I Corinthians 15:1

First Corinthians 15:1

First Corinthians 15:1-2 says, "Moreover, brothers, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also you have received, and wherein you stand; By which also you are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain." These two verses of the Bible say several important things about salvation. Usually for someone to be saved, there must be first of all the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The believers in Corinth did not believe until Paul came to them with the story of Jesus the Savior. "How shall they believe except they hear, and how shall they hear except someone tell them the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ?"

When the gospel is declared to someone, the next thing that must happen is that they must believe. One can believe or one can choose to not believe. That is the power of human choice. Paul uses the word "receive" to describe someone becoming a Christian. To talk about receiving the gospel or receiving Christ paints a very good picture of salvation. The gospel will tell you that Jesus died for your sins, and the gospel will tell you that God loves you, and the gospel will tell you that God offers you eternal life through His Son; but unless you personally receive that truth about Jesus, it will not be yours. If someone offers you a gift, you can choose to accept it or to refuse it. The same is true concerning the gift of God, which is eternal life through Jesus Christ. Belief in Jesus is a choice.

But once you do receive it, it becomes the most important thing in your life. The good news about Jesus Christ becomes your answer to the failures and sorrows of life; and it becomes the basis of your hope for the future. That is why Paul said that the Christians in Corinth did "stand" on the gospel. The gospel was their foundation. All else was sinking sand.

Once you receive the gospel of Christ, and it becomes the spiritual foundation upon which you stand, it is the will of God that there be results in your life because of it. The way that those results will be realized will be based upon primarily what you think about. That is why Paul said, "If you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless you have believed in vain." Every day a believer should remember what Jesus did for them on the cross of Calvary. No matter how busy is your day, surely you can find time to lift your heart to God and thank Him for sending His Son to die for you on the cruel Roman cross. Surely you can find the time to remember what Jesus did so that you could be forgiven of your sins. One of the temptations of life for those that believe will be to forget what God has done for them. Some people will become so preoccupied with the affairs of this life that they will forget how important the gospel once was to them. If that happens, their spiritual life will become vain; that is, it will be empty and of no consequence.

In case the Corinthians had forgotten the principal elements of the gospel, Paul repeats them in First Corinthians 15:3-4 and says, "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures." When the New Testament says, "according to the scriptures," it is talking about the Old Testament. Jesus Christ as the Messiah, dying for the sins of the world, was prophesied hundreds of years before it happened. That is one of the proofs to the truthfulness and significance of the death of Jesus. Most of the major details about the crucifixion of Christ were astoundingly foretold hundreds of years before they happened.

Isaiah 53:5-6 says, "But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all." The Old Testament says in Zechariah 12:10, "...and they shall look upon me whom they have pierced..." The Jews always understood the prophesies about the Messiah coming as King, but they did not understand the prophesies of Him coming to die for their sins.

There are also prophesies in the Old Testament about the resurrection. Psalm 16:10 says, "For you will not leave my soul in Hades; neither will you suffer thine Holy One to see corruption." Jesus told the Sadducees that one of the ways to understand that there must be a resurrection from the dead, was to realize that God was not the God of the dead, but of the living. To rise from the dead means to live again with the same identity as before. In His teachings, Jesus made it very clear that He would raise from the dead those who believed in Him. He said in the Gospel of John, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die." If you are a believer in Jesus, death is not the end of life but a transformation into a different life and a better life.

The nature of the new life after death is seen first of all in Jesus Himself. There are certain details about the resurrection of Jesus that will be true for all the believers who will eventually be resurrected. Paul will go into some of these details later in First Corinthians chapter 15, but the first point that Paul is making is to establish the fact of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

For those who believe in the authority of the scriptures, there is the Old Testament prophesies that support the idea that Jesus did truly rise from the dead. If something is true, then there will be evidence to support the truth. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead has very substantial evidence. There is especially the evidence of the eyewitnesses. In First Corinthians 15:5-8 the Bible says, "And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brothers at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time."

