Truth Unites - You Should WANT Christianity To Be True

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Gavin Ortlund shows why the claim that Jesus rose from the dead is not only true, but the best possible news you could ever hear.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth.Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

The claim that Jesus rose from the dead is the most thrilling possibility you can consider. If it's true, it's not just good news, it's the best news, it's not just hope, it's the best imaginable hope. This is the happiest possible religion. You could not make up something more enchanting and wonderful. Pull out a sheet of paper and try and just dream to your heart's content. You'll never find something as happy and good as the bodily resurrection of Jesus on Easter morning. If it indeed happened, you should want this to be true. and it's not just a better alternative to disbelief in the afterlife, it's a better alternative

to different views of the afterlife. Bodily resurrection is a unique idea that entails a particular kind of happiness. My goal in this video is to try to press that happiness into your heart as much as I can, that it would touch you in your heart no matter where you're coming from, to try to capture the quality of this unique happiness. Let's start with a scene from literature. J.R.R. Tolkien's the Lord of the Rings. you probably know where I'm going, actually, some of you. You know, you might like this scene like I do. At one point there's a character named Sam who wakes up from a long sleep and he's suffered horribly. He's been through tremendous darkness. But he's greeted by an old friend whom he thought was dead, Gandalf, and Gandalf asks him how he feels. And it says, for a moment between bewilderment and great joy he could not answer.

At last he gasped, Gandalf, I thought you were dead. But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue. And then Gandalf laughs, and the sound of his laughter falls upon Sam's ears like the echo of all the joys that he had ever known. And then Sam himself burst into tears of joy, and he springs out of bed laughing, and he says, how do I feel? Well, I don't know how to say it. I feel, I feel, he waved his arms in the air. I feel like spring after winter and the sun on the leaves and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard. Now let's double-click for a moment on this language of everything sad becoming untrue. That's a great starting point for us, because we want to try to approach the quality of resurrection joy by asking, why does it say everything sad coming untrue rather than just everything sad being

over? And this will get us right into it. Let's develop this with two particular implications for Christ's resurrection, for those who know Jesus and walk with him. One, if Jesus rose from the dead, your suffering in this life can be turned to glory. And number two, if Jesus rose from the dead, happiness in this life is anticipatory. And I hope you'll feel in your heart, oh, that's not just theory. That could work for me. And the goal here is to show, not that this is true, I have other videos on that, but that you should want it to be true. To begin with, let's consider the nature of Jesus' resurrected body.

What exactly is a resurrection? How is it different from a resuscitation, for example? According to Christianity, Easter morning is as unique as the creation of the world. Nothing like a resurrected body has ever happened like this. The resurrected body of Christ is unlike anything that's ever existed in history or eternity. It is totally new. Think of it as created reality 2.0, okay? Because here you have a body that is both physical and immortal. On the one hand, it's immortal. So unlike other people, this is what distinguishes Easter from other resurrections in the Bible. Jesus himself raised people from the dead like Lazarus, but Lazarus had to die twice. Jesus rose never to die again. He rose to a new kind of life. The New Testament calls it the power of an indestructible life. I like that word indestructible.

Jesus' resurrected body has real flesh and real bones and doesn't undergo the typical deterioration that we will experience with aging. So Jesus in his resurrected body is never going to get gray hair or skin that gets wrinkles or anything like that. And yet at the same time, it's a physical body. The Easter story is not the body remains in the tomb, but Jesus's spirit endures. It's the body that gets out of the tomb so you have an empty tomb and it's the very same body. So this is how Jesus is reassuring the disciples in Luke 24, he's saying, look, see my hands, see my feet, it's me, touch me, you know, and the whole appeal is I'm not a ghost because a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. Remember those words flesh and bones. So Jesus is

inviting them to touch him to verify his identity. Say, look, it's the same guy. It's still me. And in John's Gospel, they talk about Jesus's side in John 2017, because that's where he was stabbed with a spear, according to John 19. So what we want to highlight is this language of flesh and bones, which I'll put back up from Luke 24 there, what Jesus is saying, you know, my body has flesh and bones. He's got finger bones and hand bones and a skull. He's got organ and tissue. This is a physical body. And one of the ways you see that as well is Jesus invites them not only to touch him, but to feed him. He gets fish because they still can't believe,

verses 41, 42, and so he says, give me some fish and he eats it, which means he's got a stomach and a digestive system. So this is a real physical body. You could shake his hand. You could feel the warmth of the resurrected Christ's breath. You could bump into him in a narrow hallway. It's a physical body.

