Easter is about life. Indestructible life. Eternal life.
Sin brings death (Rom 3:23). What God promised would happen after Adam ate the forbidden fruit happened (Gen 2:16–17). They died (Gen 5:5). Since then, life under the sun has been dominated by death (Rom 5:12). Approximately 2 people die per second, that’s 150,000.00 people a day who breath their last. Death reigns in our world, even over babies (Rom 5:14). So dear reader, be confronted and feel the full weight of the reality that you are mortal. A day of reckoning will soon encroach, and you won’t escape it (Heb 9:27).
What then?
The answer to that question is the message of Easter. The reason Good Friday has no true significance in the lives of many is because they aren’t convinced of the bad news of their sin. Many think they aren’t as bad; they think Christians make a big deal of nothing and the talk of death is sinister.
If we understood our depravity, Easter would be like water to a weary soul. The Good News from heaven is missed because heaven’s diagnosis of our condition is rejected. Death is unnatural and our soul knows it well. We were created to live (Eccl 3:11).
Paul reminds Timothy that when our Saviour Christ Jesus appeared, he “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim 1:10).
Christ brought an end to death in his crucifixion. His death made death no longer exist. He set aside the principle of death forever. He wiped out the stronghold of death. He broke the power of death by destroying the one who had power over death, even the devil (Heb 2:14). He abolished death by bearing the full weight of our sins and the full punishment of death they deserve (2 Cor 5:21).
In so doing, he brought life. He revealed life. He unveiled immortality. This should stun us as Paul has mentioned in his first epistle to Timothy that only God is immortal (1 Tim 1:17; 6:16). That Christ has brought immortality is to say he gives us the very life of God. We live because God also lives (John 14:19). We carry his life in our veins.
At the end of his life, Paul was arrested afresh by his savior’s life-giving gospel (2 Tim 2:8). He was confident that though abruptly taken by the Romans, his life would nevertheless remain intact (2 Tim 4:18). He had lived to guard the gospel with full assurance that God would guard his own life (2 Tim 1:12; 4:6–7). In fact, he knew he would be more alive than he had ever been (2 Tim 2:11). Paul was eager to preach this message, even suffer for it, because it is the only means by which sinners are rescued from death and brought to life (2 Tim 2:10).
Choose this Easter whom you will serve…
Will you remain in your sin, captive to the devil’s will, loving and serving yourself, and following the whims of this world? Many did in Paul’s day, denying Christ and proving themselves faithless (2 Tim 1:15; 2:12–13). Sin and the fleeting pleasures of the world have always competed with the solid joys Christ gives and many easily drift (2 Tim 4:10).
Or will you turn from sin and serve Christ? This is the only path to life; life he has already purchased and secured for his own on Good Friday. May the promise of life in Christ Jesus be yours this Easter.
