Why Easter?

Easter is one of the busiest days in the Johnson family. Our church day starts with a 0730 Sunrise service, a carry-in breakfast, egg and scavenger hunts for kids and teens, then a two-hour Easter service filled with singing, skits, testimonies, and preaching.

After church, the Johnson clan gathers at our home for Easter dinner, then we return to church for the evening Easter service. The day would wear me out when I was younger, and now that I’m older, it’s exhausting. However, regardless of how exhausting the day is, Easter is still one of the best days of the year. I love Easter.

Every year around this time, I challenge the congregation and readers of this column to ask: Why Easter? Why did Jesus Christ rise from the dead?

The question itself brings to the surface other fascinating claims of Christianity. Jesus was born of a virgin, Jesus is God, that God came to earth and lived among us, and that life never ends, it just moves from this earth to eternity. This column’s goal this week is to explain these claims.

Everyone would agree that they are not perfect; that they have done things that are wrong. Anyone who thinks they are perfect and has never done anything wrong has a problem with pride and is lying to themselves. Pride and lying are both wrong, so their claim of perfection already gives them two strikes against them.

God, the Creator of the universe, is perfect. He is holy. He is sinless. God wants to spend time with His creation, but allowing sin into a perfect heaven makes heaven no longer perfect. Think of it this way: an innocent child witnesses a violent crime. The child loses his innocence. In a world he thought was safe and secure, it is now unsafe and scary. He has lost his innocence. If sin enters heaven, heaven loses its purity. The current heaven has already lost its innocence because Satan comes to talk to God from time to time (Job 1-2), but the new heaven, the eternal heaven that comes from God, will never have sin enter into it (Revelation 21).

Because of God’s desire to spend eternity with us and our sin nature (everyone has done something wrong), before God created Adam and Eve, He already had a plan in place.

God knew we could not save ourselves from our sin. Remember, we all sin. Let’s say a person tells a lie. She is determined never to tell a lie again. She goes the next fifty years, until the day she dies, never uttering another untrue statement. She should be commended for her life of honesty, but fifty years of truthfullness does not erase any lies said before her decades of honesty. Regardless of her overwhelming life of honesty, the sin of lying is still there. Look at it this way: How many banks do you need to rob to be a bank robber? The answer is one. One lie, therefore, makes us a liar. Our past sins are not erased by the turning of a new leaf.

Since none of us is perfect, nor can we make ourselves sinless regardless of how hard we try, God must be the one to do the cleansing of our sin. This is why all those claims mentioned above are necessary and true.

The Bible tells us that only the shedding of blood can erase our sins (Hebrews 9:22). With that said, one may think, “Then why don’t we do the animal sacrifices as they did in the Old Testament?” Well, the New Testament tells us that animal sacrifice cannot take our sins away. Hebrews 10:4, “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.”

A perfect, sinless sacrifice was needed to wash sins away. God steps in and provides the sinless sacrifice: His Son, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ.

The Bible tells us that sin is passed down through our physical father (Romans 5:12) and that it would be the seed of the woman that God would use to crush Satan and provide salvation for mankind (Genesis 3:15).

God, therefore, sends His Son, Jesus Christ, to the earth by way of a virgin. With no earthly father, the sin nature is not passed down to Jesus. Jesus never sinned. He is the only person in history who could have been the sacrifice to wash our sins away. As for Jesus being God, the Bible tells us that Christ created the universe (John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17; and many other verses). Without the virgin birth, salvation would be unattainable for anyone.

In the Christmas story, an angel comes to Joseph to explain that Mary is still a virgin, and that the child she is carrying is the Son of God. The angel also explains why this is happening. Matthew 1:21, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” God’s plan for mankind was moving along like a well-oiled machine.

Jesus spends His adult life performing miracles and preaching the gospel of repentance (Matthew 4:17). As He gains popularity, the Jewish hierarchy fears that He will take followers away from them, and they plot to kill Him because of envy (Matthew 27:18; Mark 15:10). Little did they know, His death is the need sacrifice for the sins of mankind.

Then comes Easter morning. The women come to the tomb and find it empty. An angel is there, and tells them, “He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay” (Matthew 28:6). He is seen by over five hundred people after His resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:6).

His resurrection is proof that He is God. Jesus did raise people from the dead, but no one raised Him from the dead. He rose from the grave on His own power, the power of God. His resurrection also gives us hope of eternal life. We do not worship a dead God. We cannot go to a grave and say, “Here He is.”

So, how is eternal life and salvation acquired? It comes by faith. A person must have faith in the shed blood of Christ. Trusting in our goodness will not work because, as discussed before, no matter how good we are, it does not erase the sins we’ve already committed. Performing a religious ritual, such as baptism, will not save us because it does not include a sinless blood sacrifice. Jesus Christ and the blood He shed is the only hope. The resurrection, the empty tomb, is God’s promise to us that eternal life can be guaranteed (1 John 5:13).