John 20:19-23
Jesus Appears to His Disciples
19 On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”20 After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
21 Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” 22 And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23 If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
Acts 9:1-6
Jesus Appears to Paul
1Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. He went to the high priest 2and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. 3As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. 4He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"
5"Who are you, Lord?" Saul asked.
"I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," he replied. 6"Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do."
Jesus appears after His death to His disciples...The disciples have the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders...But locks and doors cannot stop the LORD...He comes and stands among them...He says to them peace be with you...Jesus shows them His wounded hands and side, where He was speared...He tells His disciples peace be with you again, then tells them that He is sending His disciples out as His Father has sent Him...He breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit...If they forgive anyone, then they are forgiven...If they do not forgive some people, those people will not be forgiven...This time, this event, this happening, is the most important event in mankind's history...His appearance was sort of a final piece in completing His time on earth with Jesus...His appearance to them was life changing...They would never be the same again...
Without Jesus' appearance there would be no Christianity...Before Jesus' appearance to the disciples, they feared the Jewish leaders...After His resurrection and His talk to them inspired them...Paul, whom was persecuting Jesus, was also inspired...After seeing the resurrected Jesus, they are ready to be sent out, as He tells them...The disciples were not courageous, and they have the appearance of hiding, and not knowing what to do, before they see Him after His death...They are lost and without their Leader...They maybe even wondering if the Sanhedrin and the Roman officials are after them next...But after Jesus appears to His disciples they are much braver and ready to spread the good news...Their lives have changed...St. Luke writes about their acts and what they do in the Acts of the Apostles...As you read through the Books of the Acts of the Apostles, you do not get any feeling of this fear anymore of the Jewish leaders...And Peter who denied Jesus three times right after His arrest, is the leading disciple in the Book of the Acts, spreading the good news about Him...In fact, Peter and John were spreading the gospel to the people and teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead...Because of this teaching they are seized and put in jail (Acts 4:2-3)...They go before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leaders tell the leaders about how they crucified Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and that God raised Him from the dead and by the name of Jesus they are able to heal a crippled man (Acts 4:10)...
The resurrection gave Christianity the traction, which was necessary to be spread successfully among the nations...Without God raising Jesus from the dead, Christianity would not have spread throughout the Roman Empire...There will be those that do not believe in Jesus and some will believe that He was not raised from the dead...All four gospel books have this story of the resurrection... The disciples were the ones with Saul of Tarsus that lead the way in spreading the message of Christ and His resurrection...
Blaise Pascal sums up the resurrection appearance, and could have the apostles deceived others in spreading the word, in His Pensees:
The apostles were either deceived or deceivers. Either supposition is difficult, for it is not possible to imagine that a man has risen from the dead. While Jesus was with them, he could sustain them; but afterwards, if he did not appear to them, who did make them act? The hypothesis that the Apostles were knaves is quite absurd. Follow it out to the end, and imagine these twelve men meeting after Jesus' death and conspiring to say that he has risen from the dead. This means attacking all the powers that be. The human heart is singularly susceptible to fickleness, to change, to promises, to bribery. One of them had only to deny his story under these inducements, or still more because of possible imprisonment, tortures and death, and they would all have been lost. Follow that out. (Pascal, Pensees 322, 310)...
The apostles leader was now gone...They followed Him for three years...They were always there listening to what He said...His after death appearances changed them...All of Jesus disciples saw Jesus after His resurrection...Saul, who is also called Paul, saw Jesus after His resurrection on the road to Damascus...These men would spend much of there next years, and in many, if not all cases, would spend their entire lives teaching about Jesus and His resurrection...
We have a choice to believe in the resurrection or not believe it...Why should we or anyone believe this?...We should only believe this because it is true...Why believe in anything, unless it is true...Many more people saw Jesus after His resurrection...Paul says Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people (1 Corinthians 15:6)...As Pascal said any of Jesus disciples or apostles could have denied seeing Him after His death...But since others have seen Him, so shortly after His death on the cross, makes the argument that the disciples seen Him more acceptable, believable, and true...It is remotely possible that the more than five hundred people are all lying, but that does not make any sense...Why would so many lie about their dead Leader...Jesus is the One, who stood up and said He is the Truth, the Life, and the Way (John 14:6)?...Jesus taught the truth...To have a lying group this large makes no sense...
We should believe that Jesus resurrected because it is the truth...Since it is true, it is therefore a fact...It is the most important fact in human history...Without this fact, are faith is futile and we are doomed...We have no hope for peace on earth, and no hope for eternal life...Jesus brought us hope...Jesus brings us hope, because He was resurrected...He is alive...Jesus gives us hope...With the resurrection we have hope...