Introduction
I am sure that there are many articles written on Christians celebrating Easter. However, I would like to give you a fresh perspective on why Christians celebrate Easter.
Easter is a celebration of Christ rising from the dead but it is also symbolic of believers rising from their old life into their new life.
It is this new life perspective that I am going to share with you today and then begin a 7-day devotion on the Easter Holy Week.
Easter – The Time To Rise
Let us go back in time with our imagination. It is the early years of the church. A young woman, a former prostitute who found a dynamic and transforming relationship with the risen Jesus and encountered real love from His followers, steps into a cool clear pool of water and is about to be baptized.
She is surrounded by other women from all different paths of life and status in society. Tears flow down the faces of the people in the room and the warm ambiance of their smiles fills the place.
With a brief explanation of what is happening and a humble and quiet profession of faith from the girl, she is immersed in the water.
In the next moment, she arises from that watery tomb.
She arises.
Laughter, hope, electrifies the room as she begins her new life in Christ, no longer defined by who she was and the mistakes she had made in her life, but rather defined by who she now is and by whom she now belongs to.
2 Corinthians 5:17
New Living Translation (NLT)
17 This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!
Baptism has always been a symbolic representation of when the Easter story becomes our personal story.
We die on the cross with Christ when we turn from our sins and the mistakes we have made, we enter the tomb of a watery grave and then are raised up coming out of that watery grave beginning a new life in Christ.
Easter’s message and what is called “Holy Week” preceding Easter is relatively straightforward.
Because of what Jesus did on the cross, His burial, and His triumphant resurrection from the dead 3 days later, sin and death do not have a hold on us anymore. We are a new creation. We are born again by the amazing and abounding grace of God and His unfailing love towards us.
When we recognize and acknowledge Jesus as King and Lord of our life, we are taken out of the old kingdom that we were part of and placed into a new kingdom. We have a new and living hope. We have risen with Christ.
At Easter, Jesus did not rise to make bad people good. He rose to make dead people live.
This Easter, when many of us recite the Apostles Creed, we can say, “On the third day he rose from the dead”.
And we can speak from our hearts, “and this Easter, with Him I arise”.
Blessings to you all!
