John and Peter had run to the tomb at dawn.  Having heard the women report that the stone had been rolled away, they came to investigate (John 20:1-2).  Peter was braver than John.  Going inside the cave he found the linen burial cloths, wound as though they were around the body and head of Jesus, lying on the rock shelf.  But there was no body inside them.  It was as though the body of Jesus had evaporated from inside the funeral shrouds.
 
That observation confirmed the women’s report.  Peter wondered to himself what had happened (Luke 24:12); but John ‘believed’ (John 20:8).  What did he believe?  They believed that the body of Jesus had gone; John may have believed that Jesus was alive - but they could not make sense of it.  They had not understood what the Scriptures had said about Jesus rising again.

It was not until Pentecost that Peter could quote Psalm 16:10 as the reason for the resurrection: “because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead, nor will you let your faithful one see decay.”  The resurrection had to happen because Jesus was the Holy One of God.  Although He inhabited a human body and had accepted responsibility for the sins of the world, He could not be swallowed up into the ground.  The Creator could not be reduced to being part of His creation.  He could not disintegrate or decay because He is God.
 
The resurrection not only proves the power of God over death and the devil, and that God has accepted the sin-sacrifice of the body of Jesus.  The resurrection also proves that Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, is both the Lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36).  Yet some people only partly believe.  They are impressed by Jesus and believe in His goodness but do not believe in His God-ness.  The reason is that they are looking at Jesus from a human point of view: they do not see Him through God’s eyes.  We can never properly understand Jesus without God’s help through the Scriptures.  The Bible enables us to ‘join up the dots’ of information about Jesus so that we can learn to love the Lord we admire, and be satisfied by the God we search for.  Encourage your friends to explore the Scriptures about Jesus in www.crosscheck.org.uk.