Jesus Is Risen, So What? – Sunday Thought For The Day

Easter church services are come and gone. Most Resurrection Day services included songs and hymns about Jesus being risen from the grave and sermons proclaiming the same. But, so what? Even if we believe in Jesus, so what if He “was risen” from the grave?

However, the question isn’t so what if He “was risen” from the grave? The question is what if He wasn’t risen from the grave?

If Jesus wasn’t “risen” from the grave, it would make Him just another person who spun convincing tales of deceit and dishonesty, and in His case not even for personal material gain.

If Jesus were not risen, His body would be in the ground just like the body of every false prophet in the history of the world. It would have been possible to go and see His dead body. It would mean that in the millennia since Jesus was crucified, dead and buried, someone or some group would have found His body. If He were not risen, credible searches for His body would continue until this very day.

But there are no credible searches for His buried body, because His “is risen.” Note, I said: “He is risen”; not “He was risen”, as I indicated above. That is because if Jesus “was risen” it would offer no hope of His being alive today. It would mean that “He was risen” but not necessarily that “He is risen” still today.

Jesus is risen, and if He were not: our hope of victory over death, our hope of not just living eternally with Him in Heaven, but doing so in our resurrected bodies that will also be raised from the grave would be in vain.

The question is, do we believe that? Because if we do not believe that, it means we are hopelessly lost, and the best it will ever be for us is our best moment while we were alive. It means that some of us will spend our lives “doing things” that we hope will make it possible for us not to spend eternity in hell when we die.

The question(s) we might consider asking ourselves is: “Is this the way we want to live our lives?” Do we want to live our lives and then die without the assurance and confidence of our spending eternity with God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ?

Believing that Jesus “is risen” from the dead is as important as believing He is God the Son. Our eternal future is based upon whether or not we believe Jesus “is risen” from the grave and is alive forever more, because if we do not believe “He is risen” we cannot believe He is God the Son. And if we do not believe He is God the Son, we cannot believe He is our Lord and Savior. And if we do not believe He is our Lord and Savior we have no hope of forgiveness of our sins and that would presume we even believed we were sinners.

READ: Acts 1:1-11 (KJV)
1 The former treatise have I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach,

2 Until the day in which he was taken up, after that he through the Holy Ghost had given commandments unto the apostles whom he had chosen:

3 To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God:

4 And, being assembled together with them, commanded them that they should not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise of the Father, which, saith he, ye have heard of me.

5 For John truly baptized with water; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence.

6 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom to Israel?

7 And he said unto them, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power.

8 But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

9 And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld, he was taken up; and a cloud received him out of their sight.

10 And while they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, behold, two men stood by them in white apparel;

11 Which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven? this same Jesus, which is taken up from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven.