As Easter draws near, I’ve noticed a trend and one that I’ve fallen comfortably into myself. On Good Friday, it is not uncommon to hear some brief reflection on the Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross followed by these words, “but Sunday is coming.” Of course, the sentiment strikes at the heart of the culmination of this Lenten season, the anchor of the Christian faith – not just the death of Christ, but his resurrection. That is where our hope resides. As Paul indicated, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:13-14).
To be sure, the resurrection cannot be undermined. I confess that for much of my Christian life, I treated Easter Sunday as kind of a resurrection birthday only to downplay it’s significance the remaining of the year. The cross of Christ is nothing without the resurrection. At the cross, Jesus final sacrifice of atonement, where he bore the penalty for our sin, is not complete unless he rose from the dead. In his resurrection, is where we find life in him. The resurrection is where we can anchor our hope.
We have the advantage of hindsight. Imagine what his disciples felt at that time. This person they followed and believed to be the Messiah, the promised Savior, who would come and rescue the God’s elect from the oppression of Gentile rule, was now seemingly defeated by it in the cruelest manner. But they would come to realize that in God’s paradox, he would use an instrument of death to bring life and nailed at his resurrection.
And so living on the other side of this revelation in Christ, we want to celebrate in the victory that secures eternal hope for those found in Christ. To put in more simply, we want to skip to the good part. Continue reading
