The Resurrection

Are There Reasons for Believing?

Two weeks ago, I began a short sermon series called The Resurrection that’s based on 1 Corinthians 15. The purpose of 1 Corinthians 15 is a defense of the resurrection of the dead, which is predicated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For this reason, Paul begins the chapter by reminding the Corinthians of the good news.

The good news, or what we commonly refer to as the Gospel, has to do with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: 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, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.¹

The claim of this passage is also foundational for the Christian Faith. If this claim is false, our faith is useless (cf. 1 Cor 15:13) but if the claim is valid, then we should remain firm in our faith and give ourselves to the work of God (cf. 1 Cor 15:47).

Christians claim that the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ are true but some people, even Christians, struggle with questions and doubts. Now, let me state up front that there’s nothing wrong with having questions and doubts. However, I do believe there are some compelling reasons to believe in the good news about Jesus Christ and to have confidence in our faith.

What I mean is that I believe there are good reasons for believing but not proof, as in proving the good news of Jesus Christ is true, like one can prove that Newton’s Laws of Physics are true. Seeking scientific proof for the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus is the wrong approach because the matter at hand isn’t a scientific claim. The good news of Jesus Christ is a historical claim for which I believe there are some compelling reasons to accept.

I share that distinction between scientific and historical claims because I think we do people with questions and doubts a disservice when we try to prove the gospel like it's science. Science is based on observations that raise questions from which we can formulate hypotheses and then test those hypotheses with experiments to disprove the hypotheses. With the resurrection, an observation is made that the tomb is empty, which can lead to several hypotheses: Jesus never died and was buried in the tomb, perhaps the body of Jesus was stolen, or that Jesus was raised from the dead. But what we can’t do is test any of these hypotheses. Therefore, instead of attempting to test these hypotheses, which is impossible, we can pay attention to some historical observations.

The first historical observation relates to the Scriptures. Paul says Jesus died and was raised according to the scriptures. In other words, the claim that Jesus died, was buried, and was raised from the dead isn’t something that happened in a vacuum. Instead, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are part of the larger redemptive story told within the Scriptures and fit well within that redemptive story. So, even though this observation is far from settling the matter of belief, we know that we are being asked to believe a claim that is congruent with the larger story it is told within.²

The second observation pertains to the witnesses. Paul says that after Jesus was raised, he appeared to numerous people. Thus, there were people at the time who could corroborate what Paul was saying.³ The crucifixion of Jesus was a public event that a lot of people who were in Jerusalem for the Passover saw. Other people, some of the same people who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul, saw the resurrected Jesus alive again. In today’s parlance, people could fact-check Paul. A lawyer would have been able to go to the people who are said to have seen the resurrected Jesus Christ and have them sign affidavits stating that they saw the resurrected Jesus.

The third observation pertains to the mission of these believers. In his book The New Testament and the People of God, N.T. Wright says:

The single most striking thing about early Christianity is its speed of growth. In AD 25, there is no such thing as Christianity: merely a young hermit in the Judean wilderness, and his somewhat younger cousin who dreams dreams and sees visions. By AD 125 the Roman emperor has established an official policy in relation to the punishment of Christians; Polycarp has already been a Christian in Smyrna for half a century; Aristides (if we accept the earlier date) is confronting the emperor Hadrian with the news that there are four races in the world, Barbarians, Greeks, Jews and Christians...”

...Christianity summoned proud pagans to face torture and death out of loyalty to a Jewish villager who had been executed by Rome. Christianity advocated a love which cut across racial boundaries. It sternly forbade sexual immorality, the exposure of children, and a great many other things which the pagan world took for granted. Choosing to become a Christian was not an easy or natural thing for the average pagan. A Jew who converted might well be regarded as a national traitor. Even slaves, who might be supposed to have less to lose than others, and hence to appreciate an elevation of status through conversion, might face a cost: as we saw, Pliny thought it normal to interrogate, with torture, slave-girls who happened to be part of the early Christian movement. We have no reason to suppose that interrogation under torture was any easier for a young woman in the second century than it is in the twentieth.

Why then did early Christianity spread? Because early Christians believed that what they had found to be true was true for the whole world. The impetus to mission sprang from the very heart of early Christian conviction...⁴

The conviction of the early Christians was that Jesus Christ died on the cross, that he was buried, and that God raised him from the dead on the third day. Someone might retort that the Apostles and the rest of the Christians just made up the good news about Jesus Christ. However, if that’s true, then many of them suffered great persecution and even, in some cases, death for a story they made up. As challenging as it might be to believe that Jesus actually died and rose again just as the scripture says, it seems ridiculous to think that people would suffer persecution and even death for a story they just made up.

The final observation pertains to the Apostolic Preaching. Despite all the differences that exist within the broad umbrella of Christianity today, the consistent claim of Christianity from the beginning has been the message of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection. The late Chuck Colson addressed the consistency of the Apostolic witness by pointing out that the people involved in the Watergate Scandal couldn’t keep their story straight long enough to avoid criminal charges and being sent to prison.⁵ But the apostles were consistent in their story that Jesus of Nazareth died on the cross, was buried, and was raised on the third day. They were so deeply moved by what they and others had witnessed that they insisted every church share this same story, and the churches did, passing it down from generation to generation.

Again, I don’t believe we can prove the good news of Jesus Christ like we can do with scientific claims but as a historical claim, I do think there are compelling reasons for believing the good news really happened. And what makes this news about Jesus Christ so good is that he died for our sins and was raised from the dead, which means we have victory over the power of sin and death (cf. 1 Cor 15:55-56).

1. All scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

2. Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel: The Original Good News Revisited (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 50, who notes that the mention of the scriptures serves as a reminder that this brings the story of Israel to completion.

3. Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1997), 257, points out that the mention of witnesses “shows that Paul did not think of the resurrection of Jesus as some sort of ineffable truth beyond history…”

4. N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Christian Origins and the Question of God, vol. 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 359-360.

5. Charles Colson, “Colson Preaches that Watergate Proves the Resurrection,” Washington Post, September 28, 1983, (last accessed Tuesday, May 13, 2025), wrote, “I know the resurrection is a fact, and Watergate proved it to me. How? Because twelve men testified they had seen Jesus raised from the dead, then they proclaimed that truth for forty years, never once denying it. Every one was beaten, tortured, stoned, and put in prison. They would not have endured if it weren’t true. Watergate embroiled twelve of the most powerful men in the world, and they couldn’t keep a lie for three weeks. You’re telling me twelve apostles could keep a lie for forty years? Absolutely impossible.”