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Does the Resurrection of Jesus Prove He is God?

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Jesus Christ ResurrectionMany people believe that the resurrection of Jesus proves that Jesus was God. There is one main problem with this view and it is this: the resurrection of Jesus does not prove He was God.

At least, not directly.

Eventually you can get to the divinity of Jesus from the resurrection of Jesus, but it is a little less straightforward than most suppose.

No one would conclude—not then or now—that someone was God simply because they had been raised from the dead. If I came to you and said, “I died in a car accident yesterday, but now I have come back to life,” you might think I was crazy, but even if you believed me, you would not conclude that I was God. One does not logically lead to the other.

So does the Resurrection of Jesus prove He is God?

Well, it is not so much the resurrection of Jesus that proved He was God, but what Jesus said and did before the resurrection which was then verified by the resurrection of Jesus.

I’m not talking about His claims to be God. Critics say He never made such claims. While I believe Jesus did explicitly claim to be God, for the sake of argument, let us just concede the point and move on.

The means by which Jesus implicitly made His claims to be God incarnate was through His actions of replacing the Temple and fulfilling the Torah. In Judaism, the Temple was the closest thing to incarnation that they had. It was where heaven and earth came together as one, where God could meet with man, where sins could be forgiven.

Jesus Replaced the Temple and the Torah

Jesus, through many words and actions indicated that the Temple ministry—including the priesthood and sacrifices—was being relocated in Himself. In forgiving sins, pronouncing lepers clean, and announcing judgment upon the Temple, Jesus was showing that He was the replacement for the Temple.

The same thing happened with the Torah. While many Jewish teachers used tradition and consensus to determine what the Torah meant and how to live it, Jesus simply declared on His own authority what it meant and how to apply it. Furthermore, in many of His teachings, He went beyond the Torah, and offered new commandments and further instructions. In such a way, He not only made the claim of being an infallible interpreter of the Law, but the actual Lawgiver Himself.

Again, some critics will want to deny that Jesus ever said or did such things. But with their constant denials of anything and everything that Jesus did, they very soon leave themselves in a an impossible situation: they are left with a Jesus who does and teaches some nice things, but which would barely get noticed by the populace, much less crucified. Eventually, these critics must give up their denials, or come up with a believable scenario for why Jesus was crucified.

In other words, Jesus had to have said and done something to get people angry enough at Him to crucify Him. If He never claimed to be God, either implicitly or explicitly, and never challenged traditional Jewish thinking or theology, then what possible scenario is there which would have led to His crucifixion?

The Crucifixion of Jesus

I agree with what NT Wright has written. The primary reason for the crucifixion was that “Judaism had two great incarnational symbols: Temple and Torah, [and] Jesus seems to have believed it was His vocation to upstage the one and outflank the other” (NT Wright, Challenge of Jesus, p. 120).

For the early believers, the resurrection of Jesus vindicated these claims of Jesus. For Jesus to make such outlandish claims about God’s Temple and God’s Torah and then to die is not surprising (if He was wrong). That is the just judgment of God.

But for Jesus to make such outlandish claims, and then not only to die, but also to rise from the dead, proves once and for all that God was in what Jesus said and did, and therefore, Jesus was the embodiment, the manifestation, the incarnation of the one God of Israel.

So the resurrection of Jesus by itself does not mean that Jesus was God, but the resurrection of Jesus is one link in the chain that gets us there.

For more on this, read The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright – Chapter 5. See a fuller treatment in Jesus and the Victory of God.

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Did the Resurrection of Jesus Really Happen?

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the resurrection of JesusThe main problem in proving the resurrection of Jesus happened is in how to prove an historical event.

How would you prove, for example, what you had for breakfast this morning? It cannot easily be done, except through witnesses (who can lie or be mistaken) and documents (which can be forged).

But with the resurrection of Jesus, while we have witnesses and the documents they wrote, it is not so much what they say that convinces us of the historical fact of the resurrection, but the simple fact that such witnesses and documents actually exist which provides the greatest evidence for the resurrection.

