Jesus is Risen

Isn't that just an immense thing to meditate on in this Easter week? Yes, he came back from the dead. It is so easy to become over familiar with the story, we know what happened, we can lose the wonder of it.

Of course, there are many sceptics who come out of the woodwork at this time of the year with the usual arguments as to why Jesus shouldn't have risen. Ah yes, they'll say, it is in some spiritual sense, the disciples increasingly felt his "spirit" and eventually believed that he was with them. Or, the disciples stole the body and hid it. Or, he didn't really die at all, he became unconscious, just "swooned", but was not really dead.

Well, Jesus did rise physically, he invited Thomas to put his hands into his wounds, real wounds on a real person. Where would the disciples have hidden the body, and would no one have found it? He really did die - that was noted by the officials at the time, also when a sword was put into his side blood and water came out simultaneously meaning death.

We are also told that the accounts in the Gospels do not exactly tie up. That, in fact, gives me even more confidence that it is true. If the early writers wanted to conspire together to make up a story such as this, they would have had all the details exactly identical.

The Apostle Paul tells us that "if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins." (1 Corinthians 15 v 17). Jesus' resurrection was the final and vital part of the securing of our Salvation. It was as though God the Father was giving his approval to the work of his Son.

This is something in which we can rejoice - Christ is risen, therefore we who trust in him will also, one day, rise to take our place in the New Earth under the New Heaven. Now there is hope!