I. ITS IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION.
1. IT HOLDS A UNIQUE PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY.
Christianity is the only religion that bases its claim to acceptance upon the resurrection of its founder. For any other religion to base its claim on such a doctrine would be to court failure. Test all other religions by this claim and see.
2. IT IS FUNDAMENTAL TO CHRISTIANITY.
In that wonderful chapter on the resurrection (1 Cor. 15) Paul makes Christianity answer with its life for the literal truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That the body of the founder of the Christian religion did not lie in the grave after the third day is fundamental to the existence of the religion of Christ: "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain" (v. 14). "If Christ be not raised . . . ye are yet in your sins" (v. 17). "Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished" (v.18). Remove the resurrection from Paul's Gospel, and his message is gone. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is not an appendage to Paul's Gospel; it is a constitutive part of it.
The importance of this doctrine is very evident from the prominent part it played in the preaching of the Apostles: Peter—Acts 2:24, 32; 3:15; 4:10; 5:30; 10:40; 1 Peter 1:21, 23. Paul—Acts 13:30, 34; 17:31; 1 Cor. 15; Phil. 3:21. It was belief in such preaching that led to the establishment of the Christian church. Belief in the resurrection of Christ was the faith of the early church (Acts 4:33). The testimony to this great fact of Christian faith was borne in the midst of the fiercest opposition. Nor was it controverted, although the grave was well known and could have been pointed out. It was in this fact that Christianity acquired a firm basis for its historical development. There was not only an "Easter Message," there was also an "Easter Faith."
Our Lord's honor was, in a sense, staked upon the fact of His resurrection. So important did He regard it that He remained forty days upon the earth after His resurrection, giving many infallible proofs of the great fact. He appealed to it again and again as evidence of the truth of His claims: Matt. 12:39, 40; John 2:20-22.
Both the friends and the enemies of Christianity admit that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is vital to the religion that bears His name. The Christian confidently appeals to it as an incontrovertible fact; the sceptic denies it altogether as a historical reality. "If the resurrection really took place," says an assailant of it, "then Christianity must be admitted to be what it claims to be—a direct revelation from God." "If Christ be not risen," says the Apostle Paul, "then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." The one tries all he can to do away with the proofs submitted for the accepted fact; the other plainly says that if the resurrection cannot be believed, then Christianity is nothing but a sham. If the resurrection of Christ can be successfully denied, if it can be proven to be absolutely untrue, then the whole fabric of the Gospel falls to pieces, the whole structure of the Christian religion is shaken at its foundation, and the very arch of Christianity crumbles into dust. Then it has wrought only imaginary changes, deluded its most faithful adherents, deceived and disappointed the hopes of its most devoted disciples, and the finest moral achievements that adorn the pages of the history of the Christian church have been based upon a falsehood.
Nor must we ignore the prominent place the resurrection of Jesus Christ occupies in the Scriptures. More than one hundred times is it spoken of in the New Testament alone.