Initially, this argument seems to make no sense. Just because someone writes a story about seeing a purple-polka-dotted elephant doesn’t mean that they actually saw one.

Precisely.

Many people claim that the early church invented stories about the resurrection of Jesus in order to support their new belief system and practices.

But that is exactly the point.

Stories about the Resurrection of Jesus Help Prove the Resurrection of Jesus

Prior to the resurrection of Jesus, no Jewish person believed that the Messiah would die and rise from the dead. But beyond this, nobody except Jewish people believed that people rose from the dead, and even among Jews, they believed the resurrection would happen all at once, at the end of time, for all Jewish people.

While there are “pagan” stories of resurrection, they are always stories about deities rising from the dead, not human beings. Everybody knew that when people died, they stayed dead.

And while there are occasional stories within Judaism of someone actually rising from the dead, these people still died later, and are awaiting the final resurrection to this very day.

So nobody believed that the Messiah would die, and therefore, nobody believed that He would rise. To talk about such things was almost exactly like telling a story about a purple-polka-dotted elephant. Talk about a dying and rising Messiah was just as ludicrous to a first-century audience as talking about a purple-polka-dotted elephant.

Which means that if the early church wanted to gain credibility as a movement, they never would have invented stories about a dying and rising Messiah.

If the church really wanted to gain credibility among the Jews, the Greeks, and the Romans for its new beliefs and practices, the last thing they would do is invent stories that sounded to everyone like fairy tales.

We cannot and must not say that the early church invented these stories about the resurrection of Jesus the Messiah in order to support and defend their new religion. Doing so would be like me telling you about a purple-polka-dotted elephant appearing in the sky as a way to prove to you that I had French Toast and coffee for breakfast this morning. Such a story might be creative, but hardly believable.

If you want people to believe what you say, you do not begin by creating outlandish tales which everyone knows to be false.

Yet this is exactly what the early church seems to have done if we say that they invented the stories about Jesus.

If the church had invented stories about Jesus rising from the dead, their message would have been doomed from the start.

Nobody Would have Invented Stories about the Resurrection of Jesus

Therefore, the only other reason for them to write about the death and resurrection of Jesus is because they believed it was true. If they had really wanted to “invent” stories which declared Jesus as the Messiah, the stories about Jesus dying on the cross and rising from the dead are not the stories they would have invented.

Does this prove that the resurrection of Jesus actually happened? Not exactly. But it does prove that the early Christians who wrote about the resurrection of Jesus did not invent these stories. If the church was inventing stories about Jesus, death and resurrection stories were not the sorts of stories they would have invented.

In his book, The Challenge of Jesus, NT Wright puts it this way:

The only way forward for us as historians is to grasp the nettle, recognizing that we are of course here at the borders of language, of philosophy, of history and of theology. We had better learn to take seriously the witness of the entire early church, that Jesus of Nazareth was raised bodily to a new sort of life, three days after his execution (p. 148).

So if you believe that the resurrection did not happen, but that the early church was wrong, you cannot simply say they invented the stories. Another explanation is required. Some have tried, but the explanations get more outlandish and illogical than simply believing in the resurrection of Jesus.

For more on this line of reasoning, read The Challenge of Jesus by NT Wright, or the more detailed explanation in Jesus and the Victory of God.

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Death precedes Resurrection

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the resurrection of JesusWhy don’t we see resurrection today?

I don’t mean bodies of people actually coming forth from the grave. That is the physical resurrection which will happen at the future resurrection of all people. We shouldn’t expect to see that sort of resurrection today.

What I means is, “Why don’t we see lives of Christ-followers being radically transformed and changed into new creations?” Why don’t we see the “resurrection life”?

The Resurrection Life

It seems almost expected today that when a person believes in Jesus, not much will change. Oh, they might start going to church, and maybe reading their Bible and praying, and if they are really zealous, they will talk about Jesus to their friends. But typically, within a few months, old habits creep back in, old ways of living continue. Not much changes.

