“And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ …” (1 Corinthians 15:14,15)
The validity of our faith stands on the resurrection of Christ. We do not preach the wise sage Jesus, the noble martyr Jesus, the loving humanitarian Jesus, we preach the resurrected Jesus. Integral to the faith handed down to us from the apostles was that they saw Jesus alive again after knowing He had been executed and buried. They put their hands in His wounds, ate with Him, spoke with Him.
If Jesus proclaimed before His death that He would rise again and then failed to do so, He would have been a liar. All He said and did would have been called into question. But because He did in fact rise from the dead, His disciples were fired with a passion to preach Him to the nations.
This is our faith: Jesus came from heaven; lived a perfect life; died a sinless Lamb; rose a mighty Lord; returned triumphant to heaven; sits expectant at the right hand of the Father; soon will return to this earth to fully establish God’s kingdom. Had Christ not risen, none of these things could be proclaimed.
Thank You Lord for Your resurrection!