The really important point, beyond dispute, is that Christ has shared in every human experience, even in death.  Whatever lies before us, He has endured it first and emerged victorious.  ‘Christ in dying shared to the full our lot.  His body was laid in the tomb.  His soul passed into that state on which we conceive that our souls shall enter.  He has won for God and hallowed every condition of human existence.  We cannot be where He has not been.  He bore our nature as living; He bore our nature as dead. . . . it carries light into the tomb.  But more than this we dare not say confidently on a mystery where our thought fails and Scripture is silent.’^[1]

 Article  IV

OF THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST

Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again His body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature; wherewith He ascended into heaven, and there sitteth, until He return to judge all men at the last day.

This Article was composed by the English Reformers in 1553, and contains five positive assertions.:

(1) ‘Christ did truly rise again from death’.  Jesus often predicted that He would rise again on the third day,^[2] but His disciples did not understand His predictions,^[3] and in fact believed that His death was the end of all their hopes.^[4]  After the Crucifixion they lived in fear,^[5] and sadness,^[6]and so little were they expecting His resurrection that at first they refused to believe that it could be true.^[7]  The women who first discovered that He was risen had gone to the tomb with the intention of anointing His dead body.^[8]  This evidence of the unexpectedness of the Resurrection is very important, for it rules out any possibility that the witnesses of the Resurrection were suffering from hallucinations.  Men do not imagine what they do not believe or expect.