So whatever happened to the resurrection? Whatever happened to being raised to new life in Christ? Whatever happened to being a new creation? People talk about living the “resurrected life,” and sing about it, read about it, preach about it, and even pray for it, but it rarely seems to happen.

Why is the resurrection life so rare?

Death of JesusI believe it is because we have forgotten a vital element in the truth of the resurrection, and it is this: There can be no resurrection without death. Death always precedes resurrection. If you want to see resurrection, you must hang out with the dead, and if you want to experience resurrection in your own life, you must die.

Yet very few of us like to think much about dying, and fewer still like to hear pastors and preachers call for us to die.

Preaching, teaching, writing, and singing about resurrection is wonderful. It is joyful. It is happy and uplifting. But preaching, teaching, writing, and singing about death? Not so much. Yet by definition, resurrection requires death.

To Live the Resurrection Life … Die!

If you get a chance, look through the Gospels and the writings of Paul and Peter, and try to find every reference to resurrection, the new life in Christ, and becoming a new creation. I haven’t yet done this myself, but I predict that almost always, within a few verses of talking about such exalted themes, the author will also mention the requirement of death.

You must die to your old self before being raised to new life. We are buried with Christ before we are raised with Him. We must crucify the old man and the lusts of the flesh, before the new man rises from the grave.

This may be one of the most prominent themes in Scripture. Almost every single time God makes a promise for something great — a new son, a new nation, a new kingdom, a new restoration — the humans to whom He makes the promise try to accomplish the promise in their own strength and ability, until finally, they give up all hope, and die to the promise. Only then does God step in and resurrect the shattered dream and the (seemingly) broken promise up out of the ashes into a glorious new life.

So you want to experience resurrection? Die.

Not literally, of course. Die to your dreams, your ambitions, your goals, your old habits and patterns. Die to yourself. Because resurrection reigns only where there is death.

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

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Good God, Bad God (On the Penal Substitution Theory of the Atonement)

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good-cop-bad-copThe way many of us view the death of Jesus on the cross is like some poorly scripted “Good Cop, Bad Cop” scene from a crime thriller movie, except now it is “Good God, Bad God.”

You’ve seen these movies, right? Prior to questioning a suspect, the two cops agree that one will be the “Good cop” and the other will be the “bad cop.” Usually the bad cop starts questioning the suspect, and in the process gets a little unhinged and starts to threaten the suspect with death, torture, or a life sentence in prison. Then the good cop steps in with a soft voice and a soothing tone and says that he can rescue the suspect from the bad cop and all his threats if the suspect will just tell them what he knows.

In much of Christian theology, this is sort of what happened between God and Jesus as they prepared to send Jesus to earth for our deliverance. I imagine the scene to be somewhat like this:

In a back room of heaven (before the foundation of the world) God and Jesus realize that they need to get the bad guy in the interrogating room (all humans) to confess to our numerous crimes. Here is how the planning went:

God: I know what I’ll do. I’m going to tell him that although I’m only looking out for the good of the universe, and since I’m so holy and just, I just cannot stand evil and sin, and I’m gonna have to shoot him.

Jesus: Yeah! And then I’ll come in, all humble, meek, and mild, full of love and care, and say, “God loves you so much! But you are so sinful, He’s gonna have to shoot you if you don’t fix up your life and tell us all the bad stuff you’ve done.”

God: That’s good. And then maybe when he says that he is doing a pretty good job, and he doesn’t know why he’s been arrested since he hasn’t broken any law, you can raise the bar on him a bit. Blame it on me, though. Because I’m so holy.

Jesus: Okay. I could say that although you commanded them not to commit adultery, what you are really concerned about it lust. And although you said, “Don’t murder,” if they call someone a fool, it’s the same thing.

God: Right. Improvise a bit on that. Just make sure you blame it on me and my holiness. That’s key. And then, after this goes on for a while, I’ll step into the room, pull out my gun, and yell, “Enough! This man is evil. Stop beating around the bush and make him confess!” Then I’ll point the gun at his chest and pull the trigger. I’ll shoot him.

