He Is Risen!

If I were to tell you that someone I knew had been raised from the dead, you’d think I was crazy. Yet, over the centuries, countless people have believed that Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead over 2,000 years ago. Why have so many believed in this seemingly impossible miracle? And, most importantly, how do we know that the Gospel writers were telling the truth about the resurrection of Jesus—the founding doctrine of the Christian Church?

The Claims of the Gospel

In the first century AD, Jews believed the Messiah would command an army and overthrow their Roman oppressors. Jesus’ 12 disciples subscribed to this popular teaching. So, when Jesus was crucified, their hopes were dashed, and they had serious doubts that Jesus was the promised Messiah. But the Gospel writers all agree that something miraculous happened three days later: Jesus rose from the dead! This event solidified the faith of the disciples that Jesus was the Messiah. These early Christians subsequently carried the message of a resurrected Jesus around the world.

The Empty Tomb

Within days of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter and the other disciples were proclaiming the Resurrection as witnesses of the empty tomb. We can be sure that if the tomb wasn’t empty, or if the disciples of Jesus had somehow gone to the wrong tomb, the Jewish leaders would have found the body of Jesus and made sure to publicly humiliate the disciples. Instead, even the enemies of the new faith didn’t refute the disciples’ claim of an empty tomb.¹

Additionally, the idea that a few scared disciples stole the body of Jesus, as the chief priests later claimed (Matt. 28:11–15), seems highly unlikely since a band of hardened Roman soldiers were guarding the tomb. As the disciples publicly preached a resurrected Jesus, thousands of Jews, many of whom were personally familiar with these very public and recent events, joined the new religion. Acts 2:31, 41.

Witnesses of the Resurrected Jesus

The disciples also claimed to have seen Jesus alive after His resurrection, the first witnesses being women. Mark 16:9. Were the disciples making up the Resurrection story to gain a following among their contemporaries?

First, as investigative journalist Lee Strobel notes in his book, The Case for Christ, the testimony of a woman was not considered credible in first century Palestine. If the disciples were inventing the Resurrection story, they wouldn’t have cast the first witnesses as women.

Second, within 20 years of the Resurrection of Jesus, Paul sent an open letter to the church in Corinth in which he publicly affirmed Jesus’ resurrection and named specific individuals and groups of people who saw Jesus post-resurrection. 1 Cor. 15:3–6. As Timothy Keller writes, “Paul was inviting anyone who doubted that Jesus had appeared to people after His death to go and talk to the eyewitnesses if they wished.” Keller notes that “[i]t was a bold challenge and one that could easily be taken up…. Paul could not have made such a challenge if those eyewitnesses didn’t exist.”²

Some argue that since the disciples were so close to Jesus, their testimony cannot be trusted and we must rely on non-Christian secular testimony about Jesus. But, as Norman L. Geisler points out, if there are eyewitnesses to a murder—even of those who had a close relationship to the victim—and others who only have second-hand knowledge of the murder, a jury would consider the eyewitness testimony to be stronger than that of those with only secondhand knowledge.³

But even without eyewitness testimonies, there is plenty of circumstantial evidence that points to the reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

Circumstantial Evidence: Martyrs

People die for their faith all the time, but people won’t die for their beliefs if they know those beliefs to be false. Philosopher J.P. Moreland observes that most people can only have faith that their Christian beliefs are true. Not so with the disciples and early Christians. They “were in a position to know without a doubt whether or not Jesus had risen from the dead.” The apostles “claimed that they saw Him, talked with Him, and ate with Him. If they weren’t absolutely certain, they wouldn’t have allowed themselves to be tortured to death for proclaiming that the Resurrection had happened.”⁴

Circumstantial Evidence: Converted Skeptics

A few decades after the death of Jesus, Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian, wrote that James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the church in Jerusalem, was stoned to death for his belief in Jesus.⁵ Why is this significant? Because, prior to the Resurrection, James had been a skeptic of Jesus’ claims to be the Messiah. John 7:5. After the Resurrection, James was willing to die for his belief in Jesus. Moreland asks: “Why did James’s life change? Paul tells us: the resurrected Jesus appeared to him. There’s no other explanation.”⁶

It was Saul, later called Paul the Apostle, whose radical conversion presents the most compelling example of a skeptic turned follower of Jesus. As a Pharisee, Saul persecuted the early Christians. But suddenly, he became one of the foremost proponents of the faith he once despised. What had changed? Paul tells us that it was because he encountered the resurrected Jesus in an event also witnessed by others. Acts 22:8. Paul not only boldly proclaimed the Resurrection but was also persecuted and eventually executed for his belief in Jesus.

Circumstantial Evidence: Rituals of the Early Church

The death and resurrection of Jesus was central to the faith of the early disciples. One reason we know this is because they regularly celebrated two rituals: the Lord’s Supper, which memorialized His death, and water baptism, which celebrated both His death and resurrection. “Don’t you know,” Paul wrote to the Christian church in Rome, “that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:3, 4, NIV.

But why would the disciples celebrate that Jesus “had been publicly slaughtered in a grotesque and humiliating way”⁷—unless they were certain He was resurrected?

As Moreland puts it, “[H]is murder wasn’t the last word—the last word was that He had conquered death for all of us by rising from the dead. They celebrated His execution because they were convinced that they had seen Him alive from the tomb.”

If the Resurrection of Jesus is a lie, it’s one of the biggest hoaxes ever perpetrated on the human race. But if the Resurrection of Jesus is true, everything changes. Jesus is more than just a good man; He is God. If the Resurrection actually happened, there is hope in this life and beyond the grave for every one of us who chooses to trust our life to the resurrected Jesus.