Easter: A Recap on Why It Matters

I love holidays, but Easter has to be one of my favorites.

Mostly, I love the meaning of the holiday itself. Isn’t it fitting that Jesus rose from the dead to give us new life during the spring?

To summarize the biblical history of Easter, Jesus Christ was crucified in ancient Israel around two thousand years ago and rose from the dead three days later. Christians across the world celebrate the day He rose, but the why it happened is the best part of the story.

Starting way back at the start of the Gospels (the first four books of the New Testament in the Bible), Jesus is born in Bethlehem, a small town in Judea in ancient Israel. Baby Jesus is the promised Messiah, the Savior God promised to send to earth after Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden four thousand years before Jesus was born (depicted in Genesis chapters 1-3).

From the moment Adam and Eve sinned for the first time, God had a plan already worked out to save all of humanity. Adam and Eve aren’t the only people who ever sinned, just the first ones. Since then, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Because of our sin, we cannot come to God, who is perfect and holy. He cannot be in the presence of anything unclean.

That is us in our sin. Like everyone else, I am not perfect. I mess up, I do or say the wrong things. I have a laundry list of past mistakes and ones I will continue to make. Everyone has things they’ve done wrong or are ashamed of. No one is perfect, so how then can we come to a holy and perfect God?

The answer is Jesus.

God promised to send His own Son to earth to bridge the gap between us and God. One man sinned (Adam) and caused the rest of the world to fall into sin. One perfect sacrifice (Jesus) bridges the gap where Adam fell away from God.

Jesus walked this earth about two thousand years ago, completely God and completely human. He was perfect; He never sinned. His entire reason to be on this earth was to die so we could be with God.

Romans 3:10-12 states that there is not one righteous person on earth. Therefore, no one is good enough to come to God on their own. Let’s face it, everyone can be selfish, proud, angry, bitter or jealous a thousand times a day. All of these are sins that separate us from God, as well as sins that most people label as “big sins”: murder, stealing and abuse. What would an Almighty God who cannot be in the presence of sin want with us?

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). We might be dead in our sin without Jesus (Ephesians 2:1), but that’s entirely why Jesus died for us! We cannot make our way to God through anything we do or say, even if we claim to be a “good person”.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9). No one can work their way to God. Think about it: if God cannot be in the presence of sin, how could we possibly get to Him? Not one verse in the Bible talks about doing good works to outweigh the bad ones (I read the entire Bible multiple times — every verse — and never saw this mentioned once). Instead, as I have already stated, we are dead in sin apart from Christ, there is nothing good in us, and James 2:10 tells us, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”

Go back and read all of the law this verse is referring to back in Leviticus. This is the law that we would be required to follow in order to get into heaven.

Solution: Jesus.

When Jesus came to earth, He kept the entire law perfectly because He is perfect. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe that He rose from death, then we are saved (Romans 10:9). Jesus is perfect so we don’t have to be!

As to Easter, Jesus atoned for our sins on the cross, which is the Christian-esque way of saying He took away the faults of everyone who believes in Him. He died physically, so we don’t have to die spiritually, and we can live in heaven with Him forever. One of my favorite parts of the Easter story is directly after Jesus died on the cross. In the temple in Jerusalem where Jesus died, there was a heavy curtain separating the worshipers from what was called the Holy of Holies, the place where God’s presence was, as we were still separated from Him before Jesus’s death. At the very moment Jesus died, the heavy curtain split down the middle, a picture of us now having full access to God through Jesus.

Jesus said before He ever went to the cross “…I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father (God) except through me” (John 14:6).

The best part of Easter is three days later when Jesus rose to life again, proving His authority over everything, including death itself. If He never rose, then we wouldn’t have this hope because death itself would still have reign over Jesus. This proves it doesn’t and fulfills every foreshadowing told through generations up to that very moment.

After four thousand years of promises of a Savior, of being promised reconciliation between God and man, Jesus came to fulfill this. He died for a broken world and people who both love and despise Him. He died to take away sin we might never even know we committed in the moment. He died and rose to make sure that we as fallen people can be with God and have a hope and a future.

Also – it’s FREE to accept Jesus’s gift, no experience, references or resume required.

Easter is the best news of all.