Jesus: Sounds good. That’s when I jump in front of the bullet, and die in a bloody mess right there in front of everybody. It will be great. I’ll get on the news. I’ll be the talk of the town for thousands of years. People will write books about me. Of course, you’re not going to leave me dead, right?

God: Don’t be silly. Of course not. The resurrection is the grand finale. After I shoot at the man, and then you step in front of the bullet, he will be so shocked at your love for him, especially after you laid all that guilt on him, that he will be amazed at your love. And then when I raise you from the dead — oh man, he’ll just drop down and start worshipping us. It will be awesome!

Is that how it went down? Not even close.

How it all went down

First of all, while there was a plan, the plan did not include God and Jesus playing off each other like this. They were of one mind and will toward humanity, with love as the primary motivation.

Second, while God is just and holy, and while the death of Jesus did satisfy the holiness of God in regard to our sin, this was not the only — or even the primary — reason for the death of Jesus on the cross. This is called the “appeasement theory” or “penal substitution theory” of the atonement, and is the idea that the death of Jesus appeased the wrath of God.

Such an idea comes more from Greek Pantheistic mythology than it does from Scripture. The Greeks believed (as do the people of most religions) that the gods are angry and need to be appeased (aka bribed) in order to act nicely toward humans. To appease the gods, we need to do great things for them or offer valuable possession to then, such as our prize cow, firstborn son, or virgin daughter. If the gods are impressed enough with our achievements or our sacrifice, they won’t be angry any more.

This sort of thinking has crept into Christian theology as well, so that many Christians today think that something similar went on in the death of Jesus on the cross. It goes like this: God was angry. We tried to appease Him by obeying the law and giving him bulls and goats, but it wasn’t good enough. He was still angry at our sin. Since He knew that we could never obey Him well enough or give Him a sacrifice good enough to fully satisfy our debt, He sent Jesus to pay the penalty instead. Jesus stepped in, died for us, and paid the debt. Now God loves us, just as He always wanted.

While this way of thinking fits well with pagan theology and pagan deities, it could not be further from the truth regarding the God of Scripture.

Why did Jesus die?

Jesus did not die to appease God, but to cleanse us from sin, and deliver us from its power. Jesus died to defeat sin, death, and devil.

The death of Jesus was a rescue operation where He broke into the prison of our bondage where we were rotting in filth and decay, and through His life, death, and resurrection, demolished our chains, picked us up on His shoulders, and carried us to freedom outside of the prison walls.

If we want to liken what Jesus did to a movie, it is not a “Good Cop, Bad Cop” scene we should imagine, but Chuck Norris breaking Prisoners of War out of a military prison camp — except without all the shooting and killing. On second thought … maybe Chuck Norris isn’t the best example, but you get the idea.

The death of Jesus on the cross was to break the power of sin in our lives, and recapture for us the relationship with God that they have always wanted with us. And that is something that is Oscar-worthy. Or worship-worthy.

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

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After His Death, Jesus Retraced the Steps of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement

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Jesus our High PriestWhat happened to Jesus our High Priest after He died, but before He rose from the dead? Where did He go for three days? What did He do? Was He just sitting in heaven (or hell) twiddling His thumbs and checking His watch while the hours ticked by until He could rise?

Jesus our High Priest (Leviticus 16; Hebrews 9)

No. I believe Jesus our High Priest was retracing the steps of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement as recorded in Leviticus 16.

The author of Hebrews writes that the actions of the priest on the Day of Atonement are followed by Jesus in His death, resurrection, and future return (Hebrews 9:24-28).

The High Priest Entered the Tabernacle

First, the tabernacle that Jesus our High Priest entered was not the earthly tabernacle, but a heavenly one (Hebrews 9:24). As such, it was a better tabernacle which required both a better priest and a better sacrifice. Jesus acted as both.

