Reflection: How can the resurrection be explained?

We are using this season of Easter to explore what is arguably the most significant question in human history. Did the resurrection of Jesus really happen?

There can only be a few explanations for Jesus’ resurrection. So, let’s look at them and assess them:

The swoon theory. This suggests that Jesus didn’t die but was in a coma from which he recovered.

This claim is fanciful. If Jesus had swooned on the cross, he would have suffocated and had irreparable brain damage within nine minutes. Jesus was flogged savagely, crucified, speared in the side, wrapped from head to toe in embalming bandages, and left in a tomb for two days. It can’t seriously be said that Jesus was fit enough to unwrap himself, pull back the heavy stone over the tomb entrance, dodge the soldiers who were on guard, and then persuade the disciples that he had risen from the dead!

The resurrection was not the survival of death but the overcoming of death.

The disciples all hallucinated or had visions of Jesus. The fact that over five hundred people (1 Corinthians 15:6) in different places should have had such simultaneous hallucinations or visions makes this highly unlikely.

The disciples stole the body. This is not credible, as the disciples were as surprised about Jesus’ resurrection as anyone. Another key reason why this claim is not credible is that following the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples exploded on to the world stage with missionary zeal. All of them had to overcome enormous odds, and all but one of them was martyred. No one can seriously believe that the disciples would be prepared to suffer martyrdom if they knew their message was based on a lie.

Jesus’ resurrection was just a myth that developed in the first few years after Jesus’ death.  C.S. Lewis was one of the world’s leading experts on myth literature, and he said that the New Testament records don’t read like a myth. Rather, they read like eyewitness accounts. In fact, he says that they are one of the earliest existing eyewitness accounts in literature. He wrote: ‘I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, and myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this’.*

It is chronological arrogance to suggest that the disciples were a primitive people unable to tell the difference between myth and reality. The Apostle Peter said: ‘We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty’ (2 Peter 1:16). Peter makes the point that Jesus was seen by: ‘witnesses who God had already chosen — by us who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead’ (Acts 10:41).

John (another of Jesus’ disciples) writes similarly: ‘That…which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have touched — this we proclaim…’ (1 John 1:1)

It’s fair to say that the early Christians were not prepared to be martyrs because of crucifixion. They were prepared to be martyrs because of the resurrection.

Jesus’ resurrection changed everything.

* C. S. Lewis, Fern-seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity, (Collins, Font Paperbacks, 9th Imp, 1986), 109.

Prayer:

Jesus, your resurrection truly changed everything. You overcame death, which gives us eternal hope. Thank you.

*Prayers for this series have been written based on Nick Hawkes’ reflections.