The Certainty of the Resurrection

Our Lord was assuredly dead: the Roman guards at the cross took care that no condemned person escaped the death penalty; in our Lord’s case his heart was pierced with the spear to make sure that no life remained in him.

Joseph begged his body, and by the loving hands of those who were sure that he was dead, he was wrapped in spices and fine linen, and laid in the tomb.

There lay our Lord, in the grave, with a stone rolled at the cave’s mouth, and a seal set upon it by those in authority. Our Lord’s sepulcher watched by a guard of Roman soldiers, that no man might steal his body.

There he lay for a portion of three days and nights. He was really dead, and in the grave he wore all the marks of death: a napkin bound about his head; linen clothes around his limbs.
On the morning of the third day it was truly said, “The Lord has risen indeed”; for he actually, literally, and in very fact awoke to life, unbound the napkin and laid it by itself, folded his grave clothes, and when the angel had rolled away the stone, the First-begotten from the dead came forth in a material body to live among his disciples for forty days.

During the time of his sojourn, his resurrection was established by many infallible proofs: he was seen, heard, touched, and handled. One of his disciples put his finger into the print of the nails, and thrust his hand into his side. He possessed a real body, for he ate a piece of a broiled fish before them all. It was Jesus of Nazareth, and none other than he, who met his disciples at Galilee.

On this firm basis of fact we build our holy faith. All glory be to him “that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.”

~ Charles Spurgeon