Background and context from my passage: Some of the Corinthian believers had concluded that there was no future resurrection of the dead and this was influencing the faith of the rest of the church. As Paul said earlier about the acceptance of the members of the church who were practicing fornication openly and blatantly, "A little leaven leavens the whole lump" (1 Cor 5:6). Paul may have heard about this via the letter or report that had come to him that caused him to address the other topics in this letter.
Paul's response comes in three parts:
He first reestablishes their commonly held ground, that Christ was raised from the dead (15:1-11).
He contrasts the contradiction of Christ's resurrection and the denial of the resurrection of believers (15:12-34).
He does this by asking, "What if the dead rise not?"
That would mean that Christ is not raised (15:12-19). If Christ is not raised then everything else about the Christian faith is a lie.
Since Christ has been raised then the inevitable corollary is the resurrection of believers (15:20-28).
It's absurd to live the way Christians if the resurrection is not true (15:29-34). Paul disagreed with the song "I Choose to Be A Christian."
He explains the mystery of how (the form) the dead are raised (15:35-58).
It sounded repugnant to their Greek sensibilities for a "corpse" to get back up and be resuscitated. Paul will explain that resurrection is more than resuscitation. There is both continuity and discontinuity between the present state and the resurrected state of believers.
The Corinthians had received the baptism of the Spirit and had so many profound spiritual experiences that they were arguing with Paul about what it meant to be "spiritual." They thought they had everything that there was to receive from God and that they did not need their body and would one day just completely discard it and go on into being pure spirit. They may have had the idea that the body was an inferior creation and so the idea of it being raised was horrible. The Greeks thought that to leave the body was to leave a prisonhouse. They probably spiritualized the idea of resurrection including the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
The Jewish believers, except those heavily influenced by the Sadducean sect, would have seen their future hope as connected to the resurrection of the dead, but the Gentiles came from a different cultural milieu. They could easily spiritualize it all. They also anticipated Jesus's Second Coming and saw no need for resurrection. They would be alive when Jesus came. Paul is going to correct their bad theology and show how a proper understanding of the resurrection of the dead should cause us to live correctly and have hope and encouragement (1 Corinthians, Gordon Fee, NICNT).
Exposition of Text:
1. The Basis - The Resurrection of Christ
1 Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, 2 by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.
"Received" is a technical term from Paul's Jewish heritage. The Hebrew words qibbel/masar: "Moses 'received' the Law from Sanai and 'committed' it to Joshua, and Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the Prophets; and the Prophets 'committed' it to the men of the Great Synagogue." (Fee, p. 607 n. 87).
Here we see salvation in three tenses. We are saved at the new birth, we are being saved as we participate in the process of sanctification, and we will ultimately be saved at the resurrection.
3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures,
The combination in the creed of "buried" and "raised on the third day" emphasizes the resurrection of a corpse, not a "spiritual" renewal of life after death. The resurrection of Jesus was corporeal and genuine.
The "for..." is almost identical to what he says earlier in 11:23. It goes back to the very beginning of things.
The Atonement is the only way to reach God for both Jews and Gentiles and the resurrection is the reason for believing in the Deity of Jesus.
This is what is received and passed on! It is vital. You cannot have Christianity without miracles. Every miracle in some way foreshadows or echoes what C. S. Lewis calls the Grand Miracle, the Incarnation. All miracles flow from this one miracle. The Incarnation includes the Divine condescension and descent and the ascent. The gospel includes the death, burial, and resurrection. It is not multiple choice.
"First of all": These are the "bare bones" of the gospel. It sounds a lot like the words of Jesus at the end of the Gospel of Luke and Luke's record of Paul's words in Acts:
Luke 24:44-49 (NKJV)
44 Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” 45 And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.
46 Then He said to them, “Thus it is written, [l]and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, 47 and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48 And you are witnesses of these things. 49 Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on high.”
