1 Corinthians 15:3-4
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
Last week I published a post on Ephesians 2:1-2. In that post I mentioned that there are three levels to a Christian's saving faith. There is notitia (the facts) assensus (what is said) and fiducia (our certainty). In my post on Ephesians 2:1-2 I addressed the notitia (the facts that shape our faith) are that we are dead without Christ, because we are sinners who are born into sin. With this alone it would seem that we as believers don't have anything good worth proclaiming; certainly not anything we can call good news (What's so good about being dead?). Nevertheless the foundation of our saving faith does not end with simply the background information behind it, and in fact we as believers do have something good to proclaim to the whole world. Something radical happened in history that has permanently changed how we perceive the facts surrounding our faith. It has even changed how we perceive life and the after-life. It is this radical histrorical event that we proclaim and call the Gospel (good news for everyone).
One place we see this good news written in the Bible, is in Paul's letter to the church in Corinth. Though this is not the first time we see this good news written in the New Testament, this particular set of verses from 1 Corinthians is regarded as a primary basis for all Christian religions and denominantions. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 is regarded as a Creed (A creed is defined as a formal statement of Christian beliefs, especially the Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed). It is highly likely that this section from 1 Corinthians was in fact the first written Creed of the Christian faith. In Lee Strobel's famous book The Case for Christ, Strobel writes from his interview with New Testament Scholar Craig L. Blomberg PH.D. that this section from 1 Corinthians 15 was "perhaps the most important creed in terms of the historical Jesus...Paul uses technical language to indicate he was passing on this oral tradition [of preaching the Gospel] in relatively fixed form [the written form]" (35). It is estimated that this Creed was written down in 32 A.D. (two years after the death of Jesus Christ). Paul himself stresses the importance of this single Creed. Before he writes it he states to his readers, "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" (1 Corinthians 15:1-2). Paul even addresses this Creed as a matter of "first importance" (1 Corinthians 15:3). If what we believe and profess about Christ contradicts what is found in this Creed, then our faith is not saving faith. If we do not believe what is written about Christ in this Creed, then our self proclamation (what we tell ourselves we believe) does not come from saving faith. Only assensus (the proclamation of the Gospel) that is founded upon what Paul has written here will save.
The assensus (the proclamation of faith) Paul states in this set of verses is simply this (as a paraphrase): Jesus died for our sins according to what is written in the Old Testament and He rose again three days after His death. To the firm believer who has read and heard all of this before, Paul's statement can appear to be classic and rather obvious (One might think, "Of course Jesus died and rose again. Duh."). To the unbeliever, though, this simple statement, this Creed, has profound temporal and eternal implications.
To say that a living human being died and came back to life is miraculous! (How many people do you know who have done that on Earth?) How beautiful is it to know that our deaths on Earth don't have to be the end of our lives, opening the possibility of an after-life beyond our imaginations. Another piece of life giving bread someone can receive from this Creed is that Jesus died for our sins (for all the wrong we have done, did and will do). He did not die for no reason or for Himself only (certainly His death and resurrection has brought Him eternal glory for His namesake), but He died for our sake. He sacrificed His life, something few people are willing to do, for people who are sinners like me and you and everyone you meet. Who can read that and not be moved by how much Jesus cares for those who He hasn't even physically met? One last big nugget of truth from this Creed is that Jesus' death and resurrection happened according to the Scriptures. This tells us that not only do we have the ability to read about all of this wonderful amazing stuff that was written down in the Old Testament, but we can also trust that the writings of the Old Testament are reliable. We can know this, because there are prophecies written within the Old Testament that have been fulifilled (Jesus the Messiah came, died for our sins and rose again, as the prophets proclaimed). How wonderful it is to know that we have access to information about God Himself through the Scriptures, and that this information we have is reliable and trustworthy. All three of these glorious implications are within this one set of verses. This Creed is profound truth that we must proclaim to as many as possible, because it is such good news.
Jesus died for our sins, and He is alive again and we can read all about it! This is the Gospel! This is the assensus (the proclamation) of our saving faith. Next week I will conclude this series of posts on the three levels of our saving faith, by addressing what is the fiducia of our saving faith (What is the certainty behind our saving faith, and how certain should we be of our faith?).
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