I can't imagine what it must have been like for Jesus' friends on that first Easter Sunday. They had watched as their friend was arrested, marched out to the place of execution and nails were driven through his hands and feet. Through tears they saw him breathe his final breath. They looked on as his lifeless body was laid in a tomb.
Yet some of their number had gone to the tomb to perform the burial rituals only to return with stories of a missing body, and angels proclaiming that Jesus had risen to life.
If the story sounds incredible that's because it is! Dead men don't come back to life. Jesus' friends knew that as well as we do. But then Jesus showed up. He spoke to them. Ate with them. Let them touch his wounds. They were convinced. Jesus really had risen to life and they were not going to stop telling anyone who would listen.
There are many good historical reasons for us to believe that all of this really happened and we may explore them in a future article. What I want us to consider today is why the resurrection of a man some 2000 years ago matters so much to us today.
What Jesus did by rising to new life was win a great victory which those who trust in him will share.
Last week we spoke of death as the ultimate expression of the brokenness sin has caused in our world. God's purpose in creating us was that we would live and enjoy him forever. Yet as we seek to create our own meaning for life, we push God's creative purposes for us to one side and find ourselves cut off from the source of our life. As the Bible puts it; "The wages of sin is death."
Had Jesus stayed dead that would have shown only that he was as guilty of rejecting God's creative purposes as any of us. If Jesus were guilty then his death could only have been what his rejection had earned and as a sinful man he could never have died in our place.
Yet the resurrection is God's declaration that Jesus had suffered as an innocent man. God could never allow death to hold the one who had lived in perfect accord with His purpose in creating him. The one who had repeatedly said during his earthly ministry that he was coming to "give his life as a ransom for many" could now be seen to have been telling the truth all along.
However the resurrection is more than just a personal vindication of Jesus. The reason that the risen Jesus is able to save those who are guilty is because his resurrection is a victory over sin and death and all that is broken in our world. Jesus has disarmed the king of all human terrors, death itself. He has shown that God is willing and powerful to overcome the damage which sin has caused in this world. I a world in which we live constantly with the reality that death puts an end to all life, Jesus shows us a life which puts an end to death itself.
2000 years on from that first Easter, countless millions from every corner of the world continue to find hope in the resurrection of Jesus. Why? Because what God in Jesus is the first glimpse of what he will do to all who place their trust in Jesus.
God will one day renew the world, reasserting his creative purposes and wiping out all that runs counter to them. crying and mourning and pain and death itself will be wiped away. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the first look at God's great restoration plan for his creation and it is to that topic that we will turn next week.
