There is a good chance that the majority of people who call themselves Christians don’t understand the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Most people believe they know the Easter story, but the story they believe doesn’t seem to excite them very much.

Paul wrote his first letter to the church in Corinth probably in the year 54  which was 23 or 24 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the same as someone today writing about events in 1994, which happens to be the year I was married. I remember the year quite well, and there are lots of people you can talk to who were at our wedding and can verify that Leeanne and I were indeed married.

When the Apostle Paul talked about the gospel he was not talking about theological ideas but simply stating a series of  historical facts that were easily verified by the readers by simply talking to any of the eyewitnesses that Paul names:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles…

1 Corinthians 15:3-7

Over the years numerous people have wanted to claim that Jesus never existed, or that if he did the story of his death and resurrection was made up many years later. No serious historian believes these claims, as evidenced by the agreed dating of Paul’s letters.

More than the dating of Paul’s letters generally though, this specific part of 1 Corinthians is remarkable for the incredibly strong evidence it is for the truth of the biblical story. The overwhelming consensus is that these few sentences can be dated to within months and at most a couple of years after the first Easter. One atheist professor of the New Testament (Gerd Lüdemann from Göttingen University) says it plainly:

The formation of the appearance traditions mentioned in I Cor.15.3-8 falls into the time between 30 and 33 CE

Because this statement is the earliest description we have of the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection from the New Testament church we need to pay it very close attention.  Three things stand out:

1. The New Testament church believed the reason Jesus died was “for our sins.”
2. The New Testament church took it as given that after being buried, Jesus rose again and that many people encountered him and were available to verify the story.
3. Both these things happened “according to the scriptures.”

Why does Paul, and the New Testament church who passed this story on to him, repeat the phrase “according to the scriptures?” They firmly believed that what we call “The New Testament” is firmly grounded, and a fulfilment of what we call the “Old Testament,” or what is more properly called

The New Testament church firmly believed that what we call “The New Testament” is firmly grounded, and a fulfilment of what we call the “Old Testament,” or what is more properly called Israel’s scriptures.

As a Pastor and someone who grew up in the Christian church over the last 40 years, I am convinced that we Western Christians don’t fully grasp what was so obvious to the New Testament church.  We tend to focus on the New Testament, and when we do quote the Old Testament it is generally out of context in order to make us feel better about ourselves (remember the big deal people were making of  “The prayer of Jabez” in the early 2000’s?).

The New Testament church believed that in order to understand Jesus you needed to understand the whole sweep of Israel’s scriptures. If that is true there is a good chance that the majority of people who call themselves Christians don’t understand the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection.

Jesus himself made it clear to his disciples that his death and resurrection was “according to the scriptures:”

He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

Luke 24:25-27