In that wonderful chapter on the resurrection (1 Cor. 15) Paul
makes Christianity answer with its life for the literal truth of
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That the body of the founder of
the Christian religion did not lie in the grave after the third day
is fundamental to the existence of the religion of Christ: "And
if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith
is also vain" (v. 14). "If Christ be not raised . . . ye are yet
in your sins" (v. 17). "Then they also which are fallen asleep in
Christ are perished" (v.18). Remove the resurrection from Paul's
Gospel, and his message is gone. The resurrection of Jesus Christ
is not an appendage to Paul's Gospel; it is a constitutive part of
it.
The importance of this doctrine is very evident from the prominent
part it played in the preaching of the Apostles: Peter--Acts 2:24,
32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 1 Peter 1:21, 23. Paul--Acts 13:30,
34; 17:31; 1 Cor. 15; Phil. 3:21. It was belief in such preaching
that led to the establishment of the Christian church. Belief in
the resurrection of Christ was the faith of the early church (Acts
4:33). The testimony to this great fact of Christian faith was borne
in the midst of the fiercest opposition. Nor was it controverted,
although the grave was well known and could have been pointed out.
It was in this fact that Christianity acquired a firm basis for
its historical development. There was not only an "Easter Message,"
there was also an "Easter Faith."
Our Lord's honor was, in a sense, staked upon the fact of His
resurrection. So important did He regard it that He remained forty
days upon the earth after His resurrection, giving many infallible
proofs of the great fact. He appealed to it again and again as
evidence of the truth of His claims: Matt. 12:39, 40; John 2:20-22.
Both the friends and the enemies of Christianity admit that the
resurrection of Jesus Christ is vital to the religion that bears His
name. The Christian confidently appeals to it as an incontrovertible
fact; the sceptic denies it altogether as a historical reality.
"If the resurrection really took place," says an assailant of it,
"then Christianity must be admitted to be what it claims to be--a
direct revelation from God." "If Christ be not risen," says the
Apostle Paul, "then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also
vain." The one tries all he can to do away with the proofs submitted
for the accepted fact; the other plainly says that if the resurrection
cannot be believed, then Christianity is nothing but a sham. If
the resurrection of Christ can be successfully denied, if it can be
proven to be absolutely untrue, then the whole fabric of the Gospel
falls to pieces, the whole structure of the Christian religion is
shaken at its foundation, and the very arch of Christianity crumbles
into dust. Then it has wrought only imaginary changes, deluded its
most faithful adherents, deceived and disappointed the hopes of
its most devoted disciples, and the finest moral achievements that
adorn the pages of the history of the Christian church have been
based upon a falsehood.
Nor must we ignore the prominent place the resurrection of Jesus
Christ occupies in the Scriptures. More than one hundred times is
it spoken of in the New Testament alone.