The Real Proof of Easter

As an atheistic attorney and legal affairs reporter for the Chicago Tribune, journalist Lee Strobel set out to investigate the evidence for Christ, if any was to be found.  What was the big deal about this man who claimed to be God?

Layer upon layer, Strobel dug into existing documents and interviewed experts about the proof of Christ's life to see if the evidence held up.  In his engaging 1998 book The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, he analyzes the words of eyewitnesses, the psychological character of this ancient man, fingerprints, medical evidence, and even research supporting the inconceivable resurrection of Jesus.  As in his day job as an investigative journalist, he followed every clue and lead.

Strobel found Jesus was no ordinary man.  

What he discovered surprised him. 

Strobel found there was always something more, not just a trail of facts and persuasions, but having to confront the nagging question:  What do I do with this?  It was not, after all, a matter of accepting the evidence of an historic figure, but accepting the forgiveness and love of Jesus.   And in the end of his investigation, he realized it did not rest on arguments or what proof is on the table, but the one question that each one of us must answer: And who do you say that I am? Matthew 16. 15 

As another atheist-turned-believer C. S. Lewis states in his classic book Mere Christianity:  "But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to." 

Then again, the question is not what we do with Jesus.  But what He does in us.    

Because when it comes down to it, we are standing face to face with Him.  The profound difference is not what we know or don't know about God, but that we know Him and are known by Him.  The door is open, the threshold over which new life comes into being.  And He invites us in.

And even then, that was not the end of the story.  Indeed, so what?  What difference could Jesus make? What emerged was not the end of Strobel's life as he knew it, but a radical beginning and upheaval that he did not fully understand or see coming.

The very real evidence of the Resurrection and its power became obvious to everyone around this reporter. 

In the final chapter of his book, Strobel stated the life-changing evidence: 

"In fact, so radical was the difference in my life that a few months after I became a follower of Jesus, our five-year-old daughter Alison went up to my wife and said, "Mommy, I want God to do for me what He's done for Daddy."  

"Here was a little girl who had only known a father who was profane, angry, verbally harsh, and all too often absent.  And even though she had never interviewed a scholar, never analyzed the data, never investigated historical evidence, she had seen up close the influence that Jesus can have on one person's life.  In effect, she was saying, "If this is what God does to a human being, that's what I want for me."

The real proof of Easter is the change in our lives.  We are loved.  We are forgiven.  And we are released from our own selfishness to love and forgive others.  Jesus has come not just to walk with us through this broken world, but to live in our hearts.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.  John 3. 17 

May others -- whether strangers or our own family-- see the present-tense difference Jesus is making in our lives.  Others are constantly watching us, not to see if we are perfect or what we do when life is not, but to know if this God of ours is real.

The case for Christ is not closed, but only yet begun.  His life for ours, our life in Him.  Nothing can ever be the same.  The boulder is moved.  And that would be our hearts.

And that is the real proof of Easter.