Sermon Discussion Questions:
1. Why do we need to be reminded of the gospel?
2. In the sermon Marc said that if we attempt to do bold things for God while forgetting the gospel we may wind up as one of the two sons from Luke 15. Why? And which son do you think you would be more prone to?
3. Why is Christianity necessarily a historical religion?
4. Read 1 Cor 15:8-10. What does it look like for you to work hard, but rely on the grace of God to help you?
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.
- 1 Cor 15:1-11
The Gospel Remembered, Preached, Received, in Which You Stand, and Work
The Gospel Remembered
“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel” (1 Cor 15:1)
Why does Paul need to remind the Corinthians of the gospel? Surely this is something they are well acquainted with by now. A similar question may be posed about why we are told that God’s mercies are new every morning (Lam 3:22-23). Are God’s mercies like the manna in Exodus that melts in the noon-day sun? Does it expire? No, the problem is not with the mercies of God, the problem is with us. Our hearts are like buckets that have been used for target practice. We are leaky and forgetful and need fresh applications, fresh fillings, and fresh reminders of God’s mercies. The temptations and struggles of life press in upon us with a harsh reality that leads us to forget, that tempts us to fight for what is ours, to live like there is not a heavenly Father watching over us. Basically, we cannot assume that the Christian life is a cruise-control mentality. “I believed the gospel, accepted the forgiveness of sins, great! Set it and forget it!” No, there is an active force pushing against us to constantly sideline and downplay the centrality of the gospel in our life.
And Paul knows that the Corinthians, despite being “super spiritual” people, are prone to forget what is of “first importance.” Any church that has sidelined the gospel in the name of spiritual experiences, theological sophistication, or good works—treating those things as “of first importance”—is leading a congregation into Death Valley with no water. It is asking of congregations to bear fruit but severing the roots. It is telling the car to drive, but refusing to put oil in. If you expect church people to be “on fire for the Lord” and do acts of justice and mercy and study God’s Word diligently, and those functionally become what is “of first importance” then they will, in time, either turn into prodigal sons who are so burnt out with church that they decide to go vacation in the world for awhile; or elder brothers, who have hearts as dry as leather and nurse a secret resentment towards everyone else, especially the Father who they view like a cruel taskmaster.
I want to see our church take more risky steps of faith—right now we are setting an audacious goal of raising 30,000 dollars in a month to send to our missionaries. To do so, will take some sacrifice on our part—and sacrifice is good for us. I want to see us seek the Spirit more and more. I want to see us dig more deeply into God’s Word and into precise theology and let it master us!
But if we pursue all of those things and forget the centrality of the gospel, it will be just a matter of time before we start saying: Okay, none of my non-Christian friends are working this hard, their life looks pretty nice…or, Why aren’t more people working as hard as I am? Why doesn’t God recognize all that I do? If you remember, about ten-twelve years ago or so it was very trendy to take about “gospel-centeredness” in church. And it was basically an effort to hit the “refresh” button on the gospel regularly for us all, which was a wonderful thing. But, the human craving for novelty, our ever-shrinking attention span, and the inevitability of practitioners downstream from the movement applying it in a kind tired trope (where every sermon ends with the same script on what the gospel is) creates a risk where we can feel like being “gospel centered” is passe.
We must be careful lest we forget what God wants to remind us of. So, let’s think about what the gospel is.
The Gospel Preached
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you.
Why is the gospel preached? Not discussed, not a back-and-forth, not suggested…but preached. Jesus could have commissioned His disciples to dialogue with crowds about the kingdom of God. He could have charged elders to have open-handed discussions with churches about what they felt the gospel meant. But He didn’t. Why? There are certainly places where we see discussions take place—Philip asks the Ethiopian eunuch if he knows what he is reading (Acts 8:26-40). But why is the primary method of delivery preaching?
Well, we may be helped by considering what that word means. Preaching is the heralding, the proclamation, or announcement of something. It is distinct from teaching in the Bible. Teaching involves explanation and application, more of a give and take. And all good preaching should have elements of teaching wedded into it. But imagine an immensely wealthy individual were to announce that he was intent on paying off your mortgage, all your credit card debt, all your medical bills, and wanted to leave a six-figure inheritance to all your children. What is that? That is an event, an announcement of good news. You may have questions, you may ask this person to explain some details to you, but it is essentially a brute fact that is declared to you. It isn’t a 10-step plan to pay off your debt, or advice to consider. It is a heralding of good news, of a historical fact that is really good. This is why later, Paul ticks off all of the basic historical details around the events of the gospel:
“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,” (1 Cor 15:3-7).
Now, why does Paul recount these details? Because Christianity hinges on history. Christianity is distinct from many other religions in that it is not a kernel of life-advice, wrapped in the husk of a religious myth. If Buddha had never existed, Buddhism would still work. If Marcus Aurelius never existed, Stoicism would still work. Or any of the pop-psychology authors writing self-help books today about how (usually with an expletive in the title) to care less about what others think of you or how to be more organized at work, if all their anecdotes and personal stories turned out to be fabricated, their life-advice may still be useful. If they make you more productive, and less anxious, who cares?
