“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God bring with Him those who sleep in Jesus” (I Thessalonians 4:14).
If Jesus really did rise from the dead as Scripture claims and as Christians hold, then nothing is the same and everything has changed forever.
The reason Christians are positively giddy about the Easter Event–the resurrection of Jesus–is that in walking out of that tomb and leaving it forever empty, He broke the stranglehold in which death had held humanity.
We are free. We are free forever. We are free to live forever.
It doesn’t get any better than this.
Everything stands or falls on whether Jesus rose from the dead that first Easter Sunday morning.
The resurrection of Jesus was Heaven’s imprimatur on Jesus’s ministry, the Father’s validation of Jesus’ every claim, eternity’s “amen” to Jesus’ promises, and convincing evidence that Jesus Christ is everything He said He was.
Prove that He did not rise, that His body is still lying in some grave somewhere, and you will have put a stop to the entire Christian movement. Thereafter, the few remaining followers of the Man of Galilee would form themselves into a Jesus Memorial Society. Not long before they stopped meeting altogether, they would quit writing “Man of Galilee” and “He” in all caps.
Even the most notorious atheist, adamantly opposed even to the idea that Jesus could have risen from the dead, would concede that if indeed it did happen, it was a game-changer from that moment on.
The ultimate game-changer. Nothing would ever be the same.
A new reality. That’s what it was.