St John the Beloved
Sermon and teaching audio from St John Church in Cincinnati Ohio.
St John the Beloved
The Greatest Story Ever Told
Start with the biggest claim imaginable: everything’s going to be okay—not because life is easy, but because Jesus died for our sins and rose again. We open 1 Corinthians 15 and walk through Paul’s tight summary of the gospel, why it’s of first importance, and how the resurrection functions like a public receipt stamped across history: paid in full. This isn’t a self-help tweak or a new routine; it’s news that changes the ground under your feet.
We share why Christianity begins with receiving, not achieving, and how that same grace becomes the place we stand and the power by which we are being saved. Think of discipleship less like collecting flashy moves and more like mastering simplicity: returning to the cross and empty tomb until they shape instincts, habits, and hopes. Along the way, we talk about maturing repentance, the widening gap between God’s holiness and our sin, and the surprise that deeper growth leads to deeper dependence—not less. Trials don’t have to uproot faith; held rightly, they deepen roots and strengthen resilience.
Finally, we explore what the gospel produces: endurance that holds fast when storms hit, and hard work borne from gratitude. Paul’s line says it best: “By the grace of God I am what I am… I worked harder… yet not I.” Grace doesn’t make us passive; it makes us persevering and purposeful. If you’ve lost the plot in life’s side quests, this conversation recenters you in the true story that interprets every other story: God saves sinners, and the King is victorious. If this resonates, subscribe, share with a friend, and leave a review to help others find the hope you found today.
For the rest of us, I'll invite us to stand for the reading of God's Word, which this morning comes from 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 1. The word of God reads this way. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But the grace of God but sorry, but by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed. This is God's word. Thanks be to God, you may be seated, and may God add his blessing to the reading of his word. Many years ago I read George R. R. Martin's famous Song of Ice and Fire, which was a series of novels. It was made into the popular TV series Game of Thrones, which I never watched and cannot endorse. I know there's a lot of bad stuff in there. I did enjoy reading the books. It was a fascinating story because it was a really big story. There were dozens of characters that the author alternated between their perspectives. There were dozens of storylines that the author would jump back and forth between. It was kind of like Lord of the Rings in that sense, except on steroids, rather than two or three storylines. It was literally dozens. I never finished reading the books because the author never finished writing them, sadly, because he got too greedy and was just into that TV money. But he never finished writing them, but six books is all he made it, and six books into the series, the reader is left with this, still with this scintillating sense that somewhere behind and above the dozens of interwoven storylines, somewhere there is one big story. I can feel it. But we don't yet know. Well, if you watch the TV show, you know I don't know. He finished it on TV, but we don't yet know what it's really about. It's not yet clear who the real hero is or who the real villain is or what is the big meta-narrative that makes sense of all of the individual little stories. We've been teaching through 1 Corinthians, and today we enter a new section of the letter where Paul focuses on the gospel and then begins to talk about the resurrection of Jesus. And the gospel is, above all else, a grand story, a big story. It's the greatest story ever told. It's the true story that is behind and above all of the little stories that we love to tell and we love to listen to. It's the true story of the history of the world, the only story that is able to make sense of the fragmented stories of our lives. Being a Christian is far more than adopting a certain way of life, but it's more about discovering the true plot and the true story of the world and allowing that story to reinterpret and to challenge everything else that we see. So, our question this morning: are you holding fast to the true story, or have you lost the plot and gotten sidetracked in endless side quests that really have nothing to do with the main story? This morning we're going to remind ourselves of the plot, of the true story by looking at three things: what the gospel is, what the gospel does, and what the gospel produces. So, first, what the gospel is. The gospel is the true story of how God saves sinners. Paul says in verse 3 that the gospel is of first importance. He says, Let me remind you, brothers, as of first importance, the message that I preach to you. The most important thing in Christian faith, let's think about that for a moment. So, as Christians, we have political opinions, but our political opinions are not the most important thing about us. We have a system of ethics, we have ethical views, but that's not the most important thing about us. The most important thing in Christianity is not necessarily a way of life, but a story that we hold to be true. A story about what has happened in the world, the true story of the world. The Greek word for gospel here is ewangelion, which translated simply means good news. But that term was also a technical term in the Roman Empire. It referred to good news of a public event that had life-changing implications for the whole empire. So if the empire was at war, for example, and if a decisive battle was won that would determine the fate of certain regions or nearby cities, runners would be sent to nearby cities and towns proclaiming