Risen Indeed
Resurrection is profound Christian belief
It’s the one radical–and some would say dangerous–belief of the Christian faith.
There are many profound truths of Christianity.
However, the resurrection sets Christianity apart from Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religions or cults.
The idea that Jesus Christ rose from the dead three days after being crucified, just as He said, conquering death, sin, and Satan is the history-altering event that stands above everything.
Kenneth Samples wrote the following for Reason to Believe in March 2015:
‘Dangerous ideas’ in such disciplines as philosophy, theology, and science often challenge the standard paradigm (accepted model) of the day. These so-called unsafe ideas have radical implications for how people view reality, truth, rationality, goodness, value, and beauty, and can sometimes contravene what many people believe. Not only do such revolutionary ideas threaten accepted beliefs, but they also contain explosive world-and-life view implications for all humanity.
Rising from the dead defies the human experience. Dead is dead, finished, expired. Dead men are supposed to stay dead.
That’s what makes the resurrection so dangerous. It alters rational thinking, especially with the truth Jesus Christ accomplished it. Jesus Christ made the way to reconcile sinful human beings to himself by blowing up the notion that “all roads lead to heaven.”
The resurrection flips death and the afterlife on its head. Many people fear death, but that isn’t the case for a Christ follower who has peace and hope facing death. However, Jesus Christ’s resurrection delivers a paradigm shift of the bodily resurrection of believers in Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ rose from the grave, followers of Jesus Christ will rise too.
The gospel record is compelling of the crucifixion account, His burial, resurrection, repeated appearances, and ascension. More than one atheist has come to believe by examining the gospel record.
In John 11:25-26 (NASB), we get one of the I AM statements of Jesus Christ:
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Jesus raising Lazarus, and others, from the dead was a prelude to the main event of Easter. Jesus repeatedly told His disciples about His death and resurrection. It wasn’t until He rose again and appeared multiple times that it made sense.
However, everything still comes back to a dead man, witnessed by thousands with the events at Golgotha, dying, being buried, and rising again the third day, according to the Scriptures.
Joseph of Arimathea prepared Jesus’ body for burial, and the Romans had a rock seal in Jesus' tomb and a soldier guard it.
None of it mattered because an angel emerged to greet Mary and Mary Magdalene saying in Matthew 28:4-7 that they needed to tell the disciples that Jesus was resurrected from the grave.
Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the crucifixion account is Jesus Christ's consistent appearances after the resurrection, and the different perspectives provided by the gospel writers. Over the 40 days between the resurrection and His ascension, these are some of the people Jesus Christ appeared to:
Mary Magdalene and other women at the tomb.
Simon Peter.
Two disciples on the Road to Emmaus.
The 11 disciples.
Thomas.
James, Jesus’ half brother.
More than 500 people.
J. Warner Wallace of Cold Case Christianity conducted an interview with the Baltimore Post-Examiner in 2022 about the veracity of the resurrection. Regarding the eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ appearances, Wallace said the following:
The best way to end the threat of a fledgling Christian religion is to either produce the dead body – and as a crime scene investigator, I can tell you that, once you have the body, it’s game over – or get the people to recant their story. That would also end it immediately. Those would have been the best things to do, and that never happened.
What did happen was, you had a very early development of creeds, and, to me, that was telling.
Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, affirms that Jesus rose from the dead. If you’re going to make such a claim, you don’t do it immediately. You wait until most of the enemies of Christ are dead.
Stephen was tried by some of the same people who tried Jesus, so they knew Him. So, again, for me, the early dating of the Gospels – and the early claims of the resurrection – are two of the surest ways an investigator can lock down if the story is true.
If the resurrection was a fraud perpretrated on the world, a body would have surfaced shortly after the reports of the crucifixion. Multiple people had an interest in destroying that Jesus rose from the grave. That never happened.
And if the resurrection is a fraud, why would the apostles spread the gospel to other parts of the world, with 11 of them facing a martyr's death, and the last one, John, being exiled to Patmos? No one would risk that for a fraud, a hoax.
While Jesus rose from the grave, Buddha, Mohammed, Joseph Smith, and countless others are a pile of bones. While Christianity proclaims the free gift of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, other faith traditions proclaim good works, meaning do x, y, or z to earn God’s—or the gods’—favor.
We live in a culture that bombards us with the message that it doesn’t matter what you believe because Heaven is everyone’s final destination.
However, Jesus says in John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.”
That creates one important question for people that demands an answer: What are you going to do with the risen Savior?