Return to our example of the wealthy philanthropist. If he is giving you financial advice, not aid, and it works—you pay off your bills and get out of debt—and you later find out that his image of a wealthy man is actually fabricated, it doesn’t really matter that much. But if He hasn’t come just to give you advice, but to pay your debts, then the reality of his personal wealth really matters. So too with Jesus Christ—if He really has come to save us, not give us life advice, then His work to save us in all of its objective, historical color, really matters. It is news to be proclaimed, not suggestions to be considered.
What do you do with good news? You can doubt it (there must be a catch); you can reject it (too good to be true); or, you receive it.
The Gospel Received
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received.
What does it mean to “receive” the gospel? A helpful comparison: “He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” (John 1:11-12).
To receive the gospel is to believe it. But “believe” is such a fuzzy word. I can use believe to describe a confident position I have, like I believe that Lord of the Rings is a wonderful book. In that sense, “believe” refers to my subjective analysis and experience. Or, I can believe something because of evidence, like I believe the sky to be blue; or because of trusted sources, like I believe that Christopher Columbus existed and sailed to America in 1492, though I have no direct experience of that and cannot logically deduce it.
What does it mean to “believe” the gospel? Is it like believing the Lord of the Rings is a great book? An expression of my personal preferences? Or is it like believing Christopher Columbus existed? A statement of historical fact?
In a way it is similar to those two things—to believe in the gospel is to affirm a historical fact and it is a revelation of your personal preference, your personal affection. But, to return again to our analogy of our wealthy do-good-er. What would it look like to receive the help that individual gives? What do you do to receive it? In a way, you don’t do anything. Yet, at the same time, when it comes time to think about your budget the next week, when it comes to the time where you normally send a check off to your creditors, but this generous man has said that he will pay…it does require something of you. It requires you to trust. Trust that this man is who says He is, and has done what He says He will do.
To believe, to receive the gospel, is not only saying that you affirm the historical facts about the gospel or God’s existence; it is not only claiming that you love God. It isn’t even claiming that you know your life needs to change. It is not less than those things, of course. It is more. It is to believe that Jesus Christ, God the Son, died for your sins, was buried, and rose from the dead to purchase your salvation. It is to see that His death personally affects you: your sins.
In Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer Scrooge is first visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Marley, like Scrooge, was miserly and greedy in life, and so he is cursed to wander the earth bound in a heavy chain made of his own sins of greed and indifference to the poor. And he warns Scrooge that his chain is even longer and more terrible than his own, and if he wants to avoid an eternity in purgatory atoning for his sins, he must show penance and do good. It’s a wonderful tale, but if we could tweak the theology a bit, we might have a better picture of the gospel. The hope of Christianity is not the hope Dickens offers. It is not a revelation of our sin that we were blind to, the way that Marley and the three ghosts of Christmas open Scrooge’s eyes to his own sin. It is that, but more. In a way, it is much worse. Your sins are far worse than you can imagine. Far more grave, far more expansive, and far more costly. Even if you were to be visited by three specters in the night to terrify you, you would not be able to muster enough moral effort and generosity for the rest of your life to rid yourself of the metal coil of sin that winds itself around you.
The hope, instead, is that Jesus saddled Himself with the totality of your sin debt, and let Himself be sunk under its weight on the cross, sunk all the way down into the grave, all the way down to Hell where we deserve to go.
But, He didn’t stay there. Three days later, Jesus rose from the dead—He finished the payment, He served our sentence. The judgment our sins deserved was severe, but He was stronger. To believe the gospel is to have “faith”, to trust that that not only happened, but happened for you. Your sins have been dealt with. And if you believe it, what does that do to you?
The Gospel in Which You Stand
Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, (1 Cor 15:1)
What does Paul mean by saying that the gospel causes the Corinthians to “stand”? To “stand” in the Bible usually refers to what your confidence is in, where you have planted your flag, so to speak: “Not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy, for you stand firm in your faith,” (2 Cor 1:24).
You can have misplaced confidence: “Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall,” (1 Cor 10:12).
At the last day of judgment, those who are being judged cry out: “…for the great day of [the wrath of God and the Lamb] has come, and who can stand?” (Rev 6:17)
A helpful comparison:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Rom 5:1-2)
“…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” (Rom 5:8)
“God does not love us because Christ died for us; Christ died for us because God loved us,” (John Stott).
The Gospel Which Saves and Works
“…and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain,” (1 Cor 15:2)
What does it mean that Corinthians are “being saved” by the gospel? Isn’t “being saved” something that happens once, and then is done?
We are dealing with a gospel time-warp. Salvation is a future reality, it has to do with the last day.
What’s the deal with the warning?
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. (1 John 2:18-19)
Not faith + works, but faith that works.
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. (1 Cor 15:8-10)