the Yuan Gelion, that was the technical term, proclaiming the good news that the battle had been won and that they needn't fear any longer, and that everything was going to be okay. At the very center of Christian faith is the announcement that God has done something in human history that changes everything. So what is it that God has done? Well, Paul rehearses the most important details of the story, which are the death and resurrection of Jesus. We read in verses three through four. Paul says, For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures. And then he goes on to say how the risen Christ appeared to many, to all of the apostles, to Peter and to James and to himself, and even to 500 brothers at one time, many of whom are still alive, at least at the time of his writing, and that you could go and talk to them and they could attest to that truth. The most important teaching in the Christian faith, in other words, is not about you, and it's not about me, it's about Jesus. It's about what God has done in history through Jesus Christ in order to save sinners. And notice here that as important as Jesus' teachings are, and as important as his life is, notice that in this passage, Paul does not even mention the life and the teachings of Jesus. And it's not because those things are unimportant, but it's because the most important thing that Jesus did was die and be raised again three days later. Why is the death of Jesus more important than his teachings? Say, for example, the Sermon on the Mount, which is one of the most profound ethical teachings ever delivered by anyone in history, why is it that his death is more important than even that? Because, as Paul says here in our text, that he died for our sins. That's why his death is so significant. That all of us have sinned against God, against our Creator, and have fallen under condemnation. But instead of condemning us, Jesus came and was condemned in our place. That's what his death means. And he rose again three days later, testifying to all, testifying publicly, that our sins are completely paid for. One way that you can think about the resurrection is in these terms. It's like a cosmic sales receipt that shows us and everyone that all of our sins are paid for and we do not have to pay for them again. So if you go into a store and you purchase an item and you get a receipt and you're still walking around the store, and someone says, Hey, did you pay for that? You can show them, I did, and I don't have to pay for it again. That's what the resurrection is. It's a receipt showing us that our sins are paid for and we do not have to pay for them again. So the gospel in three words is this God saves sinners. That's the good news. God saves sinners. He does that through the work of Jesus Christ. One of my favorite illustrations of this comes from Lord of the Rings, and I've shared this before, but it's a great illustration. At the end of the book, in or at the end of the story in the third book, Aragorn the King leads the armies of men to the gates of Mordor, and they don't have any hope of victory, but they do hope to draw the enemy's attention away from the interior of his country to the front gates, because they hope that somewhere inside there are two hobbits carrying a ring, and they're going to cast it into the fires of Mount Doom, and it will end the dominion of the enemy forever. So the armies depart for war and they're gone, and then the people of the city, the people of Menas Tirith, wait anxiously to hear what fate will befall them. Well, it turns out the halflings are victorious, and the enemy is overthrown, and the eagles take the good news to the white city. They fly back before anyone else, and it reads like this. Before the sun had fallen, far from the f far from the noon out of the east, there came a great eagle flying, and he bore tidings beyond hope from the lords of the west, crying, Sing now, ye people of the Tower of Anur, for the realm of Sauron is ended forever, and the dark tower is thrown down. Sing and rejoice, ye people of the Tower of the Guard, for your watch hath not been in vain, and the black gate is broken, and your king hath passed through, and he is victorious. Sing and be glad, all ye children of the west, for your king shall come again, and he shall dwell among you all the days of your life, and the tree that was withered shall be renewed, and he shall plant it in the high places, and the city shall be blessed. Sing, all ye people. That is a picture of the proclamation of the good news, that something amazing has happened that changes everything. The people of Gondor learned that all of their troubles were over, and that there was nothing to be afraid of any longer. And that's exactly what the gospel is trying to tell us. That at the core of Christianity is the good news. It's a story that because Jesus is victorious over your sin and over death and over Satan, that all of our troubles are over and that we need not be afraid anymore. Tim Keller put it like this toward the end of his life. He said, very simply, as he was so good at putting things simply, he said, because the gospel is true, everything's going to be okay. And that's something that you have to be able to internalize deep down in your soul that the things that are most worrying you right now, the things that are most distressing you and oppressing you and depressing you, all of those things, it's going to be okay. Even that thing that you're worried about, everything's going to be okay because Jesus has defeated your greatest enemies, and none of this can ultimately hurt you. None of this can hurt you. And even if you're facing your own mortality and your own death as we all one day will, even that's going to be okay because Jesus died too, and he rose again for you, so that not even death has the last word. So for you, if you are not convinced