What if?

Easter time is here.

I had a skeptic friend once say to me... "Well, what difference does it make? Even if Jesus rose from the dead, it's not going to make any difference to me. I'm going to go to work tomorrow just as I always have. I'm going to do the things I usually do. It's not going to make any difference to my family or to me, or to my attitudes or my daily life, whether Jesus did or didn't rise from the dead."

1 Corinthians 15:14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, then to all practical effect, Christianity is a waste of time. Though Christianity says some very brave and noble things, and puts them in rather beautiful language at times, nevertheless, it is really all a pipe dream.

It is just the wishful thinking of people who are tired with all the grief and heartache of life and want something beautiful to cling to, but it really is not worth anybody's time. And if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then, of course, we really don't have any hope beyond this life. The grave is the end.

There are a lot of people who believe that today. Bertrand Russell, one of the spokesmen for those who do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus said: "The life of a man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, toward a goal which few can hope to reach and where none may tarry long. One by one as they march our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent death. Brief and powerless is man's life. On him and all his race the slow sure doom falls pitiless and dark. Blind to good and evil, reckless of destruction, omnipotent matter rolls on its relentless way. For man, condemned today to lose his dearest, tomorrow himself to pass through the gate of darkness, it remains only to cherish, ere yet the blow falls, the lofty thoughts that ennoble his little day."

But, what if he did?

If Jesus rose from the dead, as the Bible says, and there is one who has come back and told us what lies beyond, if Jesus did break the bonds of death and come out of the tomb on that first resurrection morning, and if all the simple story which is so bluntly told in the Scriptures is true, if it really happened, then what does it mean?

Well, the first and most obvious thing is that it means that Jesus is still alive.

He is still around, still available -- this beautiful man who lived in such a way that he captivated the people of his day, and shook them to the core by the way he lived and things he said and did, by the compassion of his heart and the honesty of his life which would strip a religious hypocrite naked right before the eyes of a crowd, who could not abide falsehood and untruth but was always tender and loving and compassionate toward those bound up with their own guilt and problems, their own evil.

If Jesus rose from the dead, he is available. He still can meet us in the same way.

His promises, which he uttered, are valid promises: "Come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest," (Matthew 11:28 KJV). "He who follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life," (John 8:12b RSV). "I am the door; if anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture," (John 10:9 RSV). And he has promised, "Because I live, you shall live also," (John 14:19).

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Watson is pastor of the Bella Vista Assembly of God.