One of the most important forms of evidence in any court of law are eyewitnesses, especially if there are many eye-witnesses who tell the same story. The character of the eyewitnesses is also a very important consideration. If you have hundreds of eyewitnesses that establish a fact, and the eyewitnesses are of outstanding character in the society: then you have an open and shut case. The Apostles and Paul and hundreds of others saw Jesus and talked with Him after He rose from the dead. Their lives were changed by the experience, and they suffered many things including a martyr’s death for telling about their experiences with Jesus. If it had not been true, they would have been laughed to scorn in their own day and Christianity would not have spread. If it had not been true, these would have been deceitful and manipulative people, and they would not have been followed. But they were honest and caring, and the truthfulness of their words brought the impact of the authority of God with it. And now over the centuries, added to their testimonies are the testimonies of everyone else who has met Jesus on a personal and a spiritual way and who have been touched by Him. Jesus rose from the dead, and He lives today, and you can also know Him.

The original twelve apostles knew Jesus in a very unique way. They traveled with Him for three years and heard all of His teaching in person. They visited the empty tomb, and saw Him and talked with Him many times after the resurrection. Paul was also an apostle, but he met Jesus much later. Paul met Jesus on the road to Damascus. The circumstances of the experience that Paul had with the resurrected Jesus was much different than that of the other apostles. Paul wrote in First Corinthians 15:9-11, "For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet 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 which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so you believed."

Paul did not forget how sinful he had been before he met Jesus, and Jesus became his Savior. Paul did not lose an appreciation for the concept of the forgiveness of sins. Paul also knew that if anything was accomplished, it was only by the grace of God. No one really understands what happens in their life, unless they can truthfully say concerning the good things: "It was only by the grace of God." We depend upon the grace of God to save our souls, and we depend upon the grace of God to be able to do anything of real consequence in this life.

Paul knew that what he and the other apostles had done, which was to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ, was only done by the grace of God. But he reminded the believers in Corinth that the message that was delivered to them was the same message whether they heard it from Paul or from one of the other apostles. It was the message of the death, and the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.

The resurrection from the dead is a vital part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. God has revealed His truth from heaven, and an important part of the truth that God has revealed is concerning the resurrection from the dead. If anyone claims to be a teacher of spiritual things and does not teach the resurrection from the dead then they are a false teacher, and they themselves need to be taught because they do not understand the first principles of the revelation from God.

Evidently there were people in the city of Corinth who were starting to stray from the great teaching of the resurrection, and in First Corinthians chapter 15 Paul is addressing the error, and explaining why they are wrong who brought in false teaching concerning the resurrection. The Bible says in First Corinthians 15:12-19, "Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; you are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable."

The teaching of the resurrection from the dead is one of the most important teachings concerning the life of Christ and concerning Christianity. It is not logical for someone to claim to be a Christian and then to claim to not believe in the resurrection from the dead. Paul points out what the consequences would be if there was no resurrection from the dead. If there is no such thing as the resurrection from the dead, then Christ could not have risen from the dead, and if Jesus did not rise from the dead then you are still in your sins and there will be no Savior at the judgment to step in on your behalf.

If there is no resurrection from the dead, then the things that Paul and the other apostles taught were of no value and were false, because the resurrection from the dead has always been a key element of the message about Jesus the Messiah. If there is no resurrection from the dead then faith is in vain. Anyone who has faith, has faith in a living Christ. If there is no resurrection from the dead, you might as well throw away all Bibles, stop all sermons, and close all churches. It is all useless and pointless, if there be no resurrection from the dead.

Those who believed in Jesus and who died no one will ever see again, if there be no resurrection from the dead, because they would have ceased to exist. And Christians like Paul who have labored and sacrificed and worked and suffered because of their belief, have done it all in vain if there is no resurrection from the dead. Jesus promised His followers that they would be rewarded in the next life. But if there is no resurrection from the dead then there will be no future comforts and no future rewards for your labors.

But there is a resurrection from the dead. The prophecies of the scriptures, the empty tomb, the eyewitnesses, and the personal experience of millions of believers who have met the risen Jesus in a spiritual way: all these things are the proof of the resurrection. First Corinthians 15:20 says, "But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept."

There are many wonderful consequences to the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, and one of the consequences is that we also will rise from the dead. The grave is not the end. There is more to come. There is a more abundant life, and there is a much greater existence that will await those who are believers in Jesus. That is why it says that Jesus is the "firstfruits." He is the first to rise from the dead with a resurrected body, and all of the believers can look forward to the same destiny. Because it happened to Jesus, the same will happen for you. Death will not hold you, and death will not conquer you. If you believe in Jesus, you will leave this life and find yourself in the bosom of God. Because Jesus rose from the dead, you will also.

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