"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."
â 1 Corinthians 15:3-4
Quick Answer
In 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, Paul summarizes the gospel of first importance in four simple facts: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and he appeared to witnesses. This is the historic core of the Christian message, Christ's substitutionary death and bodily resurrection, received by faith for salvation.
Paul's 'of first importance'
Writing to a church confused about the resurrection, Paul does not invent a new message. He reminds them of the gospel he had already delivered and they had already received, calling it a matter of first importance (1 Corinthians 15:1-3). Scholars widely recognize verses 3-4 as an extremely early Christian summary, likely passed to Paul within just a few years of the crucifixion itself, meaning it goes back to the very beginning of the church rather than to some later legend.
In four short clauses, Paul compresses the entire gospel: Christ died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised on the third day, and he appeared. Nothing essential to salvation is missing from this list, and nothing unnecessary has been added to it.
Notice, too, what Paul does not include. There is no requirement here to first master church history, resolve every theological debate, or achieve a certain level of moral improvement. The gospel he calls of first importance is a short, learnable set of historical facts about what Christ did, paired with a call to trust him. That simplicity is a feature, not a shortcut, because it means the gospel travels well, across cultures, across centuries, and into the hands of anyone willing to hear it.
Christ died for our sins
Christ died for our sins is the first fact, and the word for carries the weight of substitution, he died in our place, bearing what our sin deserved. Paul says elsewhere that God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). Paul adds according to the Scriptures, rooting this death not in tragedy or accident but in a plan announced long before, especially in passages like Isaiah's description of the suffering servant, pierced for our transgressions (Isaiah 53:5).
This is the heart of the gospel: not that Christ died merely as an example of love or a martyr for a cause, but that he died bearing the actual penalty for actual sin, yours and mine, so that those who trust him would not have to bear it themselves. God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).
He was buried and raised on the third day
He was buried confirms the death was real and physical, not a swoon or an illusion. The tomb was a real, verifiable place, later found empty. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures is the hinge on which the whole letter turns. Paul goes on to say that if Christ has not been raised, Christian faith is futile and believers are still in their sins (1 Corinthians 15:17). The resurrection is not decoration on the gospel, it is proof that the death actually accomplished what it claimed to accomplish.
Third day also reflects an Old Testament pattern and Jesus' own repeated predictions of his death and resurrection (Matthew 16:21), showing that this event too unfolded exactly as God had said it would, not as an improvised rescue after the fact.
He appeared: a gospel built on witnesses, not legend
Paul then lists eyewitnesses: Cephas, the Twelve, more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom were still alive when he wrote, James, and finally Paul himself (1 Corinthians 15:5-8). This is not vague spiritual language, it is an invitation to go ask people who were there, most of them still living. A message built on legend does not name eyewitnesses whose testimony could be checked and disputed by hostile readers.
This grounding in real testimony is part of why the earliest Christian preaching leaned so heavily on the resurrection as a fact to be reported, not merely a truth to be felt (Acts 2:32; 4:33). The apostles staked their entire lives, and in most cases their deaths, on having actually seen the risen Christ with their own eyes.
Why this ancient summary still saves today
What makes this summary still the gospel today is its simplicity. It does not ask you to master theology before you can be saved, only to believe these historical facts and what they mean for you, that Christ's death paid for your sin and his resurrection guarantees new life to everyone who trusts him. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved (Romans 10:9).
Paul calls this the message by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to it (1 Corinthians 15:2), not a message to admire from a distance, but one to receive, trust, and stand on for the rest of your life, exactly as believers have done for two thousand years.