Of First Importance
1 Corinthians 15:1-8
[fast
on Good Friday]
If you¡¯re new or visiting,
welcome! We¡¯re glad you could join
us this Palm Sunday. Just a
reminder: if we have friends who do not have a church to worship at, please do
invite them to join us next week for Easter.
I¡¯d like to start a little
series on the first section of 1 Corinthians 15. This is the big chapter on the
resurrection. We¡¯ll take 3 or 4
weeks to study this chapter (not even all of it) as we consider the significance
of the resurrection.
Have you ever received a
message that you knew was really, really important.
Sometimes
I¡¯ve heard, ¡°Pastor Paul, can we talk.
I¡¯ll come by your office anytime you¡¯re available.¡±
¡°I¡¯ve
never told anyone about this, but I need to talk with someone.¡±
Or
perhaps a loved one gives a last word before a good-bye.
Sometimes you know that a
message is really, really important.
We¡¯re looking at an important passage, not because I
say it¡¯s important but because the passage itself emphasizes its own importance.
The Importance of the Message
Paul says he wants to remind them of the gospel he already preached to them
which they received,
taken their stand, and through which
they are saved
this is what they have already embraced, believed, this is
how they are Christians and are saved
Paul has already preached it, they¡¯ve already received
it, they know it, they are believers, but Paul comes back to it. He wants to remind them of it and spell
out some implications from it.
1. This
gospel message is not just to nonbelievers but to Christians.
For
many this message is for those who do not believe, it is the message by which
we believe we¡¯re saved from sin and death.
We think it¡¯s just for nonbelievers. Paul is preaching this in our passage to
Christians.
(v.
2) By this gospel you are saved, if you hold
firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
The implication is hold
firmly to the gospel. Why? Because we have a
tendency to stray from the gospel.
In Galatians, Paul is addressing how they also had been straying from
the gospel.
Paul writes at the beginning, I want to remind you of the gospel.
Why do Christians need to hold firmly and be reminded
of the gospel? Two reasons in 1 Cor 15:
We must protect ourselves from doctrinal error,
from deviating from this message.
We be careful that various beliefs and worldviews do not compromise this gospel.
As
we¡¯ll see, the Corinthians didn¡¯t seem to believe that people could rise from
the dead. They didn¡¯t believe in
resurrections (do you?). Do you believe in miracles? That has a huge implication for the
gospel.
We must embrace it for our own Christian living. As we shall see, believing the gospel
and particularly the resurrection is a source
of strength for righteousness.
We
have a tendency to trust in ourselves, base our sense of significance on what
we do. The gospel reminds us that
it¡¯s not about how much we do or get done.
It is Christ—I am weak, He is strong.
I¡¯ve had different conversations this week about
various issues in the church from deacon nominees to a future building to staff
roles & responsibilities to marital struggles. I found myself getting into ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll
do more, try harder¡± mode. Step it
up and get it done. I need to be a
good pastor.
And I realized, I need to
hold firmly to the gospel. I need
to remind myself, my identity isn¡¯t in ¡°being a good pastor.¡± My identity and significance comes in
that Christ died and rose again for me and now I am a child of God. More than worrying about trying to being
a good pastor, I need to rejoice about being a child of God.
I need to hold firmly to the gospel because I have a
tendency to rely on myself, to save myself, not to rest in Christ, to celebrate
His grace. The gospel is for
Christians too.
v. 3; what I received I passed on to you as of first
importance.
2. He
says it is of first importance
This
is core, central. This is what it¡¯s
all about.
Paul adds a warning (vs. 2): you¡¯ve got to get this
gospel right, or you will have believed ¡°in vain.¡±
Paul believes, as do I, that what we believe, and in
particular, how we respond to this gospel determines everything.
It¡¯s kind of like weddings. There are many things that come up in a
wedding: where should we get
married, how many groomsmen/bridesmaids should, how many people do we want to
invite, who should they be.
There are tons of questions to answer, but there is
one ultimately question: [picture]
Do you, John, take Jane, whom you now
hold by the hand to be your lawful and wedded wife, and do you promise in the
presence of God and these witnesses to be to her a faithful, loving and devoted
husband, in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in
health, so long as you both shall live?
That is the question of first importance. Everything else is based on the answer
to that question. Those two lives
are forever changed by how they answer that question.
Even if John has made mistakes in the past and has
regrets, even if he thinks he doesn¡¯t deserve Jane, if he says, ¡°I do,¡± then he
becomes Jane¡¯s husband.
