Without the Resurrection of Jesus Our Faith is Futile

Believing Jesus to have been a great moral teacher implies His teachings are true.  Since He taught that He Himself is God, He logically must be God. The thirty five miracles in the four gospels prove Jesus had powers beyond our human limitations.  The nature miracles provide strong confirmations of His divine claims. The hundreds of prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament were all fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth, and that far beyond coincidence.

However, not to diminish the importance of this evidence, all claims of Jesus stand or fall with His resurrection. Without the resurrection, His claim to be the Son of God; that is, deity in human flesh, vanishes into thin air. Without the resurrection His death as payment for our sins is meaningless. Without the resurrection of Jesus Christ we are wasting our time.

The importance of Jesus' resurrection was immediately recognized by the apostles, and we find statement after statement in the New Testament emphasizing the importance of Jesus’ full and complete victory over death. In the words of Paul (1 Corinthians 15:13-22, emphasis added):

“If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 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. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

The resurrection of Jesus is the ultimate miracle provided for us by God in order to prove beyond any dispute that Jesus is indeed the Son of God. No one in history successfully claimed to have resurrected himself from death. Nor does any other world religion claim a miracle such as the resurrection, or anything even near this magnitude.

Respected Christian scholar William Lane Craig writes: [1]

“Without the belief in the resurrection the Christian faith could not have come into being. The disciples would have remained crushed and defeated men. Even had they continued to remember Jesus as their beloved teacher, His crucifixion would have forever silenced any hopes of His being the Messiah. The cross would have remained the sad and shameful end of His career. The origin of Christianity therefore hinges on the belief of the early disciples that God had raised Jesus from the dead.”

How Does One Prove the Resurrection?

How does one prove one of the most extravagant claims in human history? How does one prove that 2,000 years ago a carpenter executed as a criminal came back to life after three days and then appeared to many of His followers? Despite the fact that written historical accounts of those days are few, it is still possible to build a strong compelling case on a solid foundation of factual evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The case is made in three logical steps:

• Jesus died on the cross. To prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we first must establish that Jesus did indeed died during the crucifixion.. If He survived, any attempt to claim Jesus' resurrection could have been only gross deception. Only if we can prove it was not possible for Him to have survived the cross, can we take the next step in our investigation.
• Three days after He was buried, His tomb was found empty. What happened to Jesus’ physical body after His death? Could it have been stolen or perhaps eaten by animals? Or was it buried as the gospels claim. And if so, was that tomb empty the following Sunday? If so, what happened to the body? The missing body alone proves nothing, but the empty tomb is a necessary condition for the resurrection claim. If an alternative explanation is supported by the evidence, or even, if His body was located and identified, then the whole claim for the resurrection collapses.
• He appeared before eyewitnesses to prove that He was alive again. To prove that He returned to life after His death, it is imperative to investigate the encounters of the witnesses who saw Him alive. Outrageous claims require outrageous testimony. So to validate the resurrection claim we must examine the testimonies of as many witnesses as possible. Get ready for a real surprise. Not only the gospels tell about Jesus’ resurrection, but there are also verbal and non-verbal testimonies from the other New Testament writers, Early Church Leaders, and the conversions of some remarkable individuals.

First we will systematically present the evidences for Jesus' resurrection. Next we will investigate the possible alternative explanations that try to explain the resurrection “away.”

Read on about : (2) Exhibit #4: Jesus was crucified under Pilate 

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