Easter is a wonderful time of the year. The fact that it coincides with the coming of Spring is no coincidence. Easter, like Spring, is the annual commemoration of the coming of new life. It’s the day when we remember that Jesus not only died for our sins, but that He rose from the dead and brought us new access to God’s kingdom - to God’s family. Not since the fall of man in the Garden of Eden was the door so opened, and the way laid out before us, to know God. That the relationship between God and humankind has been restored for those who put their trust in the person of Jesus Christ is the core of the Easter message and the true heart of the season. But you would probably not be able to guess that was the true message of Easter if your only exposure to Easter was the way our culture views the day.
It’s fascinating to see the way our culture views Easter. We all celebrate it - it shows up on every holiday calendar across the country. Stores have special sales or sell seasonal goods for Easter; some of them close for the day when they would otherwise be open. Towns and cities sponsor easter egg hunts full of quote-unquote, “Easter themed” candy (which I love). I think these things can be wonderful things! Culturally, we recognize Easter as a significant day, whether believers or not. However, the cultural understanding of the day, as best as I can tell, is muddled and confused.
Part of this confusion stems from the way Christianity more generally is viewed. The message about being a Christian in our society is usually summed up this way: be a good person; don’t be a bad person. This is not necessarily a bad way to live, but this view makes Easter unnecessary. Why mark the time a man, who claimed to be the Son of God, and was claimed to have risen from the dead if the point is to just be a good person and not be a bad person? Humans have been wrestling with what it means to be a “good” person for as long as we have written language. The ideas of good and bad were important well before Jesus ever showed up on the scene. He doesn’t have to die for us to want to get a clear picture of what it means to be good.
The ideas of “good” and “bad” are, themselves, also a jumbled mess in our cultural message. For most of our society, being a good person usually revolves around two definitions or approaches to being good. The first approach says that good people are the ones who don’t do bad things. It’s obvious to us that good people aren't murderers or cheats or liars. Good people, as we suppose, don’t defraud their neighbors. If someone actually does good things, such as giving to the poor or helping a friend move, this is almost above and beyond the call of goodness. They’re extra-good.
But this definition runs into problems pretty quickly. The main problem is us. Sometimes, we do cheat or lie. Sometimes we don’t speak up against a bad thing happening around us. Sometimes, we bend the rules or find the gray areas. This takes us to the second definition our culture has for being a good person, and that is that a good person is simply better than the person next to them.We might call this the, “Not That Bad” approach to goodness. We may have lied a little, but we’re not Bernie Madoff. We may have stretched the truth, but we’re not politicians (which is something even politicians try to say about themselves!). We may not have stuck up for the person next to us, but we haven’t murdered anyone which means that we are at least better than someone who has.
The central problem with Easter remains though. Why celebrate the death of a man who lived 2000 years ago, and supposedly rose from the dead? What about that story makes the idea of not doing bad things, or at least not doing worse things than someone else, make sense as a way of salvation? There seems to be a significant disconnect between our cultural understanding of Easter and the actual Easter story. The whole story seems so unnecessary if our culture is right - to the point that we have to wonder if our definitions of being a good person actually work or make sense. Has the Christian conception of salvation been misconstrued? Has Easter been misrepresented?
To get a clear picture of the point of Easter, we have to properly understand a few important ideas. One of the most important of these ideas is the concept of sin. Sin is such a loaded term, and one our culture doesn’t really know what to do with. For many, sin is simply the word we give to the bad things we do. The teachings of Christ, on the other hand, contend that this definition is incomplete. Sins are the bad things we do, but, according to Jesus, the problem goes much deeper.
Sin isn’t just the bad actions we engage in - it’s also in how quickly the bad action came to our mind in the first place. It’s in how easy we found it to do the bad thing even though we probably knew it was a bad thing. It’s in the way we feel like we have to justify ourselves or explain away the bad thing we did as much as we possibly can. This is the true depth of sin. It’s in our hearts.
The Bible teaches that the issues of life flow from the heart. Jesus used the metaphor of cleaning a cup to demonstrate this truth. He said that we cannot just clean the outside of the cup and then call the cup clean. The inside had to be cleaned as well. One of the early followers of Jesus, a man named Paul, wrote about this idea as well. In one of his most famous letters, he wrote about how he struggles with doing the things he knows he should. He wrote about an internal war, and that he finds himself not doing the good things he knew he was called to, but instead found himself practicing the things he did not want to do.
He ended that portion of his letter with the words, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” By this he meant, “Who will deliver me from this struggle, or this thing I am carrying around with me? Who will take this load from me because I cannot do this on my own?” Paul lived in the first century, when the Roman Empire was in power. One of their means of punishment was to strap a dead body to the one who had broken the law or offended the emperor, and make that person carry a corpse around. This could be what Paul is alluding to - it’s a bit graphic, but it underscores the weight of what Paul is talking about. Sin is a kind of death - it’s the sort of struggle that goes on in our hearts which, if left unchecked, will eventually destroy us from the inside out. That’s what Christians mean with the word ‘sin’.
A second concept we have to understand is the concept of salvation. If the point of Christianity was to get people to stop doing bad things, then what exactly are we being saved from? In the popular imagination, heaven is a place “good” people (i.e. people who haven’t been that bad) go after they die. But if doing good things gets you to heaven, then we are back at our central problem: why are we gathered here, today, on Easter? Why does Jesus have to die and rise from the dead if doing good things gets you the ultimate reward?
Again, Jesus presents a more complete view. There are two main components to “being saved” according to the teachings of Jesus. First, we have to understand what we are being saved from. The common answer to this might be hell, or something like that. Our simplistic cultural understanding thinks that to be saved means to avoid punishment for your sins. This is another thought that, while not entirely wrong, is not exactly what the Bible presents. Jesus does want us to do good things and to stop doing evil things, but it’s an incomplete thought. The better, more complete answer is that we need to be saved from our sin, using the definition we just outlined. The contention of Christianity is that Jesus came, not to just make sure we don’t do bad things anymore, but to conquer sin, the very sin that makes its home in our hearts, and to conquer the death that sin brings along.
This is why belief (not just doing good or bad) is so central to the teachings of Jesus. We’re not dealing with something that exists on the surface - sin resides in the heart, and the heart speaks the language of belief. Jesus says it this way:
John 3:16-22 NLT
16 “For this is how God loved the world: He gave[g] his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.
18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil. 20 All who do evil hate the light and refuse to go near it for fear their sins will be exposed. 21 But those who do what is right come to the light so others can see that they are doing what God wants.
Here, in Jesus’s own words, we see that ‘doing good and not doing evil’ misses something fundamental. Without belief in Jesus, without the recognition that He is the Son of God, and without the presence of the Holy Spirit deep in our hearts, we aren’t living our lives in the light. We’re not living in truth. Our hearts are the same and the problem remains.
Jesus came to save us from sin. That’s the first thing to understand about salvation, what we are being saved ‘from’. Second, we should understand what we are being saved ‘to’. If we look at the teachings and life of Jesus, it becomes apparent that his concern is not simply to rescue us from sin and its consequences. He wants to move us forward to something. We don’t have to look too far into his teachings to see his intention. Jesus’ very first message went like this:
Matthew 4:17 NKJV
17 From that time Jesus began to preach and to say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
The kingdom of heaven is at hand, or ‘has drawn near’. The heaven in the mind of popular culture is some far away place, which may or may not involve clouds, harps, and pudgy cherubs. The heaven that Jesus talks about is a kingdom, and it’s here and now. It’s not only for some time after your life on earth, and it’s not something out in the ether.
We see this idea repeated in a very prominent piece of scripture that many of you might be familiar with. In one of Jesus’ teachings about prayer, he gives us what has become known as the Lord’s prayer. It reads this way:
Matthew 6: 9-13 NKJV
9 In this manner, therefore, pray: Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
It’s right there in the middle of one of the most recited pieces in all of the Bible: “Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jesus’ vision of what it means to be saved is for you and I to be a part of his kingdom, a kingdom that starts here and now and not in some distant land at some undetermined time. Jesus seems to think that belief in him should materially change our hearts, and that should materially change the way we live. It should change the way we even think about life.
A book of the Bible called Acts records what happened to the very first followers of Jesus. In Acts, those who believe in Jesus and follow his teachings were often referred to as, “followers of the Way.” The idea was that following Jesus was so essential to their lives that it became their identity. They did lots of things - some were fishermen, others repaired tents, others were doctors. But no matter what they filled their days with, they were followers of the way. They saw themselves as part of Christ’s kingdom; as part of God’s family.
Not only does ‘being saved’ mean we are part of God’s family, it also means that we can experience the kind of life and be the kind of people that God intended from the beginning. We can know a life full of meaning, purpose, love, grace, and truth because of the saving work of Jesus. In short, we can become like Jesus. We can grow into his character, know God personally, and build deeply satisfying and important relationships with those around us. There is a whole different kind of life that God has for us - it’s a life built on love and not on fear.
The term usually applied to this idea is ‘transformation’. It’s the idea that, as the Spirit of God and our spirit interact with each other, we are changed to become more and more like Jesus. The Bible teaches that for those who have placed their faith in Jesus, they are:
2 Corinthians 3:18b NKJV
being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as [b]by the Spirit of the Lord.
How is sin conquered in our lives? Through the ongoing transformation of our hearts. And this transformation starts when the spark of belief is born in our hearts and makes its way into our conscious minds. The Bible says it this way:
Romans 10:9,10 NLT
9 If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
10 For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.
This brings us back to Easter and shows why it is so important. The story we remember on this day is that Jesus, God in the flesh, came to earth to live among us and show us what life could look like - to be our teacher and example. Then, in order to give us a way out of the sin in our hearts and make this new life possible, he went to the cross and died in our place. In doing this he conquered sin. On the third day, he rose from the grave. In doing this, he conquered the consequence of sin, which is death. Having died and risen from the dead, he completed the work against the darkness which destroys us from the inside out. Now, we have access to the kingdom of God in a way that was simply not possible before.The early Christians said it like this:
I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,
and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.
What I just read to you is known as the Apostle’s Creed, and it’s thousands of years old now. The death and resurrection of Jesus being the access point to God is an ancient belief now. But you’d never know that if you only understood what the culture teaches about Easter. Here's the plain claim made by the New Testament: If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then there's no point to Easter. It’s just another holiday. If he did rise from the dead, then he is the Son of God and is the only way to salvation. This was recognized from the beginning of the faith:
1 Corinthians 15:16-20 NLT
16 And if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. 18 In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! 19 And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world.
20 But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died.
For many, this belief is a bridge too far. Many people believe that Jesus was a good and important teacher, or that he is an important historical figure. But those ideas don’t match the actual story being told, and they don’t rise to what that story requires of us. Make no mistake: Easter is about Jesus, who died and rose again. It’s about belief and transformation and life everlasting.