that everything's going to be okay, then you don't yet understand the good news. You haven't yet fully appreciated it or wrapped your mind around it, and you just need to go back to the gospel. Has your life been changed by the good news of the gospel? Are you able to rest your soul in the finished work of Jesus? Have you turned from trusting in your own ability to fix your own life and place your faith in the hands of another, in the faithfulness of the Savior? If you're here with us this morning and you are investigating the claims of Christianity, know that before Christianity is anything else, before it's about a lifestyle or a code of ethics or political opinions or anything like that, it's about staking our lives on what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, so much that we can say, in any situation, I shall not die, but I shall live and recount the deeds of the Lord with the psalmist. So that's what the gospel is. Point one. Point two, what the gospel does, the gospel saves us from beginning to end. Paul begins this chapter by reminding the Corinthians of the gospel that he first preached to them. Verse 1, he says, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. And notice those those three movements. He says, You received it, you stand in it, and you are being saved by it. So, in other words, the the good news is not just the beginning of the Christian life, or it's not just what we need to hear in order to get started, but it's the beginning and it's the middle and it's the end of the Christian life. The gospel which you received, let's start with that. Becoming a Christian begins simply by receiving something, not by achieving anything or accomplishing anything, but like a child accepting a gift that he could never afford, we simply open our hands and receive from the Lord. The Christian life starts with grace received, a story in which we stand. Paul says that this is also the gospel in which you stand. So we don't just start with God's grace, but we continue, we stay with grace. The same news that saved you is the news that sustains you and nourishes you and keeps you going. We never outgrow our need for grace. And we should never get over our wonder at grace. As we sing, grace is amazing. It's amazing, grace. And if it ever become, if we ever become inoculated with God's grace, and it just becomes old hat or boring, we we've lost sight of what it really is. If you understand grace, we will always be amazed by it. We're continually amazed by God's grace. And then again, it's a story by which we are being saved. Paul's not speaking about a one-time decision to believe in Jesus and then nothing else happens after that, but an ongoing work. How are you going to overcome habitual sin in your life? Um, how are you going to endure under intense suffering in your life? How are you going to escape every snare of the enemy and temptation and things that are meant to trip you up? And we do all of this by returning again and again to this gospel message, by being renewed in its power and grace. So the gospel does not just begin salvation and get us into the door, but it carries it on and it completes it. We need to continually go back to this story. We will never and should never move beyond the gospel. There is no graduate level Christianity beyond this message. There is only a deepening. As we grow in Christ, it's a deepening of our faith in the gospel, a deepening of our understanding of it, a deepening of our awe before the grace of God. The gospel gets us through the door, it keeps us on the path, and it leads us all the way home. Training in martial arts has taught me a lot about this. And what I love about the martial art that I study is how simple it is and how fundamental it is. When you first start, you learn the basics, and this is true of any discipline, but for me, footwork, good stance, basic strikes, there's not a whole lot to learn. It's a basic set of principles. But then as you advance, I've been doing it for almost three years now, as you advance, you do not move beyond those basic things that you learned, but you return to them. Some people come in and expecting to learn flashy moves and spinning tornado kicks and things like that. But the way to get better in that discipline or in any discipline is not to add complexity, but to master simplicity. To master simplicity. The best fighters in the world are simply people who have perfected the basics, the very basic things. And that's why a champion can walk into a beginner's class and still find value, because whether you've been training for 10 years or for 10 minutes, you're working with the same core things. It's just working with the fundamentals. And that's exactly how spiritual growth works. The gospel that brings us to Jesus is the same gospel that keeps us walking with him and makes us more like him, and one day will bring us home to him. And the way to make progress in discipleship is not by adding complexity, but it is by mastering simplicity. As one of my mentors used to say long ago, that the amazing thing about the gospel is that it is at the same time shallow enough for a baby to wade in, yet deep enough to drown an elephant. And it's just that same gospel message of Jesus dying for our sins and being raised again. No matter how long you've been following Christ, you will never outgrow your need to return to its fundamentals. Grace received, grace in which we stand, and grace by which we are being saved. So this means, just to make an application here, that growing as a Christian is not about growing out of our need for grace. We will never grow out of our need for grace. It's more about growing into a deeper dependence upon grace. So think about Paul the Apostle, and he talks about this here in this passage. Before he was a Christian, he was a persecutor of the church. And he writes later in this very