What gives Christians Hope?
John 20:24-31
24Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord!" But he said to them, "Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it." 26A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you!" 27Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe." 28Thomas said to him, "My Lord and my God!" 29Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." 30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Doubting Thomas. Here is a man forever defined by one single act. For 2000 years, he has been known, quite disparagingly, as doubting Thomas. But, was it really all that unreasonable for Thomas to doubt?
A Reasonable doubt
As modern people, we can relate to Thomas. Thomas is not merely a doubter. He doesn't doubt the resurrection. He simply refuses to believe it unless there is overwhelming proof. All of our lives, we have been conditioned to believe that nothing is true, or at least, you cannot know anything, unless it somehow is empirically verifiable. That is, you must be able to prove it scientifically—touch it, see it, hear it, smell it, or taste it. So, when Thomas says, "I won't believe it until I can see it and touch it," there is something in us as modern people that applauds him. "No willy nilly faith here. We are rationale, modern people!"
While that seems rationale and the opposite of faith, that belief is in itself a faith commitment. How do you know that the only way you can know anything for certain is through the scientific method? How do you know that the spiritual reality is not just as real as the physical reality? To say that nothing is true unless it can be scientifically proven is a faith commitment that itself cannot be scientifically proven. It is an unsubstantiated claim. Yet, it is through that unscientific claim that the only way we can know anything with certainty is by physical proof, that we view the world.
One thing we must see about ourselves is that we are never neutral when we look at evidence. We never deal with pure facts. We always look at facts through our own grid, our own paradigm, through our own biases. That is why two people can see the same facts and come to different conclusions.
For example, in the 1940's, Harvard psychologists Gordon Allport and Leo Postman conducted a study on rumors with a group of white men. They showed the first white man a picture and he was to describe the picture to the next man, who would describe it to the next, and so on, until it made it around the circle. The picture was on a subway and it showed a black man in a three-piece suit and a white man threatening him with a razor.
However, by the time the story made it around the circle, the white man was in the suit and the black man was holding the razor. Why? Because, at that time in white America, and probably today, our bias is to believe that the white man wears the suit and the black man holds the razor.
Your assumptions, what you believe, determine what you see. If you begin with the assumption, that people cannot rise from the dead, or that Jesus did not rise from the dead, then you will always find a way to explain the resurrection away. You will always seek to interpret the facts through that faith commitment.
So, before we even look at the evidence, we all must be honest about our faith-commitments through which we examine the evidence. You will always see the facts through the lens of what you already believe.
Secondly, you need to examine your faith-commitments and see if they work in the real world. Most of our assumptions about what is true and how we view the world go untested. Test your assumptions and see if they really hold water. "Is there a God? Is the Bible true? Is Jesus the Only Way?" No matter how you answer those questions, it good to examine your assumptions and see if they work in the real world.
One of the ways we change our basic assumptions, or have what some call a "paradigm shift" is when we encounter overwhelming evidence that our assumptions are wrong.
I have a friend who always believed that police would not give you a ticket unless you were going at least five miles over the speed limit. How many of you have held that faith-commitment? Well, one day, he had the opportunity to test it. He and his wife were on the highway. The speed limit was 55. Up ahead was a state trooper, going exactly 55. Traffic was backing up because no one wanted to pass the state trooper. Well, Paul decides to test his assumption that police won't give you a ticket unless you are going at least five miles over the speed limit. He gets in the left lane, cruises up to about 58 miles per hour, well within the five mile cushion, and proceeds to pass the trooper.
The whole time, his wife is saying, "Paul, don't do this. Don't do this." He presses on. She slinks down into her seat. He passes the trooper and as soon as he slips back into the right hand lane, the flashing blue lights signal a paradigm shifting experience.
That is what happens to Thomas. He declares in no uncertain terms that he will not believe the resurrection. The resurrection is not possible. But then, Jesus gives him a paradigm shifting experience. The result, Thomas declares, "My Lord and my God."
I doubt that you will ever get proof as convincing as Thomas received that day, but that does not mean that believing in the resurrection is irrational. As we will see in point 2, it is a reasonable faith.
A reasonable faith
In a court of law, evidence can be divided into two categories—physical evidence and eyewitness testimony. So, as we look at the reasons for believing in the resurrection, we are going to look at the physical evidence, the eyewitness testimony, and then we will look at some common objections.
