One of the loose ends that Jesus needed to get right on the first Easter Sunday, and the forty days that followed, was that he had really come back to true physical life. One way he did this was that on Easter evening he walked several miles on the road to Emmaus with two disciples. Later the same day he appeared within a locked room in Jerusalem to some of the disciples and asked them to examine his healed wounds (Luke 24). There is no way a human body could heal itself of the wounds of crucifixion in three days, as some people seem to think.

From all the testimony of the New Testament writers, I believe that Jesus was truly, literally, and actually raised from the dead on the third day and restored body, soul and deity to the person he was when he died on the Cross, except his wounds were healed.

The witness of the New Testament to the Resurrection has not prevented people from finding ways to deny the reality of the Resurrection, either by saying it could not happen or did not happen. However, none of these people were there when it did happen.

It is not only unbelievers who have had a problem with resurrection from the dead. Paul had to write a rather sharp passage to the Corinthians concerning how essential Christ’s resurrection was for them if they were to be free from their sins.

“Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.  We are even found to be misrepresenting God,because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:12-17 ESV).

Paul’s language is somewhat complex because he is arguing both for the resurrection of Jesus Christ and for our own resurrections. What he is emphasizing is that the entire edifice of Christian testimony rests on the reality of resurrection as God’s unique gift to the faithful. If there is no resurrection for us then we are no-hopers and in no better state than nonbelievers.