Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, the day on which we Christians celebrate the heart of our faith — the resurrection of Jesus. Actually, apart from the resurrection, we wouldn’t have a Christian faith.

As the Apostle Paul explains in 1 Corinthians 15:14, “If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” He goes on to say in verses 17-18, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.”

In other words, without the resurrection, we Christians are wasting our time. Here we are, serving God, living for Him, believing that our saved loved ones who have died are with the Lord, and none of it is true!

But it is true, and we know that because Jesus was raised. As Paul says in verse 20, “But in fact Christ has been raised.”

Christianity rests on this historical fact. It is not a philosophy about how to live. It is not good advice. It is good news about something that really happened. Jesus died for sinners, and how do we know that his sacrifice on our behalf was acceptable to God? He was raised from the dead.

If you do not believe in the resurrection, how do you explain the empty tomb? After all, in the days following his purported resurrection, critics of Christianity could have shut down the whole thing by producing a dead body. They could not, because there was not one.

What do you say about the eyewitness testimony of his many appearances to people after he was raised? As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:5-8, “He appeared to Peter, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.”

Paul and the other early believers were willing to die rather than recant their testimony of what they had seen and heard. Would they do that for a hoax?

There is another group of eyewitnesses that Paul does not mention in 1 Corinthians 15. The gospels tell us about women being the first ones at the empty tomb. If the gospel writers were making up a story, and trying to convince people of its credibility, they would never have made up a story with women being the first eyewitnesses, because in the first century the testimony of women was not admissible in a courtroom.

But, you may say, “Why did the risen Jesus only appear to people who already believed in him?” Answer: Actually, none of the people he appeared to believed in the resurrection, until they saw him. The disciples and the women had given up hope and were going back to their everyday lives. Others, like Paul, were actually enemies of the Christian movement.

But they saw the risen Christ, and everything changed.

The risen Christ can change your life, too. If you don’t have a church family, I would like to personally invite you to worship with me tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. at First Baptist Church of Suffolk, 237 N. Main St.

Dr. Thurman R. Hayes Jr. is senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Suffolk. Follow him on Twitter at @ThurmanHayesJr.