Defending the Christian Faith in Conversation with Islam — Unit 7: The Resurrection of Jesus

Key Verse

"For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures" (1 Corinthians 15:3-4, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Explain what most Muslims believe about the end of Jesus' life on earth and why, for them, the question of the resurrection depends on the question of the cross.

2. Present the main historical evidence for the resurrection: the early creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, the empty tomb, the appearances, and the transformation of the disciples.

3. Answer the main alternative explanations, including the stolen body, hallucinations, the swoon theory and the substitution theory.

4. Show why the resurrection matters in conversation with Muslims and how it confirms who Jesus is.

5. Speak about the risen Christ with Muslim friends with clarity, gentleness and respect.

Why This Unit Matters

In the last unit we studied the crucifixion. We saw that the death of Jesus on a Roman cross is one of the best-established facts of ancient history. Now we turn to the event that gives the cross its meaning. If Jesus died and stayed dead, the Christian faith has no good news. Paul says it plainly: "And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins!" (1 Corinthians 15:17). The resurrection is not one doctrine among many. It is the foundation stone of the church.

For a pastor who ministers among Muslims, the resurrection is also one of the strongest places to stand. Muslims already believe that God is all-powerful. They already believe that God will raise the dead on the Last Day. They already honour Jesus as a prophet and as the Messiah. So the question we place before them is not "Can God raise the dead?" Every Muslim agrees that He can. The question is "Did God raise Jesus from the dead on the third day, as Jesus Himself said He would?" That is a question of history, and history can be examined.

What Muslims Believe About the End of Jesus' Life

Before we answer, we must describe Islamic belief fairly, as an informed Muslim would recognize it. The key text is Qur'an 4:157-158. A Qur'an verse is called an ayah (plural ayat), and a chapter is called a sura. These verses say that the Jews claimed to have killed the Messiah, but "they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them" (Qur'an 4:157, Pickthall). The next verse says, "But Allah took him up unto Himself" (Qur'an 4:158, Pickthall).

From these verses, most Sunni and Shia Muslims hold three beliefs. First, Jesus did not die on the cross. Second, God raised Jesus bodily and alive into heaven without his dying. Third, Jesus will return near the end of the world. Many Muslim teachers add that after his return Jesus will live out his life, die a natural death, and later be raised with all people on the Day of Resurrection. Some understand Qur'an 19:33 in this way, where Jesus says, "Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!" (Pickthall).

Notice what this means. For most Muslims, Jesus was never dead, so he could not have been raised from the dead on the third day. Our conversation about the resurrection therefore always includes the conversation about the cross. We cannot skip the evidence of Unit 6. A risen Jesus is a Jesus who first truly died.

There is also a smaller group to know about. The Ahmadiyya movement, which began in India in the late 1800s, teaches that Jesus was put on the cross but did not die there. They say he fainted, recovered, and later travelled east, where he died of natural causes. Most other Muslims do not accept the Ahmadiyya movement, but its teaching about Jesus is spread widely in parts of Africa. This view is a form of what scholars call the "swoon theory," and we will answer it below. Nabeel Qureshi, whose story we met in Unit 1, grew up in an Ahmadi family, so he knew this view from the inside.

How We Approach the Evidence

Christians believe the resurrection because God's Word declares it. But when we speak with Muslims, we cannot simply say, "The Bible says so," because many Muslims believe the Bible has been changed. (We will study that claim in Unit 8.) So we begin where both sides can meet: the ordinary tools of history. We ask what the earliest sources say and which facts nearly all historians accept, even sceptical ones.

The scholar Gary Habermas has made this approach well known. He gathers facts that are so well supported that most scholars who study the subject accept them, whether they are believers or not. Then he asks which explanation best accounts for all of those facts together. We will follow a similar path. Nabeel Qureshi argued in a similar way. During years of friendly debate with his Christian friend David Wood, he studied the historical case for the death and resurrection of Jesus, and he came to see that the evidence was strong.

The Evidence for the Resurrection

The Early Creed of 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

The most important single text is 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. Paul writes that he "delivered" to the Corinthians what he had first "received." These were the words teachers used for passing on a fixed tradition carefully, like a teacher handing down a lesson to be memorized. The passage has the shape of a short creed, a summary of belief meant to be learned and repeated.

The creed says that Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, that He rose again the third day, and that He was seen. Paul then lists those who saw Him: Peter (called Cephas), the twelve, more than five hundred brethren at once, James, all the apostles, and finally Paul himself.

Why is this creed so important? Because of its early date. Most scholars agree that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in the mid-50s AD, about twenty-five years after the cross. But the creed is older than the letter. Paul received it earlier, most likely when he visited Peter and James in Jerusalem about three years after his conversion (Galatians 1:18-19). For this reason many scholars, including some sceptics, date the creed to within a few years of the crucifixion. This is not a story that grew over centuries. It was being taught while the eyewitnesses were alive and active.

