As we look forward this Sunday to our new two-part series on evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, “Reason to Believe,” I’d like to direct your attention to something that pastor Tim Keller said in his profoundly good apologetic work, Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism:
Sometimes people approach me and say, “I really struggle with this aspect of Christian teaching. I like this part of Christian belief, but I don’t think I can accept that part.” I usually respond: “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like this teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” That is how the first hearers felt who heard reports of the resurrection. They knew that if it was true it meant we can’t live our lives any way we want. It also meant we don’t have to be afraid of anything, not Roman swords, not cancer, nothing. If Jesus rose from the dead, it changes everything.[†]
† Timothy Keller, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Dutton, 2008), 202.