Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 2023

1 Corinthians 15:1-10

August 20, 2023

+INJ+

What a mess! This congregation is divided. The congregation is divided about which pastor is better. There’s a deeply judgmental spirit. Some even boast about their sin!

This congregation has serious problems with sexual immorality. Some people give nothing, while others give begrudgingly. Some of the women don’t dress modestly.

In this congregation the Lord’s Supper is a serious problem. There are factions. How can Christians eat the same supper when there are divisions? People are rude, they don’t bear with one another, they keep a record of wrongs. There are many words spoken, but few are said to build others up.

What a mess this congregation is in! I’m talking, of course, about the church in Corinth. We heard part of Paul’s first letter to them this morning.

But in truth, it describes many congregations. Maybe even, in some ways, ours.

But despite all of these problems, and others I didn’t mention, Paul addresses them as saints, as holy ones. He begins the epistle like this: “to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all who in every place call on the name of Jesus Christ our Lord… Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” [1 Cor. 1.2f].

They are sanctified, made holy by the washing of water with the Word. Despite their divisions, their judgmentalism, their immodesty, their stinginess, he reminds them that God has called them to be saints. So are you. You are holy ones. You are saints.

You don’t become a saint from within yourself. It comes from the outside. Look how God’s Word describes the Gospel at the beginning of today’s epistle lesson: The Gospel is something you received. That’s passive. And you stand on it, not your own works or efforts.

Then notice how the passive language continues: the gospel “by which you are being saved.” This is called a passive present – it’s being done to you, and it’s ongoing. You are being saved, but it’s not done yet. Let’s say you needed to go to the airport, so you summoned an Uber. Once you’re in the car, you wouldn’t text someone saying, “I’m at the airport,” but, “I’m on my way to the airport.” It’s in progress. But it’s not yet completed. Various things could happen. You could panic and jump out of the car.

Paul says that the power of the Gospel is the thing “by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the Word.” Don’t jump out. Don’t panic if the traffic gets rough. Don’t panic if the driver gets gruff. Hang on.

Well, this is more than an Uber. If you miss your flight, there’s another one. But if you miss out on Christ, you lose everything. Hold fast to the Word! Hold fast to the Gospel! It’s the one thing that matters. It’s the power of salvation.

The right doctrine of Christ is the most important thing in the whole world. St. Paul calls it the “first importance”:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

You can see the Apostles’ Creed taking shape there. We recite the creeds because they tell us the major points of the Christian faith, along with the Ten Commandments and the Our Father. It’s all important, but here Paul tells us the critical, number one thing: the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Now what does this mean, that “Christ died for our sins”? In English, it could just mean, “He suffered for my mistake.” But the words that Paul uses carry much more weight. It’s not coincidental, but Paul is telling us the death of Jesus has a purpose. Here are three better ways to put it: “Christ died in order to atone for the sins”; or, “Christ died to remove them”; or here’s how my teacher, Gregory Lockwood, put it in his commentary on 1 Corinthians: “Christ died for taking away our sins.” That’s the purpose of Jesus’ death: to take away our sins.

Paul then reminds us that this is what the Scriptures—and for him, that meant the Hebrew Bible, what we call the Old Testament—this is what the Scripture said the Messiah would do. E.g., Is. 53[:4-6, 12b]:

Surely He has borne our griefs
And carried our sorrows;
Yet we esteemed Him stricken,
Smitten by God, and afflicted.
But He was wounded for our transgressions,
He was bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all….

He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

Jesus died, and He was buried, Paul says in his summary of the most important things. Those are simple statements of past action. It was done in the past and completed. We speak this way all the time. I went to the grocery store, I bought the groceries, I went home and put them away. I’m not still at the store, I’m not still putting away the groceries, it’s done. That’s the way Paul speaks about the death and burial of Jesus. He died (in the past; that’s completed); He was buried (in the past; that’s completed); and then! - there’s a radical shift in the next verb that the ESV just doesn’t bother with. It’s a perfect passive, which means something that happened in the past that is still going on. The grammatical way to describe the perfect is a present state resulting from a past action. To go back to the grocery store example, if I used the perfect, I’d say I went to the grocery store and I’m still there; I live there now.

Why is this important? Paul is saying there is something really important about Christ that is different from His death and burial. Those were things in the past done and completed. But now there is a past action that endures into the present. That’s His resurrection. Christ died; He was buried; but now, He has been raised and continues to be. That’s why on Easter we don’t say, “Christ was raised,” but “Christ is risen” – He continues to be.

Paul reminds us that lots of people saw the risen Jesus. Cephas (Peter); the twelve Apostles; over 500 disciples; James, the half-brother of Jesus; and finally Paul, who was persecuting the Church. “The church’s faith in Christ’s resurrection rests on eyewitness testimony” [Lockwood].

The rest of chapter 15 is about why that past action continuing into the present matters to you. St. Paul affirms the reality of Christ’s resurrection. He then asserts it is the beginning of what will be for you, you saints, you holy ones joined to Christ. “Behold, I tell you a mystery…. The trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed…. Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’” Now we experience corruption: a corrupt government; people who lie and betray us; bodies that grow old and weak. No matter! Christ is risen, and His reality shall become ours.

Now, we are called, on the one hand, to live as saints, to lead holy lives according to God’s Word, and on the other hand to live in perpetual repentance, saying with the tax collector in today’s parable, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” +INJ+