Let me preface this post by saying that after I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior almost 4 years ago, that was when I truly, genuinely understood why it is important for us to never forget why a perfect and sinless Son of God had to die for our sins. Remembering this makes me feel so grateful that Jesus died on the Cross to free me from the bonds of my sins and allow me to be as close as I can to the Father.
But the point of this post is not Jesus' death.
It's how he conquered it.
I get bewildered every time I hear other Christians proclaiming something that the Bible clearly does not support. Imagine my surprise when I found out that some believers, even preachers, dismiss the validity and historicity of Jesus' resurrection.
His resurrection is not metaphorical. It is not merely symbolic. No, it's not enough to dismiss the nature of the resurrection because "what matters is that we believe in Jesus." No, it's important to truly understand that it really did happen and that Jesus physically, bodily rose from the dead.
It's not even something we can just "agree to disagree on." If you're a Christian, you have to believe in an actual resurrection. It's non-negotiable.
I have not yet read books to answer this question, but I'll gladly lead you to a blogger I look up to who wrote about the answers. The original post is here, and here are all of the important arguments:
1. Jesus repeatedly predicted his own resurrection (not just his death!).If you have more time to read - and I think you do since it would be holidays the following days - I also suggest you read this post about Jesus' Resurrection from GotQuestions.org. Here are the arguments highlighted in it:
A skeptic might say that anyone could predict his own death if he was causing a political uproar at that point in history. But the Gospels each point out at least once that Jesus predicted he would rise after death. Jesus clearly knew it was important that he demonstrate his foreknowledge of the resurrection.
“From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.” (Matthew 16:21)
2. If Jesus predicted resurrection but did not come back to life, he would have either been wrong or an outright liar. If he predicted resurrection and did come back to life, it proves he was God (only God could do that).
If Jesus was wrong or a liar, that would make him NOT perfect, and therefore NOT God. If Jesus was NOT God, he had no power to die on the cross for our sins, which is literally the heart of Christianity.
Christianity therefore rests on the historical truth of the resurrection.
The fact that Jesus predicted his own resurrection meant that he had to rise or else he was nothing more than a person who lived 2000 years ago and taught people to do some good things.
3. The lives of the apostles bear strong witness to the truth of the literal resurrection.
We have now established the facts that Jesus predicted his resurrection and that he had to fulfill that prediction in order for him to have been the God he said he was. Now, how do we know he actually did rise from the dead?
Although there are many pieces of evidence for the historical resurrection (see Lee Strobel’s book, “The Case For Christ,” for a great summary), the lives of the apostles after Jesus’ resurrection bear the ultimate witness to it: almost all of the apostles died gruesome martyr deaths for spreading the Gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
Every Christian should understand why this is extremely powerful evidence that the resurrection happened.
It is possible for anyone to be willing to die for a strong belief in something. But no (sane) person would be willing to die for proclaiming a lie. These apostles knew first-hand whether Jesus really was resurrected. If he wasn’t, they would have known that, and would not have been willing to die to proclaim it. If he was, they would know he was nothing less than God, and would have risked everything. This is exactly what they did.
Paul said it best in 1 Corinthians 15:14: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.”(See also Acts 17:31, Acts 23:6, Romans 8:34, 1 Peter 1:3.)
In short, Jesus had to be resurrected to prove he was God; it was the ultimate proof because only God is capable of conquering death. Because he was God, and because he lived a perfect sinless life, he was uniquely able to die for our sins, ultimately reconciling us with God through our belief in him.
The First Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrectionLet me end this post by borrowing a quotation from Sir Lionel Luckhoo of The Guinness Book of World Records fame for his unprecedented 245 consecutive defense murder trial acquittals:
To begin with, we have demonstrably sincere eyewitness testimony. Early Christian apologists cited hundreds of eyewitnesses, some of whom documented their own alleged experiences.
Many of these eyewitnesses willfully and resolutely endured prolonged torture and death rather than repudiate their testimony.
The Second Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrection
A second line of evidence concerns the conversion of certain key skeptics, most notably Paul and James.
The Third and Fourth Lines of Evidence for Christ's resurrection
A third line and fourth line of evidence concern enemy attestation to the empty tomb and the fact that faith in the resurrection took root in Jerusalem. Jesus was publicly executed and buried in Jerusalem. It would have been impossible for faith in His resurrection to take root in Jerusalem while His body was still in the tomb where the Sanhedrin could exhume it, put it on public display, and thereby expose the hoax.
The Fifth Line of Evidence for Christ's resurrection
Finally, a fifth line of evidence concerns a peculiarity of the eyewitness testimony. In all of the major resurrection narratives, women are credited as the first and primary eyewitnesses. This would be an odd invention since in both the ancient Jewish and Roman cultures women were severely disesteemed. Their testimony was regarded as insubstantial and dismissible. Given this fact, it is highly unlikely that any perpetrators of a hoax in 1st Century Judea would elect women to be their primary witnesses.
“I have spent more than 42 years as a defense trial lawyer appearing in many parts of the world and am still in active practice. I have been fortunate to secure a number of successes in jury trials and I say unequivocally the evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”
Have a meaningful and prayerful holy week, everyone! I used to stop celebrating it thinking that we should remember Jesus' death and victory over it every day, but hey, there must be nothing wrong with having a special time each year meant for us all to remember it.
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