To Paul, and to God, how we respond to the gospel is
the question of our lives.
Everything else is based on the answer to that question. It is a watershed issue. The world is divided into two categories
based on how they respond to the gospel.
[to visitors/nonChristians] It does not matter what schools we went to,
what jobs we have, whether we married or not. It doesn¡¯t matter as much if we went to
church or did a lot for the poor, or if we have tons of mistakes and regrets. At the end of time what matters, what is
of first importance is how we respond to this gospel message.
Christ offers, as it were, to take you as His spouse,
to marry you. I¡¯d like to challenge
you to consider the question: what is
your response to the gospel? What
is your reply?
If you¡¯re on that journey, I encourage you to keep
searching, asking, listening.
3. It is received and passed on.
This isn¡¯t just Paul¡¯s message. This is the message of all the apostles, this is the message of the
(v. 11) Whether, then, it was
I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Paul is affirming that that he with all the other
apostles have preached this same message.
This isn¡¯t just my thing or a Renewal thing, or a
Presbyterian/Evangelical thing, or an American/Western thing. This is the same message preached from
hundreds of pulpits all over
Every generation in the Christian church has been
called to protected, preserve, proclaim and pass on this message. We stand in a great tradition of
gospel-bearers:
The first apostles, Augustine, Martin Luther, John
Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Hudson Taylor, George Whitfield, Elizabeth Elliot, Amy
Carmichael, Billy Graham [pictures]
This is the message that has been preserved in
Scripture and proclaimed and passed down from generation to generation, from
century to century. Thousands of
saints have literally laid down their lives for this message, and now it comes to us.
We have the opportunity to be part of something far
bigger than you and me. We are
invited into the history of God¡¯s saving work which He does through this very
message.
This is the message that has come down to us, which we
have received. But like Paul, we
too should say, ¡°What I have received I passed on to you as of first
importance.¡± We¡¯ve got to pass it on too.
Now it¡¯s our turn. We are called to join the chorus of
those who have proclaimed this gospel down through centuries. The line must not end here.
We believe that our church is called to renew lives in Christ to transform our city
and the world. We don¡¯t exist
just to be happy for ourselves and be comfortable. We believe that we¡¯re called to take
this gospel message and hope and power and pass it on.
The
Message
So what is this message? It is simply this: that Christ died for
our sins, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day. And all this was done as the Bible had
said it would.
Let me take it in 2 parts:
1. Jesus died for our sins.
We believe that we sin, in fact, we sin all the
time. Maybe we¡¯re not corrupt
corporate executives or terrorists, but in our hearts, we share struggles with
anger, greed, pride, and selfishness.
We lust, manipulate, gossip, criticize; we hurt others around us.
And sin is not a trivial thing. It is not okay to say to the child
molester, ¡°It¡¯s okay. It doesn¡¯t matter. Well let it go.¡± It does
matter, especially if it¡¯s my child!
And God says to the child molester, you have sinned against the child
and his/her family, and you¡¯ve sinned against Me.
Again, it¡¯s not just the child molester. We also have sinned against others, and
more importantly, we¡¯ve sinned against God. God is holy, He cannot ignore sin. Sin must be punished.
God¡¯s solution is that instead of punishing us, Jesus
takes our place. On the cross,
Jesus took our punishment, our guilt, our shame, our
failures. He was our substitute, he
took our place.
The gospel is that Jesus
died for our sins. He was the
one man who was perfectly righteous, loving, holy. He didn¡¯t die for his own sins, He died
for our sins.
WWII,
Scottish soldiers were captured by the Japanese and forced to build a jungle
railroad. One day, a shovel was
missing. The officer became enraged
and demanded that the missing shovel be produced. The officer threatened to kill them
all. Finally one man stepped
forward. The officer put away his
gun, picked up a shovel, and beat the man to death. The survivors picked up the bloody
corpse and carried it away. They
then counted their tools again, and this time found that no shovel was
missing. There had been a miscount
at the first counting.
He didn¡¯t have to die; He died in my place: I took the
shovel. At its core, Christianity
is not a story about good people going to a good place. It¡¯s a story about undeserving people
who find mercy and kindness in a radically, sacrificially loving God.
2. Jesus rose from the dead.
V. 4 points to the fact that Jesus
was buried. It seems that purpose of explicitly
mentioning the burial was to highlight that this was an actually, physical
resurrection. The Christian gospel
is not a story about a spiritual, mystical, metaphorical resurrection, but an
actual bodily resurrection.
