Good News!

1 Corinthians 15:1-11 - Riley Boggs

I’ve had the opportunity to teach and interact with young Christians in several different settings. I had the opportunity to teach a Christian school, I’ve taught some VBS’s, and have taught in different church settings. As I’ve done this, I’ve noticed a trend among all of them. I like to ask kids tough questions and push them to think more deeply about different things, and so I would typically ask them a few simple questions and then press a bit more. Here’s an example of what I mean.

I’ll ask something like, “How does someone get saved?” All the kids yell out, “Jesus!”. I respond, “That’s exactly right! But how does Jesus save someone? I mean, how would you explain to someone how to get saved?” Everyone gets a bit quieter and then someone will speak up and say, “I would tell them to believe in Jesus.” I’ll say, “That’s good. If you believe in Jesus, He will save you. Now can someone tell me why you come to church?” “The class yells out “Jesus!” “Okay, good. Why do you obey your parents?” Again, “Jesus!” This goes on and on for all kinds of different questions until eventually I’ll ask something to the effect of, “But who is Jesus? Why do we obey Him? Why do we worship Him?” At this point the room goes entirely silent. 

This story has happened time and time again. On one hand it encourages me to see these young kids proclaiming the name of Jesus, knowing that their ought to be oriented entirely towards Him. On the other hand, I find myself a bit worried. I wonder if we just say Jesus’ name over and over again, but neglect to tell them who Jesus is. Neglect to tell them what He has done, what it accomplished, and why we do what we do. 

This same thing, I believe, can happen to all of us when it comes to “The Gospel.” Being the good evangelicals we are, we love to talk about the Gospel. We believe the Gospel, we live for the Gospel, and we are to go out and share the Gospel. But, more often than not, when you press someone and ask what the Gospel is and what it does, the room gets a bit more quiet. Evangelicals in recent years have done very well to continually speak of Jesus and the importance of the Gospel. But, also in recent years, evangelicals have struggled to go deeper. And as a result of this, many Christians find themselves struggling to know what to do at times. They know the right words and the right saying, but they lack understanding of the richness that stands behind it all.

The reason I bring all that out is because this morning we are going to look at a text where Paul lays out The Gospel so clearly. He tells us what the Gospel is, what we are to do with it, and what it accomplishes. He puts it right before us. Throughout this letter to the Corinthians, Paul has been addressing problems in the church, wrong beliefs, wrong practices, and wrong motives. And after concluding his word on the spiritual gifts and corporate worship, he turns to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It seems, and you can see this at the end of verse 2 when he says, “unless you believed in vain”, that there were some in the church at Corinth who were denying the resurrection. Now, we will see next week that they were denying it because they were denying the bodily resurrection of believers, but the point is the same. The church had issues with their doctrine of the resurrection, and so Paul sets out to walk them through what and why they should proclaim it with confidence.

So, this morning I want to put that very thing before you. I want us to see, in these first 11 verses, what the Gospel is, what we are to do with it, and what it does. Also, this passage, I think, makes the most sense if we start in the middle, go back to the beginning, and then go to the end. So we’re actually going to start by looking at verses 3 to 8. 

1.) The Gospel is Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection

The word Gospel, and many of you probably already knows this, literally means good news. The Greek word Paul uses in verse 1 that is translated as “gospel”, is pronounced “euaggelion”, and simply means good news. And so Paul, starting here in verse 3, tell us that the Gospel that he brought them, he brought to them as first importance. What does he mean by that? Well he simply means that it precedes, it comes before, all other things that he intended to bring them. He must first come and proclaim that Christ died for sins, that He was buried, and that He resurrected. As a matter of first importance, this good news must be shared. All other things that Paul will go on to instruct them have no place, if the Gospel has not been put forth.

Imagine going to city where everyone is lost. And you show up, and the first thing you start doing is instructing people on how to use their spiritual gifts and the importance of church discipline. Is that going to work? Of course not. Spiritual gifts and church practices are irrelevant if people do not know Christ. The Gospel must come first, it must precede these things. It is a matter of first importance.

Since it’s a matter of first importance, we have to get it right. And so Paul lays it out. He says, here it is, starting in the latter half of verse 3, “… 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. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” That is the Gospel, that is the good news. Christ died for our sins, He was buried, and He was raised again. 

Notice how Paul gives us 2 points to attest to it’s validity here. First, he says, “in accordance with the Scriptures”. What does he mean by that? What he means is that the Scriptures, which at this point was the Old Testament Scriptures, foretold and prophesied that this very thing would happen. Not only did they prophecy that it would happen, but how it would happen. And all of it was true. It was foretold by God through prophets to take place exactly how it took place.

