Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand,  (2) by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain.

(3) For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received:  that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, (4)  and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, (5) and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve.  (6)  After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.  (7) After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles.  (8) Then last of all He was seen by me also as by one born out of due time.

(9) For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.  (10) But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God which was with me.  (11) Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

The Apostle Paul founded the Church in Corinth and he is writing to them to correct reports of strife and dissension.   Chapter 15 of this first letter to the Corinthians is devoted entirely to the doctrine of the resurrection without which Christianity would be little more than wishful thinking.

In the ancient world there were many views of death.  The Sadducees denied life after death; many believed the body was the source of our weakness and sin – the Greeks thought immortality was a spiritual concept and there was no place for the resurrection of the physical body –  matter is evil.  There was nothing in the Greek background of the Gentile that said there was a resurrection of the dead.  They in general believed in the immortality of the soul but not of the body.  The resurrection of Christ is the central truth that the Apostle Paul preached  and the personal experience of transformation culminating in resurrection was not easily accepted in Corinth.

Paul repeats that he has received the gospel and has preached that gospel to the Corinthians – that the Corinthians have received what Paul has received.  He is emphasizing that no man has invented the gospel or discovered it for himself.  Paul says that he has received this from Christ.  This same gospel on which they stand is thus the foundation and certainty that there is salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.  Christ died an atoning death and was buried and rose from the dead.  Paul does not want to introduce new truth but wants to remind the Corinthians of the doctrine of death of Christ and the resurrection.  Without this truth there is no religion.  Our salvation depends on this.

Paul writes that this essential truth of the resurrection is historically supported by the Scriptures and by the fact that the risen Christ was seen first by Cephas (Peter) and then by over 500 witnesses – many of whom are alive and some even known by the Corinthians – and also James, the half brother of Christ.  And then, Christ was seen by Paul.

The design here is to affirm the doctrines of the great undeniable and fundamental truths of Christianity which are essential to salvation.  My personal favorite, C.S. Lewis pointed out in his talk titled “The Grand Miracle” that “…the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again,, bringing nature up with him.  It is precisely one great miracle.  If you take that away there is nothing specifically Christian left.”