Though he would say that Israel’s history was instructive, especially in learning about the faithful God that would become embodied in Jesus of Nazareth, Paul would not necessarily want his Gentile readers to take Israel’s Deuteronomic curses into consideration when they considered their own cursing and exile. Those curses were associated with the covenant established with Israel at Sinai; and a better covenant had been enacted at Calvary, in line with the Abrahamic covenant and its directive towards all peoples. So Paul would utilize mankind’s curse, along with the curse on all of creation that began with Adam, as the point of reference for that from which they were being saved. Under the covenant of Jesus, salvation, for all mankind, Jew and Gentile, would involve being delivered from the curse of death, along with the end of exile from God’s fellowship, under which man was not truly able to rightly bear the divine image in which he had been created.
Salvation would involve regaining a lost dominion, doing so in union with Jesus, sharing in His rule over all creation. Most assuredly, for Paul, though it was part of a great hope, salvation had very little to do with an assurance of escaping hell and going to heaven when one died. Sharing in the Resurrection of Christ, and in His defeating of death, through a believing union with Him, meant that salvation and eternal life was at hand, and that God was at work, through the second Adam, to undo and reverse that which was wrought by the first Adam. This did not entail an escape from the world, but rather, an engagement with the world based upon God’s purposes, in hopes that the world, created as good, would one day be set completely to rights, restored, and renewed.
Moving along with that, as we focus on that which Paul preached and which brought belief---the Gospel, we see Paul begin to provide a practical definition for the term. He writes, in explaining what he will always mean by “preaching the Gospel,” “For I passed on to you as of first importance what I also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3a). What we are about to read, Paul says, is “of first importance,” so we should probably pay careful attention. He writes, “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures” (15:3b). He does not let this stand by itself, but continues on, attaching to this important proclamation of Christ’s death, “and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve” (15:4-5).
The whole of this statement is important. Without an inclusion of all of this information, in verses three, four, and five, the Gospel, as defined by Paul, is not preached. By definition, the preaching of the Gospel includes the preaching of death, burial, Resurrection, and appearances. This is effectively summed up by saying that the Gospel is that Jesus of Nazareth is the crucified, buried, and resurrected Lord of all. That is the message of the Gospel. That message is an announcement about Jesus, which would fit into the well-defined mold of the use of the term “gospel” in that day, which was that of announcements about Caesar.
Paul continues on, writing “Then He appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as though to one born at the wrong time, He appeared to me also. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God” (15:6-9). Paul makes this appendage to the primary Gospel proclamation, bolstering the factual basis of the Resurrection, while allowing himself to provide a bit of biography that points to what he believed to be evidence of the immeasurable grace of God---allowing him to preach the Gospel. He adds, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me has not been in vain. In fact, I worked harder than all of them---yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (15:10). That grace of God that was at work in Paul was the Resurrection power of the Gospel.
By all means, we can teach the sayings of Jesus, but if it is not presented with the firm foundation of the Gospel proclamation, then it is not really preaching the Gospel. We can make presentations about Bible stories and characters, but if they are not tied together with the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, then we are not actually preaching the Gospel. Having pointed to the grace of God as that which even allowed him to come to belief and to preach the Gospel message, Paul comes to the point about the power to produce the faith for belief and transformation that is inherent in what it is that he has preached, saying that, “this is the way we preach and this is the way we believed” (15:11b).
If we truly desire to have an impact for our Lord and God in this world, then we must speak the very message that sends His transforming, renewing, re-shaping, re-creating, restoring, and saving power into the world. That message is the message of the Gospel. The proclamation of Jesus as Lord is what carries the power, and it never fails. If we will simply preach the Gospel---if we will preach the crucifixion and the Resurrection as fundamental to all that we dare to say---belief will follow.
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