Physical Evidence
The evidence that John mentions here was evidence that was readily available to everyone at the time. If he were lying about this, it would have been easily disproved and Christianity as a movement would never have gotten off the ground. The most compelling piece of evidence is not what is there, but what is missing—the body. To this day, the tomb is empty. No one has ever found the body of Jesus.
But a missing body does not a resurrection make. So, John describes for us some more of the physical evidence. Notice his description of the grave clothes. In those days, when they prepared a body for burial, they wrapped it in strips of linen covered with spices, very much like Egyptian mummies. The linen and spices together would form sort of a soft cast. What describes is seeing the clothes which had been wrapped around Jesus' body lying as if still enfolding it.[1] The cloth that had been wrapped around his head as a burial turban, is nearby, folded up, or, another way it might be translated, still twirled.
The picture is not of a grave that has been robbed. Rather, the grave clothes are completely undisturbed, as though Jesus' body had simply passed through them, just as He would later pass through the walls of the upper room.
Now, this must have been some impressive physical evidence, because, upon seeing these undisturbed grave clothes, John believes. Even before he sees the resurrected Christ, John believes. That was all the evidence that he needed. The physical evidence alone was compelling enough for Him.
Still, as impressive as the evidence is that the grave clothes were undisturbed, it does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead. As we said already, an empty grave does not a resurrection make. Here is where the second type of evidence comes into play—that of eyewitness testimony
Eyewitness Testimony
As one expert says, you can prove the resurrection by answering two questions. "First, did Jesus die on the cross? And second, did he appear later to people? If you can establish those two things, you've made your case, because dead people don't normally do that."[2]
We do not have enough time to go into all the evidence that Jesus actually died on the cross. Suffice it to say that the Roman soldiers were experts at execution. There is no way they would take a man down from the cross before he was dead. The only real question is, did he appear to people later? Here, we have the testimony of several people.
First, Mary Magdalene meets Him outside the tomb. She then runs and tells the other disciples. Later that evening, while the disciples were hiding in a locked room, Jesus suddenly appears to them. For some reason, Thomas wasn't with them. When they told him about this, he made his bold declaration, from which he received the name of "Doubting Thomas"-
"Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it."
Then, a week later, Jesus appeared even to doubting Thomas. But that is not all, the Scriptures tell us that Jesus appeared to more than 500 people and later even appeared to Saul, who became the Apostle Paul.
Mary Magdalene, eleven disciples, 500 people, and later the apostle Paul—that seems to be fairly strong eyewitness testimony. Many people have been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt with far less testimony. Here, there are scores of witnesses.
So, we have strong physical evidence and indications of numerous eyewitnesses. Are there any other reasonable ways to explain this evidence other than the Bible's claim that Jesus rose from the dead?
Common Objections
How do we know these witnesses
really believed the resurrection?
First of all, you might say, "Mark, you say we have over 500 eyewitness accounts. However, the only reason you say that is because the Bible says that. How do we know that the Bible is true?" That is an excellent question, and if you come back in two weeks, we are going to talk about how you can know the Bible is true.
However, that isn't the only evidence that we have that these eyewitnesses believed that Jesus rose from the dead. The best indicator of what a person believes is their behavior. If I said, "There is a million dollars hidden in the parking lot and the first person to find it gets to keep it." How would I know if you believed me? If you got up, ran out the door and started looking. If you didn't do that, I would conclude that you don't believe me.
So, besides John's testimony, are there any indications that the disciples believed that Jesus rose from the dead? The record is clear. Ten of them suffered the death of martyrs. Even "doubting Thomas" became "believing Thomas" and died while taking the gospel to India. The only one who did not die a martyr's death was John, who instead died in a prison camp on the island of Patmos. The fact that they all were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection is fairly compelling proof that the saw the resurrected Christ.
How do we know this is not just a legend?