passage, he says in verse 9, For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. When Jesus brought Paul into the kingdom, when he met him on the Damascus road and struck him blind and called out to him, he poured out grace upon him. He forgave him, abundant grace, undeserving grace. Now you might think that as Paul grew in faith and obedience, that he would need less grace. That, you know, of course, we need all this forgiveness and all this grace when we first become Christians, but the idea is that we would need it less, right? That we would be getting better. After all, as we repent of sin and change, shouldn't we become less dependent on the grace of God? Not at all. Not at all. Spiritual growth is not about escaping grace or moving beyond grace. It is about realizing how much more of it you need than you ever thought you did. When your faith is young, your sense of the distance between God's holiness and your sinfulness is not very big. That's all of us. None of us have a great appreciation of the distance between God's holiness and our sinfulness, especially when our faith is young. You know that you've sinned. You know that you're guilty, but on the whole, you're not that bad. You're not that far from God's requirements for you. But as your faith matures, as you, and this is how you know that you're really growing as a Christian, as your faith matures, that gap begins to look a little a little bigger. It begins to widen. You begin to see, oh wow, God is God is not like me. God is holy, God, I, and I have fallen pretty far from what I am supposed to be, from what God created me to be. So that distance begins to grow, but you as it does, you also discover that the grace of God, which covers that distance, gets bigger and more amazing and more impressive and more praiseworthy. In that growing gap, you discover that God's grace is far greater than you ever hoped. So the more the more that you mature, the more you come to depend on God's grace, not less. So, just to give a practical example of this, when you blow up an anger at your kids or at your spouse or at someone in your church or whoever's getting on your nerves, when you when you blow up an anger, what do you do? How do you respond to that? You don't say, God, I cannot believe that I did that again. Um, I know I'm better than this. Forgive me, and I promise I'll do better. I can't believe that I relapsed and backslid and I did that again. That would be, that would betray your belief that you were actually not very far from God's holiness. Instead, this is what you say. Instead, you say, God, of course I did that again. Of course I blew up in anger again. I was proud and self-reliant because I forgot your grace. I tried to stand on my own, and when I stopped abiding in you, this is what happens. I hurt the people that I love. So forgive me and teach me to abide in your grace today. And that's what maturity sounds like as a believer. Growth in the Christian life is not about needing less grace, it's about leaning on it more and learning to say, as Paul did, by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. So let's now talk about that, what that means, that it would not be in vain, what the gospel produces. Point three, God's grace does not leave us unchanged, but it produces something in us. It produces many things, but in the language of this passage, it produces endurance and it produces hard work. God's grace does not leave us unchanged. If you truly encounter and understand the grace of God, it will have a massive impact on your mind and on your heart and on your life. It will change the way that you handle relationships and that you treat other people and that you see other people. How does it change us? Well, there's two things that Paul explicitly mentions in this passage. Uh look again at verses one and two. Paul says, Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved. And then he says, This, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. If you hold fast. So in order to be transformed by the gospel, we must hold fast to the gospel. And what does that mean? It means that we don't give up when life get when life gets hard. That we don't when life gets hard, we don't walk away from faith, we don't walk away from the church, we don't walk away from the gospel. In the parable of the four soils, Jesus talks about the shallow soil, where the word lands and it seems to take root. It shoots up quickly, but as soon as the sun comes out, it gets scorched because it didn't have deep enough roots. And Jesus says, this is the person who hears the word, but they don't have a very deep understanding of it. The roots are shallow and they seem to be doing well, but as soon as life gets difficult, as soon as trouble arises or persecution arises, they fall away. Both Paul and Jesus say that this is a person who has believed in vain. And to be clear, they never had a proper understanding of their faith. They never had a true grasp of the message of the gospel, and the little belief that they did have did not make any ultimate difference in their lives because it was not able to endure under hardship. A faith that cannot stand up under pressure is sadly in vain. And I've seen this story play out many times in my career as a pastor, and I'm sure you've seen it too, where a person seems to receive Jesus and they're doing well, they're going to church, they're reading their Bible, they're professing faith, we're encouraged about them, but then something difficult happens in their lives. Something unfair, something hard, uh, maybe even persecution on account of the word, and they get scared, they get hurt, they get bitter, and they do not hold fast to the gospel. Rather than pressing into their faith during a difficult time, they abandon their faith. But where the gospel truly takes root in someone's life, it cannot easily be uprooted. And