“…the gospel I preached to you…”

1 Corinthians 15:1

The apostle has reached the last troubling issue within the church at Corinth which he needs to address.  As we will see in our study of chapter 15, some within Corinth believed “that there is no resurrection of the dead” (15:12).  This erroneous belief undermines one of the most elemental theological doctrines of Christianity (Heb. 6:1-2), not the least of which because it goes against a primary tenet of the gospel message itself. 

Paul recognizes this as he starts his discourse against this false teaching, reminding them “of the gospel I preached to you, which you received” (15:1; cf. Acts 18:1ff).  It is this same gospel “in which you stand, and by which you are being saved” (15:2a).  All of this is conditioned on whether they “hold fast to the word I preached to you” (15:2b; cf. Gal. 1:6-9).  If they unrepentantly deviated from the teachings of God’s Word, they would have “believed in vain” (15:2b; cf. Heb. 10:26-31).  This is still true for us today, Christians.  The salvation brought to us by the gospel did not start and then immediately end upon our belief, repentance, and baptism into Christ (Mk. 16:15-16; Acts 2:36-41).  No, we must continue after baptism to penitently “observe all that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19-20) in order to constantly “stand” in the gospel and thus continue to be “saved” by it and God’s grace (Eph. 2:8-10; Tit. 2:11-12).  

By straying from true teaching about the resurrection of the dead, the Corinthian saints were in danger of losing this salvation brought to them by the gospel.  Thus, Paul reminds them of the significance of the resurrection within the gospel message.  He starts by reminding them that he had already taught them what was “as of first importance” to the gospel message:  “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, (and) that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (15:3-4).  “In accordance with the Scriptures” refers to the Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah that point to his death, burial, and resurrection (Is. 53:4-10; Zech. 13:7; Ps. 16:10).  The apostle then reminds them that the resurrected Jesus “appeared to Cephas” (that is, Peter, whom Paul has already indicated that some of them knew personally – 1:12; 3:22; 9:5), “then to the twelve” (15:5; cf. Lk. 24:34; Mk. 16:14ff; Lk. 24:36ff; John 20:19ff; Acts 1:21-26), before then appearing “to more than five hundred brothers at one time,” most of whom were still living at the time of his writing and could testify to the Corinthians of their interaction with the risen Lord (15:6). 

After also mentioning the resurrected Lord’s appearances to his brother James and a subsequent appearance to the twelve apostles (15:7), Paul then lists himself as the “last of all” to whom Jesus appeared as of the time of his writing to Corinth (15:8a).  Even though by the grace of God he “worked harder” than the other apostles (15:10b), he still considered himself “one untimely born” and “the least of the apostles (and) unworthy to be called an apostle” due to his persecution of the church before he became a Christian (15:8-9; cf. Acts 8:3).

He then writes a truism that applies to each of us every time we repent of our sins, brethren:  “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain” (15:10a).  This is the good news that Paul and the apostles preached and which was believed by the church in Corinth (15:11), that by the death and resurrection of Christ God’s grace saves us from our sins!                            

— Jon