Trinity 11 2019
1 Corinthians 15:1-10
September 1, 2019
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Our Epistle reading for today, 1 Corinthians 15, is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible. Here, St. Paul proclaims the Gospel very clearly, the salvation of pure grace that we have through faith in Jesus Christ crucified, buried, risen, and revealed. This is the message of Christ’s church for the world, the message, as we’ll hear more about next Sunday, that delivers the very saving faith that is needed and required. This is what St. Paul has building up to his entire letter. St. Paul begins his letter by stating, "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). It is by the word of the cross, which is the Gospel, that you owe you present status as Christians. And it is by the same Gospel that your present and future salvation is being secured.
So this is why as a Christian you are to hold fast to that word of the cross. The term “hold fast” has great meaning. Restrain, to hold it back from going away or leaving. To adhere firmly to traditions, convictions, or beliefs. To keep in your memory, to guard, and keep in possession. Paul urges Christians to never let go of the Word of God preached, the Gospel which you have received. To guard it jealously, so that nothing can steal it away.
So, first thing first. The first thing, the thing of first importance is that Jesus died for your sins in accordance with the Scriptures. This lay at the very heart of the Gospel itself, promised long ago after the first sin and throughout history as recorded in the Scriptures. Without the sacrificial death of Jesus, the Son of God, we would still be in our sins. Scripture tells us that without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. It is the blood of Christ, the very blood of God the Son, who through the eternal Spirit of God offered Himself without blemish to God the Father, purifying our conscience from dead works to serve the living God (Heb 9). With your hearts sprinkled clean by Jesus’ Divine blood, your sins are forgiven by His holy sacrifice (Heb 10).
But that’s not all. St. Paul also tells us that Jesus was buried. This may seem like a minor point to many, but it holds great significance. And we confess this every week in either the Apostles’ or Nicene Creed. According to all four Gospel accounts, Christ’s burial underlines the reality of His physical death upon the cross. He really died, became a dead corpse, and His lifeless body was dealt with in the usual way, by burial in a tomb.
Do you remember last week, I mentioned 1 Corinthians 6, where St. Paul states that the body of the believe is a temple of the Holy Spirit and so to be honored as belonging to the Lord? This view of the body as sacred to God – the body that God the Father created, that God the Son redeemed by His blood, and that God the Holy Spirit sanctified to be His temple – and the hope of the future resurrection, is the reason why the usual practice of God’s people in the OT, the NT, the early Church, and the vast majority up of history up until recently has been burial rather than cremation or other destructive ways of disposal of the body. The way we treat the body in life and death gives confession concerning Jesus, His redemption, salvation, and sanctification, and the certainly of our hope in the resurrection. By Christ’s rest in the tomb He sanctifies, He makes holy, the graves of all who believe in Him. We are to honor the body of a believer as belonging to the Lord, as sacred and holy, in life and in death. Your body is not a vessel for the soul, a shell, or like clothing that is to be taken off when it is wore out and old. You are an ensouled body, which is part of why death is so devasting, for it rips in two what God has created to be one.
But God has a solution for that too. Jesus was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. Again, the resurrection is the fulfillment of the Scriptures, not an accident or God’s back up plan if things went south. The resurrection is the very foundation of the Gospel. Paul spends the rest of the chapter defining and declaring what this means for the child of God. The problem for the Corinthians, and for all too many today, is not the future aspect of the resurrection but the notion of the bodily resurrection. Jesus, the Son of God who died and was buried, has been bodily raised, never to die again, and He is the first fruits of all who die in the faith. Upon Jesus’ return, He will change our lowly bodies to be like His glorious body by the power that enables Him to subdue all things to Himself. Jesus’ bodily resurrection promises and ensures our own bodily resurrection to life everlasting.
While some may doubt the reality or the ongoing significance of all this, St. Paul drives home his final point of the importance of this Gospel: that the crucified, buried, and risen Lord has appeared. He appeared not as some sort of ghost, but in the glory of His resurrected body, not just to some, but to many. In Acts 1, St. Luke relates that Jesus “presented Himself alive after His suffering by many convincing proofs, appearing to the them over a period of forty days.” The Church’s faith in Jesus’ resurrection rests on eyewitness testimony. Not just a few or the 12 disciples, but hundreds of people seeing the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes, eating with Him, talking with Him, and seeing Him ascend into heaven.
While the word of Scripture testifies to this truth, it is through faith in Christ that we believe the testimony of Scripture. We believe the Bible is the Word of God because Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. We believe that what Jesus said and did was true and good and beautiful because He died, was buried, and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. We believe that we are saved by this good news and that our sins are taken away because Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. We believe that we too will be bodily resurrected one day from the sleep of our death Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. And this Jesus, who revealed Himself to many, is coming again, when every eye will see and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. He will come not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly awaiting for Him (Heb 9:28).
So hold fast to these things, the things of first importance, the Gospel itself. Don’t let it go, don’t comprise the faith. In everything that you do as a Church, as God’s people, those who have received the preaching of the Gospel, in which you stand and by which you are being saved, in everything you do. keep the main thing the main thing. Of first importance, that Jesus Christ died for your sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He has appeared and is coming again in glory. Come quickly Lord Jesus. Amen.