Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose From The Dead

Here is the final post in the Easter Series; Eight Reasons Why I Believe Jesus Rose from the Dead, by Pastor John Piper.

Eight Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose from the Dead

by John Piper

1. Jesus himself testified to his coming resurrection from the dead.

Jesus spoke openly about what would happen to him: crucifixion and then resurrection from the dead. "The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again" (Mark 8:31; see also Matthew 17:22; Luke 9:22). Those who consider the resurrection of Christ unbelievable will probably say that Jesus was deluded or (more likely) that the early church put these statements in his mouth to make him teach the falsehood that they themselves conceived. But those who read the Gospels and come to the considered conviction that the one who speaks so compellingly through these witnesses is not the figment of foolish imagination will be unsatisfied with this effort to explain away Jesus' own testimony to his resurrection from the dead.

This is especially true in view of the fact that the words which predict the resurrection are not only the simple straightforward words quoted above, but also the very oblique and indirect words which are far less likely to be the simple invention of deluded disciples. For example, two separate witnesses testify in two very different ways to Jesus' statement during his lifetime that if his enemies destroyed the temple (of his body), he would build it again in three days (John 2:19; Mark 14:58; cf. Matthew 26:61). He also spoke illusively of the "sign of Jonah" -- three days in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:39; 16:4). And he hinted at it again in Matthew 21:42 -- "The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner." On top of his own witness to the coming resurrection, his accusers said that this was part of Jesus' claim: "Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, 'After three days I will rise'" (Matthew 27:63).

Our first evidence of the resurrection, therefore, is that Jesus himself spoke of it. The breadth and nature of the sayings make it unlikely that a deluded church made these up. And the character of Jesus himself, revealed in these witnesses, has not been judged by most people to be a lunatic or a deceiver.

2. The tomb was empty on Easter.

The earliest documents claim this: "When they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus" (Luke 24:3). And the enemies of Jesus confirmed it by claiming that the disciples had stolen the body (Matthew 28:13). The dead body of Jesus could not be found. There are four possible ways to account for this.

2.1 His foes stole the body. If they did (and they never claimed to have done so), they surely would have produced the body to stop the successful spread of the Christian faith in the very city where the crucifixion occurred. But they could not produce it.

2.2 His friends stole the body. This was an early rumor (Matthew 28:11-15). Is it probable? Could they have overcome the guards at the tomb? More important, would they have begun to preach with such authority that Jesus was raised, knowing that he was not? Would they have risked their lives and accepted beatings for something they knew was a fraud?

2.3 Jesus was not dead, but only unconscious when they laid him in the tomb. He awoke, removed the stone, overcame the soldiers, and vanished from history after a few meetings with his disciples in which he convinced them he was risen from the dead. Even the foes of Jesus did not try this line. He was obviously dead. The Romans saw to that. The stone could not be moved by one man from within who had just been stabbed in the side by a spear and spent six hours nailed to a cross.

2.4 God raised Jesus from the dead. This is what he said would happen. It is what the disciples said did happen. But as long as there is a remote possibility of explaining the resurrection naturalistically, modern people say we should not jump to a supernatural explanation. Is this reasonable? I don't think so. Of course, we don't want to be gullible. But neither do we want to reject the truth just because it's strange. We need to be aware that our commitments at this point are much affected by our preferences -- either for the state of affairs that would arise from the truth of the resurrection, or for the state of affairs that would arise from the falsehood of the resurrection. If the message of Jesus has opened you to the reality of God and the need of forgiveness, for example, then anti-supernatural dogma might lose its power over your mind. Could it be that this openness is not prejudice for the resurrection, but freedom from prejudice against it?

3. The disciples were almost immediately transformed from men who were hopeless and fearful after the crucifixion (Luke 24:21, John 20:19) into men who were confident and bold witnesses of the resurrection (Acts 2:24, 3:15, 4:2).

Their explanation of this change was that they had seen the risen Christ and had been authorized to be his witnesses (Acts 2:32). The most popular competing explanation is that their confidence was owing to hallucinations. There are numerous problems with such a notion. The disciples were not gullible, but level-headed skeptics both before and after the resurrection (Mark 9:32, Luke 24:11, John 20:8-9, 25). Moreover, is the deep and noble teaching of those who witnessed the risen Christ the stuff of which hallucinations are made? What about Paul's great letter to the Romans? I personally find it hard to think of this giant intellect and deeply transparent soul as deluded or deceptive, and he claimed to have seen the risen Christ.

4. Paul claimed that, not only had he seen the risen Christ, but that 500 others had seen him also, and many were still alive when he made this public claim.

"Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:6). What makes this so relevant is that this was written to Greeks who were skeptical of such claims when many of these witnesses were still alive. So it was a risky claim if it could be disproved by a little firsthand research.

5. The sheer existence of a thriving, empire-conquering early Christian church supports the truth of the resurrection claim.

The church spread on the power of the testimony that Jesus was raised from the dead and that God had thus made him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). The Lordship of Christ over all nations is based on his victory over death. This is the message that spread all over the world. Its power to cross cultures and create one new people of God was a strong testimony of its truth.

