An Apologetic for Christ and His Work and an Explanation of What the Resurrection Accomplished
By: Grant R. Castleberry
Note: The Apologetic material was obtained from www.carm.org and Lee Strobel’s book, The Case for Christ.
Did Jesus really exist?
The Existence of Jesus is more established than the existence of the Roman Emperor of the time, Tiberius Caesar, who rained during his day:
1.) 9 New Testament authors make reference to Christ (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and the writer of Hebrews)
2.) 20 Early church fathers make reference to Christ (Clement of Rome, 2 Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Martyrdom of Polycarp, Didache, Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Fragments of Papias, Justin Martyr, Aristides, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, Quadratus, Aristo of Pella, Melito of Sardis, Diognetus, Gospel of Peter, Apocalypse of Peter, and Epistula Apostolorum.)
3.) 9 secular sources mention Christ (Josephus (Jewish historian), Tacitus (Roman historian), Pliny the Younger (Roman politician), Phlegon (freed slave who wrote histories), Lucian (Greek satirist), Celsus (Roman philosopher), Mara Bar Serapion (prisoner awaiting execution), Suetonius, and Thallus.)
4.) Tiberius Caesar has 10 sources that mention him within 150 years of his life; so there are almost four times as many sources for the existence of Christ than for Caesar.
Did Jesus really die by Roman Crucifixion?
Read the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of Mark’s Gospel.
Yes, not only do all four Gospels along with the rest of the New Testament affirm Jesus’ death via crucifixion, but historical writers Josephus, Tacitus, Lucian, Mara Bar, and the Talmud all reference the crucifixion of Christ. Here is a quote from Tacitus “Nero fastened the guilt [of the burning of Rome] and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus” (Tacitus, Annals 15.44).
Was Christ really resurrected from the dead?
Read the sixteenth chapter of Mark’s Gospel.
Yes. The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is an established historical fact.
1.) Jesus was buried outside Jerusalem in Joseph of Arimathea’s grave (Mk. 15:43), so it would have been impossible for Christianity to spread through Jerusalem (which it did), if the body of Jesus was still in the tomb in Jerusalem.
2.) The first century enemies of Christianity presuppose an empty tomb (Matthew 28:11-15; Justin Martyr, Trypho 108; Tertullian, De Spectaculis 30) in combating Christianity. They have contrived various explanations on why Jesus’ tomb is empty.
3.) Christianity documents the testimony of women to the fact of the resurrection during a period of time when a woman’s testimony was not trusted. Why would the Disciples of Christ base a lie on the testimony of “untrusted witnesses?” Of course, the answer is that the women who saw the empty tomb (Mark 16:4-5) were indeed telling the truth.
4.) Jesus appeared to over 500 eye witnesses besides the eleven disciples after the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:6), and their claims collaborated each other so that no one could refute their witness (Paul saw Jesus after His death and also, with Luke, interviewed all the living witnesses in Jerusalem circa twenty years later).
5.) Almost all of Jesus’ disciples along with many in the early church (i.e. Clement, Tertullian, Polycarp, etc.) died as martyrs because they would not renounce their belief in the living Jesus. It is folly to believe that hundreds would die to protect a falsehood.
6.) Jesus’ tomb can be seen empty to this day outside Jerusalem.
Why should we believe in Jesus and what did Christ accomplish for us in His death?
Many believe that at the end of life, they will appear before God, and God will judge them based on their good deeds and bad deeds. They think that if they were a relatively good person during their life, went to church, and believed in the historical death of Jesus that they’ll go to Heaven. However, those that were truly evil will go to Hell. Many, when they think of God’s judgment at the end of their life also place their hope in the love and mercy of God. They hope that God will accept them based on the goodness of His character. After all, isn’t He a loving God?
However, the problem with those ideas is that the Bible describes every single person on the earth as an awful sinner and transgressor of God’s law. Romans 3:23 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” and that the punishment for any one of our sins before a righteous God is eternal death and punishment (it’s not based on the gravity of the sin that is committed, but on the gravity of the person that is sinned against, namely God). Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death…” Since God is a righteous judge, he cannot leave any person’s sin unpunished. Every sin, to the smallest offense such as lying, lusting, fabricating a story, cheating, is punishable by death and an eternity in Hell because the character of God has been violated.
However, the Good News of the Bible (called The Gospel in the New Testament) is that God, rich in mercy and love, has given us hope and extended peace. He has provided salvation through the death of Christ for all those that believe in Jesus as Savior. The death of Christ was not merely symbolic or historic. Christ, who lived a perfect life, died for the sins of the world, so anyone that professes faith in Christ will be saved. Paul went on to say in Romans 3:24 and 25 “and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.”
