The reasoning behind believing in the resurrection

I am skeptical by nature, and around this time of year I typically ask what really happened on Easter Sunday? To answer that question we have the same pieces of evidence that have been considered by honest skeptics like myself for the last 2,000 years.

People just do not come back from the dead. Undeniably, it is not a normal experience for someone to come back to life, particularly after burial. Never in my life have I encountered a person who has died, been buried and come back to life. It just does not happen. It is completely against the laws of science. This is the primary piece of evidence against the historical reality of Jesus’ resurrection.

Jesus’ tomb was undeniably empty. Otherwise, the Roman and Jewish officials who opposed Christianity would simply have produced Jesus’ body still in the tomb in order to crush talk of the resurrection. However, all historical and archeological records we have, even the anti-Christian ones, indicate the tomb was empty. The only debated historical fact is how the tomb became empty. This single piece of evidence makes it impossible that Jesus’ disciples were simply delusional or mistaken. Either someone stole the body and perpetrated a hoax on everyone, or the resurrection really happened.

The disciples were insanely willing to die for their claims that Jesus resurrected. They claimed to have repeatedly seen Jesus alive over the course of 40 days following his death and burial. During this time they claim to have touched him, eaten with him, spoken to him and to have been taught by him. At the end of 40 days, they claim they saw him ascend into Heaven. They unanimously continued to affirm this eyewitness testimony even when faced with torture and death if they continued to insist their eyewitness testimony was objectively true. Furthermore, they didn’t gain any monetary, political or personal gain from their determined insistence on the reality of the resurrection, so they had no motive to lie. They genuinely thought they were speaking the truth.

The eyewitness testimony of those who claimed to see Jesus after the Resurrection has a ring of authenticity. For instance, the eyewitness testimony says women were the first to discover the empty tomb. In that culture, women could not even testify in legal proceedings. Therefore, claiming women were the first to the tomb actually undermined the cultural acceptance of the testimony in that day. Therefore, the only reason to include such this detail is that it is the way it truly happened and the eyewitnesses are determined to stick to the truth, even when it would lead to the rejection of others.

Jesus was worshiped as God from the earliest days of Christianity.

From archeological records and ancient manuscripts, we can determine that Jesus was worshiped as divine even in the first century, within the generation following his execution. So, beliefs about his divinity could not have arisen as legend. There is not enough time for that to have happened, according to sociological and anthropological sciences.

Various skeptics, including members of his own family, came to believe Jesus truly was God shortly after his death. Whereas before they thought he was crazy, they later became believers in his divinity.

Jewish culture of the first century did not have a category for the resurrection of Jesus. Many Jews did not believe in the possibility of resurrection at all. Others did believe in resurrection, but only for the righteous at the complete end of human history. No first century culture believed in resurrection in the middle of human history.

Furthermore, several other self-proclaimed messiahs rose up in this era of history. In every instance they faded into obscurity or were killed as insurrectionists. In every instance where they were killed, their followers disbanded because the death proved that person was not the true Messiah. This did not happen with Jesus’ disciples. Instead, something happened after his execution to lead them to radically believe he actually was the Messiah even though he had been killed.

All of these factors need to be weighed in order to honestly assess the rational probability of whether Jesus really, historically resurrected. As I look at all of this I am overcome by the transformation that occurred within the disciples on Easter Sunday 2,000 years ago. When Jesus was killed they ran away. They hid. They were disillusioned and disappointed. Jesus’ death proved he was not the Messiah they had hoped. They were not in a frame of mind to steal the body of a fraudulent messiah just so they could likewise be tortured and killed pretending he was the real thing. And yet, something occurred a few days after Jesus’ historical death that caused his disciples to radically change their life trajectories. I am convinced that transformative event was the historical, literal resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I know the resurrection is too fantastical to be true. Even the disciples thought so. The Bible says even when they saw him resurrected with their own eyes some disciples doubted (Matthew 28:17). They knew it was impossible. Yet every single one of them went to their gruesome deaths insisting that the impossible had actually happened. A man, Jesus, claimed to literally be God and said he would willingly die as a sacrifice for anyone who turned away from their sins and followed him. And when he was killed he didn’t stay dead. He came back to life, proving the truth of his claims.

The miraculous has happened. God has truly come to earth, lived among us, died for our sins, risen from the dead and offered forgiveness to all who believe and reorient their lives to be founded upon him. Jesus has risen indeed.

Ashley Brown is a pastor at Wasilla Bible Church.