Day 8 — The Starting Point: Who Jesus Is, and What He Has Done

Today’s Passage: 1 Corinthians 15:1-8

Paul writes to a group of believers in Corinth, a major Greek port city. He pens this letter about twenty-five years after the crucifixion we examined on Day 6. Paul founded this church. He knows these men and women. They have fallen into arguments, and near the end of his letter, he halts the debate and takes them back to the foundation. He reminds them of the first facts he delivered when he arrived. He makes sure they know he received this material from others before handing it over to them. Verses 3 through 5 form a tight, structured creed. Men and women committed these lines to memory and recited them aloud, meaning this statement circulated long before Paul set it down on parchment. Then he lists the individuals who saw Jesus alive. The Christian message began as a report of a historical event, carried by individuals who saw it happen with their own eyes.

1 Corinthians 15:1-2 (BSB)

¹ Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, and in which you stand firm. ² By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.

Gospel translates to news. News is factual or false. Advice holds value even if it lacks historical truth. A philosophy gives you something to consider regardless of its origin. News requires an event. Either a man walked out of a stone tomb in Judea, or he rotted there.

Then Paul delivers a heavy condition. If you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. Paul addresses a specific problem here. A person can hear a message, nod at the concepts, enjoy the community, and remain completely unchanged. That kind of faith vanishes because it lacked substance from the start. He states the facts about shallow agreement. A person easily confuses liking an idea with staking their life on a truth.

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 (BSB)

³ 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,

As of first importance. Out of every topic Paul could address, he places this at the front.

He lays out four distinct claims without adding philosophical arguments. He died. He died for our sins. He was buried. He was raised on the third day. Twice he roots these events according to the Scriptures. The ancient texts predicted these events. God bolted no surprise ending onto a tragedy, and anyone could unroll the scrolls and check the references.

A death is a biological fact. The phrase for our sins applies the work of that death to you. Paul states that this death removed the barrier standing between a human being and God.

Right in the middle, Paul states He was buried. Burial requires a physical body. It anchors a claim to a specific plot of dirt and a literal day of the week. Men carried a corpse to a tomb. They laid it inside. Other people watched them do it.

1 Corinthians 15:5-7 (BSB)

⁵ and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve. ⁶ After that, He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷ Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Paul lists the names in the chronological order of the appearances. He starts with Cephas.

Verse 6 counts the witnesses. More than five hundred saw Jesus at the same time. Paul tracks their mortality. He knows how many of them have died, using the phrase fallen asleep to describe their passing. A mythmaker ignores the breathing status of his eyewitnesses.

That sentence hit the Corinthian church with force. Ships sailed east from Corinth continually. When Paul tells men who can buy a boat ticket that most of whom are still living, he issues a challenge. Go book a passage. Go ask them yourself. Paul sets the evidence on the table. Anyone who wants to test it can pick it up and examine it.

James appears on this list. He grew up under the same roof as Jesus. He rejected his brother’s claims. Yet here Paul lists him among the men who saw Jesus alive after the crucifixion. Paul records the name and leaves the bare fact to speak for itself.

1 Corinthians 15:8 (BSB)

⁸ And last of all He appeared to me also, as to one of untimely birth.

One of untimely birth serves as a harsh self-assessment. It describes a miscarriage or a birth that goes horribly wrong. A man assigns this label to himself only to destroy his own status.

Paul previously operated as a violent enemy of the message he now defends. He hunted the men and women who proclaimed the resurrection. He worked to eradicate the movement. He was traveling to make more arrests the day Jesus stopped him on a road. Paul never drifted toward a slow conversion. He never recovered from the shock of his own inclusion on this list of witnesses. He places himself at the absolute bottom, an afterthought, a man who had no right to see what he saw.

Paul builds the core of his faith on this foundation. He presents a transmitted creed, a roster of verifiable eyewitnesses, and his own name at the bottom of the page. He lays out the evidence for a verdict.

Read verses 3 through 8 again. Read them aloud. Treat this text as what it claims to be: a historical report filled with the names of actual men, recorded while those men lived and could answer questions. You do not need to force a final verdict today. Take a moment and speak to God. Tell Him exactly what you make of the evidence right now. If you need to say, “I do not know whether this is true,” say it. God handles honest doubt. He requires no pretending as you examine the facts.