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In order to discover
what the gospel is, we need to look at 1 Corinthians 15.
“Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I
preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand.” (1 Cor. 15:1)
The word gospel is the Greek word “evangelion.” It means “good news.” What makes the good news good is that
the bad news is real bad. The
bad news is that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. But the good news is what we are
going to see right here.
Notice the article – “the” gospel. There is only one gospel. The gospel is not one among many.
Paul is saying, “At a point in time I preached the gospel to
you, and you received the gospel.
You made a choice. You
appropriated the gospel in which you stand. You have taken a stand for the gospel.”
“By which also you are saved, if you hold
fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.”
(1 Cor. 15:2)
How are people saved? They are saved when they hear the
gospel, they understand the gospel and they believe. You hear the facts of the gospel; you
believe those facts to be true; and you trust the Lord Jesus Christ as your
Savior. That’s how you are
saved.
“If you hold fast that word which I preached to you” is
a third class conditional clause.
You might tell your children, “We are going swimming today if
you are good.” What that means
to them is we are probably not going swimming today. That is an “if” clause. That brings a doubt into the
situation. Paul says, “If you
hold fast that word which I preached to you,” meaning maybe you will and
maybe you won’t.
It is not Paul’s heart to plunge this church into
confusion, so he makes clear what he means when he says, “unless you have
believed in vain.” The word believe
here is “to trust, to depend upon.”
It is like walking out on a bridge. I remember bird hunting one year with
Jim Hancock. The birds were
pointing across the creek. The
bridge looked pretty dilapidated, but I have never been one to wait very long
on a pointed bird dog, so I asked Jim, “Hey, Jim, do you think it will hold
me up?”
He said, “I’m not sure preacher, it looks pretty
rotten.” But I had to try it, so
I stepped out on the bridge.
About that time I heard a crack and I stepped back as the whole thing
collapsed. It was a weak
bridge. It didn’t make any
difference how much faith I had in that bridge. I could have had a lot of faith in that weak bridge and I would
have gotten wet. But if that
bridge was a strong bridge, I could have had a weak faith and still have
gotten across the bridge.
The word faith here, to believe, to trust in
vain is to put your confidence in a weak bridge. Your faith is empty if you are putting your faith in the
wrong object, a weak object.
A man was in tremendous debt. A friend came along and said, “I will pay his debt in
full.” But what if the friend,
with great intentions, had gone through several bankruptcies. He really didn’t have a lot of
money. You wouldn’t have a lot
of confidence in his ability to pay the debt, would you? But what if the man was extremely
wealthy, maybe he was a millionaire.
That would be grace. That
man’s faith would be in a strong object.
We put our faith in a very strong object. The whole essence of the gospel is
that which we put our faith in.
Paul continues in verse 3:
“For I delivered to you first of all that
which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according
to the Scriptures. And He was buried, and that
He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.” (1 Cor.
15:3-4)
Paul is not giving the Corinthians something he has not
received himself. He has placed
his faith in Jesus Christ.
“But I make known to you, brethren, that the
gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received it from man, nor was I
taught it, but it came through the revelation of Jesus
Christ.” (Gal. 1:11-12)
Paul
received the gospel through the lips of Jesus Christ. He did not get it from another
man. He received it himself and
is now proclaiming it to the Corinthians.
There
are 3 fundamental facts of the gospel that we need to understand:
·
Christ
·
Died for our sins
·
Rose again
Christ
is not the Lord’s personal name.
Christ is His office. He is Jesus the Christ. It is like he is George Bush, the
President. President is not his
name; it is his office. The
Christ means the Anointed One, the Messiah. This is the first pillar of the gospel. It makes all the difference in the
world who died for our sin. He
is not just an ordinary man. The
value of the gospel is based upon the identity of the One who died.
So
who is the Christ and what does the term “the Christ” mean? He
is God! That is the first
aspect. He is undiminished
deity. He is equal with God. “I
and my father are one.” He is
eternal with God. “Before
Abraham came to be, I existed.”
He is the creator. He is
the one who made us. Our great
creator became our redeemer.
That’s an amazing thing, isn’t it? The one who made us died for us. “For by Him all things
were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were
created through Him and for Him.” (Col. 1:16)
But
he is also fully man. He became
a human being. It was God the
Father who pronounced that all have sinned and come short of the glory of
God. It was also God who said
that the wages of sin is death.
But God also determined that He would pay the debt Himself. But He had a problem. God is eternal life, and eternal life
cannot die.
The
Bible says that God exists from everlasting to everlasting. There never was a time when God did
not exist. He had no beginning;
he’ll have no end. But how could
God who is eternal life die to pay for our sin. He could do it because of the greatest transformation in
human history. God became a man,
and He came into the world that first Christmas morning, born of the virgin
Mary – the God-Man.
He
was fully Man. He grew tired,
and weak, and hungry and thirsty.
When he took in calories he gained weight. When he lost calories, he lost weight. He was fully God, but fully Man in
one person – the God-Man! He
wasn’t part God and part man. He
was 100% God, 100% Man, in one body.
Is that not amazing? He
was the Christ. That’s his
office. He became the Mediator
between God and Man.
Job
said, “I can’t talk to God. I am
just a man. I am sinful. How can a sinful man talk to a holy
God. Oh that there could be a
go-between – someone man enough to be man but God enough to be God so that we
can communicate with one another.”
Here comes Jesus Christ.
He became the mediator.
He’s God enough to talk to God.
He is also man enough to understand us, to understand who we are. He is the only one in human history
who can bring God and Man together.
He is the perfect mediator.
I have never gotten over that!
I
want to say, “God you’re the genius.”
And He is the genius. He
made it happen so that I, a sinful human being, could know him. How? Through Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (Jn.
14:6). That is all involved in
that term “the Christ.”
The
second plank of the gospel is that Christ died for our sins. That is beautiful to me. When Jesus died on the cross, He paid
for all sins – the sins we committed in the past, the sins we commit in the
present and those we are going to commit in the future. He paid it all. He died once for all. He had no sin. He did not die for his sin because he
had none. When He hung there, He
died in my place.
I
came into this world physically alive but dead spiritually. I needed someone to die for me. When Jesus hung on the cross, He
cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” God the Father turned His back on God the Son. God the Father separated Himself from
God the Son. Jesus died
spiritually. He took my sin upon
Himself and paid the price. Is
that not precious? He died for
me. Some things were going on
beyond our human knowledge.
Jesus Christ actually took His blood into the presence of God the
Father and offered His blood to the Father as a propitiation, a satisfactory
payment for all my sin. He died
there once for all.
According
to the scriptures – this was all in the mind of God. It was in his divine plan.
Then
scripture says that He was buried. Why in the world would Paul write
that? He wanted us living
centuries later to understand that He really died. You don’t go around burying live people, do you? People there attested to the fact
that He died. They buried
Him.
I
remember when I was in college,
a book came out called “The Passover Plot.” The essence of the book is that Jesus didn’t really die. He swooned and in the coolness of the
tomb He revived and came back and made everybody believe that He was
resurrected. No, he died! And he was buried to show all the doubting
Thomases that He was really dead.
He
rose again the third day. Rose
again is in the perfect tense in the Greek. The perfect tense emphasizes a past action with continuing
results. He rose again to die no
more. He came out of that
tomb! When He did so, it reveals
to us that He had really paid our sin debt and the Father was satisfied with
His payment. We too are going to
come back from the dead, experience the resurrection. Why? Because He did.
We
have a strong object for our faith.
One that will hold up through the centuries. We haven’t followed cunningly devised fables. We haven’t believed in myths. We don’t hear voices and see
visions. We have a confident
faith in a very strong Savior. We
have a strong bridge. The
Christ, the God-Man died for sin and then He rose from the dead.
Then notice that it says here, “He was seen by
Cephas, then by the twelve. 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. After that He was seen by James, then by all the
apostles. Then last of all He was seen by
me also, as by one born out of due time” (1 Cor. 15:5-8).
Why all of the sightings? The overwhelming evidence of those who saw Him alive is
proof that He came back from the dead.
So the three pillars that hold up the gospel are
1. The
Christ – that gives us His identity
2. Died
for our sins
3. Rose
again the third day
That is the gospel. That is the truth!
It is that in which we place our faith to be saved. We trust in Him. How do you believe
in Him? You trust Him. It is not hard.
I heard all my life that if you are going to be saved,
you have to turn from all your sins.
I tried that a few times.
Nothing happened. You
have to reform your life. I tried
that. Nothing happened. You have to join a church, walk an
aisle. Give this up, that up,
turn over a new leaf. None of it
worked. That’s not the
gospel.
There is only one gospel. The Christ died for sin and rose again. The moment I trusted Christ, simply
believed that when Jesus Christ died on the cross, he died for me, I was born
again. I didn’t trust the
church. I didn’t trust the
preacher. I trusted Jesus Christ
and Him alone. He saved me. That is the foundation of the book of
Romans.
Let me ask you a question. Have you trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior?
I grew up in the projects in Baytown, TX. I would drift down into Pelly on my
bicycle. Mom used to call
me. She would embarrass me to
death. She’d say, “DICKIE!” She’d shake the rafters. She didn’t have to do that, but I’d
come home because I knew supper was ready. I believed her.
When I heard her, I came home.
That’s faith.
The Bible presents Jesus Christ as a shepherd who calls
sheep. He says this, “My
sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall
never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand” (John
10:27-28).
I know many of you have been called. You lie there in bed at night and you
think, “There has got to be something to this gospel thing, this church
thing.” You have heard the voice
of the shepherd calling you to Himself. Have you trusted Him? I did not ask you if you have joined
the church, been baptized, turned from sin, reformed your life, sing in the
choir. That has nothing to do
with the gospel. Have you
trusted Him, made it personal?
“For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
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