Witnesses Of The Resurrection

Witnesses of the Resurrection

Read: Luke 24:44-49

“This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

Luke 24:46-48

“The Spirit of Christ is the spirit of missions, and the nearer we get to Him the more intensely missionary we must become.”

—Henry Martyn

IN WORD We have been entrusted with the greatest truth the world has ever known. The disciples were the first hearers of this incredible commission. At the apex of history, the Christ died and was raised—the age of resurrection had begun. The fulfillment of the sacrificial system had come, sins had been forgiven through Him, and the whole world was to be the audience of this story. It is an incomparable story; no man-made religion has ever come close to matching it. No others have claimed resurrection to back up their teaching. The disciples, as witnesses, were entrusted as guardians of this truth.

We, too, are witnesses of the Resurrection. We haven’t seen it in the same way the disciples did, but we have certainly witnessed it, if He lives within us by faith. And like them, we have been radically changed by this resurrection. No one who has encountered the risen Christ can remain the same; we are compelled by His Spirit within us—His relentlessly searching Spirit—to go and tell.

IN DEED This mission has been handed down to us: Having been freed from a prison of shame and incomprehensible guilt, we have been told to walk right back into the courtroom where we were once convicted. As witnesses in the trial of this world, we are told to testify of what we’ve seen. There is no hope for these defendants other than this evidence of Christ’s death, resurrection, and forgiveness of sins—just as there was once no hope for us. The charge against this world is sin, and we know of evidence that changed everything for us. That’s the truth we’re called to tell.