What Happened and What It Means

One of the striking things about Christianity is that it is not only a matter of ideas and beliefs and ‘notions’ – but that all of these are tied to history and events, to the creating and saving works of God, especially in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

“Christ died for our sins” – that affirmation is at the heart of the Christian gospel. “He was raised on the third day.” Those events, those historical facts, are heavy with meaning and significance that are spelled out for us via inspiration. And so the crucifixion of Christ for our sins tells us, unmistakably, how serious a thing sin is – nothing less that the sacrificial death of the Son of God could make atonement for it.

So sin is awful and evil. The applications of just this one idea are many, but now I think of what Spurgeon said, in relation to the Christian’s pursuit of holiness: “I cannot trifle with the sin that slew my best Friend. I must be holy for his sake.”

“He was raised on the third day.” The NT is filled with teaching about the meaning of the resurrection of Christ too. He was “appointed/declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection from the dead.” His resurrection marks him as the Lord of all, the one who is exalted to the highest place, given the title (Lord) that is above every title, so that in everything he might come to have first place. “Jesus is Lord.”

So Good Friday and Easter preach powerfully to us – they tell us that sin is serious, but even more that God so loved the world that He gave his only Son, and that this Jesus is such a great and gracious Savior. Easter tells us that Jesus is Lord, that his empty tomb is in fact the birthplace of the new creation and the coming kingdom of God. Forgiveness, justification, new birth, new life, sanctification, purpose, calling – all of these doctrines are descriptions of the realities initiated, caused and accomplished by the events of Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday.

And so they come to us, inevitably, with the calling and invitation and summons to respond in the faith that grasps the forgiveness Jesus offers as Savior and with a repentance that bows the knee to Jesus as Lord.