It is central. Remove the fact of God’s raising Jesus Christ from the dead and the gospel is without power. From the beginning the apostles made both the crucifixion and the resurrection paramount. One without the other lacks meaning. On the Cross, Jesus gave himself as a Lamb without blemish in our stead to pay the penalty for our sins. But through the resurrection and the resulting outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon believers, God demonstrated His acceptance of this sacrifice as atonement for our sin. This is why we would indeed still be in our sin if the resurrection had not taken place. Pete’s sermon on the day of Pentecost emphasized the resurrection. It was at this point that the multitude felt conviction and cried out for specific direction how to be saved (Acts 2:32-37).
The Bible tells us that Paul’s habitual way of ministering was to open up the Old Testament Scriptures to demonstrate the reality of the resurrection of Christ as God’s demonstration of the truth of His covenant (Acts 17:2, 3).
So important and basic to the gospel did Paul consider the resurrection, that he declared that both the message and our faith would be ”vain”-that is empty, hollow, meaningless-if the resurrection of Christ did not actually take place (1 Corinthians 15:12-20).
Paul broke the gospel down into historical facts. These were each real events people could investigate for themselves. The five basic facts of the gospel are:
- Christ died.
- Christ was buried.
- Christ rose.
- Christ appeared.
- Christ ascended.
We are historic Christians. We believe the historic accounts regarding Jesus Christ. This is not a spiritual story about someone who might have lived sometime. Jesus was a real person who lived, died, and rose again in a real world of space and time. We have actual historical proof of these events.