Crucifixion and Resurrection

The death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ — the events of Passover week in Jerusalem around AD 30 or 33 — stand at the center of the New Testament. After the Last Supper on Thursday evening, Jesus was arrested in Gethsemane, tried first before the Jewish high priest Caiaphas on a charge of blasphemy and then before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate on a charge of sedition. Pilate, though convinced of his innocence, yielded to the crowd's demand. Jesus was scourged, mocked as "King of the Jews," and led out to Golgotha ("Place of a Skull"), a low rise outside the city wall, where he was crucified between two criminals. Above his head hung the title written by Pilate in three languages: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." From the cross Jesus spoke seven recorded sayings, prayed for those who killed him, promised paradise to the dying thief who believed, and committed his mother to John. From noon till three o'clock darkness covered the land. After crying out "It is finished" and "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit," he gave up his life (Luke 23:46; John 19:30). At that moment the veil of the Temple was torn from top to bottom, the earth shook, and the centurion confessed, "Truly this was the Son of God" (Matt 27:54). Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin who was secretly a disciple, asked Pilate for the body and, with Nicodemus, wrapped it in linen with about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes and laid it in his own new tomb hewn out of rock in a nearby garden; a great stone was rolled across the entrance and sealed under a Roman guard at the chief priests' request. Early on the first day of the week — the third day, counting inclusively — the women came to anoint the body and found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. Angels announced, "He is not here, for he has risen, as he said" (Matt 28:6). Jesus appeared first to Mary Magdalene, then to other women, the Emmaus disciples, Peter, the eleven on Easter evening and again a week later when Thomas was present, seven disciples by the Sea of Galilee, more than five hundred brothers at once (1 Cor 15:6), and finally to his half-brother James and to Paul. The resurrection is the Father's vindication of the Son, the public proof that the cross paid for sin (Rom 4:25), the firstfruits of the believer's own resurrection, and the historical foundation of Christian preaching: "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile" (1 Cor 15:17). Without it the New Testament would not exist; with it, death has been defeated.