Why Do We Praise God At Easter?

     Most of us have a general concept of why we praise God at Easter, at least those of us raised in a Christian culture. It’s the greatest day in all of human history. The day Jesus rose from the grave, and proved to all those who would repent and put their trust in Him that we will one day rise from the dead too. How often do we really contemplate what all that means? In fact, let me challenge you to search out your heart and think about what Easter represents to you. When Easter comes to your mind, is the first thing you think about chocolate bunnies and colored eggs? Or is it about the day your sins were paid for, and eternal life was guaranteed to you?

     I love Easter eggs, and even love watching the kids go on Easter egg hunts to find plastic imposters filled with candy. Something about Easter eggs instantly brings me back to early childhood memories. I don’t mind eating a few chocolate bunnies either. But is that what Easter is about? Certainly not! In fact, it absolutely infuriates me to see how paganized and commercialized our most sacred Christian celebration has become.

     Although I think it’s okay to enjoy some colored eggs and chocolate, Easter is not about any of that. It’s about the day our Lord rose from the dead, as the first fruits of all those throughout history past and history future who will be saved. In the words of the Apostle Paul, “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” 1 Corinthians 15:20 (NKJV).

     It’s the day that God proved to us two major things – as if He had anything to prove to us! First, that Jesus was in fact God in the flesh, whom the grave could not possess, “because it was not possible that He should be held by it.” Acts 2:24b (NKJV). No mere human being ever rose from the dead. Sure there have been cases of people coming back to life after being medically declared dead, but not on the third day of being dead!

     The Apostle Paul described Christ’s deity like this:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

Colossians 1:15—18 (NKJV).

     Jesus Himself told an elderly Apostle John, “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death.” Revelation 1:17b, 18 (NKJV). This same Jesus whom we celebrate at Easter, was not merely some pitiable man who was unjustly put to death. He is the everlasting God, who created all things, and deserves preeminence in all things. Furthermore, because He holds the keys, He is the one who controls whether each person goes to Heaven or Hell. Jesus described Himself like this, “I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.” John 10:9 (NKJV). It’s probably important then to know what His criteria is for us to enter His pasture, right?

     The Second thing God proved by the Resurrection, is that there is life after death. At the final resurrection pictured in Revelation, we see every person who ever lived, resurrected in the flesh and standing before God, “And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.” Revelation 20:15 (NKJV). Jesus repeatedly described this lake of fire as a place of “outer darkness,” where “[t]here will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew 8:12b, 22:13b, 25:30b, Luke 13:28a (NKJV). Please be aware too that this lake of fire is eternal, which Jesus described as being “where ‘Their worm does not die [a]nd the fire is not quenched.’” Mark 9:48 (NKJV) (quoting Isaiah 66:24b).

     The names written in the Book of Life then are those who will enter Heaven for all of eternity. Jesus assured us of that with these comforting words, “My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” John 10:27, 28 (NKJV).

     We can only make it into that Book of Life one way. The Apostle Paul said it like this, “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Romans 10:9, 10 (NKJV). Those of us who during our lifetime, repent from our sinful ways by confessing that we have fallen short of God’s standard of perfection, and put our full faith and trust in Jesus Christ, specifically believing that He took the exact penalty each of us individually deserve when He died on that cross, we will be raised in glorified bodies. Just as Jesus was on that Easter morning 2,000 years ago. Moreover, we will have our names written in the Book of Life forever!

     That is the apex of human history. When everything in the world as we know it will be utterly changed forever. As the Apostle John recorded:

     Now I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away … And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

     Then He who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.”

Revelation 21:1a, 3—5a (NKJV).

     I think people minimize the importance of the resurrection because they either don’t really believe it happened, or they don’t really think it was all that important. I definitely fell into the second camp for most of my life. I knew it was an important part of history, but I really didn’t think it needed to have a significant influence in my life. Both of those false conceptions, however, will lead to the dreadful reality of an eternity in Hell. So if you fall into either category, please take some time to consider what I have to say. There really is an eternal Heaven, where Jesus Himself will wipe away every tear, and there really is a Hell where all those who are not in the Book of Life will end up gnashing their teeth in the anguish of lost opportunity and past sins, forever.

     Our world is so screwed up in the way we think. We have been given so much evidence for God’s existence, and His plan for mankind, but we constantly reject what God has shown us. In the parable Jesus told about the rich man and the beggar Lazarus, Jesus illustrated this exact point. The rich man, whom Lazarus begged from during life, found himself in Hell while Lazarus was in Heaven. The rich man then became the beggar, pleading with Abraham to warn the man’s brothers to repent and turn to God saying, “‘father Abraham … if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But [Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’” Luke 16:30b, 31 (NKJV).

