Becoming Christian changes everything… or at least, it should! When you read those various individuals described in the Gospel accounts, their lives were changed completely. I don’t just mean the obvious candidates like those who met the Lord Jesus as He helped them directly – the blind who were made to see, the lame made to walk, etc… I mean those whose whole outlook on life and the future was turned-around. From the apostles right down to those unnamed for whom becoming Christians became their primary identity. In fact, when you read the New Testament, there is a tacit understanding that being a Christian IS your primary identity if you are one – not just in theological terms, but as a whole of life thing: aspirations, priorities and understanding of the world.
Of course, if there were no Gospel, if Jesus had remained dead, then actually the Christian message would be one that had lots of uncertainties. There wouldn’t be anything worth being identified by any more than one’s membership of a kind of club: Sure, Jesus’s teaching was good, but how can we know it was right? OK, His miracles were amazing, but they become just a set of claims amongst the many. Perhaps most shockingly, His act of self-sacrifice was humbling– especially the claim that He “did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”(Mark 10:45)… but how, until its too late, would we ever know if such a ransom was accepted, if the atonement worked, if faith in Him is worth anything more than just wishful thinking!
The apostle Paul takes this even further in 1 Cor 15:12–19 . In that passage he lays out the grave consequences if Christ had not risen from the dead. With sobering order he lists them to explain the impact:
… if Christ has not been raised:
our preaching is useless
and so is your faith.More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead.
But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.
And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
If Christ stayed dead then Christianity is a useless faith which lies about God, leaves people enslaved to sin, gives them no hope in death or for those who have died and ultimately means that Christians are fit only to be pitied!
And of course, people do pity us as deluded and sometimes therefore as dangerous because we follow just another dead legend….
But the answer is that Jesus did rise from the dead! THIS is the most tested claim in History. Time and again detractors have attacked the fact that Jesus is alive and have hit a wall so hard that they have ultimately given in and many have become Christians – ditching their primary identities as lawyers or scientists or even skeptics and joyfully calling themselves Christians!
To bring all of this down to earth though, you have only to look again at those individuals described in the New Testament: From Mary Magdalene to the apostle Peter, and on into the book of Acts, Jesus gave people a fresh start and changed them forever. The fact of His accepted sacrifice means that sins can be forgiven and the great news of the Gospel message is that in Christ a fresh-start is ALWAYS possible. His new life means that sin can be forgiven (1 John 1:8,9), death is conquered for He is the one who holds the key and who can therefore, open and close the door (Rev 1:18.). Now, if you are a Christian – all of this means that everything should have changed – what an opportunity!!!