Paul even adds that most of the five hundred were still living when he wrote (1 Corinthians 15:6). In effect he was saying, "Go and ask them." No one invites that kind of checking if the story is invented.

The Empty Tomb

All four Gospels report that the tomb of Jesus was found empty on the first day of the week. Several facts support this.

• The apostles preached the resurrection in Jerusalem, the very city where Jesus was buried. If His body had still been in the tomb, the authorities could have shown it and ended the movement at once.

• The first witnesses to the empty tomb were women (Luke 24:1-10). In that culture the testimony of women was often given little weight. If the disciples had invented the account, they would not have chosen witnesses whom many people would doubt.

• The earliest answer of the opponents was that the disciples stole the body (Matthew 28:11-15). That answer admits the key point: the tomb was empty. The debate was about why.

The Appearances

The empty tomb alone shows that the body was gone. The appearances show why. The New Testament reports that Jesus appeared to individuals and to groups, indoors and outdoors, to men and to women, over a period of forty days (Acts 1:3). He spoke with them, ate with them and invited them to touch Him (Luke 24:36-43; John 20:27).

Two of the witnesses are especially striking because they were not believers before. James, the brother of Jesus, did not believe in Him during His ministry (John 7:5). Yet after the resurrection he became a leader of the church in Jerusalem, and the creed says Jesus appeared to him. Paul was a persecutor of the church (Galatians 1:13). He became its greatest missionary because, as he says, the risen Christ appeared to him (1 Corinthians 15:8-9). Sceptics and enemies are not easily convinced.

The Transformation of the Disciples

On the night of His arrest the disciples ran away, and Peter denied Jesus three times. Only weeks later these same men stood before crowds and rulers and proclaimed that God had raised Jesus from the dead (Acts 2:32; Acts 4:18-20). They were beaten, jailed and threatened, and many early Christian sources report that several of them died for their witness.

People sometimes die for something false that they believe is true. But the apostles were in a position to know whether they had truly seen Jesus alive. A person does not suffer and die for something he knows he made up. Their sudden courage and their willingness to suffer are best explained by their sincere conviction that they had seen the risen Lord.

We can add one more fact. These early believers were devout Jews. Yet they began to gather for worship on the first day of the week, the Lord's Day, because that was the day of the resurrection (Acts 20:7). A change like this in a deeply rooted religious practice needs a powerful cause.

Answering the Alternative Explanations

A good explanation must account for all the facts together: the death, the burial, the empty tomb, the appearances to friends and to sceptics, and the bold preaching in Jerusalem. Let us test the main alternatives.

The Stolen Body

Some say the disciples stole the body. But this explains only the empty tomb. It does not explain the appearances, and it does not explain why the disciples would suffer for what they knew was a deception. It also does not explain the conversion of James and Paul.

Hallucinations

Others say the disciples saw visions produced by grief. But hallucinations happen in individual minds. Groups of people do not share the same hallucination, yet Jesus appeared to the twelve together and to more than five hundred at once. Hallucinations also do not empty a tomb, and an enemy like Paul was not grieving for Jesus.

The Swoon Theory

The swoon theory, held in a form by the Ahmadiyya movement, says that Jesus fainted on the cross and later revived in the tomb. Roman soldiers were experienced executioners, they saw that He was already dead, and one soldier pierced His side, and blood and water came out (John 19:33-34). Even if a man somehow survived crucifixion, he would have been badly wounded, weak and in need of care. Such a man could not have convinced his followers that he had conquered death and was the Lord of life. And this theory leaves us asking where Jesus went and why He let His followers preach a resurrection that never happened.

The Substitution Theory

Many Muslims believe that God made someone else look like Jesus, and that this person was crucified in his place, while God took Jesus up to heaven. We examined this in Unit 6, but notice how it fits the resurrection evidence. If it were true, God Himself would have caused the disciples, the women and the crowds to believe something false. The whole Christian church would have grown from a deception that God started. This raises a serious question about the character of God, who is holy and true. The theory also does not explain the empty tomb or the appearances of the risen Jesus with the marks of the nails in His hands (John 20:25-27). Finally, Qur'an 4:157 was given about six hundred years after the events, while the creed of 1 Corinthians 15 comes from within a few years of them. A historian weighs the earliest sources most heavily.

When all the alternatives are tested, the explanation that best fits all the facts is the one the first witnesses gave: "This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses" (Acts 2:32).

The Risen Lord Sends Witnesses, Not Armies

The earliest disciples preached a Messiah who had been executed and whom God had raised. People expected the Messiah to be a winning king, so this message went against what most people thought. Yet the disciples did not try to prove their claim by force. They told what they believed they had seen, they reasoned with those who listened, they endured opposition, and they gathered communities for worship. By raising the crucified Christ, God showed that Jesus was in the right, and He turned frightened followers into witnesses.

