That conclusion is driven home by Paul’s teaching on the transformation that occurs in a person’s body when he is raised from the dead. Paul taught that just as Jesus was raised from the dead, so we will also be raised from the dead “at His coming” (1 Corinthians 15:20-24). Thus, contrary to popular opinion, the Christian hope is not that our souls will live forever, but rather that our bodies will be raised up to eternal life. But in order for that to be possible, the present, mortal body must be transformed. According to Paul (1 Corinthians 15:42-44), there are four essential differences between the present body and the resurrection body:
Present Body
Resurrection Body
mortal
immortal
dishonorable
glorious
weak
powerful
dominated by the natural self
dominated by God’ spirit
Paul says that the present body will be transformed into the resurrection body: “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed” (1 Corinthians 15:51-52). According to Paul, it is the present body or the remains of it that will be transformed and raised as a glorious new body. Thus, after the resurrection all the graves and cemeteries would be empty. Since what will happen to us is simply a repetition of a broader scale of what happened to Jesus, Paul undoubtedly believed that Jesus’ tomb was empty. Few facts can be more certain than that Paul accepted the empty tomb of Jesus.
But now the question forces itself upon us: how could Paul have so confidently believed in the empty tomb of Jesus, if in fact the tomb were not empty? Remember, Paul was in Jerusalem six years after the crucifixion. By that time at least, the tomb must have been empty. But we can go further. During his two-week visit, Paul saw Peter and James as well as other Christians in Jerusalem. Those persons must also have believed that Jesus’ tomb was empty from the start, otherwise belief in His resurrection would have been impossible, as I have explained. And even if it were possible, if the tomb were not empty, Paul’s teaching would never have developed in the direction it did. Instead of teaching the resurrection of the body in the grave, Paul would have had to invent some theory trying to rationalize how a resurrection was possible though the body still remained in the tomb. But Paul never faced such a problem. That means the tomb of Jesus must have been empty right from the start. If the tomb was not empty, then one cannot explain how the earliest Christians could believe that it was or why Paul’s teaching took the direction that it did.
Paul gives two other indications that the tomb of Jesus was found empty. First, the third line in the Christian saying when he quotes, “he was raised,” probably is a summary statement of the story of the discovery of the empty tomb. We saw earlier that when we compare the Christian saying with the sermons in Acts and with the gospel accounts of the resurrection that the four statements of the saying amount to an outline of the sermons and gospel stories. What corresponds to the third line of the saying, “He was raised”? It is the story of the discovery of the empty tomb. The line of the saying “he was raised” mirrors the angel’s words, “He has risen.” That makes it very probable that the third line of the saying corresponds to the story of the empty tomb. From that fact two conclusions follow. (1) The story of the empty tomb must be reliable, for it is summarized in this early Christian saying, going back to within the first five years after the crucifixion. There was neither time for legend to arise nor opportunity, since the witnesses who knew the facts were still about. (2) Paul also knew the story of the empty tomb and thus also vouchsafed for its accuracy, since he referred unhesitatingly to it.
A second indication of Jesus’ empty tomb is the phrase “on the third day.” The third line of the saying runs in fulclass="underline" “and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.” Since no one actually saw Jesus rise from the grave (His tomb was found empty Sunday morning, and He then appeared to His disciples), how did the early Christians know that He rose on the third day? Why not on the seventh day or after a month? The most obvious answer is that they found His tomb empty on the third day after His crucifixion, so naturally the resurrection came to be dated on that day.
It has been objected that the gospel stories of the discovery of the empty tomb do not speak of “the third day,” but of “the first day of the week.” But according to the Jewish manner of reckoning days, the first day of the week was the third day after the crucifixion. The Jews counted a part of a day as being a whole day. Thus, Jesus was in the tomb late Friday afternoon (one day), all day Saturday (one day), and predawn Sunday (one day); hence, the tomb was found empty on the third day. In fact, when we remember that the Jewish day began at sundown, then, as crazy as it may seem to us, if Jesus had been buried at five o’clock on Friday evening, and had risen at seven o’clock on Saturday evening, the Jew could quite properly say that he was raised on the third day.
But why did the early Christian saying use “on the third day” instead of “on the first day of the week”? Here we must look into the Old Testament. In the Old Testament we find that God sometimes acted on the third day to resolve a crisis or deliver His people or perform a mighty act (Genesis 22:4; Exodus 19:11, 16; 1 Samuel 30:1-2; 2 Kings 20:5, 8; Esther 5:1; Hosea 6:2). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the phrase “on the third day” is translated by a rather awkward expression. The Christian saying uses exactly the same awkward expression. This suggests that the saying is using the language of the Old Testament to emphasize that the resurrection was also an act of God’s deliverance and might. That suggestion gains in plausibility from the phrase following “on the third day” in the saying “he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”
Therefore, it seems that the early Christians, having found Jesus’ tomb empty on the first day of the week, dated the resurrection itself on that day. Since the first day of the week was according to Jewish reckoning also the third day after Jesus’ death, then, in order to emphasize God’s greatness in raising Jesus, they picked up the Old Testament expression for “the third day.” Therefore, in stating that Jesus was raised on the third day, the Christian saying provides still more early evidence for the empty tomb of Jesus.
Thus, Paul’s testimony guarantees the fact of the empty tomb. Paul believed in the empty tomb of Jesus, as is evident from the expression “He was raised” right after “He was buried,” from the words for resurrection themselves, from the Jewish physical understanding of the resurrection, and from Paul’s teaching about the transformation of the present body. But Paul could not have believed in the empty tomb if it had not in fact been found empty. If the tomb were not empty, the earliest disciples could not have believed in the resurrection nor would Paul’s teaching about the physical resurrection have developed as it did. Specific indications that both Paul and the early saying refer to the empty tomb of Jesus are the correspondence between the third line of the saying and the gospel account of the empty tomb and the expression “on the third day,” which refers in Old Testament language to the women’s discovery of the empty tomb on the first day of the week. The fact of the empty tomb must therefore be historical, since there was no time for legend to arise, since the witnesses were on hand to prevent it from arising, and since Paul himself vouches for its accuracy.