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What difference would it make whether or not Jesus really died?

The Bible explains that Jesus was 100% man (John 1:14) and 100% God (John 1:1). And as such, He lived and walked among crowds of people who had the opportunity to hear Him teach, to watch Him work, and to marvel at His verifiable miracles (John 11). This life eventually led Him to be tried in a kangaroo court before the religious and political leaders of His day. His crime? Jesus was condemned to die by Roman crucifixion for nothing except claiming to be God (John 19:6-7). During His crucifixion, Jesus was brutally and unjustly tortured and killed; following His death, He was buried by a Jewish politician named Joseph in a nearby tomb. Here is the significance:

If Jesus had not been 100% human, it would have been impossible for Him to die; but if Jesus had not been 100% infinite God, it would be impossible that His death would be of such value to pay for the sins of the whole world.

So, did Jesus really die on the cross?

Two truths can be known about the crucifixion.

First, Jesus was certified to be dead by a group of professional Roman soldiers whose sole role was execution.

It is improbable that these men, with nothing to lose, would risk their jobs by falsely stating that Jesus was dead (John 19:32-34; Mark 15:42-46). Tacitus, a Roman historian from near the time of Christ, confirmed this:

“Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christ, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate, and a most mischievous superstition thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea… but even in Rome…” (Annals 15.44).

So even Tacitus, in his anti-Christian and Roman way, confirmed that Jesus was crucified and killed by the Romans.

At the same time, the Bible declared that Jesus’ death was of infinite value to make cleansing from sin available to every person.

John, the only one of Jesus’ twelve disciples to observe the crucifixion up close, wrote that Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). John is claiming that Jesus’ death was of such infinite value that, if accepted by any number of people, it would prove sufficient to bring eternal forgiveness of sin (Isaiah 53:11). The only way for both of these two facts of the crucifixion to be true is that Jesus was who He claimed to be: 100% God and 100% man (1 Timothy 2:5-6).

So we considered whether or not Jesus was truly a man who died.

But is it possible to prove that Jesus was telling the truth about being God?