In the 1500s, Martin Luther strove to change the direction the Roman Catholic Church had taken for several centuries back to original Christianity. For the Church in the West had strayed from the one, true way. However, Luther failed. Instead of correcting the Roman Catholic Church, it excommunicated him. That was the beginning of the Lutheran Church.
Luther wanted to return the Church to the faith, doctrine, and practice as it had been under the Apostles. He wanted to call everyone back to what Jesus had handed to the Apostles, to “the faith that was delivered to the saints once for all time” (Jude 1:3). He sought to remove the rot that had festered within the Church, returning her to “the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone” (Ephesians 2:20). Luther wanted to return to the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ.
But what is that Gospel? The Apostle Paul, in our epistle reading, tells us of this original Gospel. He says, “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, [and] he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.” These are the fundamental facts of the Christian faith. They are doctrines, but they are also facts. They are the facts on which the Church of Christ stands.
We do not have an imaginary faith, a philosophy that some clever, religious thinker devised, thinking that he had discovered the eternal truths about God. Our faith has solid roots in facts of history. Jesus Christ was a real man. He lived in Judea in the first century. He preached, and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John recorded His words. He performed miracles, wonderful proofs, and miraculous signs that many people had witnessed. He also died and was buried. These are historical truths.
Jesus also rose from the dead. Many had seen Him alive with “many convincing proofs,” as St. Luke tells us (Acts 1:3). He was dead and then He was alive. Then He ascended into heaven. He is now risen and has “ascended far above all the heavens that He might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:10).
The Corinthians, to whom St. Paul wrote our epistle reading for today, knew from their own recollection that Paul was speaking the truth. For that was the Gospel that he preached to them from the time he arrived at Corinth. Some of them, who had gone to other cities, could affirm that it was the same Gospel they heard there, as well. And so Paul reminded them to “hold firmly to the Word” that he proclaimed to them.
They could also verify the Gospel that Paul preached was the original one, not one that he had developed along the way. They could check with other Christians who had seen Jesus dead and then alive. Most of the 500 who had seen Jesus after He rose from the dead were still living. They could ask them.
But the Corinthians could even go further back as Paul said, “according to the Scriptures.” Did you notice that what Paul said he proclaimed was “according the Scriptures”? That was the Old Testament. And Paul said that twice, that the Old Testament also taught the same Gospel that he preached! That means the Gospel we heard in our epistle reading predates the Apostles, even the birth of Christ. That means the Old Testament, from the beginning, foretold and taught such a Gospel.
So, let’s go back and see! The first Gospel sermon was back in the Garden of Eden. That’s when God told the devil, who had taken the form of a serpent: “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel” (Genesis 3:15). So, shortly after our Fall into sin, God prophesied of both Mary and Jesus. The Offspring of the woman, Mary, will crush Satan’s power, his head, through His own death.
The Old Testament repeated that Gospel many times. One of the most notable was in Isaiah 53, where it says, pointing forward to Jesus: “He was pierced because of our rebellious deeds, crushed because of our iniquities…. He was cut off from the land of the living, struck dead because of my people’s rebellion” (Isaiah 53:5, 8). The Prophet Isaiah further says, “He will divide the spoils with the strong because he poured out his life in death and he was counted with sinners” (Isaiah 53:12).
And what of Jesus’ burial? Does the Old Testament have anything to say about that? That same chapter of Isaiah, Isaiah 53, also foretold, “They made His [that is, Jesus’] grave with the wicked, but with the rich in his death” (Isaiah 53:9). And that’s what took place. Jesus died between two criminals, with the wicked, but His tomb was that of a rich man, Joseph of Arimathea.
So, the Gospel that Paul proclaimed was not something that originated in the New Testament. The Old Testament taught it, as well. The Apostles taught this Gospel and that first generation of the New-Testament Church received it to pass on to later generations. And the creeds we confess every week, whether the Nicene or the Apostles’, sums up that Gospel. These creeds also have their beginnings in the earliest New-Testament Church.
Paul says that if anyone comes and preaches another Jesus, whom he has not preached, know that it is false. Such a “gospel” is Satan trying to beguile your minds from the simplicity that is in Christ.
Yet, this Gospel is not merely a set of historical facts. It is also personal. It applies to every one of us. Paul said that we are to stand in this Gospel. That means the Gospel of Jesus Christ defines us. That Gospel also defined the Apostle Paul. Referring to himself, Paul said, “I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. But by God’s grace I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been in vain.”
In another place, Paul said, “‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners’–and I am the worst of them” (1 Timothy 1:15). And so we find that the Gospel is about sin and grace–our sin and God’s grace. Like Paul, you and I must learn to confess, “I am the worst of sinners.”
Paul teaches us to confess what we say at the beginning of the Divine Service, when we confess our sins. I am by nature sinful and unclean. I have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, by what I have done and by what I have left undone. The Church’s liturgy teaches us to live out and take in the words of Scripture with more than just head knowledge.
God has made you His child. He has made you holy and has forgiven you. That’s why you have everlasting life. God has done all that because of His Son, Jesus, who “died for our sins according to the Scriptures.” His death and resurrection are important because He died and rose to redeem and deliver you from your sins, to gain forgiveness and life eternal for you.
Now, you don’t deserve this Christ-won forgiveness. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve avoided sin, tried to do what is right, or even how much you’ve suffered in this world. Without one good work, Jesus makes you right and clean in God’s sight, and heaven becomes yours. And this becomes yours as God the Holy Spirit works through Word and Sacrament to make it your own.
That’s the original Gospel that God has still called pastors to preach today. Anything that tells you to rely on your goodness, works, deeds, love, devotion, meditation, or spiritual discipline is no gospel at all. Those are all worthy acts and practices we do because of whom Christ has made us to be. But such deeds don’t save us–they are a result of being saved.
The only true Gospel is the only Gospel that is so connected to Jesus that it is inseparable from Him, and so it saves. Paul calls that Gospel the one “in which you stand, and by which you are being saved.” Our efforts and works are worthless and measly. “Filthy rags” are what the Bible calls them (Isaiah 64:6).
Yet, by Holy Spirit-given faith, you have Jesus and His righteousness, which is enough to cover all your sins and make you holy and beautiful in God’s sight. Whatever sins you have committed, however shameful or perverse they may be, His precious blood washes them clean. It is as the Apostle says, “Where sin multiplied, grace multiplied even more” (Romans 5:20).
But Paul doesn’t stop there. He also says, “I worked harder than all the others. Yet, it was not I who did it, but God’s grace that was with me.” And so we get a picture of the Christian life. It’s hard work because life in this fallen world is hard. And the fallen ways of sin still infect us until God brings us home to Him in eternity. And yet, Paul gave God all the credit for the good that God worked in and through him. After all, that was the result of grace.
And so we learn what is at the core of all the good we do as Christians. We do good works, not to gain God’s favor, but because He has looked on us with His grace. In kindness, He adopted us as His own dear children. That’s why we want to please Him with our works, which flow from a heart filled with gratitude and love. That’s the fruit of our faith in this original Gospel, the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ Jesus. Amen.
