Only the reality of the resurrection explains the Early Church.
iStock/1391123271As followers of Jesus Christ our risen Lord and Savior, we are preparing to celebrate our most sacred and important event — the Resurrection of our Savior, Jesus the Messiah.
We must lay aside all the secular accoutrements which have attached themselves to Easter — Easter egg hunts and Easter bunnies, etc. — and focus on the central event in human history, the physical Resurrection of the crucified Son of God.
No less an authority than the Apostle Paul, writing with divine inspiration and authority, proclaimed that if Christ was not risen from the dead then we had no salvation and were still in our sins (I Cor. 15:17). The central truth of the Christian faith stands or falls with the essential truth of the Resurrection.
As the Apostle Paul declared to the Roman Christians, “if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” (Rom. 10:9)
In reality there is no valid Christianity that does not engage in a full-throated proclamation and affirmation of the physical resurrection of the crucified Christ on the first Resurrection Day.
The Apostle Paul recounts the numerous appearances of the resurrected Jesus (I Cor. 15). The four Gospels also relate the events not only of the Resurrection, but His post-Resurrection appearances before His Ascension back into Heaven (Luke 24:1-53).
One of the more compelling arguments for the veracity of the physical Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord Jesus is the post-Resurrection behavior of the apostles and the early Christian community. As the New Testament accounts make clear, the disciples did not understand Jesus’ teaching concerning the Resurrection. They were dispirited, defeated and dejected, feeling that “all was lost” as that first Easter Sunday dawned.
On that first Easter morn, two of Jesus’ disciples were walking to Emmaus (about 7½ miles northwest of Jerusalem). As they were pondering the events of the past week and the apparent collapse of all their hopes and dreams, a third person (Jesus in a disguised form) joined them and began asking them about their conversation.
They were astonished that he did not know about “Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people … we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” (Lk. 24:19) They explained to the stranger that alas, “the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.” (Lk. 24:20)
They were depressed, dejected and confused. The resurrected Jesus, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets … expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk. 24:27). That evening, “as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and broke, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him, and he vanished out of their sight.” (Lk. 24:30-32)
They returned to Jerusalem and told the disciples and those gathered with them of their experience. And as they were speaking, “Jesus himself stood in the midst of them” (Lk. 24:36). The New Testament tells us “they were terrified and affrighted” (Lk. 24:37).
Jesus then showed them the wounds in His hands and feet and ate broiled fish and honeycomb before them, demonstrating the reality of his resurrection body. (Lk. 24:38-43)
The central point is that the disciples clearly did not understand His teaching about the Resurrection until He appeared among them in His resurrected state. They were dejected, confused and afraid, huddled in an upper room, fearful the authorities were coming after them.
Then, all of a sudden, they are courageous and clearly reborn as a movement. They went on to Pentecost, where they are energized with the Holy Spirit in a new and mighty way and they went forth to fulfill the Great Commission their Resurrected Savior had given them to:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo,
I am with you alway, even unto the end of the
world (Matt. 28:18-20).
Armed with these experiences, empowered by the Holy Spirit, they spent the rest of their lives facing privation, imprisonment, and torture in order to fulfill that Great Commission.
For example, Christian tradition tells us Peter, Andrew, Thaddeus (Jude), Simon the Zealot and Philip were crucified. Matthias (Judas’ replacement) and Stephen were stoned to death. James was beheaded, Bartholomew was skinned alive, Matthew was killed by an ax and Thomas was murdered by a spear and James the Less (Son of Alphaeus) was beaten to death.
Would they have suffered all these terrible deaths for something they had to know was not true? Psychology says absolutely not. It defies all the laws of logic that they would have sacrificed their lives unless it was for something they knew by experience was true.
In the Early Church their characteristic greeting was “He is risen!” and the reply was, “He is risen indeed!”
On a personal note, this Easter Sunday will mark the 72nd anniversary of my baptism as a 6-year-old boy, having made a profession of faith in Jesus as my Lord and Savior on Palm Sunday. There have been too many times since then when I have not been all Jesus would have me to be, but there has never been one moment that He has not been everything He promised He would be and more.
Our risen Lord is ever faithful!
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
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