If Jesus Christ didn’t bodily rise from the tomb on the first Easter Sunday, then Christianity falls apart. Christians have always acknowledged that. The Apostle Paul, who wrote most of the books of the New Testament, put it like this: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”.
I’ve had the misfortune of being an away fan at a football match and seeing my team go 3-0 down after half an hour. The home fans started singing: “You might as well go home”. There’s no point staying for the rest of the match; it’s already clear what the result will be. And if there’s no resurrection, those of us who are Christians might as well go home. There’s no point trying to reinvent Christianity as some sort of moral code for life. If there’s no resurrection, it’s time to shut up shop.
But one of the interesting things about the Bible’s account of the resurrection is that even though Jesus had told his followers it was going to happen, most of them took a while to be convinced it was real. They certainly weren’t queuing up to believe in a resurrection.
The first sceptics of the resurrection were Jesus’ own disciples. What made them sceptics? Mostly the fact that they’d seen him crucified — and dead people don’t tend to come back to life.
Jesus’ friends had seen him die in a way there could be no doubt about. They’d seen him nailed to a cross. They’d seen an experienced Roman centurion, who’d likely overseen 100s of crucifixions, pronounce him dead.
And so on that first Easter Sunday morning, when a group of women walked to the tomb, laden down with spices and ointment, they were going for one reason — to embalm a body. They weren’t hoping against hope that the person they’d seen killed would have come back to life.
When they got to the tomb they were perplexed to find that the stone covering it had been rolled away. They went in — but they didn’t find a body. At which point they didn’t say: “Oh, silly us, he must have risen from the dead!” That would not be my conclusion on coming across an empty grave, and it wasn’t theirs. Instead, they jumped to the obvious conclusion that someone had moved the body.
The Bible is clear both that Jesus had predicted his resurrection, but also that when it actually happened, his friends weren’t expecting it — and in fact refused to believe it.
Two angels then appeared to the women and told them that Jesus had risen from the dead. The women went and told the apostles — the men would be the leaders of the early church. But the women’s story seemed to them to be an idle tale. Just a silly story; ‘they did not believe them’. Only two of them thought it was even worth checking.
And yet — many of the same people would go on to die for their faith in Jesus. Which means that if Jesus hadn’t really been raised and appeared to them – they wouldn’t simply have been dying for a lie. Many people die for a lie thinking it’s true. But they would have been dying for something they knew to be a lie.
And so Jesus’ friends were the first sceptics of the resurrection. The first ones to pour cold water on the idea that he had risen from the dead. And yet they would become the very same people to take the message of Jesus to the ends of the earth.
Why does this all matter? Because if there’s no resurrection, then this world, with all its pain, suffering, heartache, shame, disappointment — this is all that there is. There isn’t a day coming when all wrongs will be put right. Again, the Bible acknowledges that when it says: “If the dead are not raised, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’”
If the dead are not raised, you might as well try and fit in as much pleasure as you possibly can. Forget about other people – never mind God — and just live for yourself.
But if the resurrection is true, it changes everything.
Last year, I met a man from China who had been about to take his own life. As he prepared to jump off his apartment building, five words came into his mind: “I am the resurrection and the life”. The Bible is banned in China, so how could he have known those words? Because in school he had read “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens, and it contained that quote. Soon after, he became a Christian and his life was transformed.
If the resurrection is true, it means that no-one is beyond hope, and that even the bleakest situations can be transformed. Death itself has been defeated.
Published in the Stranraer & Wigtownshire Free Press, 26th March 2026