You could grab him, you know. When we get to heaven, we're going to get to hug him and say thank you for dying on the cross for us. So it's a real physical body, but it's a different kind of body. It's continuity and discontinuity. It's still the same body, but it's completely new. It's immortal and indestructible and the emergence of basically heaven right here in the middle of history. And this is a completely, this is an amazing idea. I mean, most religions don't have. This is a unique idea, even among religious views of the afterlife. And it earned the disciples a lot of derision in the early church. Paul, for example, is mocked for this, not for other aspects of the gospel in Athens, and in the Apostles' Creed, you say, I believe in the resurrection of the body. That was countercultural. And now, so why are we going on about this? Okay, so it's a physical body, it's immortal, okay, fine. What does it have to do with us? The Christian claim is that this miracle is not just a random or arbitrary stunt, rather it conveys the entire character of Christian hope. according to Christians, Easter morning is a portrait of how God is going to fix the world.

Actually, it's the beginning of that project. This new physical yet indestructible reality is the first installment of what eventually will spread everywhere. So Paul says, for example, that Christ's body is the first fruits. Now, this is a farming metaphor, this is referring to the first batch of a crop, a representative sample of what is to come. So basically we're going to get the same kind of resurrection body that Jesus had. After the final resurrection, those who trust in him will have a physical body like that. His came first, in the middle of history, ours comes next at the end of history. He's the first fruits.

But not just that. All creation will be caught up in that final resurrection. It's not just going to be a bunch of physical bodies floating in a non-physical space. The creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom. of the glory of the children of God. Now this makes sense, if you think about it, if you've got a physical body, you need a physical environment for it to inhabit. And this is why Jesus says, I'm making all things new in the book of Revelation. He doesn't say, I'm making all new things. He's resurrecting the world. What happened on Easter is what he's going to do everywhere in the last day.

And so I want us to know what this means for us personally. So it's not just an idea out of there, but it strikes the deepest places in your heart. Touches you in the most poignant place. This is not just an abstract idea. This could not be personal. It could not be more personal if you really open yourself up to it from a place of sincerity. It means two things if you know Jesus. Number one, your suffering will be turned to glory. In the first place, Jesus' resurrection means that the worst evil that ever transpired, the crucifixion of God, was transformed into the greatest good that has ever been achieved, the salvation of the world. At the empty tomb, God did not merely overcome evil and suffering. He transformed them into good and into glory. When Jesus rose back to

life, think about this. The scars from his resurrection did not go away. He was able to tell his disciples to verify, not only in his wrists and feet, but in his side, according to John 20. So you've got a physical body here, but it still has the scars. So resurrection didn't simply erase the markings of crucifixion. Forever, Jesus will retain these scars. These will be eternal trophies of his triumph. You and I can touch them. We can put our thumb in the holes in his wrists. And see, that's where the nails went. He'll have those scars forever. In other words, Easter doesn't reverse Good Friday. it redeems it. On Sunday morning, what happened on Friday didn't just get obliterated and forgotten. It was transformed into glory. And what we see here is in Sam's words, sadness come untrue.

Now here's the most wonderful thought that can ever wash over you. Everybody who knows Jesus will experience that. Ultimate salvation in Christ will not merely end suffering and evil in your life. It will mend them. sorrows and wounds you accrue over this life will not merely be over, they will be turned for your good. Tim Keller puts it like this. The biblical view of things is resurrection, not a future that is just a consolation for the life we never had, but a restoration of the life who always wanted. That means that every horrible thing that ever happened will not only be undone and repaired, but will in some way make the eventual glory and joy even greater. Just imagine this. Maybe you're not a follower of Jesus, but you're open to it. What if? Just say what if? What if? What if? What if you're

there was a world in which your deepest pain was not simply ended, but transformed into glory like the scars on Jesus' resurrected body. Can you even imagine a relief and comfort like that? Now, here's an objection. Some of us might say, I struggle to believe that. I'm very sympathetic to this objection, because some of the things we go through in this life are so bad and so crippling and so profound that it feels like nothing can redeem them. And even though we say, yeah, Good Friday was the worst and it was still turned to good. It's hard to feel that for our suffering. Fair enough. I mean, that's an understandable struggle. To address this, though, go back to Revelation 21. Jesus says, right previously to I am making all things new. The verse says, the Lord God will

wipe away every tear from their eyes. Now, it doesn't say merely there'll be no more tears in heaven, except tears of joy. It says, the Lord God will wipe away the tears. That the end. The imagery here implies a consolation for earthly suffering, not merely the cessation of earthly suffering. Imagine you're there in heaven newly arrived standing before the throne. The Lord God summons you, and as you're trembling standing there before him, he surgically draws up the wounds of your life and with his infinite, omnipotent power and attention gently heals the wounds in your heart. and it lands upon you and will never not be the case anymore forever, you're free. It's over. He's healed the wound and turning it to glory. If God can do that with Jesus,

