Dead, Buried and Risen

Because the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus are pivotal to real Christian faith John goes into great detail to make it perfectly clear that Jesus really died – blood and water flowed after he was pierced in the side; that his body was really buried - wrapped with embalming spices and strips of cloth and laid in a new tomb that no one had ever used before, and; that early on the first day of the week He really rose from the dead - the tomb was found to be empty with only the strips of linen lying there as though the body had simply disappeared.
Jesus did not merely appear to die, and there was no confusion over where his body was laid. Jesus really died, was really buried in a tomb and really rose from the dead. John is not fabricating a story about something that never happened. He is simply bearing witness to the compelling evidence that brought him to believe, even before Jesus showed himself to the disciples, so that we too might know for certain that death is dead, love has won, Christ has conquered!