     The phrase “Moses and the prophets” refers to all of Scripture at the time, what Christians call the Old Testament. Jesus was making the point that God has revealed Himself over and over again to us through the history and prophecy we have recorded in Scripture. However, our nature is to reject it in favor of some false reality that sits better in our sinful minds. Of course, Jesus was also prophesying that people would refuse to believe even though He would come back from the dead! The Apostle Paul warned the Church at Colosse (located in what is now Turkey) to watch out for that tendency of ours when he wrote, “Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.” Colossians 2:8 (NKJV).

     It’s very difficult to see the miraculous truth about Easter because our nature is to not believe it. So the only way we can truly understand and appreciate why Easter is the greatest day in all of history, we need to forget what we think we know, and understand what happened to mankind from God’s perspective and where we are in God’s eyes. To do that, we need to go back to the first chapter of Genesis.

     In the beginning of time as we know it, God made the first two human beings in perfection, and in a perfect world. There was no death, disease, hunger, oppression, or pain. There was only pure joy, all the time. There were also no false ideas about how they got there. They knew their Creator with firsthand knowledge, having regular communion with Him. The author of Genesis recorded for us that after creating mankind, “[] God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good.” Genesis 1:31a (NKJV).

     Contrast that description of how God viewed His human creation in the beginning, with how the Apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, describes mankind relating to God now, “And you … were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works.” Colossians 1:21a (NKJV). In addition to being God’s enemy, Paul teaches us that in God’s eyes, none of us are good people:

There is none righteous, no, not one;

     There is none who understands;

There is none who seeks after God.

     They have all turned aside;

They have together become unprofitable;

There is none who does good, no, not one.

     There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Rom 3:10b—12, 18 (NKJV) (see also Psalms 14:1—3, 53:1—3, Ecclesiastes 7:20, Psalm 36:1).

     How did we go from being viewed by God as very good, to being alienated and enemies of God and unprofitable? The answer to that question is that the human heart is wicked from the start, and as the passage from Romans above states, we have no fear of God in our eyes. Beginning with Adam and Eve, the human race has been in constant rebellion against God.

     In describing God’s decision to destroy the earth with a flood, Genesis records, “every intent of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually.” Genesis 6:5b (NKJV). In case you’re thinking that this comment from Genesis pertains only to the people from the pre-Flood era, many generations after the Flood Jeremiah wrote, “The heart is deceitful above all things, [a]nd desperately wicked.” Jeremiah 17:9a (NKJV). Jesus acknowledged this too when He said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness.” Mark 7:21, 22 (NKJV).

     The bottom line is that man’s heart is by nature evil. In fact, the Bible says that you are so wicked, that you deserve to be separated from God in Hell for an eternity. I know you don’t believe it, but either you are right, or the Bible is right. God warned Noah even after the Flood, “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth.” Genesis 8:21b (NKJV). So from the moment we are born, we are storing up for ourselves the due penalty for defying God.

     The Apostle Paul explained it like this:

But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath … [] to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil.

Romans 2:5a, 8, 9a (NKJV) (underlined emphasis added).

     Are you self-seeking, preferring to obey unrighteousness? I bet you don’t think you are. Unless you are a true follower of Christ, saved from the curse of Adam and Eve by letting the truth of the Gospel penetrate your hard heart, you probably will insist that you are a good person who does not deserve the penalty of Hell. In fact, you may even think you deserve accolades from God for the good that you’ve done. If you think this way, please understand that you are going against every word of Scripture! All the Scriptures I’ve quoted for you above, and that which I have not quoted, say the opposite.

     The entire Bible is the story of how the human race has consistently, beginning in the Garden, hardened their hearts and rebelled against God. Choosing to ignore what He instructed us to do, which is simply to submit to His rightful authority over us. This rebellion festered to the point that God destroyed the entire earth with the Flood. Yet even after the Flood, while Noah was in fact still alive, mankind came together at the Tower of Babel in unified defiance against God, to prove that they did not need God. That spirit of rebellion and defiance exists in all of us even today.

     Consider this simple dilemma, do you seek to serve God every moment of your life, or do you seek to serve yourself? What do you have to say about all the times you have taken God’s name in vain, disobeyed your parents, told lies, taken things that didn’t belong to you, looked with lust, got angry for no good reason, or coveted? Obviously you weren’t putting God first when you did those things, violating God’s law.

