I began this series of messages last Friday by affirming that the actual, bodily resurrection of Jesus is the central event on which all of Christianity stands. If you believe that Jesus rose, then everything else Jesus said and did will make sense, and you have every reason to trust the Bible as God’s true Word. Reject the resurrection, however, and nothing else Jesus said and did can possibly make sense, and you have no reason to ever open the Bible again.
That being said, I do understand the skeptic’s dilemma. If, as we said last Sunday, “Christ is risen indeed,” it would be the most amazing miracle on record, and skeptics, by definition, struggle to accept all things miraculous. As I wrote last week, when people are confronted with the false binary of being reasonable versus being religious, many are choosing to walk away from Jesus.
That’s why I’m spending a few weeks tackling some of the most common “rational” arguments employed by agnostics and skeptics to deny the resurrection of Jesus. As always, I’d love to entertain your questions and critiques if you have them. You can send them my way by simply replying to this message.
Argument #2: Jesus’ Followers Made It All Up
This argument usually goes something like this:
How can we be sure that, in the aftermath of Jesus’ tragic death on the cross, his overly zealous followers didn’t want to let him die?
How do we know that, in the depths of their trauma and grief, they didn’t conspire to carry out the greatest hoax in history by doing away with Jesus’ body and telling everybody that he rose from the dead?
In addition to the points made in last Friday’s reflection about the multiple, early (first-century) Christian and non-Christian attestations that Jesus died on a cross, was buried, and that the tomb was empty three days later, I believe we have more than enough evidence to refute the “Resurrection Hoax” myth on rational grounds.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel… – Romans 1:16
These eight words constitute Paul’s thesis statement at the top of his most important letter, and if you ask me, this is an odd way to set the tone. Why would Paul feel the need to insist to the Christians who were living in Rome that he was not ashamed of the gospel?
Well, ask yourself what’s usually going on whenever somebody says, “I’m not ashamed”. Typically, anyone who goes to great lengths to make sure you know they’re not ashamed…is covering for the fact that they’ve been doing something most people would be ashamed of.
Imagine someone saying “I love ______________ and I’m not ashamed to admit it!” Whatever goes in that blank is most likely to be something that the average person would be ashamed about loving.
I love kicking puppies and I’m not ashamed to admit it!
I’m a grown man on TikTok and I’m not ashamed to admit it!
I love the New York Yankees and I’m not ashamed to admit it!
You get the idea. After hearing someone say such things, most level-headed humans would think, “Well, you should be.”
So why did Paul open his letter to the Romans by insisting that he wasn’t ashamed? What was so potentially shameful about the gospel of Jesus Christ? For most people in Paul’s world – everything.
Basically everyone Paul knew believed the Christians were distorting the Jewish faith and Scriptures. Paul himself believed this, and he sought to punish the Christians until he became one after his Come to Jesus meeting on the Damascus Road. I suppose that made for some awkward holidays with the folks back home.
Paul had converted to that weird, new religion, and the reaction he received from his friends was the same reaction you’d get from your friends today if you announced to them that you were going all-in on Scientology. “I’m not ashamed!” you might say.
Well, your friends would think to themselves, you should be.
First-century Christians were despised by the establishment and hated by the well-to-do. We have documented accusations from the first- and second-century sources that Christians were perverts and their church meetings were little more than pagan orgies. They described Christians as atheistic, cannibalistic, and incestuous. Consider, for example, the words of Tacitus, the great Roman historian, who wrote about “the people called Christians” in 109 AD.
“(Roman Emperor) Nero falsely accused and executed with the most exquisite punishments those people called Christians (for starting the fires that burned much of Rome), who were infamous for their abominations. The originator of the name, Christ, was executed as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius; and though repressed, this destructive superstition erupted again, not only through Judea, which was the origin of this evil, but also through the city of Rome, to which all that is horrible and shameful floods together and is celebrated.” – The Annals of Tacitus
This excerpt perfectly illustrates why Paul went out of his way to insist that he was not ashamed of the gospel: because most people back then would have said, “You should be.”
And most of Paul’s own community – the Jews – would have agreed, not so much because of the libelous rumors being spread about the Christians, but because of one single, scandalous reason: the Cross. The notion of God’s Messiah dying on a cross was a non-starter for most first-century Jews, and it’s easy to understand why.
Anyone who hangs on a tree is cursed by God. – Deuteronomy 21:23
There’s a reason why, after the Jewish leaders found Jesus guilty, they didn’t simply stone him like they stoned other heretics: Jesus had become a formidable foe whose movement had grown too large. The elites couldn’t just get rid of him quickly; they had to find a way to discredit him completely. So after his trial, they escorted Jesus to the Romans and accused him of treason against the Empire. When Pontius Pilate asked the crowd what punishment they sought, they were adamant:
Crucify him! Crucify him! – Luke 23:31
What better way to prove that Jesus was a fraud than to watch him hang on a tree while reciting Deuteronomy 21:23 for all his friends and followers to hear? This is why, in another of his letters, Paul wrote:
…we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles… – 1 Corinthians 1:23
What could have compelled the first Christians to put all their faith in a stumbling block or in the utter foolishness of the cross? What could have inspired them to be unashamed of something their own family and friends would call shameful? And more importantly, what could have convinced them that their foolish, shameful, crucified hero was worth dying for?
Indeed, we know that, even by Rome’s standards of savagery, many of the original Christians were condemned to horrifying deaths. Some, like Stephen and Matthias, were stoned to death. When Matthias’ killers ran out of stones, they cut off his head. Also among the beheaded believers were the apostle James (the son of Zebedee and brother of John), Barnabas, and Paul. Matthew and Thomas were impaled by swords. Andrew was tied to a cross and died from exposure. Peter was crucified upside-down.
It wasn’t just the A-list Christians who died for Jesus; untold numbers of unnamed believers laid down their lives as well. Once again, we are indebted to Tacitus for this unbiased account of the first-century persecution of Christians:
“Therefore, first those were seized who admitted their faith, and then, using the information they provided, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much for the crime of burning the city, but for hatred of the human race. And perishing they were additionally made into sports: they were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle and performed a Circus game, in the habit of a charioteer mixing with the plebs or driving about the race-course. Even though they were clearly guilty and merited being made the most recent example of the consequences of crime, people began to pity these sufferers…” – The Annals of Tacitus
So, on what grounds did so many of the first Christians choose to lose everything they had – including their own lives? Surely it’s irrational to claim that these believers willingly sacrificed themselves for an elaborate hoax. These people saw something that changed everything.
They saw Jesus, after his crucifixion, alive and well. This is the only reasonable explanation for the unstoppable rise of Christian faith throughout the first-century Roman Empire. This is the only possible reason why Paul – and so many other believers – were not ashamed of something the whole world called shameful.