it causes us to hold fast to the word that we believed. And when suffering hits us, it only serves to further establish and strengthen our faith. Do you know what happens, for example, to trees that are regularly exposed to high winds? If the winds are not able to knock them down, the trees respond to their environment and they actually become stronger. The wood gets more dense in certain places, the root system gets more broad and deep, and when a windstorm passes through, the trees that don't get knocked down become stronger and more prepared and more resilient for the next windstorm. And so it is with genuine gospel faith. If trouble enters into your life, if you have faith in Jesus, and and if it obliterates your faith, then you believed in vain, and you never had a rooted faith to begin with. But if trouble enters your life and it blows all the leaves off your tree and it breaks some of your branches, but at the end of the day, your faith remains. The tree is still standing. Whatever remains of your faith can only grow stronger and deeper if you hold fast to the gospel. So it produces a, first of all, an endurance, a holding fast. As a Christian, you should expect the storms. And even though you don't want the storms in your life, you should welcome them, because they can only cause your faith to deepen. And that is the biggest win imaginable. If we should lose money or property or even relationships that are precious to us, but if our faith becomes more established, at the end of the day, it's a win. As James tells us in James chapter one, he says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, endurance. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. So it produces a steadfastness, but there's more. It also produces hard work. A true understanding of God's grace inspires us to work hard for the sake of the gospel. Paul writes in verse 10 He says, By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, the other apostles, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. So Paul tells the Corinthians. That he is so floored by God's grace that it stirred him up to devote his life to the gospel and to work hard, to work hard traveling the ancient world and planting churches, facing persecution, resisting temptation, bearing up under difficulty, working hard. Paul burned the candle at both ends. God's grace causes us to work hard. At the end of Saving Private Ryan, we learn that the old man in Arlington Cemetery, who was there at the beginning of the film, we learn at the end of the movie that that is Private Ryan himself. And he's standing at the grave of Captain John Miller, who is the man who gave his life to bring Private Ryan home. And he's remembering and honoring the sacrifice that Miller made, and he turns to his wife with tears in his eyes at the end of the film, and he says, Tell me I've led a good life. Tell me I'm a good man. And why does he, and that's the end of the movie. Why does he say that? Because he knew that a good man sacrificed his life in order to save his own. So if that happened, he had better make that sacrifice worth it. He owed it to Miller to be a good man, because a good man died for him. And so it is with the grace of God. The more we look at Jesus Christ and appreciate that he was the best man to ever grace our broken planet, that the world was not worthy of him. But he came for you, and he died for you. That the best man poured out his own life, poured out his blood in order to save yours. And if you understand that, you will work hard. You will be motivated to repentance and to faith and to do good work in the world and to pursue righteousness, depending on his grace, being formed in his image because he is worthy of all of our devotion. This is not working hard in order to be saved. That's completely opposite. It's working hard because we are saved and we are so grateful that the King of Glory would give his life for us. So just to land the plane, being a Christian is far more than adopting a certain way of life or an ethical ideology or a political ideology. It's about discovering the true plot, the true story of the world, what Jesus Christ has done to save sinners, and allowing that story to reinterpret and to change everything. And that story is the gospel about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That gospel is what we need to save us from beginning to end. And that gospel does not leave us unchanged, but causes us to hold fast to it more and more and to work hard for God's glory because he is worthy of all of our devotion. So to these ends, let us pray. Lord, we thank you. We thank you for the good news of Jesus, that in a world that is broken and full of hopelessness and sadness and injustice and unfairness, that there is good news. And the good news is that God has not left us without help. He has not left us in a state of condemnation, but he has provided a way of salvation. He has done what we could never do. And he invites us to put our faith in his Son Jesus so that we might be saved and our lives might be transformed and we might be delivered from all of our sin and from every trouble and brought safely home to his heavenly kingdom. We thank you for that, Lord. We thank you that at some point in all of our lives that you sent a herald to us to tell us that good news, whether that be a parent or a friend or a pastor or a mentor or a husband or a wife, Lord, for each of us it's different, but somehow you found us, you found us in our brokenness, and you gave us good news, and you called us to yourself, and for that we are grateful. We pray, God, that you would help us to hold fast to this word of grace and to become people who are fitted with the uh the shoes of the gospel of peace, the the readiness to bring the gospel to others, and pray God that you would use us for that end. All of this we ask in Jesus' name. Amen.