The point of Easter…

This may seem strange that I have dedicated a blog post to talking about the meaning of Easter, because you might think it’s pretty obvious.  Well I disagree.  I think most people get the front-end of the story but they’ve missed the purpose and reason why they should respond.  Let me explain.

The bread and butter message of Easter is that Jesus Christ, a sinless and innocent man… the Son of God, was nailed to a Cross, dying in your place for the sin that you personally have committed, buried in a tomb and then was literally raised from the dead on the 3rd day by the power of God the Father.

You know this, but this isn’t just a nice story that doesn’t involve your participation.  It requires a response from you as Jesus said in John 3:16:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

It’s not enough just to know the story and think it’s nice… you need to believe in Jesus in your heart that the Easter story went down just as the Bible describes it did.  In other words, it requires faith from an individual to fulfill Romans 10:9:

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

Alright… saved from what?  A lot of people like to use a politically-correct word for hell which is ‘a Christ-less eternity’.  Frankly though, many people are living in a ‘Christ-less reality’ right now… as in they don’t know Jesus or have any relationship with Him at all… so why should they be afraid of eternal life like that?  Of course the seriousness of the decision to be saved or not hinges on what happens if you say no: you go to hell when you die.

Now this shocks most people because they don’t think that they deserve to spend eternity in complete darkness, alone and in the torment of a lake of fire… with no parole, no one will ever intervene or care, forever.  But we do, we all deserve hell because we have chosen to sin (i.e. break the 10 commandments)… and if we were never to die on this Earth, our every thought and action would be sin perpetually (which means perpetual murder, lying, stealing, sexual immorality etc).  Some people are already like that, but even the nicest person you know hates God by default and everything He stands for… and when push comes to shove, they will sin to save their own skin.  Remember that there’s a difference between being good and being undisturbed.

Here is the amazing part though when it comes to Jesus, that you find in John 3:17-19:

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.

And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.

What Jesus is saying here is that ‘I didn’t take on flesh and bones just to guilt-trip you, I came to save you if you want it‘.  It’s like the default state of humanity is condemned to hell… or like everyone is on a train that can’t stop where the tracks are at the edge of a cliff.  Everyone wants to be on that train, God won’t force anyone off the train.  He will only tell you the truth and give you a way out through Him… and He is the only way off.

If it wasn’t for Jesus, there was no way for you.  You need to decide this day whether you will give your life to Jesus Christ or go over the cliff into hell.

Hell isn’t the only reason why you must be saved.  The very first appeal for men to be saved came from Peter who said in Acts 2:38:

Then Peter said to them, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Notice that Peter did not say ‘believe in Jesus so that you will go to heaven when you die’.  As a matter of fact, there isn’t a place  in the New Testament where heaven is used as the reason for a person to be saved.  What about John 3:16?  Well, Jesus said that we will receive everlasting life when we believe in Him.  So my question to you is, where does everlasting life come from… God or heaven?  I’ll add another one to that, what makes heaven such a great place?  Let me put it another way, what would heaven be like if God was not there?

To answer this question you need to hear the words of Jesus when He said in John 17:24:

Father, I desire that they also whom You gave Me may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me; for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

And John 14:3:

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.

And lastly John 17:3:

And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

Then the Apostle John refers back to this verse in 1 John 5:20:

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.

So I hope you can see in these verses that what God wanted, all along since the foundation of this world, is for us to know Him and be with Him like a bride is with her beloved (Song of Solomon).  If heaven is everything we could imagine and more, but God’s not there… I don’t want to go.  I want to be with Him where He is… if that means in the backside of some desert, I’m there.  But God has already made a way for us to be with Him right now as we live on this Earth.  I’ll need two passages to describe this and then I’m done.

The first scripture is in John 14:16-17, 26, Jesus speaking:

And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever– the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you.

When you believe in Jesus Christ, give your life to Him, you will receive the Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of God, He is God and a real person who lives inside of you.  And you can hear Him speak to you and you can speak with Him any place any time. He will never leave you, ever… no matter what you do.  The Bible actually goes further to describe this in 1 Corinthians 6:17:

But he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit [with Him].

So our spirit and the Holy Spirit are joined or connected together forever.  And we can know God because His Spirit lives inside us.  We don’t need to find God anymore, He has chosen to join Himself (the everlasting, uncreated, outside of time God) with us.  This is eternal life, this is the miracle of Easter… that when you were on your way to hell willfully, God sent His son to tell you the truth and save you, to take you out and join you to Himself forever so you will never die, but have an eternity with the God who created heaven and Earth.

Hope this blessed you,

Washo

Recommended reading:    Romans 6:3-14