This fact is central to the faith. That Jesus sacrificed His life for our forgiveness, rose from the grave, ascended to heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God, interceding for those who trust in Him.
Simply put: Without the resurrection, Christianity cannot be true. Because it relies on a risen Savior.
But did it really happen? None of us were there, so how do we know?
Here are several reasons you can be confident that Jesus did, in fact, rise from the dead.
Jesus Said He Would
If you read the four Gospels of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – you’ll see that Jesus, on multiple occasions, predicted His death and His resurrection. Here are three of them:
And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. –Mark 8:31
“We are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. On the third day he will be raised to life!” – Matthew 20:18-19
“The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life—only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again.” –John 10:17
The Gospels contain record of Jesus performing miracles, including healing the sick, calming a storm, and even raising someone else from the dead, demonstrating that He had power over nature.
Jesus said that He would lay down His life, but that He would be raised back to life. If the miracles He performed are witnesses that He was who He claimed to be, then we can be confident that He did what He said He would do.
Scripture Records That He Did
The New Testament not only reports that Jesus rose from the dead, it devotes many verses to detailing things Jesus did after He was raised from the dead. Scripture contains the eyewitness accounts of those who were there, saw Him, and interacted with Him.
See Luke 24 and John 20-21 for some of these things, including that He talked with His disciples, ate with them, showed them the nail prints in His hands, and gave them a mission to carry out.
The Tomb Was Empty
Each of the Gospels record this as fact. Even secular sources, who were not eyewitnesses, report that Jesus’ followers claimed He had risen.
The New Testament book of Acts tells of the disciples spreading everywhere they went that Jesus had been raised to life, and that He is Lord.
If this were not true, all the authorities would have had to do was produce the body. But they couldn’t, because the tomb was empty.
While there could be other explanations than the resurrection – and some folks try very hard to find them – it simply means that most agree that Jesus’ tomb was, in fact, empty.
Jesus’ Disciples —Who Had All Fled at His Arrest—Now Boldly Claimed He Had Risen
As mentioned earlier, the disciples of Jesus went to their deaths, many of them, claiming they had seen the resurrected Jesus. It was quite the turnaround by the group who had all run away when Jesus was arrested, following the “last supper.”
There are a host of explanations for this you could offer, but the thing that is not in dispute is that the group who was in Jesus’ inner circle – the same ones who had previously run away – were now boldly proclaiming what they had seen. And under consistent physical threat for doing so.
And from what we have record of, the disciples never changed their tune. They never recanted. Most were put to death because of their testimony. Their testimony was of no material benefit. They did not become rich or powerful because of what they preached. On the contrary, they were assaulted, imprisoned and killed. Yet they continued to claim that Christ had risen.
The Dramatic Conversion of the Apostle Paul
Saul of Tarsus was a fierce opponent of those who preached Jesus as Lord and Christ. Acts 9 records that,
Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord’s disciples. He went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. –Acts 9:1-2
But on his way, he encountered who he claimed to be the risen Christ. And it completely changed him. He spent the rest of his life “preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” (Galatians 1:23)
His testimony was that he had encountered the risen Jesus, and he was willing to undergo severe persecution to get that message to as many people as he could.
The man who was dead set on stamping out the message of Jesus Christ eventually penned about a third of the New Testament.
In summary, there is plentiful evidence, and reason to be confident that Jesus rose from the dead. It does take faith to believe something that we were not present for. But we exercise faith in believing any number of things in history took place, because we believe the testimony of those who were there.
With the resurrection, we have solid reason to choose to believe those who were there, who confidently proclaimed that Jesus did what He said He would do. And that He is who He claims to be: the Lord of all.
And the better news is that His invitation to be saved is for everyone for all time. He said in John 7:
Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. –John 7:37b-38
That is, literally, anyone. No matter what you’ve done, the invitation is for you, too.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. –John 3:16-18
I encourage you to put your faith in Him, trust Him and follow Him.
