All the Difference

If Jesus had only lived and preached and suffered and died, his memory would probably have died out within a few years.  The Resurrection made all the difference.  It was the earliest Christians' experience of the Risen Jesus that made Christianity a religion for all time and all places.
The earliest Christians had a vivid awareness that the Risen Jesus was living within them.  St. Paul's letters, which he began writing in the year 50, are full of this awareness.  Jesus was sharing with them his new life beyond death and he was making them good here and now by sharing his own goodness with them.  It was this intimate religious experience of the Risen Jesus that kept the story of Jesus alive.