That if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” (Romans 10:9–11—NKJV)

Perhaps you are one who was raised by church-going parents and you reasonably followed in their steps in religious commitment. But somewhere along the way you came across some contradictory ideology which caused you to question your “faith” and you began to follow along. Then, through the twists and turns of life you found that your newly-found ideological “flavor of the month” had grown stale and perhaps its unhealthy ingredients caught your notice. You acted on your distaste and left that ideology behind, but you are not convinced that you should return to Christianity. After all, the media has done a good job of vomiting forth the sordid details of all the bad actors who call themselves Christians. What to do? Where to turn?

To me, there is only one question whose answer will simplify and clarify your quest. Here is the question that you must answer: Did Jesus Christ really rise alive, out from among the dead, just as the Bible says?

If you can convince yourself that He did not rise, then you are able to give yourself permission to continue on in your search for personal meaning, satisfaction of your sin problem, settling of your conscience, filling the god-shaped void in the depth of your being, and searching out where and how you will spend eternity. 1 Corinthians 15:14–19 illustrates your situation: “And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God…And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.” Let’s face the fact that if Jesus Christ did not literally, bodily rise alive on that Resurrection Sunday so long ago, then the Bible is no more reliable than any other book of wisdom and morality. The conclusion must be that Christianity is based on a lie, and it offers no more direction for your soul than your daily horoscope.

However, if Christ did literally, bodily rise, and if He lives forevermore as the Scriptures purport, then the reverse of all Paul’s hopeless statements in 1 Corinthians 15:14–19 are the treasures that are bestowed along with belief in the resurrected Christ. In verse 20 Paul states, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” He is telling you and I that his preaching is full, that your faith is full, and his eyewitness testimony to the reality of the resurrection (along with over 500 witnesses he records in 1 Corinthians 15:1–8). Further, your sin problem is answered in Christ, you have eternal life after death, and every believer in Christ’s resurrection is the most blessed among men.

Resurrection is the consummate miracle and is the hinge of faith, as Romans 10:9 states. No behavior, theory, ideology, or myth of man can have an impact upon the factual, literal, bodily resurrection of Christ. The eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Jesus saw him and their witness is true. Because of belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, you are able to confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is the living Lord of your life. The promise of God is that those who rest their faith fully upon what God has revealed in the Bible concerning the substitutional, sacrificial work and resurrection of His Son, is saved. With this assurance in hand, you are free to pursue God within the guardrails of the authority of the Bible, and live a life of faith.

Is your faith real and unshakeable? Are you sure your sins are forgiven and you are born again through faith in the finished work of the resurrected Jesus? Are you living like a saved individual in complete submission and obedience to your Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in the Bible? Trust and obey.