Acts 13:28-31 (NKJV)
28 And though they found no cause for death in Him, they asked Pilate that He should be put to death. 29 Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb. 30 But God raised Him from the dead. 31 He was seen for many days by those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses to the people.
He goes on to quote from Psalm 2:7 and 16:10 to explain the resurrection.
There are four clauses and there is a whole lot packed in here:
that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures
and that he was buried;
and that he was raised on the third day,
according to the Scriptures
and that he was seen by Cephas [and] the Twelve.
"Christ died" is the basic tenet of the Christian faith. Paul begins the first letter to the Corinthians by speaking about Christ crucified (1:23), Who is the wisdom and power of God (2:2). In Paul's earliest letter, he writes, "For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him" (1 Thessalonians 4:14).
"for our sins" is a direct reflection on the Greek translation of Isaiah 53. The Jews did not interpret this chapter thinking of a personal Messiah, but Jesus said that He was dying for us (11:23-25). Jesus had to die for us because we were alienated from God because of sin and rebellion. Jesus satisfied the penalty for our sins and brought us back to God. There is both forgiveness for sins and deliverance from the bondage to sin.
"according to the Scriptures" might be translated "according to Scripture as a whole." In the OT, there are both explicit passages about the coming of Christ and the overarching theme is Christ! The Seed of the woman would bruise His Heel crushing the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15). The lamb was provided to deliver Israel from Egypt. The entire system of OT sacrifices and Tabernacle/Temple worship pointed to Christ! (Luke 24:44-49). This story is not an afterthought, but the Story upon which all others rest and from which all other stories flow. Paul emphasized this at the beginning of the Corinthian letter.
"and that He was buried" emphasizes that Jesus' death was real. Atheists theorized that Jesus merely swooned. The Koran denies that Jesus died, but was taken up into heaven. Paul wants to make it clear that Jesus died. He was so dead that He was buried.
Koran 4:157
"...and for boasting, “We killed the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, the messenger of Allah.” But they neither killed nor crucified him—it was only made to appear so.1 Even those who argue for this ?crucifixion? are in doubt. They have no knowledge whatsoever—only making assumptions. They certainly did not kill him."
The popular belief among Muslims is that a conspiracy was made to kill Jesus, Allah made the main culprit who betrayed Jesus look exactly like Jesus, then he was crucified in Jesus’ place. Jesus was raised safe and sound to the heavens. Muslims also believe in the second coming of Jesus (?).
Matthew 27:50
Luke 24:36-43 (NKJV)
Now as they said these things, Jesus Himself stood in the midst of them, and said to them, “Peace to you.” 37 But they were terrified and frightened, and supposed they had seen a spirit. 38 And He said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.” 40 When He had said this, He showed them His hands and His feet. 41 But while they still did not believe for joy, and marveled, He said to them, “Have you any food here?” 42 So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. 43 And He took it and ate in their presence.
5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.
Jesus was seen genuinely and corporally by all of these people, visibly on this side of the grave.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy 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; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. 11 Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.
Paul is not seeking to prove the resurrection of Jesus but to reassert the commonly held Christian belief. He reminds them of the initial message that they had believed. If they defected from this belief or outgrew it then they were going to ultimately be "believing in vain."
We often think of the gospel as something for unbelievers and the duties of discipleship for believers ("The Discipline of Grace," Jerry Bridges, p. 46). Paul emphasizes that the gospel we have received is not only about justification but also about our ongoing sanctification. We should preach the gospel to ourselves every day!
The text sounds like an early Christian creedal formulation.
The word gospel means "good news." The good news is that Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God, God manifest in the flesh lived a sinless life fulfilling all of God's law. He then died for our sins, was buried, and three days later rose from the dead being witnessed by His appearances to the twelve apostles, Paul, and others. The gospel:
Was preached
Was received
Offers stability
Offers salvation
You never outgrow the gospel. The first Christians identified with the gospel by confessing/believing/repenting, being water-baptized in the name of Jesus, and being filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38). This was normative for the first Christians.
