1 Corinthians 15:1

Note

Before his long argument about the resurrection, Paul takes the Corinthians back to the gospel they first heard. It is not a new teaching but the one they have already received and on which they now stand.

First Corinthians 15 is the letter's chapter on the resurrection, written because some in the church were denying it. Paul asks, "how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?" (1 Corinthians 15:12). Before he answers them, he lays the foundation. Verses 1 and 2 introduce it, and verses 3 and 4 state it: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, was buried, and was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. To deny the resurrection, he will show, is to pull down the very gospel they believed.

Noun and verb stand side by side: to euangelion ho euēngelisamēn, literally ‘the gospel which I gospelled to you’. The noun is euangelion (εὐαγγέλιον), and the verb euangelizomai (εὐαγγελίζομαι) is in the aorist middle, first person singular. Then a chain of clauses carries the gospel through time: you received it (parelabete, aorist), you stand in it (hestēkate, perfect), and, in verse 2, you are being saved by it (present). "Received" is paralambanō (παραλαμβάνω), the word for taking over teaching handed on by another. In verse 3 Paul uses it of himself: "what I received I passed on to you as of first importance" (1 Corinthians 15:3). The gospel came to Corinth as something passed from hand to hand.

The KJV says "I declare unto you the gospel," the LSV "I make known to you," both rendering the Greek gnōrizō as it stands. Since the Corinthians already knew it, the BSB takes the sense to be "I want to remind you." The last clause is a perfect tense: they took their stand on the gospel and still stand there. The KJV's "wherein ye stand" gives the present state; the LSV's "in which you also have stood" keeps the form of the perfect; the BSB's "in which you stand firm" adds a word of its own to say that the stand still holds.

Matthew Henry writes: "The doctrine of Christ's death and resurrection, is the foundation of Christianity. Remove this, and all our hopes for eternity sink at once" Matthew Henry. On standing he adds: "And it is by holding this truth firm, that Christians stand in the day of trial, and are kept faithful to God" Matthew Henry.

Around AD 180 Irenaeus described how the church came by its gospel: "We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the Gospel has come down to us" Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1. The gospel Paul had preached by word of mouth in Corinth, and now set down again in a letter, came down in just that way.

The gospel is not something each generation invents for itself; it is received, and stood upon. The news heard today is the one the apostles received and passed on, and it will hold the weight of those who stand on it.