The pastor's argument is not that Christian history has been free from force; it plainly has not. Rather, ask whether force is the pattern Jesus commanded. The risen Christ sent the disciples to teach and baptize, not to conquer and compel (Matthew 28:18-20). When we speak of Christ's victory over death, we mean that no enemy, not even death, can undo His saving work. The people across from us in conversation are neighbours to love, not enemies to defeat.

Why the Resurrection Matters in Conversation with Muslims

It Confirms Who Jesus Is

Muslims rightly honour Jesus as a prophet. But Jesus did not only teach about God. He also predicted His own death and resurrection many times (Mark 8:31; Mark 10:33-34). He pointed to "the sign of the prophet Jonah" as the sign He would give: three days and three nights in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:39-40). If Jesus is a true prophet, His own prophecy about Himself must be taken seriously.

Paul writes that Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God with power... by the resurrection from the dead" (Romans 1:4). The resurrection is God's public answer to the question of who Jesus is. Jesus claimed authority to forgive sins, to judge the world and to share the glory of the Father. If He had stayed in the grave, those claims would have died with Him. When God raised Him, God confirmed them.

It Brings Assurance of Forgiveness

Many Muslims say that no one can be sure of entering paradise. They hope that God will be merciful, and they work hard at prayer, fasting and good deeds, but on the Day of Judgment their deeds will be weighed, and the outcome rests on the will of God. This is a sincere and serious faith, and we should respect the devotion it produces.

The resurrection offers something different: assurance based on what God has done, not on what we have done. Jesus "was delivered up because of our offenses, and was raised because of our justification" (Romans 4:25). His rising shows that the payment for sin was accepted. Peter says that God "has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Peter 1:3). We may gently ask a Muslim friend, "Do you know where you will spend eternity?" and then share the hope that the risen Christ gives.

It Points to the Coming Judgment

Muslims take the Day of Judgment very seriously, and that is common ground. Paul told the philosophers in Athens that God "has appointed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). The resurrection tells us who the Judge will be. This is a serious point that we can share humbly, as people who also need His mercy.

Speaking About the Risen Christ with Gentleness

Facts alone do not change hearts. The Holy Spirit does. Our part is to speak the truth clearly and to live it faithfully. Here are some practical guidelines.

• Begin with common ground. Muslims believe God raises the dead and that Jesus is the Messiah. Start there, then ask whether God raised Jesus on the third day.

• Ask questions rather than making speeches. For example: "Why do you think the disciples were willing to suffer for this message?" or "Which source is closer to the events, a creed from a few years after them or a text from six centuries later?"

• Read the passages together. Invite your friend to read 1 Corinthians 15 and Luke 24 with you. Let the Word speak.

• Do not mock or attack. Never speak with contempt about the Qur'an or the Prophet of Islam. You can disagree firmly while still showing honour to the person in front of you.

• Be patient. Many Muslims who come to faith in Christ do so after a long journey. Nabeel Qureshi spent years in friendly debate with his Christian friend David Wood, and he prayed earnestly for God to show him the truth before he finally put his faith in Christ.

Here is a short illustration. Imagine a pastor who is asked by a Muslim neighbour, "Why do you Christians say a prophet of God was defeated by his enemies?" The pastor might answer, "We do not believe He was defeated. He died for our sins, as He said He would, and on the third day God raised Him. The cross was not His defeat. The empty tomb is His victory." Suppose the neighbour does not agree that day, but asks to read the account, and the pastor gives him a Gospel of Luke. That is how many conversations begin.

For further study, students may read Nabeel Qureshi's books Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus (2014) and No God but One: Allah or Jesus? (2016), which explain his journey and his reasoning about the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Summary

The resurrection of Jesus is the foundation of the Christian faith. Most Muslims believe that Jesus did not die on the cross but was taken up alive to heaven (Qur'an 4:157-158), so for them the question of the resurrection depends on the question of the cross. The historical evidence is strong: an early creed (1 Corinthians 15:3-8) that goes back to within a few years of the events, an empty tomb in Jerusalem first found by women, appearances to individuals and groups, including the sceptic James and the persecutor Paul, and the sudden transformation of fearful disciples into bold witnesses. Alternative explanations such as theft, hallucination, swoon and substitution fail to explain all the facts together. In conversation with Muslims, the resurrection confirms that Jesus is who He claimed to be, gives assurance of forgiveness, and points to the coming day of judgment. The risen Christ sent His followers to teach and baptize, not to conquer. We share this good news with clarity, patience and gentleness, trusting the Holy Spirit to open hearts.

Questions for Reflection

1. Why can we say that, for most Muslims, the question of the resurrection is really also a question about the cross?

2. Which piece of evidence for the resurrection do you find most convincing, and how would you explain it simply to a Muslim neighbour?

3. How does the early date of the creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 strengthen the Christian case?

4. How would you gently respond to a Muslim friend who says God made someone else look like Jesus?

5. In what ways does the hope of the resurrection shape your own life and ministry, and how can you share that hope with your congregation?

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