Accepting The Resurrection Is Hard

As they were saying this, Jesus himself stood among them. But they were startled and frightened, and supposed that they saw a spirit. And he said to them, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings rise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself; handle me, and see; for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see that I have.” And while they still disbelieved for joy, and wondered, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate before them.

Luke 24:36-43

I will begin by saying the obvious: accepting that anyone can rise up from the dead challenges my mind and even my sanity. All one has to do is study basic biology, or observe how quickly a dead animal begins to decay and decompose, to realize that spending three days dead inside a tomb and then emerging intact is not how the world normally operates.

Dead men do not get up and leave their graves. Dead men, like all dead flesh, decay, decompose, and disappear. This is how the world works. We know this is how the world has always worked.

Yet the Gospels teach—and Christian faith demands that we embrace the premise—that Jesus did get up and leave His grave. Jesus did not decay. Jesus did not decompose. Jesus did not disappear.

This is the practical aspect of the Resurrection, that Jesus did not do as dead men do, but instead returned from the dead to this world, before ascending into Heaven.

Yet Jesus did die. On this point the Gospels are quite clear:

It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, while the sun’s light failed; and the curtain of the temple was torn in two. Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last.

Jesus died—but Jesus did not remain dead. Jesus rose again from the dead.

Men die—but they remain dead. Men do not rise again from the dead.

Clearly Jesus was not just “a man”!

Who was Jesus? What was Jesus?

Even though the Gospels answer these question clearly and directly, accepting those answers requires we accept that Jesus not only rose from the dead on the third day, but that He had the power to do so—a power mortal men do not have.

The Gospels tell us all of this. The Gospels spell this out in detail.

Yet the Gospels also remind us that even Jesus’ own disciples, when presented with the truth of His Resurrection, could not at first believe it to be true. Even with the evidence of their own eyes, they struggled to accept that Jesus had risen, that He had overcome death itself.

Jesus had told them He would do exactly this—and yet they still struggled to believe that it actually happened when it did happen. They wanted to rationalize His presence away as an apparition, or a ghost even. Jesus had to prove that He was, in fact, living by taking food from their hands and eating it in their presence.

How much harder is it for us today to believe that Jesus’ Resurrection actually happened?

The disciples had the advantage of seeing the Resurrection firsthand. They were the ones who could bear witness to both His crucifixion and death, and His Resurrection from death.

We do not have that advantage. We do not get to witness the Resurrection firsthand. We have only the Gospel accounts that tell us this is what happened. We have no choice but to either accept the Gospel accounts, or reject them.

Yet if we reject the Gospel accounts, if we reject that Jesus did in fact rise again from the dead, then we are also rejecting Jesus’ death, and what that death signifies for us. If we insist that Jesus did not rise again from the dead, but that He died on the cross at Calvary, and remained dead, then we must also insist that Jesus could not, by His death, atone for our sins. If we insist that Jesus did as men do when they die, we also insist that Jesus was “just a man”.

If Jesus was “just a man”, He could not possibly be the perfect and flawless sacrifice through which there is atonement for all our sins, and by which all men may be redeemed from our sins.

If Jesus was “just a man”, He could not shed His blood for the sake of all men.

If Jesus was “just a man”, we are not redeemed, and, ultimately, we are not forgiven.

This is our choice: We can accept the Gospel accounts, and accept the redemption and forgiveness offered to us by Jesus’ death and Resurrection, or we can reject the Gospel accounts, and reject that redemption and forgiveness.

There is no logic we may employ in resolving this choice. There are no evidences we may interrogate beyond the Gospels themselves. This choice is a choice of faith entirely. This choice is a leap of faith entirely.

We can choose to believe. We can choose not to believe. We have no third option.

For myself, I choose to believe. I choose to accept that Jesus did rise again on the third day, that He did overcome death itself. I choose to believe that Jesus offered Himself up as the perfect and flawless sacrifice through which there is atonement for all our sins.

I choose to believe that, by so doing, Jesus opens the way for every man to come into eternal life, released from the burden and the bondage of past sins and past mistakes.

I choose to believe that, through Jesus, we are all redeemed, and that we are all forgiven. Even though my rational mind struggles to accept all this, in the end, my choice is to take that leap of faith and believe in Jesus’ Resurrection.

On this Easter Sunday, I pray that all men everywhere will choose to take that same leap of faith and believe in Jesus’ Resurrection. It might be a struggle to accept it, but I pray they still choose to believe it.

I pray that all men everywhere choose to believe that we are redeemed, that we are forgiven, that there is a way for us to come into eternal life, freed from all our past sins.

I choose to believe. What will you choose?