If we talk about the evidences for the resurrection, there are many. We could talk about the accounts of the resurrection, which is how we learn of it—that is, the accounts in the Gospels and in other chapters in the Word of God. Since the Gospel accounts basically agree, there are a limited number of ways to explain them. One can say that these accounts were made up. And if you say they were made up, they were either made up in collusion as the men got together to plan the story they wanted to invent. Or one could say that the Gospel accounts were made up separately.
It has been pointed out quite often that they cannot have been made up in collusion because if they were, you would not find the kind of minor differences you do, such as the number of women at the tomb. That is not the kind of thing that you would allow to stand in your narrative if you were making it up together with somebody else. You would want details like that to agree if you were working with other writers. But on the other hand, they were not made up separately either because in all of the basic facts, the various accounts are in agreement. It is impossible that the four Gospel accounts of this one story of Jesus’ resurrection could agree with each other so well if each one made it up independently.
Well, what is the explanation, then, if they were not made up in collusion and they were not made up separately? The only possibility that is left is that they were not made up at all and that what you really have here is the true account of an event that happened. What you have are eyewitnesses who testify of what they actually knew to be the case.
Another evidence for the resurrection is the changed character of the disciples. Before the resurrection, they were fearful, scattering, timid men. The Emmaus disciples were going home. Peter had denied his Lord. None of them had any courage. Yet, a short time after the resurrection is reported, you find these same cowardly disciples standing up in Jerusalem in the presence of the very men who had killed their Master, saying that they were guilty of His blood and proclaiming His resurrection. What accounts for that? The only thing that can account for that is an actual resurrection.
You also have the change of the day of worship from Saturday, the Jewish day of worship, to Sunday, the Christian day of worship. Only a resurrection on Sunday would account for that; otherwise, the change is too radical. That just is not something that would have happened historically unless there was a significant cause to explain it. And there are many other various explanations and proofs that could be given.
But what Paul talks about here are the eyewitnesses. We might wonder why Paul does not mention the other things. The reason is that, writing at the time he did, it was not necessary to mention the other things because what better evidence could you offer than an eyewitness, especially if you can talk to about five hundred of them, who all saw the same thing at once? Paul says, “Look, if you doubt this, all you have to do is talk to people who were there.”
I think it is interesting that, although Paul’s concern in this chapter is to talk about the resurrection, nevertheless, when he gets to this point and mentions the fact that Jesus Christ appeared to him last of all, Paul immediately thinks of the grace of God to give such a revelation and entrust such a Gospel to a person like himself. Before he met the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul was the exact opposite of the kind of man we find him to be here. He was a proud man. He had come from centuries of Jewish tradition. He had believed that if anybody had the right to stand before God and hold his head high in the day of the final judgment, it was he, Paul.
