That the resurrection is an essential aspect of Christianity seems to me to be a ‘no brainer’.  But recently I had a dialogue with an individual who does not share this view.  As I have thought about that dialogue I have come to realize that this person is not entirely wrong, though still, I think, confused.

Let me explain.

The resurrection is necessary to Christianity. Without the resurrection we would have no assurance that the death of Christ satisfied the justice of God.  We would have no way of knowing if Christ’s death paid the price of the debt of our sin or not. We would not know if he was a mere man or not.  Therefore, we would live, at best, with a presumptive hope, but no faith, no actual trust, that we had been reconciled to God. 

Actually, had Jesus not been raised from the tomb we would have serious reason to doubt anything positive had happend at all, since Jesus predicted his own resurrection. (See Matthew 12.40-41 & Luke 11.29-32).   Had he not raisen, he would have been shown to have been wrong.  And as good as he may have been otherwise, had he been wrong about this he would not have been perfect.  In fact, he would have himself been guilty of sin by making claims about himself – and about God – that just were not true. (That’s called blasphemy.)  And if he had sinned, even in this one instance, he could not have been God.   And if Jesus is not God, and was in fact himself a sinner, he could not reconcile us to God.  He would not even have been able to reconcile himself to God!

So, without ther Resurrection there is no Gospel.

The resurrection is so essential to the Christian Faith that the Apostle Paul wrote:

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… If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Clearly the Resurrection is an aspect of the Gospel essential to Christianity.

Why, then, you may ask, did I say that the person who does not consider the Resurrection to be an essential part of Christianity is “not entirely wrong”? 

What that person sees, I suspect, is the beauty of the life and teaching of Christ. Even if the resurrection had not occured, the life Jesus lived, and the life that lives in conformity to his teaching, is beautiful.  That is somethng I have to concede. And in that sense what some might call Christianity, even without the resurrection, has value. 

The Christian Gospel is not only the promise of forgiven sin, but also the promise of the power to grow to become more Christ-like. In other words the Gospel includes the power, subsequent to being forgiven, to live a more and more beautiul life. These truths are like two lanes of the same highway.

Sadly, it seems too many who call themselves Christians are willing to embrace the saving grace of the Gospel, but fail to take seriously – who don’t even really desire to adorn themselves with – the beauty of a life lived in accordance with the model & teaching of Jesus.  And I suspect that glaring absence is what leads some to embrace, what I will call, a Gospel-less Christianity.  

If some are willing to accept that Christianity can be salvation apart from a correspondng holiness, I suppose it is not diificult to understand why others would assume it OK to accept morality without a corresponding redemption to also be Christianity.  Both have simply divided the highway.

But that is as far as I am capable of going with this thought.  Because beautiful or not, Paul is right, Christianity without the resurrection is futile. It is a mere fragment, and not Christianity.  Christianity is the whole revelation of Christ. It is the whole Gospel, or it becomes something entirely different. To pick out bits and pieces is inauthentic, even if well-intentioned. 

Let me illustrate it this way: If my house is disassembled for some reason, and someone attempts to rebuild it using materials from the orignal, yet does not use all the material, and build it according to the same design, it is not my house any longer.  It may have many of the same pieces, but it is not the same thing.

Likewise, a Christianity rooted in the moral principals and example of Christ, but that does not include the redemption accomplished by Christ through his death and resurrection, may look nice, but it is not Christianity. 

The resurrectionis essential.

But while I was thinking about this, something struck me.  What Paul is emphasizing in 1 Corinthians 15 is not only the resurrection of Christ, but the promise of the resurrection to come.  It is the promise of our resurrection!  In fact, it could be, should be, said, that our future resurrection is an essential element to Christianity.  

That’s just awesome!  It is the promise of Heaven!