To be counted righteous before God in light of your sins, you must believe in Christ! That’s it! Paul and Silas preached in Acts 16:31, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…” Notice, you are not just believing in what Christ accomplished for you: namely His perfect life, His death, His resurrection (even the demons believe this and they are not saved), but you are trusting in the very person of Christ Himself for your salvation. This is the Good News that God offers you: your ultimate salvation (your escape of judgment) is a free gift offered to you. To receive it, you must believe in Christ. But what type of belief is this? Is it a mere intellectual acquiescence to the fact that Jesus is Savior? No! Jesus describes the type of faith we must have in Him in Matthew 13:44, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” By believing in Christ, you see Him as the most valuable thing in the Universe! Your faith has as its object, Christ, who you see as the ultimate treasure. Also, the type of faith that believes in Christ is the type that believes in the whole person of Christ. You cannot believe in Jesus as Savior and then reject Him as God (as the Jehovah’s Witnesses do), Lord, Creator, High Priest, our Mediator before God, etc. In recent years, there has been the terrible false notion that you can believe in Christ as Savior but not acknowledge or submit to His Lordship. But such a belief divides the person of Christ and presents a false Christ! That is why Paul said in the before mentioned verse, “Believe on the Lord Jesus…” Christ is both Lord and Savior and to not acknowledge Him as such is not true belief. We must believe in Jesus as all who He is revealed to be in sacred Scripture, not who we want Him to be. This belief in Christ is solely in Christ and in nothing else.
Hopefully the following formulas will clarify this “Good News”
Works + Church Attendance + Belief in the Historical Works of Jesus = Eternity in Hell
Works + Belief in the Historical Jesus = Eternity in Hell
Faith in Jesus Christ as Savior + Works = Eternity in Hell
Here’s the only right formula that is saving!
Faith in Jesus Christ as Savior = Eternity with God in Heaven + Knowing God Now + Good Works
Only on the merit of Christ’s perfect life, death, and resurrection can someone be saved. When someone places their faith in Jesus Christ, they are resting on Christ alone for their salvation, in the final analysis. That is why faith in Christ and good works together does not work (the traditional Catholic belief). By adding good works as a requirement, a person stops relying solely on the merit of Christ and starts relying on their personal merit before God as well. Therefore their faith in Christ is not a full faith, but a half-hearted faith. That is why so many Catholics struggle with assurance and wrestle with the worry of unconfessed sin. That is why Martin Luther, before he started believing solely on Christ, would rush to confess every small sin to another priest. We cannot rest on our own merit. Indeed, all of our righteous deeds before God are “like filthy rags (Is. 64:6).”
Why then was the resurrection of Christ necessary if His payment for sins was complete at the cross?
There are multiple answers to this question, I will name five, although there are many more.
1.) The first and most obvious is that if Christ had not risen from the dead, than He would have been a liar (and NOT God) because he prophesied many times that he would be killed and would be raised from the dead. For example Luke 9:21-22 states “And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”” A liar cannot be God!
2.) God, by His nature, must eternally exist. If the God Man, Christ, was truly God, his physical body cannot stay dead. Thus, Jesus paid the penalty for sins (according to Romans 6:23 the penalty for sin is death), but Jesus Himself never sinned. So because He is God and is sinless, death cannot contain Him! And therefore death cannot contain those that are in Christ! Thus the Apostle Paul says, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting (1 Corinthians 15:54, 55)?”
3.) Paul says in his first letter to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 15:14 “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” Why would this be the case? The reason why our faith in a dead Jesus would be in vain is that Jesus’ resurrection was God’s stamp of approval of His acceptance of Christ’s sacrifice for sin. The resurrection of Christ is the assurance of our justification! That is why Paul ties the death and resurrection of Christ together in 2 Corinthians 5:15: “and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” Do you see how the resurrection is linked to the work of the atonement of Christ? Think of the resurrection as the receipt that God gave Christ, showing his acceptance of His sacrifice for sins. The resurrection is our assurance because if Christ had not been raised, then we would have no hope of also been raised after our death. But since Christ was raised, we know that if we belong to Christ as his child in faith, we will be also raised with Him on the last day. Thus Jesus says in John 6:40, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day.” It is clear that if Jesus was not raised from the dead, like I mentioned earlier, we would not have hope for a future resurrection.
4.) Christ must live to act as a Mediator between us and God. Paul says in his first letter to Timothy, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 2:5). For all those that are God’s children, Christ intercedes for them (Hebrews 7:25). We need the intercession of Christ to approach a Holy God. Thus we need a living Christ!
5.) When Christ was raised He had a glorified body! This also guarantees our future glorification when Christ returns (Romans 8:30). John says in his first epistle, “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is (1 John 3:2-3).” As believers we are guaranteed bodies that will not die or decay! We will be like Christ!
Thank God for sending His Son Jesus to live a perfect life, die for our sins, and for raising Him from the dead!
