The soldiers who carried out the crucifixion had done this work many times before. They were hardened men doing a job they had done again and again, and nothing about another execution should have moved them. Yet when the darkness lifted and the earth shook, the centurion and those keeping watch with him said something no one expected: “Truly this was the Son of God” (Matthew 27). Something happened to those men. And the same thing has been happening to ordinary people ever since.
The Pattern Runs Through Scripture
Look at how often a life turns completely around in the pages of the New Testament. Peter left his nets to follow Jesus, watched Lazarus come out of the tomb, and then denied he ever knew the Lord — three times, with an oath, until the rooster crowed (Matthew 26). It is hard to imagine a lower place for a man to stand. Yet the same Peter went on to preach the name he had denied, and tradition holds that when the end came he asked not to die in the same manner as his Lord, counting himself unworthy of it. Something happened to him.
Saul is an even sharper turn. He was not a mild opponent of the church; he made it his life’s work to destroy it, and he did that work well. Then on a road one day a light shone around him and he asked, “Lord, what do you want me to do?” (Acts 9). From that moment he never terrorized another soul. He was baptized, and immediately he preached Christ in the synagogues. The man who set out to end the church spent the rest of his life building it.
Ordinary People, Extraordinary Resolve
The centuries that followed tell the same story on a much larger scale. Across roughly 250 years under a series of Roman emperors, Christians were pressed again and again to renounce Christ and offer a pinch of incense to the state gods. The historical record is remarkable for how rarely anyone did. Account after account describes believers who met terrible ends with a calm that unsettled the people watching. More than once the executioner himself became a Christian. One writer of the period observed that if every Christian simply left Roman territory, the empire would be emptied out — the faith was growing that fast, in the very decades it was most dangerous to hold.
Here is the detail worth sitting with. Those believers were not eyewitnesses. They never heard Jesus teach, never watched a miracle, never saw Him ascend. They came to know Him the same way you and I do: they opened the Scriptures and read. Their faith had exactly the same source ours has.
What That Hope Actually Does
So how does a person face what they faced? Not by unusual courage. By hope — a settled confidence that what comes after this life is more real than this life is.
- It changes what you fear. If death is not the end, then the worst anyone can do to you is temporary. That reorders every other fear underneath it.
- It changes what matters. Comfort, reputation, and possessions all shrink next to something eternal, and they stop being able to steer your decisions.
- It changes how you face death. Jesus did not merely rise; He conquered death — He removed its consequences. He holds the keys of death itself (Revelation 1:18). We will still die. It simply no longer costs us anything.
- It can be recovered. Peter is proof. Anyone who has let go of that hope can repent, reset, and start fresh.
A Call to Respond
Hebrews 6 says we have fled for refuge “to lay hold upon the hope set before us,” and calls that hope “an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast,” which enters in behind the veil where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus (Hebrews 6:18-20). Read that last part slowly. Where Jesus has gone, we can go. He went through the grave and came out the other side, and He will bring us through as well. He went through the shame, the betrayal, and the suffering, and none of it held Him.
That is not a sentiment. It is an anchor. If you have never laid hold of it, there is no better use of a day than to become a Christian and change where your eternity is headed. And if you are a Christian who has lost the feel of that hope, it is not gone — it can be taken up again. Lay hold of the hope set before you, and do not let it go.