After that confirmation His body was taken down for burial, wrapped in seventy-five pounds of embalming spices and linen cloths, and laid in a tomb with a large heavy stone across the entrance. The men who carried out the wrapping clearly saw no signs of life in the body that they prepared for burial. A military guard was set at the tomb, which had been sealed with all the authority of Rome.
The terrified and dejected disciples of Christ hid in secret locations for fear of facing the same fate as their executed leader. The church Christ had promised to build (Matthew 16:18) had been destroyed, before it got off the ground, by the death of its charismatic and controversial leader, Jesus of Nazareth. What had begun as a popular movement of hope for a nation had been crushed by the combined weight of the civil, religious and military rulers of Rome and Israel.
Three days later everything has changed. The guards have been scattered, the stone rolled away, the encrusted graveclothes are empty but undisturbed, the tomb lies vacant, and multiple eye witnesses, starting with some devoted women, report having seen Jesus alive. The broken and fearful disciples are radically transformed and begin proclaiming, on pain of death, that Jesus is alive and that He is the only hope for humanity.
The Bible records that during the following weeks He was seen by his closest followers and by over five hundred people on one occasion, many of whom were still available at the time of writing to personally corroborate the story (1 Corinthians 15:5-7). Many of these eyewitnesses, some of whom had been sceptics before His death, would go on to die horrific deaths as martyrs for what they now believed to be true. Within weeks of the event, those who had hidden in fear or laughed in mockery were boldly declaring, “This Jesus God has raised up, to which we are all witnesses” (Acts 2:32). Not one of the eleven disciples would recant on their belief that Jesus was alive, despite persecution, torture and even martyrdom.
While many over the years have died for causes that they have mistakenly believed to be true, no one, far less this disparate group of fearful and faithless men, would die for a cause that every one of them knew to be nothing more than an elaborate lie.
The belief in a literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ is not only recorded in the Gospel accounts but was embedded in the liturgy of this fledgling religion and its central importance attested to in a letter written in AD 50, less than twenty years after the events (1 Corinthians 15:3-7). The resurrection as recorded in the four Gospels and Paul’s writings is referenced by secular historians such as Flavius Josephus in his Antiquities and Celcus in his True Doctrine, providing extrabiblical conformation of this belief in the first and second centuries.
The preaching of this message survived the sustained persecution of pagan Rome, which was determined to exterminate the Christian church, and for two millennia lives and communities have been transformed by Christians whose message and motivation is based on a confident faith that Christ Jesus rose from the dead and is alive today.
The accounts of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth are the most historically verifiable by a considerable margin of any records of a figure in antiquity. The life story of Alexander the Great is told in sources written four hundred years after his death. Similarly, for Julius Caesar, one of the best documented characters in ancient history, the oldest sources are dated from nine hundred years after his death. Yet no one seriously doubts the existence of either Alexander or Julius Caesar.
Bart Ehrman, an agnostic scholar with leanings towards atheism writes,
“With respect to Jesus, we have numerous, independent accounts of his life in the sources lying behind the Gospels (and the writings of Paul) — sources that originated in Jesus’ native tongue Aramaic and that can be dated to within just a year or two of his life (before the religion moved to convert pagans in droves). Historical sources like that are pretty astounding for an ancient figure of any kind.”[1]
To reject the historicity of the life and death of Christ and the Christian belief in a resurrection would require the rejection and rewriting of almost all of ancient human history, given the existence of thousands of early manuscripts written within a very short time of the death of Christ.
If the Romans did their job properly Jesus was truly dead rather than badly injured. He was buried and under guard in a cave behind a large stone. His disciples were faithless and fearful and yet on the third day something radically changed. The tomb was empty, the guards were disabled and no body was produced. The witnesses were unconventional, the details corroborated and complemented without collusion. The independent sources were variable, the eye witnesses multiple and the effects undeniable. Christianity began with the unexpected preaching of a risen Messiah. The best explanation for all of these facts is that Jesus Christ was indeed resurrected from the dead.
The resurrection matters because it is pivotal to the gospel message. The Bible teaches that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3,4). Paul acknowledges that if Christ is, in fact, not risen then his preaching is empty, the faith of the Christians in Corinth is futile and they are still “in their sins” (vv.14,17).
The death and resurrection of Christ are central to the biblical truth of justification, whereby sinners can have their offences forgiven on the basis that Christ has died as a sinless substitute for sins. His resurrection confirms that death had no legal claim upon Him and that He now has paid the penalty of death due to sinners. According to the Bible “He was delivered up [to die] because of our offences [sins], and was raised because of our justification” (Romans 4:25).
The resurrection not only guarantees believers justification from sin, it also promises them eternal life. According to 1 Corinthians 15, “Now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (v.20).That is to say, because Jesus has been raised from the dead, we too can have the hope of everlasting life, “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive” (v.22). Again, the Bible states that “the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
How then can you come into the good of all that Jesus accomplished by his death, burial and resurrection? The gospel message is simple and clear that “if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:9,10). Trust now in the resurrected Saviour and confess him as Lord and you will be saved from the punishment to come.
One day Jesus said to a pair of grieving sisters whose brother had just died, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25,26). Reader, do you?
[1] History’s Biggest Hoax? How Historians Think About the Resurrection - The Gospel Coalition | Australia
