Keep the Gospel at Your Fingertips

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Current revision as of 22:05, 20 November 2025

Some months ago, my church installed a new security system. One day soon after, I entered the building, unaware that the system was active. To my surprise and consternation, a panel by the door began to count down. If I didn’t enter my personal code, an alarm would sound. Sweating bullets, I tried desperately to remember the code. I couldn’t. Time expired. An alarm began to sound, making it even harder to think. I could imagine the headline: “Pastor Arrested Entering Own Church.”

Thankfully, no crisis ensued. As the alarm kept sounding, the code suddenly sprang to my mind. I punched it in. No police. No more alarm. Blessed silence.

Did I know the code during those first moments of blank panic? Yes and no. I simultaneously knew it and didn’t. It must have been somewhere in my mind (otherwise I couldn’t have recalled it later). But initially, it was inaccessible and therefore useless. It’s one thing to have a fact buried in your head and another to have it at your fingertips.

That’s true in the Christian life as well. We may have the basic facts of the gospel story present in our grey matter, but is gospel truth accessible and impactful? Is it at our fingertips when we receive unkind criticism, when a friend betrays us, when the medical scan raises concerns? In those moments, do we really know the gospel?

‘I Would Remind You’ In 1 Corinthians 15:1–4, the apostle Paul says he’s writing in order to remind his readers of what they already know.

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 . . . (1 Corinthians 15:1–4)

Paul had preached the gospel during his time in Corinth. Some of his hearers had “received” that good news. And it stuck; Paul says they’re now standing in it and being saved by it. So, why does he now remind them of what they already know? Because he wants the gospel to be accessible and impactful. He wants them to know it.

Our brains are full of a thousand daily thoughts. “I need to pick up a gallon of milk, get the kids to soccer practice, and schedule a dental appointment.” They’re stuffed with a thousand deep stories. “I’m damaged, unlovable, inadequate.” “I want to make my parents proud.” “I’m a good person, better than most.” Is gospel truth prominent and productive in this pile of thoughts and stories? Is it making a difference? Or, like my alarm code (which I knew but didn’t know), is it buried in our brains, inaccessible and useless?

Imagine you have a collection of seven thousand pennies. Someone tosses another penny onto the pile. You now own that penny — but you’ll never find it! Similarly, how accessible and impactful is the gospel among our thousand thoughts?

Gospel for Right Now

In 1 Corinthians 15:1–4, Paul highlights three truths about the gospel. The reminder doesn’t put them into our brains for the first time. (If we’re Christians, they’re already there.) Instead, it helps us to draw them out when we need them. It puts gospel truth at our fingertips.

1. Jesus’s death is supremely important.

Paul says, “For I delivered to you as of first importance . . .” and then he highlights Jesus’s death and resurrection. Jesus’s death isn’t just one thing among others. It’s the thing. That’s why Paul says earlier in his letter, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2).

The death of Jesus isn’t some ordinary penny you throw into the pile with seven thousand others. It’s the lucky penny you frame on the wall and look at every day. Jesus’s death isn’t just one more fact alongside all the others in your brain (there are sixty minutes in an hour; Washington, DC, is the US capital; the moon is 240,000 miles from earth). No. The death of Jesus is of supreme importance.

2. Jesus’s death really happened.

Paul says he delivered “what [he] also received” (1 Corinthians 15:3). That means he didn’t make it up. Rather, he himself learned about Jesus’s death before conveying it to others. He was a student before he was a teacher. First Corinthians 15:1–4 likely preserves the words of a Christian creed — and if so, it must have been a very early one, from within perhaps a decade of Jesus’s own lifetime, because Paul learned it before his missionary work in Corinth in AD 49. This is evidence that Jesus’s death really happened.

Moreover, Paul says, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures . . . he was buried” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Here are two more evidences of Jesus’s death: (1) Long before it happened, the Hebrew Scriptures said it would, and (2) Jesus’s dead body was buried. Joseph of Arimathea took it down from the cross and placed it in a tomb, and witnesses observed where it was laid. Jesus really died.

3. Jesus’s death saves.

Paul’s gospel reminder includes the announcement that “Christ died for our sins” (1 Corinthians 15:3). Christ means Messiah, the long-expected Savior and King, and that Savior died “for our sins.” His death was substitutionary and atoning. He bore the divine punishment deserved by sinners.

Could severe physical suffering or a near-death experience have achieved that result? Not for the sins Paul had already mentioned in his letter (1 Corinthians 6:9–10), and not for the sins you and I have done. Jesus had to die. We were separated from God by the weight of our sins, but “we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son” (Romans 5:10). Jesus’s death saves.

Ready with the Gospel

Jesus’s death is supremely important. Jesus’s death really happened. Jesus’s death saves. Of course, if we’re Christians, we already know these things. But do we know them? Are they accessible and impactful? Do they speak into our daily struggles, our persistent insecurities, our cherished aspirations?

If you wanted to keep track of that one new penny dropped among seven thousand others, you’d find a way to keep it distinct and accessible. Perhaps you’d spray-paint it bright yellow, or maybe you’d keep it on top of the pile. Likewise, we can spray-paint gospel truth and keep it uppermost. We do so by regularly reminding ourselves: by singing it with others who treasure it as we do, by reading it often in the Bible and lingering long enough to set our hearts ablaze, by praying it into all the corners and crevices of our lives.

We faithfully oil and clean the sword of the Spirit so it’s ready for battle at a moment’s notice. We daily mutter the alarm code so that we don’t go blank when the countdown commences. “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you” (1 Corinthians 15:1). We remember what we know.