What does that really mean to me?
It seems like a big deal, but how does it connect with my life?
Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. He was executed under Roman law in the province of Palestine around the year 33AD. The third day after that execution something happened that has never happened before or since. This man suddenly became alive again, and this second life was not like his previous life - it was an eternal one. Jesus demonstrated this new life by appearing to hundreds of people over a period of 40 days and then visibly ascending into heaven. All this means that Jesus of Nazareth is alive today.
The story, though incredible in many ways, is attested by enough historical evidence that an honest inquirer is left with only one conclusion – this man Jesus indeed rose from the dead. But that fact by itself, as amazing as it is, still doesn’t make much sense. What does it mean?
There has been a great deal of wondering, speculation and even hope about life after death. Every funeral gives us a sense of something lost that shouldn’t be. The mourning and loss for those who die is a very deep, universal experience. People are not supposed to just... end.
But where can we look for evidence about what happens after death? Four centuries before Jesus, Socrates was dying from a poison called Hemlock. His friends gathered around him and asked this great philosopher and thinker, “Shall we live again?” As his life slipped away he could only answer, “I hope so, but no man can know.”
Jesus’ resurrection answers the question Socrates could not. If Jesus really rose from the dead, we have one life, one evidence, one example that screams across the ages - we do not end with our last heartbeat. There is another life! That knowledge has eternity-sized implications. With it comes a whole new set of questions. Does everyone experience this life? Is it always good? Does how we live now make a difference in the next life?
Jesus’ resurrection is meaningful not because it happened, but because it is part of a larger story that actually foretold the resurrection would happen. The Bible tells the story of the world, of its purpose and of who we are as people. It describes a Creator God who made the universe and everything in it. The Bible claims to be the Divine Word from that God.
In the Bible God tells us that He made us in His image to live in relationship with Him. He is our source, our Father. We are to be good in all the ways He is. But the Bible also tells us that through the rejection of this created purpose by our first forefather generations ago, the relationship God wanted with us was lost. It is because of this first sin that death entered the world. Mankind, created to be like God and with God, is now sentenced to physical death as one of the consequences of being separated from God. Death is a punishment for sin.
As a result, selfishness, suffering and ultimately death have marked every aspect of human history. We are still living that story today.
But God, in His goodness, had a plan to restore the life-giving relationship we were created to have with Him. That plan has also been unfolding in history since man first sinned and broke that Divine relationship.
The center of God’s plan was the eventual entrance of God Himself into His creation. God would be the rescuer, the savior. The One who made us and loved us would display the reality of love in redeeming us and removing our sin. For centuries Hebrew prophets were moved to speak about a Messiah (in Greek, Christ), or Anointed One, who would come from God, yet be God. Who would conquer, yet suffer. Who would die, yet would reign forever. Who would be a son of man, yet also the Son of God. 1 Some of the prophesies seem so descriptive of Jesus of Nazareth that many scholars refused to believe they were actually written before Jesus lived until the Dead Sea Scrolls proved it to be so.
When Jesus rose from the dead, it was the perfect completion to a series of prophesies and movements in history that began to be recorded fifteen centuries earlier. Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ - promised, foretold, and validated by miracles. His unjust death was one more example of the evil in this world. But it was also the plan of God and the hand of God, bringing the sentence for sin (death) into a life that had no sin. And when a man who has no sin receives from a perfect God a punishment that is only deserved because of sin, a just payment and forgiveness is opened up for the sin of all who are in Christ.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Romans 5:8
“I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” Jesus, John 11:24
Today God is calling every person to respond to what He did in Christ. We are to understand that Jesus is alive today, and that as the Christ He is King over everyone and everything. God calls us to accept the forgiveness He made possible in Christ, to return to God as our Father, and to live in the hope of the eternal life He revealed through Christ. God calls us to re-enter, with all our heart, the relationship we were made to have with Him.
That is what resurrection means. And that is why it is such a big deal.
The resurrection of Christ is the most important historical event that has ever happened for the life of every person that has ever lived. There is only one event that is comparable in significance. That event is yet to come. It is the return of this resurrected King to bring justice to the earth, judgment for evil, and a new world that is marked by goodness and justice for all who take part in it – for all who have returned to that relationship for which they were created, for all who know their Father God through Jesus Christ.
The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is God’s greatest evidence of His reality in the world. It is His final basis for a claim on our lives. What do you believe about the claim of the resurrection? When you see the resurrected Christ face-to-face, will it be a moment of joy?
“Just as man is destined to die once and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.” Hebrews 9:27