“the gospel I preached to you, which you received, … by which you are being saved … 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, …” (vv. 1–4)
To explain the good news, as well as the reason for the
Gospel, Paul gave the bad news that we need saving because we are
sinners:
“For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. … The last enemy to be destroyed is death. … Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. … The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. … Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (vv. 21–22, 26, 45–49).
So even when preaching the Gospel, Paul firmly grounded this in the events of Genesis 3—the very parts that many people urge us to omit!
One has to explain the bad news before one can relate the Good News!" CMI
