Why do we celebrate Easter? It isn’t about bunny rabbits and egg hunts. It’s the most holy of Christian holidays because we remember and commemorate the #1 reason Christ came to earth to live as a man: to pay the sin-debt of all humans for all time.
But you have to become a Christian to receive this pardon.
Being a Christian is more than just believing in God; after all, the Bible says even the demons believe in God, and tremble.
It involves going beyond a mere intellectual acknowledgment of God’s existence. Becoming a Christian means putting your complete faith in God: agreeing with God when He says you are a sinner who is worthy of death and eternity in Hell; agreeing with God that even your best efforts to be a good person fall short of His standard; agreeing with God when He says His son Jesus made an acceptable atonement for your sins, on your behalf; agreeing with God that His way is better than your way.
The difference in just believing in God and having the kind of faith that saves you is like looking at a chair and believing it will hold you up, and actually sitting down in the chair expecting it to hold you up. Until you “sit down” on God’s grace, until you trust it to make you right with Him, until you trust it to take care of you in this life and the life to come, you aren’t truly a Christian.
This way is so radical that Jesus called it being “born again.” It really is like being born all over again, because you receive a new nature, one that is connected to God and wants to do the right thing…and is able to do the right thing.
This is what Jesus did around Easter nearly 2,000 years ago. He died the death we deserved to pay the debt we couldn’t pay (we already owed a death for our sins, but He had no sins to die for). And on what we now celebrate as “Easter,” he rose from the dead to show his power over death, and to show that Christians from all time would one day rise from the dead to live with God in the new heaven and new earth.
You can have that assurance of being right with God and having your eternal destiny taken care of, if you’ll only sit down in the chair of God’s grace.
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Sunday, April 08, 2007
Why Have Easter?
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