Then, as a second point of validation, he says that Christ, after his resurrection, appeared to people. And notice how he intentionally ramps it up here. What does he say? Christ appeared to Cephas, then He appeared to 12, and then He appeared to 500 at once! Paul says that some have fallen asleep, by which he means they have died. But, Paul says, most are still alive. And then, if that wasn’t enough, Paul says that He appeared to me. There is validity to this good news. There is prophecy and there is proof. The Son of God came, He died for our sins, He was buried and put away, and then He truly rose again, killing death itself. This is the good news; this is the Gospel. And, as a matter of first importance, to uphold the integrity of this glorious Gospel, we must get it right. Now, let’s jump back to the first 2 verses and see what we should do with this good news.

2.) The Gospel should be preached, received, and held

Look at the first 2 verses with me. Paul writes, “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.”  There are 3 things I want to draw out of this, which you can see in the point itself, that the Gospel should be preached, received, and held. The 4th one in the text, the “by which you are being saved”, we’ll look at in the last point. 

If you remember, Paul is the one who started the church in Corinth. He is the one, we could say, planted that church. How did he do it? He tells us how he did it. He preached the Gospel to them, they received it, and they are holding onto it. At its simplest, this is what church planting is. It’s what we are doing. The preaching of the Gospel mentioned here isn’t just what is done from a pulpit, though it certainly that. It is the proclamation, the heralding, the telling, of the good news of Jesus Christ, by all believers.

After the proclamation, what is the hope? What happened in the case of the Corinthains after Paul preached the Gospel to them? Paul says they received it, which is simply another way of saying that they believed it. They believed what Paul told them about their sinfulness, about Christ dying for their sins, about His burial, about His resurrection. They believed it and so they were saved, they were redeemed. And now, what are they doing? Or rather, what should they be doing? They should be holding on to it, as it was preached to them.

I’ve already mentioned this, but that final phrase “unless you believed in vain” is an indication for us as to why he is writing this section regarding the resurrection of Christ to begin with. That is, some people are believing in vain. Or another way of putting this, is that they stopped holding onto it as it was preached to them. They started to let it slip out of their hands, and have begun to believe in vain.

See, this is why baptism is inextricably associated with trusting in Christ for salvation. What do we read all throughout the Bible? Repent of your sins, place your faith in Christ, and be baptized. Over and over again. Why? So that you might hold on to the Gospel that you have received. Now you might be thinking, how does baptism help me hold on to the Gospel? That question in and of itself, I think, comes as a result of a lack of teaching on the churches part. I think this is an area where evangelical Baptists as a whole have dropped the ball. People see baptism as simply a thing that you do after being saved. They don’t see it as a thing that is connected with membership of a church.

Here’s what I mean. You are not strong enough to hold on to the Gospel as told in the Scriptures alone. You just aren’t. Left alone your mind, your heart, and the devil himself will convince you of things that are simply not true. And you will begin to hold them over and above what the Gospel truly says, and you will begin to lose grip. 

The Lord knows this, and it is precisely why He has given us baptism. The right pathway is this. Someone hears the Gospel from another believer, whether that be at church or not, and they are cut to the heart. So they receive they Gospel, they trust in Christ for salvation. And then, what are they supposed to do? They are supposed to be baptized into a church. Baptism is the visible proclamation that someone makes to show that they have trusted Christ, and since this person has trusted Christ, they need make a visible proclamation. But why? Is it so a group of believers can clap for them? Is it so unbelievers might be convicted? Maybe those things happen as well, but that’s not the primary reason. The primary reason is so that people can hold you accountable to what you are proclaiming and walk with you. That person should be baptized into a church, so that, in that moment, they are both proclaiming they are in Christ, and that they are committing themselves to other brothers and sisters. That is simply what we call church membership.

And it is through this that we are strengthened enough to hold on to the Gospel, as the Scriptures tell them. When you lay in bed at night and think of all the ways you fall short, and you begin to doubt whether Christ truly forgives you for all your sin, you have family who you can lean on. You have fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters, who have been given to you, to remind you that you are indeed forgiven, completely. Or, when you begin to stumble into sin, thinking that grace has given you a leash to walk in some sinful things, you have a family who will pull you away from it. Who will warn you and walk with you. 

Paul is writing this letter to a church who, as we have seen in the earlier chapters, were not doing this well. And now, at the end of the letter, we see the result of their failings. Some have begun to lose hold on the true Gospel. But that is not where he ends. Paul ends by telling the Corinthians what the Gospel can do, what it accomplishes. 

3.) The Gospel saves, urges, and empowers

Look at the last 3 verses with me. Pau; writes, about himself, “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.”

The Gospel has the power to save anyone. Paul was a persecutor of the church. He literally spent his time killing Christians, and yet, God saved Him. This is the power of the Gospel. Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection is sufficient to save anyone who would place their faith in the atoning work of Christ.

