THE FOUNDATIONAL TRUTH OF THE GOSPEL

INTRODUCTION

-Our world is plunged into chaos. Violence and injustice. Moral disasters and natural disasters. Supposed Christian leaders fall in disgrace. The news everyday feeds us their headlines, but unfortunately neither side of the ideological perspective gives the news without their particular spin on it.

-It is a sad day when we can’t even trust the news that we are given. Even more unfortunate is that most people (again, on both sides of the ideological spectrum) only seek out and consume the news that fit their own agenda and narrative instead of seeking news that just gives the truth as it actually is in reality.

~And if you are sitting there thinking that I am not describing you and me, then we are blind to our own prejudices.

-What if there was news that had no care for politics or social agendas or movements. What if there was news that told reality as it is, and didn’t care what other people think, and at the same time offered the only cure to all the world’s problems. I think we would all go for that. And not just would we accept it, we would share it with others so their eyes could be open to the truth as well.

-We Christians have been entrusted with the Best News that there could ever be. Sure, in order to accept the Best News you have to also acquiesce to the bad news. But the bad news speaks truth, and then the Best News there is speaks an even more powerful truth.

-The bad news is that all humans are sinners in a sinful world that is cursed by God, and God’s judgment falls on the guilty, who is all of us.

~The best news there is can only be found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the gospel is the foundational truth of all of reality. And the gospel alone gives the answer to all of our world’s problems and ills.

-You see, when the gospel news is accepted, then human dignity is upheld regardless of race, color, or gender because all humans are viewed as made in the image of God.

~When the gospel news is accepted, it is known that God will bring the ultimate justice on humanity in the end.

~When the gospel news is accepted, hope is found in the future, eternal state of believers, not resting in a world that is itself awaiting redemption.

-The gospel is the foundational truth and is the only news that gives us something to stand on for our future hope and peace.

~In the passage we are looking at, Paul shared with the Corinthians the foundational truth of the gospel that alone has the power to change lives and give hope and peace for the future. Let’s look at this foundational truth.

1 Corinthians 15:1–8 ESV

1 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.

-I want to speak of four areas that demonstrate why the gospel is the foundational truth that we need in any day and age:

1) The tradition of the gospel

-You will notice in v. 1 that Paul reminded them that he preached the gospel to them. In v. 3 he calls the gospel as that which is of first importance (not second, but first).But he also says in v. 3 that this gospel of first importance was what he received.

-Paul is establishing the authority of the message. The gospel is not something that Paul made up on a whim; and what he preached and shared with the Corinthians was not a myth or fairy tale.

-Paul is saying that he was given this body of faith that he was to then hand down to others, who would then hand it down to others, and it is the same body of faith that we have today nearly 2000 years later.

~According to the book of Acts and Paul’s epistle to the Galatians, Paul received this body of faith (tradition) from Jesus Christ Himself, and he then checked with the 12 apostles to make sure that what he was preaching was the truth.

-So, Paul is saying that the gospel message that he preached and handed down is authoritative because it was the faith tradition given to Him by Jesus, affirmed by the apostles, and attested to by signs and wonders. And now it is preserved for us in Scripture.

-Often, we give negative connotations to the word tradition because it refers to manmade traditions and / or they are old ways that no longer work anymore. But the gospel as the body of faith for all believers comes directly from God and is eternal—it is a tradition that never changes.

-Therefore, since given by God Himself, we are to believe it, live it, share it, and allow it to flow through us unto others.

~This is the only foundation that we have that is truthful and authoritative. Therefore, if you say that we ought to do this or that, or you say we need to teach this or that, I will ask you where is that in Scripture? How does that fit with the gospel? It is only the gospel that is handed down to us, not our own opinions.

-And we are called to hand this tradition down to others by first sharing the gospel and seeing people saved, but then discipling believers to know and share it with still other people to keep the cycle going.

