God and Jesus
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Christians believe Jesus physically rose from the dead on the third day after he was crucified. It is the centre of the Christian faith, and the New Testament invites you to weigh the evidence for yourself.
Everything depends on it
The apostle Paul was blunt about how much rests on the resurrection:
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain; you are still in your sins.
What the first Christians claimed
For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
Paul wrote this about twenty-five years after Jesus died, and he says he was passing on what he had been taught earlier still. He goes on to list the people who saw Jesus alive:
He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to over five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, but some have also fallen asleep.
Cephas is another name for Peter, and “fallen asleep” was the Christians’ way of saying that someone had died. Paul’s point is that most of the witnesses were still living. In effect he was saying: go and ask them.
Things worth weighing
- The Gospels say the tomb was found empty, and that women were the first to find it. In that culture a woman’s testimony carried little weight, which makes it an unlikely detail to invent.
- The disciples changed from frightened people in hiding into bold public witnesses, and they kept to their story in the face of suffering and death.
- The Christian movement began in Jerusalem, the city where Jesus had been publicly executed and buried, within weeks of his death.
- Jesus’ own brother James and the persecutor Paul, neither of them a follower beforehand, both became leaders of the church after saying they had seen him alive.
Other explanations
People have suggested alternatives for as long as the claim has been made. It is worth asking how well each one fits the facts.
- The disciples stole the body. Then they knowingly died for a lie, which people rarely do.
- The women went to the wrong tomb. Then the authorities could have ended the matter by pointing to the right one.
- The disciples imagined it. But the reports involve groups of people, on many occasions, in different places, and include eating with him and touching him.
- Jesus didn’t really die. Roman executioners knew their work, and a half-dead man could not have convinced anyone that he had conquered death.
A body, not a ghost
The claim was never that Jesus’ spirit lived on or that his memory survived. It was that he was physically alive again.
See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see that I have.
Why it matters to you
If Jesus rose, then he is who he said he was, his death really did deal with sin, and death is not the end for those who trust him.
I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.
The best way to look into it is to read the accounts for yourself. Luke chapter 24 and John chapter 20 are good places to start.