Your unbelieving parent, your unbelieving child, the hardened atheist, the wicked murderer, and the one who says, “I’ll never believe!”. All of them are not yet without hope, because the Gospel saves. If you are here and you are disheartened because of a loved one’s unbelief, take heart in knowing that the Gospel has not lost its power. Pray that God would use your proclamation of the Gospel to open their eyes to their sin, and they might place their faith in Christ. Don’t lose heart, keep proclaiming it. It has not, nor will it ever, lose its power to save.

There is a common thought that those who land in the more reformed-ish camp will lose their motivation to share the Gospel. After all, if God is sovereign and saves whom He wills, why should I do anything? Well, I want to remind you that Paul was on his way to kill more Christians when Christ Himself appeared and saved Him, said that he has worked harder than anyone. If there was anyone in the world who knew the sovereignty of God displayed in salvation, it was Paul. And yet what did this lead him to? Did it lead him to passivity? No, it made him work all the more. R.C. Sproul said that, “Divine grace did not make Paul lazy, but caused him to labor ‘harder’ than anyone else.”

That is the right view of grace and the right response to the Gospel. The Gospel urges us on. When we think of the grace that has been poured out on us undeserving sinners, it should not lead us to passivity. It should lead us to further urgency. This isn’t a contradiction to a reformed understanding of the sovereignty of God, it is a result of it. Paul says he was the most unworthy to be called an apostle and that he only is who he is because of the grace of God. Even though the only thing he contributed to his salvation was the sin that made it necessary, the grace given to him was not in vain. Rather, it has caused him to work harder than anyone else!

Why? Because he sees how absolutely undeserving, he is of God’s love, and yet he has it. He knows the depths of his sinfulness, and yet he is redeemed. And so he is pressed to spend his days proclaiming the very Gospel than changed him from a persecutor to a pastor.

The Gospel saves, it urges, and it also empowers. Paul’s theology of the cross, of the Gospel, shows itself even in what he does. He says that it is not my own hands that bring about salvation, though he labors earnestly that people might know Christ, but rather it is the grace of God that is in him. The Gospel empowers. God saved Paul, He told Paul to go, and now because of His grace in Paul, He is saving people through Paul’s proclamation of the Gospel. 

And, it is not limited to Paul, as we see in verse 11. The Gospel’s authority and power does not lie in the man who shares it, but rather it lies in God who brought it about. It lies in the one whom the good news is about, Jesus Christ. And so, verse 11, “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.”

If you are struggling to find purpose in your life. If you feel like you go from menial task to another menial task, and it feels a bit pointless, I want you to consider the call of this text. God saved you so that you, by the proclamation of the Gospel, might see God redeem people from their sin. Reframe the way you are thinking about your life. Think in the way that Paul is thinking. 

You were once an enemy to God, someone who hated God. Maybe you have never said that, but at some point, in your life you lived like it. You did what you wanted to do, and you didn’t consider God. If you grew up in a Christian home maybe this doesn’t seem like the case, maybe it wasn’t as dramatic, but it is still true. Regardless, you were an enemy, like all of us, to God. 

And yet, God miraculously saved you. He sought you and saved you while you continued to sin against Him. While you were His enemy, He drew you in, forgave you for your sins, and began to heal your wounds. He washed you clean and filled you with every Spirit of God, so that you might walk in a way you could never walk alone. You were made new, you were saved.

Not only that, but He saved you and gifted you so that you might play a role in the greatest redemptive story to ever take place. He saved you and gave you, gave the church, the Gospel so that we might hold on to it and proclaim around the world. So that we might see rebellious sinners and hurting lost people come to know Christ. He has called you to this. Do you see how glorious this is? Are you beginning to feel the purpose that you have?

But that’s not all, you now walk in grace, forgiven for every misstep that you take. And you walk in the power of God Himself. Power that breaks every stronghold that the enemy might have. You are waging war, not against flesh and blood, but as Paul writes in Ephesians 6, “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.Walking in the grace and power of God Himself.” You are waging war against them all, by the power of God in and through you. 

You are building a kingdom! You are servant of the King of the World, Jesus Christ, who reigns at the right hand of the Father. And though this kingdom building might seem slow and repetitive and not as dramatic as the movies, it is no less glorious. The conversation with your coworker about the Gospel is not in vain, the slow and patient teaching of your children is not in vain, the hours spent in pray for that lost person is not in vain. It is the glorious purpose-filled task of building the kingdom of God Almighty.

This is what the Gospel does. This is what the Gospel is. It is Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. It is what we preach, what we receive, and what we hold on to. And it is what saves, what urges, and what empowers. The Gospel is where we as believers find our hope and where we can find our purpose. Go and tell the Gospel, be brave, you come with the authority of the King Himself.