Then Paul points to a list of eyewitnesses. Jesus appeared to Peter, James, to the
other apostles, to 500 at the same time, and finally
to Paul himself. Most of these
people are still living. Paul is
saying, ¡°We saw this resurrected Jesus.
And if you don¡¯t believe, go and talk with these people. We have hundreds of first-hand
eye-witnesses.¡±
A. There
is an emphasis on a physical, historical resurrection.
This bodily resurrection was an objective, historical
event. On that first Easter
morning, the tomb was empty!
The gospel message is not just theology and
philosophy. It is not just a set of
teaching. At it¡¯s
core, its message is about a historical person in historical events: Jesus
Christ of Nazareth died, was buried, and rose again.
This may not sit well with our relativistic,
post-modern society. It is not okay to speak about Christianity in
relative terms. ¡°This may be true
for you but it¡¯s not true for me.¡±
Either there was a Jesus of Nazareth who died on a
Roman cross in the first century and on the third day he was physically
resurrected from the dead, or this did not happen.
The easiest way to destroy Christianity is to prove
that the tomb was not empty that Easter morning. Show that there was no
resurrection. There have been
plenty of enemies of Christianity, even from its beginnings. And if Jesus had not been raised, if
they could find his body, the whole thing would have come crashing down.
But Paul says, Jesus rose, and we saw him, hundreds of
us saw him. Christians believe and
embrace, they stake their eternities on this fact: that on that first Easter morning,
a dead and decaying corpse was resurrected from the dead and that tomb was
empty.
B. There
is an emphasis on the resurrection (not the cross)
Christ¡¯s death is mentioned, but Paul spends his
energy highlighting the resurrection.
He will spend the rest of this chapter (58 verses) on
the resurrection.
For many of us, the gospel may begin and end with,
¡°Jesus died for our sins,¡± but not so for Paul.
We have a lot of sermons on the suffering and death of
Christ, on the doctrines of substitutionary atonement. We focus on the cross, and that is
good. But there¡¯s more. We may lack a proper balance or
appreciation for the resurrection.
It seems to me that for Paul, more than Christ¡¯s death
it was his resurrection that was central to Paul¡¯s conversion and theology.
Paul knew that Jesus and died on a Roman cross, but it
wasn¡¯t until Paul met the resurrected Jesus on a
Some implications of re-emphasizing the resurrection:
To simply things, for some of us focusing on the cross
puts an emphasis on what Christ has done for us. He has forgiven our sins, removed our
guilt, made a way for us to go to heaven.
I suspect that for some of us, Christianity is kind of
a religious self-help kind of thing.
It¡¯s all about helping me:
Jesus died for me, and forgave my sins, and offers me eternal life. And that¡¯s true, and we celebrate it,
but we don¡¯t end there.
Focusing on the resurrection puts an emphasis on who Christ is. His resurrection is also what He has
done for us—new life, our own resurrection, we are not dead in our sins. But there is a strong emphasis on the affirmation
of his deity: He is the Messiah, the Son of God. He is the Righteous One. He is the conqueror of sin and death.
[Jesus
Christ] was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from
the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 1:4)
By focusing on the resurrection I believe we more inclined
to not just focus on ourselves and what we¡¯ve received, and we bow and worship
this risen and exalted Christ.
Perhaps for some of us, the focus on the cross makes
Christianity about being forgiven, about being saved from death and
condemnation. The gospel is a form
of free life-insurance.
But a focus on the resurrection puts an emphasis on
the new life that we have, the new creation that we are. Christianity isn¡¯t just ¡°Thank you¡± for
something received and now I go and live my life. Christianity is about the new life that
we live, the new creation that we are.
Let¡¯s suppose there was a beggar begging in the
streets. A prince comes by, takes
this beggar and pays off all her debts.
Then the beggar says ¡°thanks¡± and goes on with her life. That¡¯s not the gospel.
Then the prince takes the beggar to his castle and
marries her. She becomes a princess
in the kingdom.
Christiaintiy isn¡¯t just ¡°Thank you Jesus for paying for my
sins. Now I¡¯m going to just live my
life.¡± Christianity is now we have
a whole new life, a new identity, a new power, a new destiny. Picture the Easter egg: there¡¯s a
new life.
So let me end with the words of Apostle Paul:
For what I received I passed on to you as of
first importance: that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, that he
was raised on the third day according to the Scripture.