6. The Apostle Paul's conversion supports the truth of the resurrection.

He argues to a partially unsympathetic audience in Galatians 1:11-17 that his gospel comes from the risen Jesus Christ, not from men. His argument is that before his Damascus Road experience when he saw the risen Jesus, he was violently opposed to the Christian faith (Acts 9:1). But now, to everyone's astonishment, he is risking his life for the gospel (Acts 9:24-25). His explanation: The risen Jesus appeared to him and authorized him to spearhead the Gentile mission (Acts 26:15-18). Can we credit such a testimony? This leads to the next argument.

7. The New Testament witnesses do not bear the stamp of dupes or deceivers.

How do you credit a witness? How do you decide whether to believe a person's testimony? The decision to give credence to a person's testimony is not the same as completing a mathematical equation. The certainty is of a different kind, yet can be just as firm (I trust my wife's testimony that she is faithful). When a witness is dead, we can base our judgment of him only on the content of his writings and the testimonies of others about him. How do Peter and John and Matthew and Paul stack up?

In my judgment (and at this point we can live authentically only by our own judgment--Luke 12:57), these men's writings do not read like the works of gullible, easily deceived or deceiving men. Their insights into human nature are profound. Their personal commitment is sober and carefully stated. Their teachings are coherent and do not look like the invention of unstable men. The moral and spiritual standard is high. And the lives of these men are totally devoted to the truth and to the honor of God.

8. There is a self-authenticating glory in the gospel of Christ's death and resurrection as narrated by the biblical witnesses.

The New Testament teaches that God sent the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus as the Son of God. Jesus said, "When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.... He will glorify me" (John 16:13). The Holy Spirit does not do this by telling us that Jesus rose from the dead. He does it by opening our eyes to see the self-authenticating glory of Christ in the narrative of his life and death and resurrection. He enables us to see Jesus as he really was, so that he is irresistibly true and beautiful. The apostle stated the problem of our blindness and the solution like this: "The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.... For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6).

A saving knowledge of Christ crucified and risen is not the mere result of right reasoning about historical facts. It is the result of spiritual illumination to see those facts for what they really are: a revelation of the truth and glory of God in the face of Christ -- who is the same yesterday today and forever.

Pastor John

I hope you had a wonderful Easter.

He Is Risen!

When the Sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices, so that they might go and anoint him. 2 And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. 3 And they were saying to one another, “Who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb?” 4 And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back—it was very large. 5 And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. 6 And he said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen; he is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.” 8 And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Mark 16:1-8

The Most Important Event In World History

This weekend we celebrate the most important event in world history: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this one event we can see two things that we all need to remember:

1. Sin is horrific
2. God loves us

Let's look at these one at a time and see what we can learn.


1.How does the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus teach us the horrific nature of sin?

When God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden He gave him only one rule to follow: Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then He added, "In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." (Genesis 2:16-17). We all know the story, Eve was deceived by the serpent, she ate from the tree and then gave some to her husband Adam, who with full knowledge of what he was doing, also ate of the tree. And sin entered the world.

Adam, Eve, and all of creation was instantly hurled into a cycle of death. Just as God had warned, on the day that Adam ate of the forbidden tree he died. No, he didn't die physically on that day (but his physical death was a direct result of that action) he died spiritually - he became separated from God. This shows us how horrific sin is to a holy God - Adam committed one sin, and it brought death and decay to the world, and it separated him from God. And this one action by Adam also caused sin to spread to all mankind, because we all came from Adam. The apostle Paul wrote in the letter to the Romans:

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man [Adam], and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Romans 5:12

Because of Adam's sin we are all born in sin, and because of Adam's sin we also sin, and we are separated from God as a result.

Sin is so horrific that it requires death as its payment. In the Old Testament God established a sacrificial system to show us just how bad and how offensive our sin is to Him. God told us that life is in the blood and that sin requires that blood be spilled for its atonement. He showed us through the system of sacrifice that the animal used had to be without spot or blemish which taught us that the sacrifice had to be pure. Then in the book of Hebrews we read that all of this was just a shadow that was to point us to Jesus - the Perfect Lamb of God.

In Jesus' death we also see how horrific sin is, because He became our Passover Lamb and sacrificed Himself to break the curse of sin that we are under. There was not a single man or animal that could pay the penalty for our sin so Jesus became a man, lived a sinless life, and died on our behalf and in our place. He took our sin upon Himself and He took the wrath of God on our behalf. Our sin is so horrific that it caused the death of the Son of God.

2. The death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus shows us that God loves us.

As I outlined above, our sin has caused us to be separated from our Creator. We are born in sin and as a result we are under a curse of death. God could have just let us die, He could have condemned all of us to an eternity in Hell as payment for our sin. But He didn't! God sent His Son to die in our place and pay the penalty for our sin so that we could have a relationship with Him. All that He requires from us is that we repent (turn) from our sins and put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ for salvation. When we do this He promises that He will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Do you want to know what love is?

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:16

but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8

Now that is love!!!

I encourage you to take some time over the next few days, as we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus, and get alone with Him and thank Him for what He did for you. Make this a weekend about more than family and dressing up to go to church. Make this weekend about Him.

Happy Easter!