By Scott Millis
Pastor at Living Word Family Church
scott@lwfstjoe.org
When I was in college, I took a class called “Religion 101”. I took it because I thought it was a survey course on world religions, which I thought would be useful. But what it was, in fact, was a philosophy course on the nature of religious belief in general. The professor’s premise was that you had the legal right to believe anything you want to, but that you don’t have the moral right to believe something you can’t explain or defend.
The class was discussion-heavy, and my relationship with the teacher, while often combative, was fruitful. I was a committed Christian with plenty of zeal but lacking knowledge, and our back-and-forth –in and out of class- forced me to seriously examine the grounds of my belief for the first time.
The final requirement for everyone in that class was to write a paper titled “My Most Cherished Belief”. And it was just what it sounds like; we were to identify our core belief (for most of us, this would be a religious doctrine) and defend it. While talking on the way downstairs after class, the professor asked me what I would be writing about. I told him I thought it should be obvious. He replied that he assumed it would be something to do with Christianity, but that Christianity was too broad a subject for a 12-15 page paper and that I would have to narrow it down. I responded with, “I know. I’m writing about the resurrection.”
He stopped suddenly and turned to me, puzzled, and said, “Really? Why the resurrection?” I was dumbfounded. This was a man who frankly came across as a pompous know-it-all in class. Once, when a friend of mine was making an argument, and expressing his frustration that the professor was not addressing his point, the professor had replied, “Believe me, I know what your point is. I’ve been doing this for 15 years. That’s why I’m up here and you’re down there.” He actually used the terms “up” and “down”!
So I was amazed that this guy was amazed at my choice of topic. I told him, “Well, it really is the central doctrine of Christianity. Without the resurrection, there IS no Christianity!” “I disagree,” he said; “Why would Jesus have to rise from the dead for us to take seriously his message of love and peace?” I told him I was only writing one paper. I would write a paper about why I believe the resurrection actually happened, or I would write one about why it mattered.
Because it does matter. We inhabit a culture that is just fine with a Jesus who preached love and peace. How can you argue with a guy whose whole message is “love your fellow man, and treat him as you want to be treated”? Problem is, that was not His whole message. Problem is, He didn’t come just to spread a message in the first place. He came, as written in Matthew 10:45 “…to give His life as a ransom for many.”
His mission was to die, die in our place, paying the penalty for our sins. This is, for the believer, half of the core truth of Christianity. Paul writes passionately about the crucifixion. Paul was educated in Jewish Law, and had a thousand lines of argument to draw from in his preaching, teaching, and writing; but he tells the Corinthians that he was, while with them, determined to demonstrate only his knowledge of ‘… Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.” One of Paul’s main messages to the early church was that the Law was unable to empower us to live in a manner that was pleasing to God. That we are, by nature, unable to do that, because sin is not just something we do; it’s part of who we are. We don’t just need to be forgiven, we need to be cleansed. And only the shed blood of Christ can do that.
There is a lot of history behind that truth, but once we grant that premise, the question is this: If the shed blood and death of Christ were what paid the penalty for sin, why is the resurrection necessary? Wasn’t the crucifixion enough?
The answer to that question is found in the person and claims of Jesus Himself. You see, if Jesus were just some countercultural guru, championing human rights, peace, and love in a militaristic culture, and had been executed by the government, He might indeed have gone down in history as a martyr. He might, conceivably, have some hangers-on even today, holding Him up as a paragon of virtue; and why not? He really did lead a perfect life, after all.
But Jesus made some extraordinary claims about His identity and His plans. And among those claims were that He was the Son of God, that He was one with the Father, and that He would be killed and rise from the dead three days later. He did not imply this; He did not hint at this; He said it plainly, and more than once.
If He had died -even died for the sins of the world- and not risen, we would, as Ravi Zacharias has said, “have a king-sized problem.” For one thing, it is almost unimaginable that a Galilean itinerant preaching in ancient Roman-ruled Palestine would have made an impact surviving much past the lifetime of the people He personally ministered to. Yet today, over two billion people claim to be believers in Christ. But that’s not the real problem.
The real problem is that if Christ had not risen from the dead, that means he lied, or was simply wrong, when He said He would. And if He was wrong about that, what else was He wrong about? How can I take His teachings seriously (some of them are hard!) if He Himself put so much emphasis on His resurrection from the dead? Not only His teachings; what about His promises?
By keeping the one promise that looked, on the outside, like the hardest one to keep, He makes it easy to believe every other promise He made. As Paul wrote, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.” What would it matter what Christ said about eternal life, about forgiveness of sins, about anything, if He remained in the grave after saying He was going to lay down His life and take it up again?
The multitudes found Jesus winsome. The multitudes responded to His miracles. Both His followers and His detractors were amazed at His speech, because He spoke with such authority. But had He remained in the grave, the Jewish authorities, and ultimately His followers too, would have concluded that it was, after all, just talk.
His resurrection emboldened His followers. Because they encountered the risen Christ, nothing could stop them from carrying out His great commission of preaching the gospel, even though most of them paid with their lives. The resurrection did more than just cause some jaws to drop; it authenticated every command Jesus gave, and every promise Jesus made. And the most precious of these promises is to us as much as to them: “Because I live, you also will live.”
Resurrection Sunday, Easter, is THE high holy day for the body of Christ. The event we celebrate is the center of human history. Every day lives are being changed and saved by an encounter with this same risen Lord. Every day people are slipping into an eternity that has been determined by their response to His invitation to believe in Him and His resurrection. Romans 10:9 says “If you will confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Does it matter whether or not Jesus actually rose from the dead? Nothing matters more.
