Was Jesus really raised from the dead?
A recent article appearing in The Huntsville Times (July 3, C1) suggested that perhaps we need to "rethink" Jesus. Quoted extensively in the article is Marcus Borg, who is convinced that the American public is open to new ideas about Jesus. Mr. Borg believes that we should seek to follow the "spirit of Jesus’ teachings," but that the body of Jesus was probably not raised from the dead. The resurrection accounts were most likely intended as metaphors simply to suggest that Jesus’ spirit still existed after his death, according to Borg.
Borg is quoted as saying that "for me to accept that God transformed the corpse of Jesus would not only violate my sense of the limits of the spectacular but it also would privilege the Christian tradition and would be saying that God acted in Christianity in a way God has never acted in other religious traditions." Perish the thought! Small wonder that Borg does not believe in the resurrection of Jesus – an event which constitutes the crowning evidence of His deity (Romans 1:4). Jesus claimed to be the only way to the Father (John 14:6), a statement which leaves little room for other "religious traditions" (see also Matthew 15:13).
Borg is joined in his unbelief by the Rev. Suzanne Paul of the Universalist-Unitarian Church who argues that Jesus was an important teacher, but not deity. She claims, "Jesus is not a god to me, but he was a very powerful figure. I would go so far as to say that Jesus was a spiritually unique person, but then so was Buddha and so was Moses." For Ms. Paul, there is evidently no substantive difference between Buddha, Moses and Jesus!
I find it incredible that people are willing to follow even the spirit of the teaching of a lying imposter. When skeptics argue that Jesus was not deity, the inescapable conclusion is that He was a liar and an imposter. He claimed to be the Son of God; even the Jews understood that and attempted to stone Him on more than one occasion! Of course, skeptics deal with this uncomfortable dilemma by affirming that the gospel writers embellished the truth and created the myth of a divine Jesus! The obvious question is, "If we can’t trust the gospel writers to tell the truth about the nature of Jesus, how can we trust anything that they write about His teachings?"
There were some at Corinth who had much the same problem as Mr. Borg. How can the dead be raised? With what body are they raised (1 Corinthians 15:35)? Paul’s response was that at the time he wrote, there were many still living who had seen the resurrected Jesus (vs. 6). He also noted that if Jesus was not raised, then no one will be raised (vs. 12-19). Do you see the danger of what Borg, Ms. Paul and others are suggesting? If there is no resurrection, "let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die" (1 Corinthians 15:32)!