Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
The Gospel I Preached to You
1 Corinthians 15:1-4
1 Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand, · WEB
The letter's climax opens by reciting a formula older than the letter itself — four clauses, twice anchored to the Scriptures.
Now I declare to you, brothers, the Good News which I preached to you, which also you received, in which you also stand 1 Corinthians 15:1.
The chapter that resolves the letter begins with a reminder rather than an argument. Three verbs trace the gospel's history with these people — preached, received, stand — and a fourth follows: by which also you are saved, if you hold firmly the word 1 Corinthians 15:2. Standing and holding firmly are the conditions, which is why what follows had to be written to a church already converted.
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received 1 Corinthians 15:3.
The language is that of handing on a fixed tradition, the same pair of verbs used of the Lord's supper 1 Corinthians 11:23. What comes next is widely recognized as a formula Paul inherited rather than composed — a summary already in circulation and already being recited when he was taught it, which places it within a very few years of the events it reports. This is the earliest surviving statement of the Christian gospel.
That Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures 1 Corinthians 15:3.
Four clauses follow, and the first two belong together. The death is not reported as a fact alone but with its purpose — for our sins — and with a warrant: according to the Scriptures, which points to the servant wounded for the transgressions of others Isaiah 53:5–6 Isaiah 53:11.
That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures 1 Corinthians 15:4.
He was buried seems slight beside the others and is doing real work: it establishes that the death was complete and the body was placed somewhere, which is what makes the next clause a claim about that same body rather than about a surviving influence. The letter will insist on bodily resurrection at length 1 Corinthians 15:42–44, and it starts by noting the grave.
And he was raised stands in the passive — God raised him 1 Corinthians 6:14 Acts 2:24 — with the same warrant attached a second time. Scripture is cited for the death and for the rising, which means the earliest gospel presented itself not as a novelty but as the completion of something already written Psalms 16:10 Hosea 6:2 Luke 24:46.
Four clauses, then, and no theology of the atonement is spelled out here, no doctrine of the resurrection body yet. The formula is deliberately minimal: an event, its purpose, its verification by burial, and its reversal — the things a person had to hold to be holding the gospel at all. Everything the rest of the chapter argues is an unfolding of the fourth clause.
settled What this mark means