JESUS CHRIST: GOD-MAN - Vital Christianity

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of the Lord's Day can be accounted for only on the ground that the apostles changed it in honor
of Christ's physical resurrection and with His approval (Mt 28:1; Mk 16:2,9; Lk 24:1; Jn 20:1,19;
Ac 20:7; 1 Co 16:2).
The Christian Church
The Christian Church is an effect that is traceable to some cause. The impression made
upon the disciples by the life of Christ among them was great, but all their hopes were blasted
when He was crucified. Nothing could have motivated these discouraged disciples to assemble
themselves for meditation and the worship of a Master if they believed He was dead. Certainly
nothing could have induced them to proclaim His name to their fellow Jews in the face of
persecution without the absolute assurance that Christ had risen from the dead. Their assemblies
were the beginnings of the Christian Church. Thus the Christian Church can be accounted for
only on the assumption of the physical resurrection of our Lord.
This point is so compelling that an orthodox Jewish rabbi, a Jewish scholar of New
Testament in Germany, Pinchas Lapide, came to believe in the historicity of the resurrection
(though he does not believe in the Christian interpretation of the resurrection). In his book which
defends this position he writes:
"How was it possible that His disciples, who by no means excelled in intelligence,
eloquence, or strength of faith, were able to begin their victorious march of
conversion only after the shattering fiasco of Golgotha."42
How did such a movement succeed? Instead of being founded on the commonly held
beliefs such as loving your neighbor or doing good, Christianity emphasized a message of death
and resurrection of an uneducated carpenter from Nazareth. This unique message was hardly the
stuff of which great movements are made! As German New Testament scholar Martin Hengel
explained:
"To believe that the one pre-existent Son of the one true God, the mediator at
creation and the redeemer of the world, had appeared in very recent times in
out-of-the-way Galilee as a member of the obscure people of the Jews and even
worse, had died the death of a common criminal on the cross, could only be
regarded as a sign of madness."43
According to her own records, the Church's beginnings are attributed to the resurrection.
Peter in his sermon at Pentecost, declared that
“this Jesus did God raise up, whereof we are all witnesses. Being therefore by
the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of
the Holy Spirit, he has shed forth this, which you see and hear" (Ac 2:32-33).