To what do the apostles and the other disciples witness when they are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ? On the one hand, they bear witness to his death: “but you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life.” Yet, even here, the witness to the crucifixion is tied intimately to the resurrection, for the verse continues, “whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” The importance of being witnesses to the resurrection is stressed also at the end of the Gospel of Luke.

After the events on the road to Emmaus, the disciples were gathered and witnessed Jesus walking, talking and eating among them. While initially “they were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost,” they were soon convinced that Jesus was alive: “‘Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet.”

Luke tells us that “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering.” What a terrific description! It evokes a sense of someone holding a newborn for the first time, a team winning an improbable victory or finding out you got the job. Is this real, or is it just a dream?

Then Jesus did the most human of things to ground them: “Have you anything here to eat?” The Greek of the NRSV seems too formal. I would opt for “What do you guys have to eat here?” They gave Jesus “a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate in their presence.” Things just got real.

Jesus once again explained his death, its necessity and its connection to the resurrection. “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” That makes sense. They actually were witnesses to these things, they actually saw him die, ate with him, talked to him, felt the giddy excitement of his presence.

But to what are we witnesses today? None of us saw him die on the cross, or watched him eat that piece of broiled fish, feeling faint with joy and amazement as we saw him alive in our midst. We are witness to two things: the authenticity and trustworthiness of the witnesses; and the authenticity and trustworthiness of our lives.

In our lives, we have choices each day. And as John says, “my little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.” Not to sin would be the best path, but our weaknesses lead us astray. Still, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, “if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Whenever we struggle with sin—so often the same old boring sins; so dull and stupid—“we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments.” We can turn back to the commandments and we must turn back to the commandments and live them out in our lives. If we do not, John tells us, each of us becomes “a liar” but we have the ability to show the world the reality of the risen Lord through our love, our obedience, our tenderness, our mercy, our gentleness, our desire to live out and witness to Christ’s victory through our daily choices.

And we bear witness to the one who was raised from the dead when we believe the words the apostles passed on to us. We believe in their trustworthiness about Jesus because we live out their love for Jesus. When we live as Jesus asked us to, passed on to us by the tradition, “by this we may be sure that we are in him.” How we live makes us witnesses to Jesus Christ. It is our task today to bear witness.

This article appears in April 13 2015.

John W. Martens is an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn,where he teaches early Christianity and Judaism. He also directs the Master of Arts in Theology program at the St. Paul Seminary School of Divinity. He was born in Vancouver, B.C. into a Mennonite family that had decided to confront modernity in an urban setting. His post-secondary education began at Tabor College, Hillsboro, Kansas, came to an abrupt stop, then started again at Vancouver Community College, where his interest in Judaism and Christianity in the earliest centuries emerged. He then studied at St. Michael's College, University of Toronto, and McMaster University, with stops at University of Haifa and University of Tubingen. His writing often explores the intersection of Jewish, Christian and Greco-Roman culture and belief, such as in "let the little children come to me: Children and Childhood in Early Christianity" (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), but he is not beyond jumping into the intersection of modernity and ancient religion, as in "The End of the World: The Apocalyptic Imagination in Film and Television" (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Press, 2003). He blogs at  www.biblejunkies.com and at www.americamagazine.org for "The Good Word." You can follow him on Twitter @biblejunkies, where he would be excited to welcome you to his random and obscure interests, which range from the Vancouver Canucks and Minnesota Timberwolves, to his dog, and 70s punk, pop and rock. When he can, he brings students to Greece, Turkey and Rome to explore the artifacts and landscape of the ancient world. He lives in St. Paul with his wife and has two sons. He is certain that the world will not end until the Vancouver Canucks have won the Stanley Cup, as evidence has emerged from the Revelation of John, 1 Enoch, 2 Baruch, and 4 Ezra which all point in this direction.