What is the gospel?
The short answer
The gospel is the good news of what God has done in Jesus Christ: he died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. It is news before it is advice: a death that pays for sin, a resurrection that proves it, and a living Lord who is to be confessed, believed, and followed.
The fuller answer
Paul gives the content in a single breath, introducing it as what he himself received and passed on: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, and he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. That summary is the gospel in seed form. It has facts, not just feelings: a real death, a real burial, a real resurrection, and each tied to the Scriptures that promised it.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
1 Corinthians 15:3 (BSB)
In plain words
Paul is handing on what was handed to him. This is not his private idea; it is the heart of the faith, and its first item is that Christ died for our sins, exactly as the Scriptures said he would.
Context · Received, and passed on
Paul uses the language of receiving and delivering something fixed, the same words he uses for the Lord's Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:23. Verses 3 to 8 read as a short summary the church already confessed: Christ died, he was buried, he was raised, he appeared. Paul is quoting the faith, not inventing it.
that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
1 Corinthians 15:4 (BSB)
In plain words
Because he truly died, he was buried. And he truly rose, on the third day, as the Scriptures said he would.
See also · On the third day
Paul does not name the passages here. Jesus himself spoke of the three days by the sign of Jonah (Matthew 12:40), and Hosea 6:2 speaks of being raised up on the third day.
The word gospel itself means good news, and news is about something that happened. The something is Jesus: God the Son, born of Mary, crucified under Pontius Pilate for the sins of others, raised bodily, and now reigning. The appropriate response is not admiration from a distance. Paul's confession runs: if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
that if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.
Romans 10:9 (BSB)
In plain words
Paul puts it plainly: confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.
See also · Jesus is Lord
'Jesus is Lord' is the church's earliest confession of faith. Paul uses it again in 1 Corinthians 12:3, and Philippians 2:11 looks to the day every tongue confesses it.
Anything added to that, your own record, your church membership, your sincerity, is no longer the gospel but a negotiation. Anything subtracted, a Jesus who did not really die, or did not really rise, is what Paul calls a different gospel, and he rejects it in the strongest terms available to him.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
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