Easter celebrates Jesus’ resurrection, vindication
Every year, Christians around the world celebrate Easter. What do they celebrate? According to the Urban Dictionary, Easter is “the holiday celebrated for the day in which Jesus’ pet rabbit mysteriously laid eggs and painted them strange colors to hide them from the…Jews”.
What does the Bible have to say? The Bible can comfort you or crush you … it depends how you read it. Is it mainly about what you must do or is it mainly about what God has done? Take, for example, the story of David and Goliath, the story of a teenage boy with no military experience who slays a gigantic warrior with a slingshot. If this story is mainly about you, then the moral is, “God favors the underdog, the bigger they are the harder they fall. Have courage, go out and slay the giants in your life!”
Such an interpretation shows it’s possible to know Bible stories and miss the story of the Bible. In order to grasp the larger meaning of this story it’s helpful to understand the biblical principles of substitution and imputation.
From the biblical narrative we learn Goliath was the undefeated champion of the Philistine people. For 40 days, he challenged a man from among the Israelites to fight saying, “…Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us…” Hearing this, all the Israelites were terrified, and no one would fight Goliath, except David.
David and Goliath fought as substitutes for their people, in place of their people. If David wins, his victory is imputed to his people … when David wins, his victory becomes their victory.
The story of David’s victory points beyond itself to a greater, final victory. According to the Bible, our real enemy isn’t a giant, but sin and death.
Sin isn’t a Republican problem or a Democratic problem, it’s a human problem. The Bible says, “all have sinned (and) the wages of sin is death.” Sin has been likened to a debt and justice requires debts be fully paid.
How does this relate to Easter? Jesus is the central figure of the Easter narrative. He claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah or Christ, in the Greek. Messiah means chosen one or anointed one. Everyone expected that when the Messiah came, he would be loved by God, he would have the favor of God. Yet Jesus dies on a cross —abandoned and cursed by God. How can he be crucified if he’s really the Messiah?
Theologian Timothy Keller explains: “The resurrection, (when) paired with the cross, makes the cross make sense and opens all of scripture.”
His resurrection proves God was pleased with Jesus, that God did love him and bless him. And if God loved him and was pleased with him while he was on the cross, that can only mean one thing: he was cursed for somebody else’s sins, not his own.
Just as the prophet Isaiah foretold, the Messiah would come as a substitute for his people and would be “pierced for our transgressions, he would be crushed for our iniquities, the punishment that brought us peace (with God) was upon him and by his wounds we are healed.“
Scripture teaches that Christ came to pay a debt he didn’t owe for those who owed a debt they couldn’t pay. At Easter, Christians celebrate because through the cross, their great debt has been fully paid and through the Resurrection their future inheritance is assured.
At Easter, Christians celebrate the vindication of Christ. Jesus conquered the grave — his final victory over sin and death is imputed to his followers, by faith. His victory is their victory. His resurrection, his life, portends their resurrection and their eternal life.
Ever since the coronavirus hit our shores, Americans have been on an emotional roller-coaster. Our emotions come and go, God’s love for us does not. At Easter, we are reminded what it cost God to love us: “…God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Amen?