~Imagine at your job your boss teaches you every aspect of the company, and he tells you to then teach it to the other people that you manage. If you do not hand down this important information and something happens to you, the whole company would come to a halt because you did not hand it down to others.

~So, we are to keep the body of faith going. It is said that we are merely one generation away from the faith being lost. How important to share

2) The effect of the gospel

-In v. 2 Paul says that this gospel is BY WHICH YOU ARE BEING SAVED. That might sound strange to our ears. We are used to talking about salvation as a past-tense experience of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ by which all your sins are forgiven and you are given a right standing before God and have the hope of heaven.

~By that understanding and definition, you are either saved or you’re not.

-But the gospel is much more than fire insurance. It is our life and our hope. It is said that biblical salvation as brought about by the gospel may be understood in three ways:

a) Past tense (justification) as I described earlier. You were lost and separated from God, but you heard the gospel and responded by faith and repentance and now in Jesus Christ you are considered perfect and holy in your standing before God

b) Present tense (sanctification) which is the gospel working in your life now to make you more like Christ. You don’t become sinless, but over time (with Holy Spirit empowerment and maturity) you sin less. You begin to take on the mind of Christ and you make decisions in life based on a Christian worldview.

c) Future tense (glorification) where you will be taken out of this world and given a new body and a new nature and will be in God’s presence forever and sin won’t ever be a problem because you will no longer have sin in your body, and in God’s presence no sin is allowed.

-And Paul here looks forward to that future tense, because later in the chapter he talks about the future resurrection of believers.

~So, if I were to rephrase Paul here, by the gospel you are saved (past tense) and while living on this earth the gospel saves you from the dominion of sin (present tense) until that day where the gospel will usher you into the very presence of God for all eternity (future tense) which gives you hope—looking forward…

~And so, the very real effect of the gospel is that you are being saved

-This effect is very important, because it is only through the gospel doing the saving that anything on earth changes (as much as eternal destinies change).

~Do you think the white supremacist will stop being racist just because you say racism is a bad thing? That will never happen, all they’d do is dig in their heels and become more hardened. It is only when they saved by the gospel that their hard hearts are softened, and they are changed.

~Do you think that telling sick or dying people that things will only get better will make it so? No, it is only when they can rest in the gospel, knowing they are being saved for something more glorious, that they are at peace.

-But Paul gives a warning here—this is true of you IF YOU HOLD FAST THE GOSPEL, UNLESS YOU BELIEVED IN VAIN

~Here Paul gives a call to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. This work of the gospel is true for you only if you have truly believed and are being saved and it is made evident by spiritual fruit that you bear and if you remain in the faith.

~This is not a warning against losing salvation, but that you never had it to begin with. You did the church thing and the moral thing, but you have never believed the gospel. You walk away from biblical authority and have no qualms about that, you were never saved.

-It has happened so much in the past year that big-name Christians walk away from the faith, and it gets people wondering, are they saved and backsliding, or what? The apostle John gives the answer (which many of us might not like):

1 John 2:19 (ESV)

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.

-The effect of the gospel is salvation (past, present, and future) but you know if someone has received that effect when they remain in the faith (when they remain faithful to the gospel, when they continuously believe the body of faith tradition handed down to us)

3) The substance of the gospel

-In vv. 3-4 Paul succinctly gives us the gospel message—it all centers on Jesus Christ. I’ve said it a million times before, and I will say it again today==the gospel is not centered on us. It is not about us. It has nothing to do with us. We are merely the beneficiaries of Christ’s work.

-First, he mentions that the gospel tells us that Christ died for our sins. People die all the time. Why was this death so important?

~Jesus, being God the Son, willingly left the glories of heaven to take on humanity so that He could take upon Himself the eternal, just wrath of God that we deserved because of our sins. He was the sacrifice that satisfied divine justice.

-The Bible uses a fancy term called PROPITIATION. So, we are told:

1 John 2:2 (ESV)

2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

-Wayne Grudem defines it:

A sacrifice that bears God’s wrath to the end and in so doing changes God’s wrath toward us into favor.

