May I pose the following question: Have you ever thought about what our world would be like if Christ had not risen from the dead?
First, we read in (1 Corinthians 15:14): “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” If Christ was not resurrected from the dead I might as well pack my bags and close down my website right now because the faith we Christians believe in is empty and useless.
Second, my message in this devotion would be one big lie and I would be the chief of all liars for we read in (1 Corinthians 15:15): “More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.”
Third, the glorious news that our sins are forgiven is a made-up fairy tale. (1 Corinthians 15:17) tells us: “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.”
Fourth, if Christ has not been resurrected from the dead then his claim to be deity and our Messiah would be false because Christ clearly claimed He would rise from the dead on the third day. If Christ couldn’t deliver on this claim then he is a liar, not all-powerful and therefore not God.
Fifth, the Bible, which we hold so dear as the only infallible book of truth, is full of errors since its claim of Christ’s deity is false and the Old Testament prophecies that foretold of Jesus’ suffering and resurrection are also false.
And sixth, our blessed hope that one day when we die we too will be resurrected from the dead and spend eternity in heaven with Christ is a mere pipe-dream. Clearly there is no hope in our own resurrection if Christ couldn’t be resurrected.
In summary if Christ wasn’t raised from the dead then we have a faith that is empty and useless, our Sunday morning services are a complete waste of time, you are still living in your sins, Christ is not God but the greatest deceiver of all time, the Bible is not only fallible but an evil book since its central claims are a pack of lies, and the most wonderful and comforting thought that we have eternal life is all a great hoax.
So, you see that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not some minor doctrine but it is the cornerstone on which Christianity rises or falls. Without the resurrection the only conclusion we can come away with is summed up sadly in (1 Corinthians 15:19) where we read: “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”
But why should anyone believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ today? After all, in our Western society the predominant worldview today is that of naturalism which starts with the premise that anything supernatural is impossible and since a resurrection from the dead would be a supernatural event we can clearly rule out this possibility. However, if naturalism is true then we would have to rule out all of the supernatural miracles that Jesus did. Also, if Jesus didn’t perform any miracles, His claim to deity would be false and as a result not only was Jesus not God but the Bible isn’t a book of truth. But before we throw out our cherished Christian beliefs and our Bibles let’s consider the following five lines of reasoning that demonstrate why our faith in the resurrection of Christ is based on solid grounds.
I will now list five convincing arguments why the resurrection is a true historical event.
In their book, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, Gary Habermas and Michael Licona make the first compelling case for the resurrection of Jesus by not appealing to the reliability of the Scriptures but to what they call a “minimal facts approach.” This approach has the advantage that skeptics who don’t accept the inspiration and reliability of the Bible can still feel comfortable that the resurrection is a very compelling historical fact based on this non-supernatural paradigm. Habermas and Licona in their book state: “This approach considers only those data that are so strongly attested historically that they are granted by nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones… Most facts we use meet two criteria: They are well evidenced and nearly every scholar accepts them.”1
Just what are these facts? Well the first four are backed by so much evidence that nearly every scholar who studies the subject, even the rather skeptical ones, accepts them. And the fifth fact enjoys the acceptance by an impressive majority, up to 75%, as a historical fact. These facts are:
- Jesus died by crucifixion.
- Jesus’ disciples believed that He rose and appeared to them.
- The church persecutor Paul was suddenly changed.
- The skeptic James, brother of Jesus, was suddenly changed.
- The tomb was empty.
These five facts point very strongly to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. All other theories including the unknown tomb, the wrong tomb, Jesus was a legend, the disciples hallucinated the risen Jesus, Jesus swooned, and Jesus’ body was stolen by the disciples are fatally flawed. Only the belief in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead meets these five well established facts.
In tomorrow’s part II of this devotion we will share four more convincing reasons why the resurrection clearly leans more toward fact than fiction.
1 Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004). p. 44.