1 Corinthians 15:3

It’s perhaps the most concise summary of the Gospel in the whole Bible – just five words in English (six in Greek): “Christ died for our sins”.

In this is summarised all Christian faith.  My sins separated me from God, and there was nothing I could do by myself to be restored to Him and saved from eternal condemnation.  But Jesus Christ – God’s own Son – came and lived a sinless life then died on the cross at Calvary and took the punishment for my sins.  All I need to do is come to Him in faith, recognising my own inadequacy and believing that through His death I can have forgiveness, eternal life and a relationship with my heavenly Father.

No wonder Paul describes it as “of first importance”!

But there’s more.  “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures.”  This was no afterthought.  The whole of the Old Testament points forward to Jesus and how he would be the Messiah.  That doesn’t mean we need to shoehorn a reference to Jesus into every verse or even every passage of the Old Testament – when  Jesus was speaking with the two on the road to Emmaus he told them “what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself”, but in a couple of hours he couldn’t possibly have even referred to all the Old Testament books.*  However, as you read the Old Testament, time and time again you come across prophecies that are fulfilled in Jesus and people and objects that clearly point forward to Him and His work in offering salvation to us.

And then there’s verse 4 – “he was buried, [and] he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” followed by lots of eye-witnesses.  Jesus’ death brings our salvation, but it is ultimately His resurrection that brings our hope, because as Paul explains we will be raised like Him, and if he hadn’t risen our faith would be hopeless.

This is the ultimate onefivethree of the Bible  and the basis for all Christian faith – “Christ died for our sins”.

* For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not criticising the practice of ‘getting to Jesus’ in sermons.  Jesus is so central to faith that it would be strange not to focus on him when preaching.  I prefer to bring in an New Testament perspective throughout a sermon from the Old Testament rather than ‘get to’ it, but the main thing is that Christ is preached without butchering the passage to do it.