     I realize that you don’t think it’s a big deal when you tell a little lie, or when you didn’t do every single thing your parents told you. I know that you don’t even think a little lust here and there is a big deal. After all, these things are only human nature, right? I can’t agree with you more. But the thing I’m trying to get across is that our nature leads to eternal death! The Apostle Paul could not have been clearer when he said, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 (NKJV).

     Our sins, no matter how trivial to us, are rebellion against God. They are the results of a self-seeking hard heart that obeys unrighteousness. Do you really believe that a person who thinks their sin is no big deal deserves to stand in the presence of a holy and perfectly righteous God?! God doesn’t think so, and He writes the rules. Look at what the Apostle Paul warned us regarding our sin:

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

Romans 1:28—32 (NKJV).

     The entire human race has rebelled against God, and He turned us over to that rebellion by allowing free will to reject him if we wish. Don’t get me wrong, I am thrilled that God chose to give us free will. Can you imagine God forcing us to love and obey Him? That wouldn’t be love at all! It would be tyranny. Nevertheless, it’s that same free will that has resulted in our own condemnation, because none of us have chosen to live for God in obedience to Him, but rather all of us have chosen to live as we see fit, for our own pleasure and satisfaction. Therefore, in God’s perspective, we are fallen creatures undeserving of the right to stand in His presence, but rather fully deserving of God’s judgment for rebelling against Him.

     But then there’s Easter. The Apostle John wrote, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” John 3:16, 17 (NKJV). Easter is not about condemnation, but love and forgiveness. Easter is the greatest miracle of all history. Far greater than when Christ healed various individuals throughout His earthly ministry, far greater than multiplying bread and fish to feed thousands, and far greater than walking on water. Easter is when God took on the attributes of fallen man, yet born miraculously to a virgin so that He did not inherit Adam and Eve’s original sin, all for the purpose of dying on the cross so that all who would repent from sin and turn to Christ through faith would be saved.

     Paul so eloquently described the Easter miracle to the Church at Rome like this:

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.

Romans 5:6—11 (NKJV).

     Jesus did not die for righteous people who deserve reconciliation. He died for sinners who deserve judgment. He took upon Himself the judgment stored up for sinners. In His own words, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick … For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” Matthew 9:12b, 13b (NKJV). Jesus offers His gift of salvation to everyone, “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9b (NKJV). However, not everyone will grasp this salvation. Only those who belong to Christ through being reconciled to God will be saved, and “if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His.” Romans 8:9b (NKJV).

     So now the question that we must answer is, how do we get the Spirit of Christ and obtain this reconciliation? How do we convert from being enemies before God by our sin, to being justified before God by the blood of Christ? Although we cannot do anything to earn God’s favor, we must respond to what happened at Easter. We can either reject the Easter miracle, and suffer the judgment and separation from God’s grace, which we deserve because of our sin. Or, we can humble our hard hearts before God, admitting that we have sinned and do not deserve His grace, and trusting that His Son took the penalty that each of us individually deserves on the cross.

     Paul explained this to the Church at Colosse, that we are saved when we repent from the sins of the flesh and trust in the work of Christ through faith, which is symbolized by the Old Testament ritual of cutting away flesh in circumcision and the New Testament ritual of cleansing in baptism:

     In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

Colossians 2:11—14 (NKJV).

     What should be clear, but maybe not, is that we are not automatically reconciled to God. We must be circumcised and cleansed in the spirit through repentance, which is turning from the rebellion, and trusting Christ alone for salvation, which is turning towards God. We must respond to Easter in order to be saved. Paul wrote, “It shall be imputed to us who believe in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.” Romans 4:24b (NKJV) (underlined emphasis added). Then we can have the hope that we too will partake in the resurrection of which Jesus, God in the flesh, was the first fruits, “[] if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” Romans 8:11 (NKJV). If however, the Spirit of God is not in you because you have not turned from your sin and embraced Christ by faith, Jesus warned, “you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.” John 8:24b (NKJV).

     Please do not casually celebrate Easter once a year. Biblically embrace Easter so that you can enjoy it for all of eternity. If you do, you will celebrate it every day of your life. If you reject it, just know that you will die one day, and you will stand before God and have to justify why you rejected His message and miracle of Easter. Listen to the writer of Hebrews, who implored, “Today, if you will hear His voice, [d]o not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” Hebrews 3:15, 4:7b (NKJV) (see also Psalm 95:7—8). If you hear His voice, do as Jesus commanded, “Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:15b (NKJV).