he can do it with you, and the resurrection of Jesus means he did do it with Jesus. Second, the resurrection means your happiness is anticipatory. In other words, if Jesus rose from the dead, it means not only that the bad of your life will turn to good, but the good you've had in this life will finally be realized and fulfilled and come into its true self. Remember Sam experiencing the echo of all the joys he had ever known? Resurrection implies something like this. All joy, all happiness is awaiting its true form in heaven. When one character makes it to heaven in the Chronics of Narnia, he says,

this is the land I've been looking for my whole life, though I never knew it till now. the reason we love the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this. If this is true, it changes your relationship to happiness. When you think of the most wonderful moments you've ever experienced in your life, when they're, when they're, when they fly over your shoulder and now they're behind you, they're not lost to you. They're not just a memory. In some sense, they're not even completed yet. They're going to return to you in a deeper yet familiar form as part of that final settled happiness to which they were pointing all along. Think of the ache you feel sometimes in a happy moment.

Have you ever been in a moment of true joy and it evokes longing? I think, I often pray this way and I think this is a valid prayer when you're happy, when you have a moment of joy, to say, Lord, store up this joy until heaven. And just to imagine this to really land. Take a moment to think back on a moment in your life when you were happy. maybe childhood memory. I don't know, you wake up on the first day of summer vacation as a kid or something like this, this kind of feeling, when you're falling in love with someone, when you've had true reconciliation with a friend, the first time you held your child, when you're out in nature and just

feel incredible peace. Think of a happy moment, true happiness, okay? Now the question is, what does that moment mean? What was your heart telling you when you had that experience? If Jesus rose from the dead, that moment isn't just in your past, it's in your future. In fact, the better version of it is in your future. That moment was a messenger whispering to you of something far greater ahead, telling you of something you cannot learn in any other way. So when you first arrive in heaven, think of this. Your life will finally have a settled, unified interpretation. All the joys you've ever known will sort of gather into their crescendo and you'll say, this is what they really meant. that's what they were really telling me. And it'll never stop and it'll keep getting better forever.

If it sounds too good to be true, then you get it. If it sounds like you're just dreaming. This is what Hans Erz von Baltzsar, great Roman Catholic theologian said, the first thing that should strike a non-Christian about our faith is that that's just wishful thinking. You're dreaming. You couldn't make up our religion so happy, right? It's like Lucy going through the wardrobe into Narnia, supreme enchantment. That's what the gospel should do when it lands on your heart. Final thought. One way to summarize the import of all of this is to think of Christ's resurrection as the ultimate happy ending. So J.R.R. Tolkien reflected a lot about happy endings, and he believed they have a revelatory quality. In other words, happy endings are a little clue

about reality, about the ultimate story. He basically said, we tell stories that unconsciously mirror the ultimate story. And he said this is a tendency in the human heart because we're created in the image of God, who's a storyteller. And he said, this is why our stories have not merely good versus evil, which all our stories have good versus evil. Why do they do that? Tolkien said, while we're made in God's image, their ultimate story has good versus evil. But he said, this is why they typically have a happy ending. And he used the word eucatastrophe to describe this. This is a good catastrophe. So he said, if you know the term catastrophe is a sudden turn for the bad, a eucatastrophe is a sudden turn for the good. And he said, the eucatastrophe is actually giving us a brief vision that the answer may be greater.

It may be a far-off gleam or echo of gospel, that's evangelium, in the real world. And what it does is provide a fleeting glimpse of joy, joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief. Or in Peter Kreef's words, the eucatastrophe, Eucatastrophe provides an opening of the curtain that veils heaven to earthly eyes, a tiny telepathic contact with the mind of God. Peter Craft, I think I said his name wrong. He's commenting on Tolkien in that passage I said it from. I've been doing research on this, so hopefully you see my excitement about this, because I want to encourage other people. People need hope right now.

This is hope. The gospel will get you out of bed in the morning. The gospel will repair you in the deep places of your heart. The gospel will help you keep going when you thought you were ready to throw in the towel. There's no hope like this. And what Tolkien is saying is the resurrection of Christ is the eucatastrophe for humanity. This is the happy ending. So when you're reading the Lord of the Rings, it strikes you in a certain way because it's a little clue of what's going to happen one day. And we know that because of Jesus. If Jesus got out of the tomb, there's going to be a happy ending. what you feel in your heart at the ending of your favorite movie or novel when the happy ending, the eucatastrophe comes and everything is stitched back together and there's harmony after so much

pain, good triumphs over evil, suffering is turned to glory, it's happily ever after, that's going to happen one day. That's what it means if Jesus rose from the dead and who wouldn't want that. So my thesis here is you should want that to be true. Now, is it true? That's a separate question, and I've addressed that elsewhere in videos like this where I try to give a historical case for this. I think it's actually historically plausible that he did rise from the dead. It explains a whole lot.

See that video for more on that. Thanks for watching.