The Resurrection of Christ
1Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. 2By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. 6After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, 8and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
9For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. 11Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.
Dig Deeper
All societies and people groups have a story (metanarrative). More specifically, they have a founding story; a story that tells how they came together and began as a people. It is this story that tells the people who they are, where they are going, and what their purpose is. For the Jews, their story was the events surrounding the Exodus and the entry into the promised land. For Americans, our story is that of the early settlers coming together under the leadership of the Founding Fathers, becoming a nation dedicated to a democratic republican form of government, giving eventual freedom for all. In this chapter, Paul is going to bring together the founding story, the meta-narrative, of the new Christian community.
We have to be clear that resurrection was not a belief in the raising of the spirit, it was the belief that Jesus had died and then had his body transformed into a resurrection body (a new body yet somehow related to his pre-death body; Paul will more fully explain the resurrection body later in the chapter) Paul sees the resurrection of Christ as the very thing that shapes everything else Christians do. It has been just under the surface as the guiding factor in everything he has written. If the issue was sexual immorality, the resurrection said don’t do it, because what you do with your body that will one day be resurrected with Christ, matters. If the issue was communion, the resurrection said that the meal must be done in the proper manner, because it was a taste of the resurrection and the ‘age to come’. If the issue was the use of spiritual gifts, the resurrection said that love was to be the overriding determining factor, because it was the only thing that would last into and would be the language of the ‘age to come’.
Not only is a proper understanding of the resurrection vital to the Christian community because it is the founding story on which all of their beliefs and practices are built, but it was also another area of misunderstanding for those in Corinth. We will find in verse 12 that part of why Paul is writing this section is that the Corinthians were denying the physical resurrection of the dead. At least among some in Corinth, there was a belief in dualism between the spirit and the body. They believed that the spirit was separate from and superior to the body and had, as we’ve seen, behaved in extreme ways to show their spiritual status and freedom and their belief that the spirit could not be denigrated by what the body did.
What Paul presents in this passage today is not new information. He is reminding them of something with which he assumes they are quite familiar because he has already taught them this. This belief in resurrection is among the foundations of the Christian gospel (It would be a mistake to push this idea too far and say that Paul’s summary of the resurrection preaching was the only information necessary for salvation. It is definitely the foundation and is central to the point Paul is currently making, but there is more to the gospel message then just the resurrection.) We should not miss the urgency with which Paul reminds them of this. Apparently, he believes that the message of the gospel that he preached to them must be held to tightly or they are in danger of drifting so far from the truth that they will find themselves clinging to something else (v. 2).
In verses 3 and 4, Paul says that Jesus died and was raised according to the Scriptures. To what Scriptures is he referring? He is not referring to the gospels which probably haven’t been written (or at least not widely circulated) yet. He is also not referring to a few verses pulled out of the Old Testament here and there that have been fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Christ (although there are many). What Paul has in mind is the fact that all of the Old Testament pointed to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. The Old Testament Scriptures were a story without an ending until Christ came. He is the ending that has given the Old Testament meaning and has opened up to the world to continuing story of God bringing a people unto Himself.
What Paul writes down from verses 3b through at least verse 7 appears to have been an early Christian creed with which the Corinthians, and all Christians at the time would have been familiar. This creed can be reasonably dated to within 2-3 years after Jesus’ death and was obviously already well known twenty years after Jesus’ death, when this book was written. In this list of people to whom the risen Christ appeared, Paul singles out Peter, reaffirming his status in the Church, despite his earlier betrayals. He also gives special attention to James the brother of Jesus, an example of one who was not convinced by Jesus’ ministry until he saw the resurrected Christ. Paul also mentions the appearance to all the apostles, a special group that went beyond the twelve. Evidently to be an apostle one had to have seen the risen Christ and be sent as his messenger into the world. Finally Paul mentions himself (this may have been part of the early creed with Paul changing ‘Paul’ to ‘me’.) The word translated ‘abnormally born’ is a violent word that actually means untimely birth as in ‘aborted’ or ‘stillborn’. It underlines the suddenness and radical change that Paul went through in his experience with the risen Christ and subsequent change of direction in life. Paul continued, even twenty years later, to be amazed at his calling and realize that he did not earn or deserve his status as an apostle. It was only the grace of God that allowed him to work for God. He saw working for God, and being able to lay down his life and enter into Christ’s life as a great privilege that was all a result of God’s grace.
The message of the resurrection, Paul reminds them, is the very message that was preached to them, regardless of who preached it. It was the foundation of their faith and belief and the very message that led to their new status in Christ. In fact, the resurrection was so foundational that Paul feels an urgent need to fix the cracks in their understanding of it before the whole building of their faith tumbles to the ground. That is what he will now turn to.
Devotional Thought
The message of the resurrection is so powerful because Christianity isn’t just a set of beliefs or doctrines. It is a way of life based on the fact that a powerful new way to live had broken into the world through Jesus’ defeat of death. Do you live that way? Do you boldly announce this message without fear?
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