Remember the Beginning
1 Corinthians 15:1 – 11
New beginnings can be both exciting and scary. The thrill of new adventures and experiences shares the active consciousness with the uneasiness of the unknown. New relationships can be challenging as well as rewarding. Moving to new, unknown places can be both exhilarating and yet overwhelming. New jobs, new churches, new personal relationships all require us to make decisions about leaving what was old and finding something else, we were drawn to something else that offered promise of change, sometimes needed and necessary growth to fulfill what we were called to be.
Speaking of newness, the gospels of the Bible represent a change from the way life that human had for thousands of years, living under the penalty of original sin with no permanent escape available only the hope offered throughout the Old Testament of a savior of God’s people. The Gospels: Matthew, Mark Luke and John are the foundation of our faith, they tell the story of the coming of Jesus and about his mission and ministry to a lost and broken world. Matthew, Mark Luke and John are the first books in the New Testament so they must be the first to tell the Gospel story, right.
Would it surprise you if I told you that those four writers of the Gospel were not the first ones to tell this truth to the Jews and the Gentiles but rather it was the Apostle Paul, and we see evidence in our lesson in 1 Corinthians today. Matthew, Mark and Luke wrote their gospels between 60 – 65 AD, John doesn’t tell his gospel account until 85 AD. Paul writes his account of the Good News of Jesus Christ to Corinthians in 55 AD, five years before the others.
So, it is in our lesson today that the Apostle Paul tells his summation of the Good News, the Gospel according to Paul, if you will, in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 and at its core is the proclamation of the gospel. Paul’s gospel is in many ways is the most complete, concise and applicable expression of the Good News in the Bible. (Karl Jacobson) And this is it very simply this as Paul writes in our lesson:
For what I received from Jesus directly, I passed on to you as of most importance 1) that Christ died for our sins according to the Hebrew scriptures, 2) that he was buried proving that he died, 3) that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 4) and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the other 10 disciples and then hundreds of other proving that he was resurrected to give us new life after death. That friends, is the core of salvation that is available to us IF we come to believe upon those things and upon the One who came to save us. Remember friends the Beginning of faith and a new life that Paul offered the Corinthians.
That truth is what Paul brought to Corinthians and that is what they came to believe in, yet, as we have seen over the past few weeks, these Corinthian Christians are in spiritual trouble because they have lost their focus on the essential things of our faith. They were fighting over who had been given which gifts, who they had been baptized by and how that made one greater than another. They were full of divisions. Some of even begun to reject the resurrection of Christ which is of course our promise of life over death giving us eternal life. (Kercheville)
Today Paul is reminding them to Remember the Beginning when their faith was young yet strong and vibrant, remember the Good News of the coming and redeeming life of Jesus that he preached to them, in which they must continue to stand, or else they have believed in vain, fallen short of the promise in which they once believed. (Kercheville)
Paul is reminding them of the foundation on which they stand. This teaching is the ground to hold fast to. Paul declares that they had received the gospel upon which they once stood, they were saved through the gospel, and they were to hold fast to that gospel message. The Gospel that Paul is preaching is an anchor point for your life. No matter how hard the winds of life blow, this is the point of your grip.
This Paul’s “gospel” is the strength that picks you up off the ground and causes you to stand. Our whole spiritual life is predicated on this message. The apostle Paul says that their past (you previously received the gospel), their present (you presently are to stand in the gospel message), and their future (you are being saved) are founded right here in this truth of the resurrection of Jesus. Remember the Beginning!
But Paul has a concern for his audience. He is concerned that they have lost their divine faith foundation and traded it in on an old model, one of founded on lack of faith in God and on worldly powers and attractions, pride, fame and riches. He speaks of them starting well in the gospel, but concerned that they would lose their grip, lose their spiritual footing and they would no longer stand in the hope of the resurrection of Jesus. (Kercheville)
Paul tells them “Now I would remind you, of what I started with.” What you started with. What this whole thing started with. We need to go back and remember together, or even individually remember where we first said yes. When a relationship is struggling, it is often helpful to go back and remember where it started, to recapture those first emotions and thoughts and decisions. In the book of Revelation, the complaint against the church of Ephesus is that they had forgotten their first love. Having just waded through the love chapter of I Corinthians, God’s Unconditional Love for us, the same Unconditional Love that we are to have for others, Paul now invites the members of the church, who are at odds with one another, to go back and reclaim what they knew at first about salvation through Jesus. (Derek Weber)
Paul’s lesson invites us to go back to where we started to Remember the Beginning, where it all started. Reclaim our initial acceptance of the faith, when we first said yes to Jesus, or first said it in public in the presence of the loving and supporting church family. Do you remember when you first heard this amazing, good news, heard it in a way that changed your life? Hold on to that moment, Paul says.
This is not a nostalgia trip, but rather a way of regaining the enthusiasm and wonderment of that moment so that we can continue to move forward on the discipleship path. It is also not a claim that our faith must be the same as it was when we first said yes to the plea of Jesus as he stood and knocked at the door of our heart. All personal relationships change and mature, Paul doesn’t tell the Corinthians that they need to be just like they were at first. But rather that they and we should Remember the Beginning, the foundation our faith, the good news of Jesus Christ.
Remember the good news; remember the proclamation; remember Jesus. We must go back to Jesus, at all times, but particularly in times of strife and division. Go back and remember the story, the simple, straightforward story of the life and death and Resurrection of the living Word made flesh. It is still at work in you. Paul says not only which you received, and in which you stand, but also that story, that person through which you are being saved. (Derek Weber) Remember the Beginning!
To help us Remember that Beginning, Paul tells about his own beginning, his own moment on the Road to Damascus when the risen Christ came to him personally he first experienced the truth found in the risen Christ. There was a moment when everything changed, and he didn’t earn it; he didn’t deserve it; he wouldn’t have chosen himself to receive it. But there it is. There it was. And now everything he became; he says is by grace. It is that same grace that we receive when we come to believe. Remember that grace. Remember the Beginning.
I asked you all when I came to Chatham Charge a little more than three years ago to remember your story of coming to faith in Jesus and inviting into your life. I do. Your response may not be as dramatic or poignant as mine, but I believe that all of you are here because you have either heard that call on your life or you are hearing it now. You are sensing or have sensed the activity of the Holy Spirit in your lives helping you to understand your sense of brokenness and unworthiness like Paul did, as Isaiah did and as Peter did in our scriptures lessons today.
But you must realize that what is broken God can fix and know that God sees all of His children as worthy of the gift of eternal life. I asked you to remember your story not because I want you to tell it to others if it is uncomfortable to rather so that you can remember the transformational power of it when you need to Remember the Beginning if and when your faith wains.
Hear the Good News my friends……….
That is what Paul is pleading with the Corinthians to hold on to – to be able to move past their arguments about gifts, to be able to love each other unconditionally, to ignore the beckoning or worldly pleasures, to resist the doubts of God’s power and authority over Creation during times of uncertainty and despair such as we continue to go through. Instead, he is saying Remember the Beginning when your faith and relationship were new and electrifying.
Dear ones be prepared to go back to the relationship that brought you into the sphere of the Spirit’s influence and that now directs you and protects you. Hold firmly to the faith that Jesus is who he says he is, and that He will do everything that He has ever promised you. (Derek Weber) It is there in that time, in that relationship that to you will find renewal, empowerment, and the grace that you need for the facing of these days. Remember the Beginning and believe anew. Amen.