The High Priest Changed Garments

Second, before any sacrifice was made, the High Priest removed his beautiful and ornate garments that he normally wore, and put on simple, plain linens. This represents Jesus putting aside His divinity to become human.

The Activities of the High Priest

Finally, there were three primary activities of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement:

  1. Making sacrifices,
  2. Offering blood on the mercy seat in God’s presence,
  3. Appearing before the people who were waiting outside the tabernacle.

The various sacrifices at the altar represent the death of Jesus our High Priest on the cross.

  1. Offering His blood in the presence of God symbolizes what Jesus did during His three days in the grave.
  2. His resurrection was like the appearance of the High Priest after the offerings were complete, proving that the sacrifice had been accepted by God.
  3. Hebrews 9:28 indicates that we are waiting for a second appearance as well, when He will come apart from sin.

The High Priest Appeared Before the People

It might be dangerous to read too much into the details of the steps of the High Priest in Leviticus 16, but it seems that he also appeared twice to the people. The steps of the High Priest are as follows, with a short description of how the steps of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement were fulfilled in Jesus Christ through His crucifixion, burial, and resurrection.

  1. The High Priest takes off robes, and puts on linen clothes (Lev 16:3-4). Jesus emptied Himself of His divinity, and became human (Php 2:7-8).
  2. The High Priest kills a bull as a sin offering for himself (Lev 16:11). This activity—and the following four activities—were accomplished by Jesus on the cross and during His three days in the tomb. All of these are done alone, without any other person present in the tabernacle (Lev 16:17).
  3. The High Priest takes blood from the bull into the Holy of Holies and sprinkles it on the Mercy Seat (Lev 16:12-14).
  4. The High Priest exits the Holy of Holies, and kills the goat as a sin offering for the people (Lev 16:15).
  5. The High Priest takes blood from the goat back into the Holy of Holies and sprinkles it on the Mercy Seat (Lev 16:15).
  6. The High Priest exits the Holy of Holies, and sprinkles blood from both the bull and the goat on the altar to purify it (Lev 16:18-19).
  7. When these steps are complete, the High Priest returns to the people waiting outside (Lev 16:20-21). While some think that this appearance represents the resurrection of Jesus, this does not fit the events well, since all of the sacrifices for the Day of Atonement are not yet complete. He still has to send the scapegoat out of the city. Therefore, it seems possible that this appearance of Jesus might be His appearance to another group of people who were also waiting for the once-for-all sacrifice to be completed, namely, those who believed in the coming Messiah, but who died before His death and resurrection. It is they, apparently, who were possibly in “Abraham’s Bosom” (cf. Luke 16:19-31). Though they were not technically in hell, the final sacrifice for their sins had not yet been made, and so they could not go to God. So maybe Jesus appeared to them, preached to them, and took them with Him at His resurrection (cf. 1 Peter 3:18-20; 4:6; Matt 27:52-53; Eph 4:8).
  8. The High Priest now lays the sins of the people on the second goat, and the goat is led out of the city and into the wilderness (Lev 16:21-22). While this could represent how Jesus was led out of Jerusalem to be crucified, it may also reveal what Jesus did with the sin of the world that was laid upon Him. If He went to Hades, which is a place away from the tabernacle, outside the camp, then maybe He left sin there. He took sin upon Him on the cross, and then carried it to where it goes—Death and Hades—and left it there. He was the only one able to escape death because He Himself did not sin.
  9. After the scapegoat is released, the High Priest enters into the Tabernacle one more time, takes off his linen clothes, and puts back on his glorious clothes (Lev 16:23-24). This represents the resurrection of Jesus, and His return to His place at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.
  10. The remains of the bull and goat that were sacrificed are now carried outside the camp, and they are completely burned up (Lev 16:27). Again, if these sacrifices represent Jesus then it may be true that in some sense, Jesus descended into hell with the sin that He took upon Himself.

What do you think? The author of Hebrews shows that there are some parallels in Hebrews 9, but do you have anything to add?

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

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