Yesterday on a five minute car ride I heard the following question asked on the radio, "Do I have to believe in the resurrection to be a Christian?"
It was good timing. The answer, too, was good.
The speaker responded, "You can be a Christian and not understand the resurrection, but no, you cannot be a Christian and deny the resurrection."
His reasoning was simple, Christ predicted and promised that he would die and rise three days later, so there is no room to claim he did not. To do so makes Christ a liar, thereby undercutting his moral authority, his integrity, and any reason to believe any of his other claims (Not to add, the implications for our eternities if Christ couldn't conquer death).
This reminds me of brilliant argument put forth by C.S. Lewis (who may be my all time favorite author in both fiction and non-fiction) popularly known as the Trilemma.
It is stated as so,
I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying a really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." This is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic--on a level with the man who says that he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any partonising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
If the resurrection isn't true, Jesus is either liar or lunatic, but if it is true, there is no option but to declare him Lord.
Lord over life. Lord over death. Lord of this world and Lord over the world to come.
That's good news.
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