1C15 Illustration

Published by 1c15 on 12th March 202012th March 2020

“I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.  After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

1 Corinthians gives us the bluntest definition of the Gospel. 

This is the Gospel that saves you, brings you eternal life with God

It was preached to us, it was received by us and it is what makes us.

Without this, your Christian belief doesn’t exist.

What is that belief?

Deity

Jesus claimed to be God and did only things God could do. The assumption behind this paragraph is Jesus Christ walked as God as implicated in his acts to follow 

Death

Jesus died for our Godless nature and everything in history and the scriptures point to this moment where he lived the life we could not so that he could take our place.

Buried

Jesus came as a man, died as a man for us with the weight of sin on his shoulders. He became our perfect advocate by living a perfect and blameless life. In death, he took our place

Resurrection

He rose in hope, a hope we can subscribe to, a reassurance that what Christ did is true, it is binding and it happened. On that final day when God sees us instead he will see Jesus stepping in for us.

Appeared

How can one know the resurrection if they did not see? The apostles proclaimed because they saw, and died for the truth. We may die for our belief of what Peter, John and the disciples saw, but they died for what they actually saw. This hope is based on what is seen, not in what is unseen.