s death and resurrection were “in accordance with the Scriptures” (v3-4). This is not an explicit citation of a particular passage, but it’s Paul’s way of saying that all of God’s word in the Old Testament pointed forward to Christ (Rom. 1:2).
As I said a while ago, we can’t take an exhaustive tour, but let me use the next 5 minutes to show you what this phrase means.
The whole of the Bible tells one harmonious story with highs and lows, victories and defeats, and the repeated refrain throughout the Old Testament is that there is a promised one coming who will finally be victorious, once and for all.
The Bible is quick to set the stage, and after Genesis 1-2 (the creation story) we learn that there is a snake in the garden. It’s not for us to know how the snake got there, but he’s there, and he’s also going to play a big part in this whole story.
Genesis 3 explains how God’s good creation went bad, and we see the first humans (God’s image-bearers) sin against God and plunge the whole of creation into a world full of pain and death. One cannot overstate the magnitude of this fall.
But when God came on the scene to proclaim His curse upon mankind, upon the earth, and upon everything within creation, God made a promise that one day there would be an “offspring” who will conquer the snake, even as that “offspring” will Himself be “bruised” or “crushed” in the process (Gen. 3:15).
And then the rest of the story unfolds, with each new generation wondering “Is this the offspring we’re waiting for?” But it wasn’t Adam and Eve’s son, Able, because he was murdered by his brother. It wasn’t another of their sons, Seth, because he and his descendents sinned and died just like Adam and Eve before them. It wasn’t Noah, because even though God preserved him through the flood, Noah too failed to maintain holiness in God’s garden or vineyard of blessing.
The promised offspring wasn’t Abraham or Isaac or Jacob. And it certainly wasn’t the people of Israel. God did reveal Himself as their “gracious and merciful” Savior, but God also made it plain that He would “by no means clear the guilty” (Ex. 34:6-7). And the problem is stated clearly: how would God both punish sinners and forgive them?
We might have had high hopes for Moses, but he wasn’t the one either. Though when Moses died, God added to the promise of an “offspring” that there would come a one who was a “prophet” like Moses, only better (Deut. 18:15; cf. 35:10-12). A similar sort of thing happened with Aaron and the Levitical priests. They became a mockery of what they were supposed to be, but God showed that He intended to raise up a good priest for Himself (1 Sam. 1:20).
And then there was king David. No one since Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had been affirmed with the blessings and prosperity that God gave David. But David too proved to be a sinful man, not capable of being the “offspring” of old.
But near the end of David’s life, God added yet another characteristic of the one that He’d been promising would come. God said that He would “raise up” an “offspring” from David, who would reign over a “kingdom” that would last “forever” (2 Sam. 7:12-13). And God said of that coming king that “he shall be a son to me… [and] I will be to him a father” (2 Sam. 7:14).
By the time Jesus was born in Bethlehem, it seemed that almost everyone had lost hope that the son of David and Son of God would ever come. And yet, throughout His earthly ministry, Jesus proved to be the best prophet ever, speaking the words of God like no one ever had or ever could. In His death and resurrection, Jesus proved to be the best priest ever, entering once for all into the holy place to offer a single sacrifice that would actually forgive sin. And in His resurrection and ascension, Jesus proved to be the long-awaited and true king, taking His rightful seat on the throne over the entire cosmos.
All of this and more is what it means that Christ’s death for our sins and His resurrection on the third day was “in accordance with the Scriptures” (v3-4). And we can know without a doubt that Jesus is the snake-crushing “offspring” that was promised way back in Genesis 3. He has triumphed over sin and death and the devil, and He will grant every bit of His victory in full to all who remember this gospel that was received and delivered… and handed down from generation to generation.
Friends, the gospel is a true story about Christ. It is a story that’s as old as time, one that climaxed at the death and resurrection of Jesus, and one that will have a grand finale… in just a little while.
And all who graciously receive this gospel and believe it will discover that neither God’s grace nor their faith is vain.
3. The Unlikely Preacher (v8-11)
3. The Unlikely Preacher (v8-11)
After all we’ve considered this morning, these last several verses may seem like something of a let-down. We’ve focused our attention so wonderfully on the glorious gospel that our eyes may not be ready to look at this more common portion of our text today. But there’s still one last point that Paul wants to make at the close of this section, and I think it will do us good to consider it.
Remember that what we’re studying this morning is a letter from an Apostle to a wayward church. And you might remember that one of the terrible things happening in Corinth was that at least some of the church members were questioning whether Paul was even a real Apostle. After all, there were better preachers, and there were other Apostles with a better pedigree (who had been with Jesus throughout His earthly ministry).
But Paul seems to wear his unworthiness as a kind of badge of honor. He says, in v8, that he was an Apostle that was “untimely born” (v8). The term is a strange one that can refer to a stillborn child. It is clear that what Paul means is that he viewed himself as “the least of the apostles” and one “unworthy [even] to be called an apostle” (v9).
It seems that one of the main reasons Paul thought of himself as so undeserving was the fact that while the other Apostles were living as disciples of Christ, Paul himself was “persecuting the church of God” (v9). He was actively opposed to all that Christ preached and to anyone who listened and believed.
But God decided to convert and commission Paul anyway. There is no hint of pride or self-congratulation from Paul in this passage (or anywhere else for that matter). Instead, Paul says, in v10, “by the grace of God I am what I am” (v10). And even when Paul does say that he “worked harder than any” of the other Apostles in his missionary exploits, he says that it was not ultimately his own doing, “but the grace of God that is with me” (v10).
In the end, Paul was not concerned about who got the credit for doing the preaching or the working. Paul’s only concern was that “whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed” (v11).
So, we end where we began. We end where Paul began this whole letter… highlighting the power and the centrality of the gospel of Christ. And we end where Paul began his conclusion (with chapter 15)… he wanted to remind the Corinthian Christians of the gospel they believed at first and the gospel which they must continue to believe if they were to persevere.
This is a good reminder for us today as well.
Will we persevere in Christian hope and holiness? Only if we remember the gospel that was first preached to us.
Will we be a rightly ordered church, always ready to be renewed and reformed according to God’s word? Only if we keep on remembering the gospel that was first preached to us.
Will we discover on the last day that neither God’s grace nor our faith was in vain? Only if we remember and keep on remembering the gospel that was first preached to us… that true story about Christ that we have graciously received and that we are eagerly believing.
May God help us to receive the gospel and remember it, and may He help us to keep on believing it as of first importance… out only hope in life and death.
Endnotes
Endnotes
[i] See Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr.’s article on Theological Triage here: https://albertmohler.com/2005/07/12/a-call-for-theological-triage-and-christian-maturity?_ga=2.6963638.568564132.1704722067-272473638.1698076356
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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