What’s important to you? Most probably loved ones is one of the responses. Nothing wrong with that. But for our Christian message Paul in his defense of the resurrection writes what appears to be an early form of a creed. A creed is a formal statement of belief (like the Nicene Creed in yesterday’s devotion) and it looks like this:-
“For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15 v 3-4)
Here are 5 parts of what is of first importance to the Christian faith.
- Christ died for our sins.
Jesus died on that cross. He was not resuscitated later. He did not faint. The suggestion that the Roman soldiers had somehow crucified the wrong man is ludicrous. The Chief Priests and the Pharisees slandering Jesus on the cross knew it was Jesus. The soldiers who crucified Jesus were experts in the cruel art of crucifixion. Historians concede the truth that crucifixion was the death sentence, no on survived. In fact many died under the Roman flogging. Prior to the cross Jesus had suffered haematidrosis where in the extreme stress that he was under in the Garden of Gethsemane he sweated blood. Jesus was giving out large amounts of blood from the flogging and then he was nailed to the cross. If Jesus had come down from the cross and recovered later, what kind of condition would he have been in to inspire and motivate his followers to lay their own lives down for a lie that he had been raised?
Jesus died on that cross. But He did so for our sins. There was a purpose. Many honourable people have died horrendous deaths over history but the death of Jesus was different for it was a redemptive, substitutionary, dying in our place and bearing the penalty of our sins, death. This was not a martyr’s death dying for a cause. It was a death for our sins. But it was a death nevertheless. There can be no resurrection without a death.
2. Christ was buried
This is as important as His death. Dead people are buried, not alive ones. Everyone thought it was over. The resurrection of Christ was a resurrection from the dead. Joseph and Nicodemus prepared His body and laid Him in a new tomb. The burial is equally as important as every other aspect of the creed. Instead of great applause He was buried in a grave. This was a moment of humiliation. There can be no resurrection without a burial.
3. Christ was raised on the third day (the tomb became empty).
In Acts 2:24 Peter preaches, “God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” If there was no empty tomb then don’t talk about it in the very city where the tomb was and where people would know if Peter was just making it up. Don’t begin the church there.
Also, if the gospel writers were wanting to make up the resurrection story then they would not have used women as the first eye-witnesses to the empty tomb. Women at the time could not testify in a court of law. Using women like they did would just not have been credible. They would have written that Peter or the other men got there first not the women.
Jesus had said he would rise after 3 days (not in some general end of the world resurrection) and it was the 3rd day. He didn’t stay dead!
4. According to the Scriptures
This is so important to Paul he repeats it twice. He wants us to know that this event was in the mind of God and for thousands of years prophesied in Scripture, in places like Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 for His death and for His resurrection in places like Jonah 1:17 and in Matthew 12:40 where Jesus says, “as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” There are other Scriptures like Psalm 16:10, “because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay”. What the Scriptures prophesied and what Jesus said about His death and resurrection, Paul preached.
5. The Creed
I left the first part of what Paul said to the last but it is still part of the evidence of the resurrection. “I received what I passed on to you.”
Paul got the gospel from the risen Messiah, Jesus Christ, it was this visitation that verified his apostleship. (I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ. Galatians 1:11-12) He then went immediately into Arabia. The date was approximately AD33. After 3 years he went to Jerusalem to stay with Peter and James, Galatians 1:17-20. Why? He wasn’t sent for. He went on his own volition. Paul was hearing Peter’s story and all that he had seen and heard from Jesus. He also heard from James. Paul was sharing his own story too. This was not a new Christian-Paul. He was 3 years a follower of Jesus. He was not learning the gospel. He already had it. But Paul was certainly learning this creed:
Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures
he was buried,
he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
This letter was written around AD55. That’s only 25 years after the event of the death and the resurrection of Christ. The creed was around in oral tradition for 20 years before he wrote it. If this creed and this event is a legend then it would be the first ever legend to emerge in such a short space of time ever in history.
This is of first importance and it is evidence for the Resurrection of Christ. But there’s more!
Missions Paul 