Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1–11
Date: April 5, 2026
Event: The Resurrection of Our Lord, Year A

1 Corinthians 15:1–11 (EHV)

Brothers, I am going to call your attention to the gospel that I preached to you. You received it, and you took your stand on it. 2You are also being saved by that gospel that was expressed in the words I preached to you, if you keep your hold on it—unless you believed in vain. 3For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received:

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,

4that he was buried,

that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,

5and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the Twelve.

6After that he appeared to over five hundred brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. 7Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. 8Last of all, he appeared also to me, the stillborn child, so to speak. 9For I am the least of the apostles, and I am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted God’s church. 10But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not ineffective. On the contrary, I worked more than all of them (and yet it wasn’t my doing, but it was the grace of God, which was with me, that did it). 11So whether it is I or they, that is what we preach, and that is what you believed.

This Is of First Importance!

Think for just a moment—what is the area of life that you have the most personal expertise in? It might flow out of your family life—parenting or navigating other tricky family relationships and situations. It might come from your interests, a hobby that you are particularly knowledgeable about. It might come from your professional life, where you have tremendous experience and skill in the areas required for that work, whether inside or outside the home.

So, center yourself in whatever areas of expertise you have. If someone came to you and said they had no knowledge or skill in one of those areas but that they wanted to learn, how would you guide them? What would be the most important single thing you would share with them about your hobby or profession? What single lesson that you had learned raising children or helping elderly parents would rise to the very top in your advice?

This morning, on this highest of festivals in the Christian church, we are staring at the absolute most important thing not only in the Christian faith, but in our lives as a whole. Or at least we’re starting at the effects of the most important thing, but everything is tied together in a tight knot, secured by God’s eternal love for us, so we do well to take it all in.

We began our service with a review of God’s plan of salvation because we really, really need to know how we got to Easter in order to appreciate what this empty tomb actually means—but Easter is the linchpin in everything. Easter gives Good Friday its meaning; Easter gives Christmas its meaning. Without Easter, everything we would hope for falls to pieces, but with it, we have eternal comfort beyond compare.

1 Corinthians chapter 15 is often nicknamed the “Resurrection Chapter” of the Bible. We have just the first eleven verses of this somewhat lengthy chapter as our Second Reading for this morning’s worship, so I would encourage you to take a few minutes sometime today to read through it in whole at home, but these opening verses lay out the importance of what we’re celebrating today.

Paul is writing to the Christians living in the city of Corinth. If you read the two letters in the New Testament that he wrote to them, you will quickly see just how many problems this congregation has. Internal strife and divisions that led to abuses in how they handled the sacraments (especially the Holy Communion), jealousy in seeking out spiritual gifts, toleration and even support of open, wanton sin, and then difficulty in forgiving people of sin when they had repented.

But in these opening verses of chapter 15, Paul seeks to ground the whole conversation he’s had with them in the letter up to this point, and what will follow in his next letter. He says, “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received.” Not that the other things weren’t important, but what Paul is going to spend time on here in this chapter is the most important, of first importance; this outranks everything else.

He proceeds to lay out a series of four statements of faith, which sound very much like the Apostles’ Creed, which would develop later. The very first statement is perhaps the most important: Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.

This is where we spent our whole service on Friday evening. Jesus allowed himself to be crucified, and more than that, suffered the full wrath of hell as he was abandoned by the Father, because of our sins. Our sins are the reason that he went to his death, and his death fully dealt with them, just as had been promised. And we left things on Friday with Paul’s second statement: he was buried. Jesus wasn’t passed out or unconscious. He died. The separated blood and water from his pierced side showed that. When they left him in the tomb late Friday afternoon, he was dead.

He needed to die because death is the wages of sin. If he was truly going to die for our sins, he had to actually die. And so he did. And in many ways, that would have been enough. But if no one knew what had happened, it all would have been worthless. The sins would have been paid for, yes, but if no one knew it and believed it, that reality would not have benefited anyone. People needed to hear and see what had happened in order to trust the blessings he freely gives. He needed to prove his victory for us so that we could put our trust in him. And that’s what brings us to our celebration this morning: he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

We said a few times during Lent that Jesus didn’t look all that triumphant or glorious. In fact, he looked like a defeated husk of a man. Easter is necessary, not to forgive our sins—that was accomplished on Good Friday; it is necessary to prove that Good Friday was successful, that Jesus’ “It is finished!” from the cross was truly a cry of victory, not defeat.

This was of such first importance to Jesus that he was going to spend the next 40 days after Easter making appearances to people, many of whom saw him dying or even dead, and proving that he was alive. Paul puts these post-resurrection appearances on the same level of importance in this brief confession as Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection: he appeared to Cephas (that is, Peter), then to the Twelve. And he even then goes to offer more detail on these appearances: After that he appeared to over five hundred brothers at the same time, most of whom are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, he appeared also to me…

After his work was done, Jesus made it his highest priority to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the work truly was done. Next Sunday, we’ll hear Jesus directly address Thomas’ confusion and doubt as he encourages Thomas to put his fingers in the places where the nails had been, and the spear had pierced him. Even on this first Easter evening, Jesus eats some food, not because he was hungry, but to prove that he wasn’t a ghost or a collective hallucination or some other figment of their imagination, but a truly living and breathing human being—who had been dead just days before.

So what is the point of all of this? Why are we gathered here this morning for a special service? Why do we make all of this a priority ideally not just one day a year, but everyday? Paul gave us the “why” in the opening verses of our Second Reading: Brothers, I am going to call your attention to the gospel that I preached to you. You received it, and you took your stand on it. 2You are also being saved by that gospel that was expressed in the words I preached to you, if you keep your hold on it—unless you believed in vain.

The Christian faith is not just some cultural heritage or family tradition that we look to preserve. Jesus’ death and resurrection is the saving work of God to rescue us from our sins, to rescue us from hell. The horrid suffering and abandonment by God that Jesus faced on the cross is what our sins deserve. Jesus’ resurrection proves that this is defeated so that, when clinging to Jesus by faith, we will never, ever have to face that.

Jesus’ resurrection isn’t just a nice, inspiring story. It’s the certainty of your eternal life, and mine. Jesus had told his disciples the night before he died, “Because I live, you also will live.” Two weeks ago, we heard Jesus tell Martha that he was the resurrection and the life. He is our life and our resurrection.

Unless Jesus returns before we die, we all will have graves just as Jesus did. We will have remains that will be laid to rest as the soul and body separate as one of the results of sin in this broken world. But Easter shows that our graves will be just as temporary as Jesus’ grave was. We, too, will rise, not because we were so strong or good or anything else involving us, but because Jesus won the victory for us. The Good Shepherd who laid down his life only to take it up again will be the one to raise us to life at the start of that full, eternal life with him.

Because of Jesus, we have no fear in death because the punishment that we deserved is done. Because of Jesus, we have confidence in the eternal life to come that will not be like this life with its heartaches and headaches; that life will be perfect. Because of Jesus, we have the confidence to know that we go through each day under his love and protection.

When you do the math, anything that deals with the eternal is infinitely more important than something that deals with the temporary. That’s why our eternal lives are of even greater importance than our lives right here and right now. That’s why this message of sins forgiven in Jesus and proved by his resurrection from the dead is of first importance. There is nothing bigger, better, or more impactful than Jesus’ victory for you. And he gives it to you freely and completely because he loves you.

May God help each of us to cherish this reality of sins forgiven in Jesus as the single most important thing in our lives. May we prioritize not just one day out of the year, but every moment of every day of our lives!

Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia! Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria