Affirming the Apostles ’ Creed by J.I. Packer

whether we face death with Christ or without him?

And if Christ has not been raised,
your faith is futile and you are still
in your sins.
    1 CORINTHIANS 15: 17

CHAPTER 11

    The Third Day

    S uppose that Jesus, having died on the cross, had stayed dead. Suppose that, like Socrates or Confucius, he was now no more than a beautiful memory. Would it matter? We would still have his example and teaching; wouldn’t they be enough?

    J ESUS’ R ISING IS C RUCIAL

    Enough for what? Not for Christianity. Had Jesus not risen but stayed dead, the bottom would drop out of Christianity, for four things would then be true.
    First, to quote Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:17: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.”
    Second, there is then no hope of our rising either; we must expect to stay dead too.
    Third, if Jesus Christ is not risen, then he is not reigning and will not return, and every single item in the Creed after “suffered... and [was] buried” would have to be struck out.
    Fourth, Christianity cannot be what the first Christians thought it was—fellowship with a living Lord who is identical with the Jesus of the Gospels. The Jesus of the Gospels can still be your hero, but he cannot be your Savior if he did not rise.
    A F ACT OF H ISTORY

    To show that it views Jesus’ resurrection as a fact of history, the Creed actually times it—”the third day,” counting inclusively (the ancients’ way) from the day when Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate” in about a.d. 30. On that precise day in Jerusalem, the capital of Palestine, Jesus came alive and vacated a rock tomb, and death was conquered for all time.
    Can we be sure it happened? The evidence is solid. The tomb was empty, and nobody could produce the body. For more than a month afterward, the disciples kept meeting Jesus alive, always unexpectedly, usually in groups (from two to five hundred). Hallucinations don’t happen this way!
    The disciples, for their part, were sure that the risen Christ was no fancy and tirelessly proclaimed his rising in the face of ridicule, persecution, and even death—a most effective way of scotching the malicious rumor that they stole Jesus’ body (cf. Matthew 28:11-15).
    The corporate experience of the Christian church over nineteen centuries chimes in with the belief that Jesus rose, for the risen Lord truly “walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way,” and communion with him belongs to the basic Christian awareness of reality.
    No sense can be made of any of this evidence save by supposing that Jesus really rose.

To believe in Jesus Christ as Son of God and
living Savior is certainly more than an exercise
of reason, but in the face of the evidence it is
the only reasonable thing a person can do.
    Well might Professor C. F. D. Moule issue his challenge: “If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested in the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole of the size and shape of the resurrection, what does the secular historian propose to stop it up with?” The actual historical effect is inconceivable without the resurrection of Jesus as its objective historical cause.
    F ACING THE E VIDENCE

    A Christian in public debate accused his skeptical opponent of having more faith than he—“for,” he said, “in face of the evidence, I can’t believe that Jesus did not rise, and you can!” It really is harder to disbelieve the resurrection than to accept it, much harder. Have you yet seen it that way? To believe in Jesus Christ as Son of God and living Savior, and to echo the words of ex-doubter Thomas, “My Lord and my God,” is certainly more than an exercise of reason, but in the face of the evidence it is the only reasonable thing a person can do.
    W HAT J ESUS’ R ISING M EANS

    What is the significance of Jesus’ rising? In a word, it marked Jesus out as the Son of God (Romans 1:4); it vindicated his righteousness (John