I Really Believe This
Why Jesus' empty tomb is the most important thing in my life
I’ve ducked my head through the tiny opening in what is The Garden Tomb, and I’ve descended the stairs to the place under The Church of the Holy Sepulcher. However, Easter was the most real to me, not when I visited the place (s) where Christians believe Jesus’ tomb was located, but a few years ago when I stood over the emaciated body of my dying mother in her last days on earth, each of her final breaths more labored than the other.
When Mom passed, I wept like Jesus at the tomb of his friend Lazarus. Death is a rebellion against the way the world should be. Death, we are told in 1 Corinthians 15, is the final foe. Christians can have peace in death, but we should never make peace with death itself. It’s ugly. It’s an intrusion on the good. It steals mothers and fathers from children and children from mothers and fathers.
This year, several people we know lost people close to them. In the work that I do, I’m aware of so much tragedy, from unnecessary wars by evil rulers to famine and despair across the globe to the injustices that prey on the vulnerable right here at home.
As he approached his death from cancer, the late Tim Keller wrote poignantly about the way Easter buoyed him:
Most particularly for me as a Christian, Jesus’s costly love, death, and resurrection had become not just something I believed and filed away, but a hope that sustained me all day. I pray this prayer daily. Occasionally it electrifies, but ultimately it always calms:
And as I lay down in sleep and rose this morning only by your grace, keep me in the joyful, lively remembrance that whatever happens, I will someday know my final rising, because Jesus Christ lay down in death for me, and rose for my justification.
Keller could stare at death because he knew the one who defeated death. If the claims of Easter are true—and I believe them now more than I ever have—then I could face my mother’s passing. Tim Keller could spend his last days with joy.
We believe this. The facts of the resurrection are overwhelming. Read N.T. Wright’s massive volume, The Resurrection of the Son of God. Read Gary Habermas's three volumes.
Because the resurrection is true, everything changes. It means the world as we know it is not the final chapter. It means death, which snakes its way through the human experience, has been defeated. It means the brokenness, the pain, and the sadness will one day give way to a restored world where every tear will be wiped away.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live (John 11:25).
Jesus made an audacious claim. He claimed to have the keys to life and death. And then he did rise again. He beckons those who are far from him to come, have their sins forgiven, and find peace with God.
Perhaps you—this Easter—might find that peace with God.