This last weekend was Easter weekend, and endless social media posts wished “Happy Easter”, “He is Risen”, etc. I also posted the same “He is Risen” and was left thinking about it all. What does that actually mean to me personally? I’m not going to go into a salvation message, but I’m going to start processing the idea of the resurrection of Jesus.
Is it important for the Christian faith to have a resurrected Jesus? Or is it good enough that He walked the earth and taught about love, philosophy, and the future of mankind? I’d like to argue that without His resurrection, it is not even worth bothering with the idea of Christianity at all. There are enough philosophers that have given some thought to living life a certain way, do we need another one?
The Apostle Paul agrees…
In 1 Corinthians 15:14 Paul writes, “and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is without foundation, and so is your faith.” He ties this whole concept into the idea of resurrection in general, and if there is such a thing. Without these two concepts, then we are just wasting our time and should be pitied (vs. 19). This was the conclusion he came to after building the case for the resurrection, and stating how many actual eye-witnesses there were, the total being over 500. One might then ask, who cares if there were so many so-called eye-witnesses if the Bible itself is an outdated book written by men?
Good point.
That’s where faith comes in.
This blog post could go on and on, quoting statistics and the deep thinkers of our time, but that isn’t my point. This is just a process of thought. Our current culture believes that we are born good and the moral law is part of human nature. The question needs to then be asked, if there is a concept of good and evil, where did it come from? Ravi Zacharias, one of my favourite Christian thinkers, has this to say, “When you say there is evil, aren’t you admitting there is good? When you accept the existence of goodness, you must affirm a moral law on the basis of which to differentiate between good and evil. But when you admit to a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver.” That moral lawgiver cannot be human. Emotions and morals cannot be part of an ongoing evolutionary process, because they haven’t changed in thousands of years.
Yes, I know there are multiple arguments that I am working with right now. This is part of the process. All I am going to say in the conclusion of this blog post, is that I have faith in the unseen. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus….
To be continued…