The Easter Rising

On this day that some branches of Christendom call Easter Sunday, it is so great to remember the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God, and Saviour of the world.  To think that apart from His sin-bearing love for the world, we’d all be lost and undone. 

And when I think that God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.

When Jesus died on Calvary, it wasn’t for any sin of His own, but for my sin, my vileness, my rebellion.  He died to take it away, which is what the Lamb of God came to do (Jn.1:29).  It is utterly amazing.  Charles Wesley got the import of what God did in Christ when he wrote “’Tis mystery all! The immortal dies, Who can explore His strange design.”  What an unusual way to redeem mankind!  How can the immortal die?  It baffles our understanding.  The eternal Son of God compressed into a human body, and then taking the full rigour of the law against us as God’s wrath was poured out on Him.  Why?  He did it for you and for me.  And He did it because He loved us.

That’s why we celebrate the resurrection of Christ every Sunday – resurrection day.  We meet to worship the resurrected Lord every Sunday.  This is the Lord’s Day.  And we rejoice in it. 

We also rejoice because given our mortality, when Christ died, death died with Him.  For believers death is dead.  Now that’s something to shout about, is it not?  Death has been defeated once and for all.  There is no fear in death because Christ conquered death.  And His victorious resurrection on the third day confirms that fact.  Death is defeated.  Death is dead. 

For the Christian, death is little more than the doorway through which we pass to get into His nearer presence.  But for the unbeliever, death is still the “king of terrors” (Job 18:14).  Even believers do not look forward to meeting this king, despite knowing that he has no hold on them.  But it is still not something we welcome, whenever and however it comes.  If it holds some fear for Christians, what must it not be for unbelievers?  It is “the king of terrors;” and as one old preacher added, “The terror of kings.”  Death frightens everybody, however high or however low they might be.  We have only ever met it second hand (in someone else’s death), but one day we will meet it personally.  For the believer it will be like meeting a chained animal, able to go so far but no further; for the non-Christian, he will meet it head on and be everlastingly destroyed by it.  It will not be a pretty experience.

But the Gospel brings us this tremendous assurance that death has died in the death of Christ.  It also assures us that when Christ was raised from death by the power of God, He signalled the final and eternal defeat of this last enemy, death. 

Therefore we celebrate what God has done for us in Christ.  It brings a “joy inexpressible and full of glory” into our hearts (1 Pet.1:8).  It fills our hearts with the deepest gratitude to God for “so great a salvation,” (Heb.2:3).  To think that the Lord Whom we have offended so deeply by our sin has found a way to forgive us and accept us as His children is utterly amazing.  To realise that when God looks at us, He sees us as clothed in Christ’s perfect righteousness, not as we are in our sins.  To recognise that God has found a perfect way to pardon us and still remain just and holy is mind-blowing.

I think the trouble with many of us is that we are far too familiar with the Gospel record that we miss the sheer thrill of what was done for us in and by Christ.  We need to sit down and allow these facts to sink in.  They are astounding.  We have lost the enormity of what God has done for us in Christ.  And our prayers reveal it!  We can thank God in mere words only, and no heart.  I think we need to discover how to utterly abandon ourselves to this Christ Who has done such astonishing things for such worms of the earth.  Only when we have abandoned ourselves to Christ will we see “what it meant for Him the holy One to bear away my sin.”

Perhaps, these few rambling thoughts will help us do that.  May it be so.

Margaret has had a good week, all things considered.  Her back pain is still quite acute and if this was healed, she’d be in very good form.  Her love for the Christ of the Gospel is deepening by the day, and how she loves to hear it preached with clarity and passion.  And how angry she becomes when such a glorious message is delivered in a lifeless way.  She shares Puritan Richard Baxter’s complaint of ‘the living word of the living God being preached by dead preachers to dead congregations.’  It is obscene, and both of us share that.

To hear her sing the old Gospel hymns in praise to the Lord is heart-warming.  And her concern for those known to her that are still dead in their sin is obvious.

You know, there is surely no better comfort when facing cancer than not just to know a few things about Christ or to have made a decision at sometime in the past, but to know Him experientially, know Him in the heart, and be assured of our sonship of God.  Knowing Him is much more than knowing about Him.  It is an intimate relationship with Christ that is spoken about, a relationship that is productive and deeply satisfying.  Margaret knows Christ in this way.  Do you?  What better comfort can anyone have than such knowledge!