~It sounds abhorrent, but God’s holiness and justice is very serious. Sin had to be punished in some way. So, it either falls on the one who committed the sin, or it falls on someone who took their place.

-And so, by saying Jesus died for sins, Paul says that Jesus is this propitiation. And he introduces us to the important doctrine of substitutionary atonement. That sounds like a deep, theological concept but it is very important for us to hear. Professor Tom Schreiner defines it this way:

The penal substitutionary view of the atonement holds that the most fundamental event of the atonement is that Jesus Christ took the full punishment that we deserved for our sins as a substitute in our place, and that all other benefits or results of the atonement find their anchor in this truth.

-Paul then mentions that Jesus was buried. That seems like a minor detail in comparison to everything else, but he states it to further emphasize that Jesus did actually die. He didn’t just swoon or pass out. He didn’t just walk off of the cross. Jesus literally died and was placed in an actual tomb because He was dead.

~If Jesus didn’t die, there is no payment for sins. No payment for sins, we are still lost.

-But then, praise God, Jesus rose again on the third day. Paul will later say that this demonstrates that Jesus now has the keys to death, meaning that He has conquered death and is in control of death and will bring physical death to an end someday. Therefore, it also demonstrates that Jesus’ death was sufficient—nothing more is needed or can be added.

~The resurrection also proves that Jesus is who claimed to be—the Son of God, Messiah…

~The resurrection also tells us that all of Jesus’ words and promises are trustworthy.

-This message is what will bring peace and unity to the world because it is the only message that brings us peace and unity with God. Through anything else we end up fighting against God, not working with Him.

4) The proof of the gospel

-Why can we rely on the gospel? How can we know that it is foundational truth for us to live by? Paul offers two evidences:

a) Fulfilled prophecy:

Paul says in v. 4 that everything accomplished by Christ for the gospel was all according to what we call the Old Testament Scriptures. The gospel was prophesied hundreds of years before it came to pass. This particular apologetic evidence is of utmost importance. As one Christian scholar wrote:

The first Christian apologists deemed fulfilled prophecy the main evidence for the Faith. Similarly today the apologetic argument from external evidence turns to the Bible, maintaining that the Scriptures present as foremost the proof from prophecy. The appeal of God Himself to fulfilled prediction is to be found throughout the Bible. … Detailed prediction, then, is the mode chosen by the Lord God to make plain to man the fact that He has spoken.

-The substitutionary atonement of which I spoke was predicted 700 or so years beforehand:

Isaiah 53:5 (ESV)

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

~And the resurrection was prophesied:

Psalm 16:10 (ESV)

10 For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, or let your holy one see corruption.

b) Eyewitness corroboration:

-The gospel events were not done in secret or in a vacuum. They were public, out in the open for anyone to witness.

~Paul specifically mentions eyewitness testimony to the resurrection of Christ. There were hundreds of people that saw Jesus alive after He died. He was really dead, and He really came back to life again.

~The gospel of Jesus Christ, therefore, is foundational truth and has evidences that demonstrate it as such. Therefore, it is worthy of belief and it is worthy to share.

Conclusion

-Finding any truth in the news has really fallen on hard times in our day and age. It’s almost like every day is April Fool’s day. It’s getting harder to tell the supposedly real news outlets from the satirical news outlets like the Babylon Bee or the Onion.

-No joke, CNN had a reporter in Kenosha Wisconsin covering the violence there, and the title on the screen said FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS IN KENOSHA, while their reporter stood in front of burning buildings and mass chaos.

~Oh, the irony of it all…

-But we have the true news. People commit racist injustice because of sin. People riot and commit acts of violence because of sin. People spend their time in worry and fret because of sin. The world is full of viruses and hurricanes because man introduced sin into the world.

~But thankfully the news doesn’t end there, we have a Christ who redeemed us, this world…

-Christian, live in truth, share the truth…

-If you have never believed…