It’s not over! Yes, you read that right. We don’t return to life before Easter, because every Sunday, indeed every day, is Easter day for the Christian – there’s no going back. We are not caught in some pagan cycle of continual death and rebirth, but rather one of forward movement and progression, whereby having encountered Christ as Saviour, we live in the power of His resurrection.
The life, death and resurrection of Jesus brings us total forgiveness, cleansing, deliverance – total salvation, a salvation that rest’s in Christ’s work alone. Not only that but it also grants us the power to live a new kind of life, a life empowered to say no to sin, and bear good fruit to God, with a sure and certain hope of heaven.
As Paul puts it, in baptism we were baptised into Christ’s death, and just as He was raised from the dead, so we too have been raised to walk in newness of life – wonderful!
Paul said that knowing Christ, being found in Him, and knowing the power of his resurrection was everything, indeed he counted all that he previously knew as loss – and he knew an awful lot and had an impeccable religious heritage and experience, but he said, I boast in it no more, it has no value, for Jesus is everything.
If we look to ourselves we will fall into the trap of pagan spirituality, of the constant need for death and rebirth, and be continually coming to the end of ourselves and recommiting and renewing ‘our vows.’ That is to move away from the gospel, and bring us into works.
The writer to the Hebrews reminds and exhorts us to keep looking unto Jesus because He is the author (or founder), and finisher (or perfector) of our faith. And as he says a bit later, it’s not to blazing fire, darkness, gloom and tempest, with the sound of a trumpet and voice that caused the hearers to beg, ‘no more,’ that we come, but to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, who is giving us a Kingdom that cannot be shaken!
Yes, the death and resurrection of Jesus changed everything, and if you have encountered Him, your history has been permanently changed, along with your present and your future.
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