Another common objection is that the resurrection is just a myth or a legend. Yet, one of the indicators that this story is true is that the details are so surprising. Any scholar of literature will tell you that the account of the resurrection has none of the characteristics of myth or legend. First of all, in ancient days, fiction and myth never included details. The novel and similar literary forms had not yet been developed.& Yet, the account of the resurrection is filled with details. John tells us that Mary got up early, while it was still dark. He tells us that one disciple got to the tomb first, but the other entered first. He tells about the linens and the burial cloth. Historians will tell you that this kind of attention to detail was never in fictitious accounts of that day. Details like this were only used historical narratives.[3]
Not only that, but notice the kind of details that are given. If you were writing a script to make a myth of Jesus, you never would have chosen Mary to be the first one to see Him simply because Mary was a woman. In those days, women were viewed by the culture as inferior. They were not even considered to be fit witnesses for court.[4] Yet, here she is as the first person to see the risen Christ.
Furthermore, not only is Mary a woman, she is not even credible among women. Before meeting Jesus, she was demon possessed—hardly a credible witness in any culture. If you were going to build a case that Jesus rose from the dead, you certainly would not use her as your star witness. The only explanation of why the gospels say that she is the first one to whom Jesus appears is because that is how it actually happened. In form or in content, the gospel accounts clearly are not legend.
While none of this may prove conclusively that the resurrection is true, the evidence shows that faith in the resurrection is a reasonable faith.
A time for commitment
The truth is, one cannot prove conclusively that Jesus rose from the dead any more than one can prove conclusively that He did not. However, given the evidence that Jesus did rise—the testimony of the apostles, the commitment of the apostles, the rise of the church, the very fact that today there are millions of people throughout the world who claim to know the risen Christ, it clearly is not unreasonable to believe in the resurrection. While not conclusive proof, there is an abundance of evidence. And as one author puts it, this evidence eventually demands a verdict.
You can either look at the evidence from the perspective that Jesus did not rise from the dead, and then look for some way to explain it all away. Or you can look at the evidence as grounds for belief that Jesus did rise from the dead. But, make no mistake, both are steps of faith and both are commitments.
One option that is not available is to go your whole life without deciding. You cannot stay neutral and open-minded on the subject.
The great mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal compared it to a wager, or a bet. He says you must either bet that there is a Jesus is the Son of God or you must bet that He is not. He compares it to a coin that has been tossed and is spinning. Sooner or later, the coin will settle down to head or tails. Sooner or later, we will face eternity. You do not have the option of not committing to one position or another, because the coin has already been tossed and the stakes could not be higher.
You are not simply a quest to find out which position you like better. It is not like deciding who is better, The Beatles or the Rolling Stones, Shania Twain or the Dixie Chicks. This is serious business and it affects everything about your life. While you must make your commitment deliberately, it is not one on which you can afford to delay.
Here is where you must ask yourself the hard, honest question—do you not believe in the resurrection because you do not believe it is true, or do you not believe because your faith commitments are holding you back?
There are two possible options. One is, the resurrection is a lie. That would mean Jesus is not God. God did not so love the world that He gave His only begotten Son. All of Christianity is a lie.
The other option is, the resurrection is true. That means there is a loving God who loves His people so much that Jesus Himself came down from heaven to die for us that we might have life.
If the resurrection is not true, then this life is all there is. Enjoy it while you can. If the resurrection is true, then God invites us to enjoy life ever after with Him. The question is, what do you believe?
Belief is not merely an intellectual act. It is not merely agreeing that the resurrection is true. A man tells the story of trying to explain Christianity to some tribal people in Kenya. The word they had chosen for faith in their language literally meant, "to agree to." Their guide said it was not a very satisfactory word. He said, "To believe like that was similar to a white hunter shooting an animal with his gun from a great distance. Only his eyes and his fingers take part in the act."
… "for a man to really believe is like a lion going after its prey. His nose and eyes and ears pick up the prey. His legs give him the speed to catch it. All the power in his body is involved in the terrible death leap and single blow to the neck with the front paw, the blow actually kills. And as the animal goes down the lion envelops it with his front legs, pulls it to himself, and makes it part of himself. This is the way the lion kills. This is what faith is."[5]
[1] Stott commentary.
[2] Quoted in Strobel, The Case for Christ,
p. 228.
[3] From a Tim Keller sermon. I don't remember
which one.
Also in C.S. Lewis and in The Message of John.
[4] Stott.
[5] Guinness, Os, The Journey,
p. 184.