How do we know Christ has been raised?

This is the question that has haunted me when my faith has faced the most difficult doubts: how do we know Christ has been raised? How can I--as a Protestant Christian, living 1,950 years after the fact, living in a land 10,000 miles from the events described in the New Testament--how can I know that the reports of Christ's resurrection are true?

Have I ever stopped believing? Thanks be to God, no. But have I ever had what I felt to be an adequate answer to this question--which is really a question of certainty? Well... no, not really. However, today I'd like to reproduce for you--my Christian friends and family, and anyone who has yet to believe in the resurrection of Christ--a portion of what I wrote in my journal this morning.



"A sort of epiphany has occurred to me this morning. The Holy Spirit, in speaking through my thoughts, has answered a pivotal question for me--the question which has for some time been the most disturbing to me when my faith faces doubts. I have for some time now realized that the entirety of a Christian's hope and faith rests upon the historical event of Christ's resurrection--the event which serves as the focal point for the New Testament gospel. (Paul even writes that if the resurrection of the dead has not occurred in Christ, then we Christians are among the most pitiable people on earth, and our faith is in a lie [1 Cor. 15].)

"I have often wondered, though, how I--as a 21st c. North American Christian--am supposed to even know, with any degree of certainty, whether or not the reports of Christ's resurrection from the dead are true. I have never ceased to believe it, but this is the form through which my deepest doubts have sometimes been manifested.

"I was blind, but now I see! I should have seen this so long ago--but I don't know if anyone has ever explained it to me this way: How do I know (how do we all, as Christians, know) that Christ has been raised from the dead? Because we have received His Holy Spirit! He could not have given us His Spirit if He had not been raised from the dead. But He has been raised! And we have received His Spirit, at baptism! And I cannot deny that I have seen the evidence of the Spirit--in the church, in my life, in the Scriptures, in the ordering of life in general. We have received His Spirit--Who is the deposit, the guarantee, not only of our resurrection to come, but, primarily, of Christ's resurrection, which has already come! He is the first fruits from among the dead, and we have received His Spirit as evidence of His resurrection!"

May this be an encouragement to all who have received His Spirit--those of His Church--and to all who have yet to receive but wish to know the power of the Resurrection.

Christ is Risen!
He is Risen, indeed!
And we have received His Spirit as the evidence thereof.