What Easter means to me
This past week was one of the most important weeks of the year for any Christian. The Easter week is always a time of reflection for me. Starting with Palm Sunday, I am always in awe of how the whole week continues to progress. Who celebrates a man and wants to make him king, and then a few days later calls for the same man to be crucified. It just boggles my mind. The people in Jerusalem laid out their clothes and palm leaves on the ground for Jesus to ride over. Get that, their CLOTHES! They were ready to make Him king. This is on Sunday and come Friday they are yelling for Pilate to kill Him and set free a murderer. There is a Musical that was being performed in Germany this week, that came out the first time a year or two before we moved to Canada. It was called “Wo warst du?”, in English “Where were you?”. It asks the viewer the question of where were you when Jesus was crucified. Would you have been one of His disciples, absolutely struck by fear, who ran away? Would you have been one of the women who followed Jesus everywhere He was taken during his suffering? Would you have been one of the Pharisees who started the whole proceedings to get Jesus killed? Or would you have been one of the people who not a week earlier were celebrating Jesus and now yelled “crucify him”? I ask myself that question so often. I want to think that I would have been there among the women following Jesus, crying and begging them to stop, of course not understanding at the time what was really going on. But would that really be the place you would have found me if I was alive at the time? I don’t know.
I catch myself sometimes thinking a few times about what I want to share on this blog. If I share my faith the way I want to share it, is it going to offend anyone? Is someone going to think less of me? Then I think how selfish and absolutely wrong it is of me to think like that. Jesus went on the Cross for me! He DIED for me! He gave up EVERYTHING for ME! And I can’t even share what that means to me because I am scared what people may think of me? How twisted is that? I mean when you follow social media or media in general these days, you find a lot of times that people ridicule Christians for their beliefs. I guess that is one thing I am scared about. But at the same time I want to ask, why is it okay for everyone else to openly share their belief and convictions but its not okay when it comes from a Christian?
Over the last 4 months I have learned so much about Jesus and His better sacrifice as we call it in Ladies Bible Study. The study that we have been going through focused on Hebrews (the book in the Bible) and how it shows the difference between the Jewish belief system and the new belief system Jesus brought, as well as how exactly He fits into it. The Bible speaks so much about Jesus in the old Testament and giving promises that were fulfilled by and through Jesus, but so many people don’t see that.
Isaiah 53:3-7
“3 He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man os suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. 4 Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities;the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth, he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”
This passage was written around 700 years before Jesus was even on this earth and it just about explains word for word what happened on Good Friday. If you just think about that for a minute, 700 years! This passage also makes up the lyrics to one of my favourite songs that Annika introduced me to when we first met at the bible school.
What people don’t see is that by Jesus going to the cross and becoming that perfect sacrifice, there is no need for further sacrifices. There is no need to follow the Mosaic law anymore because Jesus set us free from it. He traded His life, for our life. He traded His life, to set us free from having to bring sacrifices to atone for our sins. If you have ever studied the Mosaic law or even read through some of the laws you will find, that some of them are sheer impossible to fulfill. Let me give you and example.
Deuteronomy 22:11
“Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together”
This one is one that would be nearly impossible to do in todays time. There is so many different laws like that, that just show that people can’t live by this law and not fail. That was what it was designed to do, to show humans that without God its impossible to live such a life. Jesus came and become the better sacrifice, so that we would be set free from having to do animal sacrifices. I like the analogy of a bridge over a deep canyon when it comes to explaining salvation and our separation from God. When man sinned for the first time, the canyon was created with a massive divide between God and Man. God gave the Mosaic law but every attempt to cross that canyon fell short and didn’t make it to the other side. Jesus needed to build the bridge and the tools he needed for it were 2 wooden beams and 3 nails. By Jesus, being perfect and without sin, becoming the perfect sacrifice, he built the bridge so we can come to God. This message of Easter is always something that touches me so deeply.
So when resurrection Sunday comes along, all I can do is praise God and thank HIM for this amazing gift. Since without the resurrection Jesus scarifies wouldn’t have been complete. So one of the best verses in the bible is
Mathew 28:6
“He is not here. He has risen from the dead as he said he would.”
