“12-15 Now, let me ask you something profound yet troubling. If you became believers because you trusted the proclamation that Christ is alive, risen from the dead, how can you let people say that there is no such thing as a resurrection? If there’s no resurrection, there’s no living Christ. And face it—if there’s no resurrection for Christ, everything we’ve told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you’ve staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. Not only that, but we would be guilty of telling a string of barefaced lies about God, all these affidavits we passed on to you verifying that God raised up Christ—sheer fabrications, if there’s no resurrection.“
To a believer, the resurrection of Christ is a matter of pure faith and steadfast belief in the event of Christ having been raised up from the dead. This is no “barefaced lie” and no “smoke and mirrors”. It is not allegory or abstraction, either. It is the fundamental, factual truth upon which one’s faith is built upon. And death is no longer a scary proposition because we know that we are not contained in death. This is pure faith and nothing short of it. This is the message every believer holds dear, and especially in the reality of the physical loss of a dear one.
