My husband and I told our 4 1/2 year old daughter this year that there is no Easter Bunny or Santa Clause. To some, that may sound mean and heartless, which makes me laugh, but let me tell you why we did it. The real reason why Christmas and Easter are celebrated is so much more exciting than these silly made up fairy tales. I began to imagine how Jesus Christ must feel as He watches all of us scramble around buying things and hyping up our children for make believe creatures on days that were intended to remind us all of his great love for us by remembering the story of what He did to save us. Some people argue that the dates that we celebrate these holidays are not historically accurate and to tell you the truth, it is probably true, but that doesn't bother me. The purpose is to take some time to remember.
To some people, Christmas is the most important holiday of the year. To me, Easter is. You see, on Christmas we celebrate the miraculous and immaculate birth of Jesus Christ. On Good Friday we remember his crucifixion. Then comes Easter, the day that we remember His resurrection from the dead 3 days later. If you have never really been that "into church" or if you know that there is probably a God, but you just aren't sure of who He is or have never heard the story of Christ that is known as "The Good News" or "The Gospel", please take a couple minutes out of your day to hear it now. Read on.
God's holiness is so perfectly pure, that he simply cannot be in the same place as sin. God and sin are like oil and water, they just don't mix and they never will. The old testament of the bible represents all of the books of the bible that were written to describe life before the birth of Christ. In these books we read that the only atonement for sin was a sacrifice of death. People used to sacrifice animals at the alter to compensate for their sin. This was commanded by God, through the instructions that he gave Moses for all of God's people.
Can you imagine that? Every time you sinned, if you truly loved God and desired to obey Him, you had to go through this ritual of offering an animal. Not only was this just disgusting in my opinion as a "girly girl," but it was a sacrifice. You see, people lived off of the food that their flocks provided to their families. They made their clothing from the wool of their sheep and the skin of their herds. This was a monetary sacrifice just as much as it was a sacrifice of time and energy. I imagine there were times where they thought to themselves, "God didn't see that sin too did He?"
I wish I could explain all of the details of this time frame, but that is why the whole old testament was written with so many books. The details go on and on and statistically most people's attention span will only allow them to read until right about now, if you are even still with me. If you are, please continue. This story is the one thing in my life that I am the most passionate about. If I died today and you all attended my funeral, I would be ok with that as long as at the service this story was told. So how about you just read the whole thing now so I can stick around a little longer, lol...
God's passionate love for you and me motivated Him to do something about this distance between Him and us. He knew that no matter how many animals we sacrificed, we would never be able to compensate for every little evil thought that creeps into our minds.... envy, jealousy, lust, greed, etc. So He decided to take care of it Himself. He sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to be born as a human. He lived a perfectly sinless life all of his years on earth. He was humble, gentle, loving and wise. He was also bold, honest and brave. He never once thought an evil thought or did anything without a pure and good intention.
He came knowing that his purpose was to represent what it meant to live the way that our Heavenly Father desires for us to live and then to die a criminals death although he had never committed any sin. He became the final sacrifice for sin, once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Never again will animal sacrifice be required in order to be right with God. Because of this sacrifice, now, all we have to do is repent from our sin to be right with God and believe, based on the sacrifice of Christ for our sins, that we are forgiven and have new life in Him. It's important to understand that "repenting" and "apologizing" are not at all the same. Repenting means you confess your sin AND turn 180 degrees around facing the opposite direction of that sin and you RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN AWAY FROM IT AND TOWARDS GOD. When you truly repent, you know that you might slip up again in the future, but you will try with everything in your being not to go near the place that will cause you to be tempted.
Making the choice to believe in what Christ did for us is as simple as allowing a creditor to cancel the debt that we owe them. Essentially God is asking you, "Do you want to keep trying to earn your salvation or do you want me to give it to you for free?" Do you want to keep making payments on a bill, or do you want your creditor to say to you, "You know what, our system is showing that your account has been paid in full. Would you like that sent to you in writing?" And just to make sure we get it, He gives it to us in writing with the scriptures in the bible. This decision should be a "No Brainer" right?
Thanks to Jesus Christ, salvation is granted to us not based on our past successes or failures. It has nothing to do with our percentage of "goodness". (Since God's percentage of goodness is 100%, we would all fall short anyway.) It becomes a simple matter of deciding whether or not to allow God to give you this gift which He so passionately prepared for you over 2,000 years ago.
This story would not be complete without mentioning what happened 3 days after He was crucified. This is the best part: God the Father raised Jesus Christ's physical body from the dead. This fact was proven by many encounters that He had with people for several days. He walked and talked with many people on the earth at that time. A disciple named Thomas, doubted it was really Jesus, so the Lord allowed Him to place his hands in the wounds that Jesus still had from being nailed to the cross and pierced in His side. He provided Thomas with evidence that he was not a ghost, but His body had literally been raised back to life from the dead.
The most exciting part of the story is this... Through faith in Christ, we have access to that same power that resurrected Him from the dead. He has given us a divine promise that if we will accept this gift of salvation by confessing and living out true genuine FAITH in Christ, we too will spend eternity alive and in the glorious presence of God. We will no longer live in our earthly bodies, but we will have new heavenly bodies that do not experience physical pain. He will wipe away every tear from our eyes and we will never cry again.
Having knowledge of this amazing good news, I cannot help but ask:
"Who's coming with me?"
"You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart." -Jeremiah 29:13
