T. Austin-Sparks · 1 of 2

The Necessity for Jesus Christ

Will you please open your New Testaments at the first letter to the Corinthians. The first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15, the first verse: "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye received, wherein also ye stand, by which also ye are saved. I make known, I say, in what words I preached it unto you."

With these words the greatest apostle that Jesus Christ ever had, draws his mantle together over his shoulders and sets himself to gather up everything that he has been saying into a climax and a consummation. We can almost hear him breathe a sigh of relief that he has got through all the unpleasant business that was imposed upon him in the writing of this letter, and having got through it, he says, "Now I make known unto you, brethren, the gospel which I preached unto you."

He had been compelled to write about a whole lot of unpleasant and difficult matters. He was, at the time, in Ephesus, about to conclude a very wonderful time of ministry there. And his fellow labourer Apollos had arrived and told him the state of things in Corinth and sent three other people, probably slaves of the household of Chloe in Corinth, who had also arrived and they had poured out a very deplorable story of things in the church in Corinth. Sad stories of divisions, schisms, quarrels, and disorders, moral evils, social wrongs, of spiritual immaturity, of Christian unkindness one to another, and so on. It's all here.

By either Apollos, or these others, they had sent a letter to Paul asking him to answer a number questions on a lot of matters about which they were troubled. And, as you know, this letter is his answer to that whole situation and all those aspects of it. A labourious thing... you can't read it without feeling how the apostle was labouring with this situation, as well he might be. Troubled, heartbroken, deeply moved, he passed on from point to point, covering the whole. And then with what is the end of chapter 14 in the dividing up of men of this long letter into sixteen pieces, he finishes that. And I think, as I have said, gladly finishes that. You might very gladly finish that as far as the job is concerned, and he, in effect, says, "Having dealt with all that I'm not prepared just to leave it there. Let me take you back, brethren, right to the beginning of your life and history as a company of the people of God and remind you of that basis upon which you came to be a church and a company of God's people - what I preached unto you, and you then believed, and upon which you stand, that is, you have your very existence and by which you're saved". Having written all the rest with a sick heart, he concludes that he must restate the gospel, he calls it, which he had preached and which was the ground of their existence as a church.

Now, while all the conditions at Corinth, all of them may not obtain today in many churches (thank God) there are some things that persist and are at least the abiding peril of companies of God's people. In any case, there's something that comes out of this final resolve of the apostle which is of inestimable value to the church and the churches in all ages. We are not glad that the Corinthians were what they were, were like that, but here is the wonderful sovereignty of God - that He takes hold of the most deplorable situation and makes it the means of drawing out some of the most sublime things in Divine revelation. And who would be without what we call the fifteenth chapter of the first letter to the Corinthians? Who would be without it? Thank God for His power to use the darkest black background to bring forward the most glorious revelation!

And you notice that this chapter, or this section, is a summary and is a consummate restatement and a climax. Paul uses this word preach, you see, several times in verse 1, verse 11, verse 14: "The thing preached".

The Thing Preached

So you look to see what was the heart and the essence of that preaching. Well, you've only got to underline one word: Christ. You find yourselves right at the beginning in the presence of a mention of Christ no fewer than thirteen times, I say, at the beginning, showing what the foundation really is, what the preaching really is.

Now into this consummate restatement, the apostle gathers a revelation which is well-nigh unparalleled in holy Scripture. (For, if I may make this parenthesis, if you read through this long chapter, you are amazed and you hold your breath and you say, "Where did the apostle get that? Where did he get that? How did he come by that?" Things that he's telling you here about glory and the differences in glory, and the resurrection body and what it will be like, and so on. You say, "Well, this is something that no man ever concocted, this never arose in a man's brain, there's something here of unparalleled revelation!")