Why do we believe in the resurrection of Jesus? It itself, it is utterly unbelievable, as the two disciples on the road to Emmaus also concluded (Luke 24:19-24).
But why is it so unbelievable? Are there not many stories of a dead man or woman coming back to life? Stories from many countries throughout history? Sometimes when people die, they don’t quite fully die, so they resuscitate. Or maybe something more weird. But, after all, it happens, doesn’t it?
Actually, that is one of the things that makes Jesus’ resurrection so different and so difficult to believe. First, He was clearly dead — as in dead-dead. Roman soldiers do not botch crucifixions. They even made extra sure that Jesus was dead by piercing His side with a spear. Blood and water burst forth. Second, He was buried in a new tomb belonging to the rich man, Joseph of Arimathea. His women followers witnessed His burial and a stone was put in front of the entrance. To add certitude to precaution, a guard was assigned to watch the tomb — no one in, no one out.
Third, and most important, Jesus did not die again. Remember Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary? They held a funeral for Lazarus and buried his corpse in a fine tomb. But Jesus interrupted the proceedings and brought Lazarus out of the grave! Everyone rejoiced, but some time later, there had to be a another funeral. Lazarus had to die again. Martha and Mary had to pay for a second funeral.
But there was nothing like that for Jesus. His resurrection was qualitatively different. He did not die again. There was no second funeral. His disciples claimed they saw Him taken up to heaven.
How can we believe something like this?
The simple and most direct answer is: we cannot. It is beyond belief.
But we do believe.
So, what happened?
What happened was a miracle. The Holy Spirit of God worked in our hearts to lead us to faith, to bring us to the Father through the Son (John 6:44).
None of us decided at some time to put on our scientific spectacles to do an objective investigation of all the evidence related to Jesus’ resurrection, eventually — after painstaking research — coming to the ineluctable and incontrovertibly rational conclusion that Jesus did indeed rise from the dead! That is not the way it happened.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with scientific spectacles or objective investigation. Scrutinize to your heart’s content! My point is simply that our faith in Jesus’ resurrection is not the outcome of impeccable analysis.
We believe because the Holy Spirit led us to faith.
Does that mean our faith is totally irrational? Have we no reasons to believe, even if our faith was not originally born of those reasons?
We do have reasons to believe. Jesus appointed men to be witnesses — eye-witnesses, touch witnesses, dinner witnesses — to His resurrection.
But why appoint His own disciples? Why not appear to Pontius Pilate? Wouldn’t he have been a great witness? What about the high priest or the Sadducees and Pharisees? If the post-resurrection appearances had been planned by a post-enlightenment rationalist, Jesus would have appeared to all of these people and more — Tacitus and Josephus for sure. In addition, throughout history, all of the most enthusiastic atheists and unbelievers — including Mohammed and Joseph Smith, not to mention Marx, Lenin, and Hitler — would have seen Jesus personally and been invited to touch the wounds in His hands and eat fish together. What a great story!
Why didn’t God write the story that way?
If we ask this question, it means we have not been reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. It means we have no idea about who the God of the Bible is and the way He works.
Of course, we cannot here review the whole story to make the point. Let the reader who thinks that Jesus appearing here and there to anyone and everyone would make a better story re-read the Bible and think about how God typically does things.
Imagine: if a post-enlightenment rationalist were designing the drama of Jesus’ birth, it would definitely not be birth to a poor woman in an obscure place where no one would know or notice, except a chosen few. No, it would be more spectacular. Something like a comet would come crashing down in front of Caesar Augustus’ palace and out would come a giant Jesus to terrify and subdue Rome! Or, maybe something else — but however the drama would be designed, it would definitely not be about a poor virgin in Bethlehem.
God’s way of doing history does not conform to our standards.
So, when Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared first to the women disciples — unreliable witnesses in the ancient world. Then, He appeared to various others, disciples who could be witnesses.
Why not Pontius Pilate?
We need to think about this.
First, Pilate barely knew Jesus. The disciples would recognize His voice and His face. They had spent so much time with Him that even though they knew that resurrection itself was not possible — until the last day — they would not be able to deny that the man they met was the same Jesus who had walked and talked with them for about three years. When they saw His face and heard His voice, His absurd and unbelievable appearance could not be denied — especially when He ate with them.
Second, if Jesus had appeared to Pilate — or to Josephus, Tacitus, or Marx — only one time, His appearance would have been dismissed as the appearance of a ghost or as some sort of hallucination. That was the disciples’ reasonable conclusion on hearing the crazy story from the women and their first thought when seeing Jesus Himself.
Jesus had to appear to the disciples over and over. He had to talk with them and eat with them. He had to show Himself to them, as Luke says, “with many infallible proofs” — even though they were His disciples from the beginning. They knew His face and His voice. They trusted Him and revered Him. But even for them a single appearance was not enough. Two or three times was not enough. Appearance without a meal was not enough.
What about Pilate? If Jesus had appeared to Pilate over and over — unless the Holy Spirit gave him faith — Pilate would have simply gone raving mad. He would not have confessed that the Jesus he crucified as Israel’s king had actually come back to life. He would have concluded — if he still had the mental capacity to conclude anything — that he had lost his mind, perhaps because of guilt, and everyone around him who heard his crazy story would have concluded the same.
Do not misunderstand me. It was important that the disciples saw the empty tomb and that Jesus appeared to them over and over, presenting many proofs. Their faith had to have a basis in reason and experience, for they were called to be witnesses, not fanatics.
Because they were the kind of men whose testimony is trustworthy, our faith too — though wrought miraculously by the Holy Spirit — has a rational basis. Jesus actually did appear to the disciples over and over for a period of 40 days. He talked with them, ate with them, and allowed them to touch Him, just to be sure. In the end, they could not doubt that the same Jesus who spent three years teaching them was the Jesus who appeared to them after He died.
It was as unbelievable for them as it would be for us.
But Jesus did not only appear to disciples.
To aid our faith, Jesus appeared to a man who hated Him with a passion, a man who killed His followers and blasphemed His name, a man farther from faith than Pilate or even Nietzsche, the man we know as Paul.
He was no less ardent in unbelief than any other Pharisee. In fact, his zeal in opposing Christ surpassed them all. For Jesus to have appeared to Pilate or Caesar would have been nothing compared to Him appearing to a Pharisee of the Pharisees and the most vehement foe imaginable. Saul was a more formidable opponent than any pagan or atheist. A dedicated Jew, who honored the God of Moses and only sought to do what was right in His eyes, was the most unlikely convert and at the same time the most undeniably powerful witness to Jesus’ resurrection.
In a sense, then, Jesus did, after all, appear to Pilate, Caesar, and all the other pagans and atheists in the world, when He appeared to Saul and changed him to Paul. We do not have to read the same story repeated over and over to know that it is true — though, in fact, the same story is repeated over and over. Each believer reading this is no less a miraculous convert than the apostle Paul, even if his or her conversion occurred at such a young age that it cannot be remembered. Jesus, the Gospels show us, loved little children. No reason they can not be the subject of His miraculous care any less than a Pharisaic scholar who persecuted Christians.
The God of the Bible is the God of miracles, but most of the miracles are strange — humble and quiet miracles that only surprise people who take the time to look into what He is doing and think about why.
All of us who believe the resurrection have been miraculously led to Jesus. Though there are abundant reasons for believing the resurrection, our faith was the gift of a gracious God. So, too, were the reasons and testimony of reliable witnesses, including the most unlikely witness of all, the fanatic persecutor, Paul.
Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.