How Do I Know I Am Right?

First Peter 3:15 says, But sanc­tify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to every­one who asks you a rea­son for the hope that is in you, with meek­ness and fear (New King James Ver­sion).

I have a great hope within me — a blessed hope that is Jesus Christ. Today I was asked why.

And I con­fess that can be a dif­fi­cult ques­tion to answer. After all, in our day & age, hav­ing hope in Jesus Christ as the only hope of sal­va­tion & eter­nal fel­low­ship with God is a dif­fi­cult thing for many to swal­low. I wouldn’t expect it to be any­thing dif­fer­ent, though — the generic “No Monop­oly on the Truth!” reli­gion of, for exam­ple, Miss Oprah Win­frey is hard to avoid.

It’s increas­ingly ques­tioned, then, how I and so many oth­ers can make the state­ment, “Only in Jesus Christ is there any hope of Heaven; any­one who has not believed in Jesus Christ in a bib­li­cally mean­ing­ful way are already con­demned to Hell.”

My answer for my hope is the hope itself: Jesus Christ. And really, as brazen as that state­ment may seem com­ing from me, it was stated in bold­ness by the Man Christ Jesus Him­self nearly two mil­len­nia ago:

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begot­ten Son, that who­ever believes in Him should not per­ish but have ever­last­ing life. ¹⁷For God did not send His Son into the world to con­demn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. ¹⁸He who believes in Him is not con­demned; but he who does not believe is con­demned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begot­ten Son of God. ¹⁹And this is the con­dem­na­tion, that the light has come into the world, and men loved dark­ness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. ²⁰For every­one prac­tic­ing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. ²¹But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” John 3:16–21, NKJV

So why do I believe in Him?

The sim­plest and most the­o­log­i­cal answer I could give is that I believe in Him because the Father dragged me to Christ, quick­en­ing my spirit, and grant­ing me faith to believe, faith which my newly alive spirit could not help but express.

But here are some other rea­sons for curi­ous unbe­liev­ers to con­sider. I am not say­ing these are fool­proof answers; indeed, if you are an obsti­nate unbe­liever, you’ll find cause to object to each and every one of these and won’t waste any time in not think­ing about them — fair enough, for the Scrip­tures cer­tainly do antic­i­pate that response from so many. If there are any out there who have hon­est ques­tions regard­ing these points, by all means post them. If you’re post­ing not out of curios­ity but out of a desire to argue or debate or what­ever, you are wel­come to due so at The Round­table.

• I believe in Jesus Christ because He rose from the dead. The apos­tles — eye­wit­nesses to the life and death of Jesus Christ — went to their graves pro­claim­ing that Jesus Christ had risen from the grave, hav­ing con­quered death. Oppo­nents to Chris­tian­ity (includ­ing the mighty Roman Empire) did not squelch the mes­sage of the apos­tles by way of expos­ing the still-dead body of Christ, for there was no still-dead body to expose! Unable to reveal what they felt was the truth, they instead resorted to mas­sacring Christians.
• I believe in Jesus Christ because of the tes­ti­mony and char­ac­ter of the apos­tles. These men spent years with Jesus Christ, grow­ing in under­stand­ing of Him and the Old Tes­ta­ment, and when He died, they dis­banded believ­ing He had been defeated. Yet in no time at all, the apos­tles became an indomitable force in the spread of the mes­sage of Christ. Hav­ing seen Him alive with their own eyes, they risked their lives tes­ti­fy­ing of His. Were these men char­la­tans, they would be the twelve most wicked, most damnable trick­sters in all of his­tory, for their mes­sage has led to the mar­tyr deaths of count­less believ­ers. Yet it is extra­or­di­nar­ily unlikely that these men would them­selves be deceivers, for they died (some very bru­tally) affirm­ing their beliefs.
• I believe in Jesus Christ because the once Christ-hating, Christian-murdering Paul would become per­haps Christianity’s great­est evan­ge­list, pro­claim­ing the truth of Christ in cities even after hav­ing been beaten and dragged out of the same!
• I believe in Jesus Christ because the Old Tes­ta­ment fore­tells of a com­ing Mes­siah who would pro­vide sal­va­tion for His fol­low­ers, and Jesus Christ fits the bill per­fectly. First cen­tury Jews didn’t hate Jesus Christ because He wasn’t ful­fill­ing the prophe­cies; rather, in ful­fill­ing the proph­e­sies and reveal­ing Him­self to be God come in the flesh, the Jews con­spired to kill Him.
• I believe in Jesus Christ because He is the uni­fy­ing theme of the Scrip­tures. This is a book writ­ten over thou­sands of years by over forty writ­ers from var­i­ous classes and occu­pa­tions, rang­ing from prophet to king, shep­herd to Roman tax col­lec­tor. Given all of that, it is remark­able that from begin­ning to end, the Scrip­tures are uni­fied and consistent.
• I believe in Jesus Christ because of the preser­va­tion of the Scrip­tures. Thou­sands of years after John penned the final “Amen” in Rev­e­la­tion, we are still unearthing increas­ingly ear­lier man­u­scripts, parch­ments, and papyrii of the Scrip­tures; no mat­ter how early this evi­dence it, the same Scrip­tures (albeit assuredly in a dif­fer­ently lan­guage than Eng­lish!) are found thereon. The claim that the Scrip­tures have been manip­u­lated through­out his­tory is ground­less. While cer­tain groups may trans­late the Bible in a way which is biased to their beliefs, the under­ly­ing man­u­script evi­dence is mirac­u­lously uni­form, with vari­ants most often con­sist­ing of spelling and word order; where the vari­ances are even larger, no sig­nif­i­cant doc­trine is affected.

I could go on, but oth­ers have already put together much more thor­ough answers for our hope. For the above rea­sons and more, I believe I am right about Jesus Christ.

Still, the most poignant rea­son is the first — pro­duc­ing the dead body of Christ was impos­si­ble for the First Cen­tury Romans, and it is still impos­si­ble today.

Paul, writ­ing about twenty years after the Cru­ci­fix­ion, said this about the Christian’s faith: Now if Christ is preached that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no res­ur­rec­tion of the dead? But if there is no res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, then our preach­ing is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false wit­nesses of God, because we have tes­ti­fied of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up–if in fact the dead do not rise. For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have per­ished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable, (1 Corinthi­ans 15:12–19, New King James Ver­sion).

When Paul wrote that, there were still eye­wit­nesses alive who were at the Cru­ci­fix­ion. The Romans at any time could have went to the tomb in which Jesus had been buried, unearth Him, and parade the life­less body around to believ­ers in Corinth, in Galilee, and any­where else they may have been. But they didn’t. They couldn’t.

Jesus Christ is risen.

He is my hope, and He is the rea­son for my hope.

I do not believe that I am right; rather, I believe with cer­tainty that the Scrip­tures are. I am only right inso­far as my beliefs line up with the Scrip­tures’ teachings.