This is the first Easter sermon I preached in Armenia. I recall the surprising, even jolting enthusiasm and excitement with which the congregation stood and exclaimed at the end, “He is risen indeed!”
“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.” Easter is the day when those words are uniquely fulfilled! God did not simply love the world. He did not simply give his Son. In fact, by this God reached, achieved the whole desire of his grace: He met our ultimate, unimaginable need. He created a new day, one in which Adam’s children can walk with him again in friendship, without shame or guilt. He sent his Son. And he didn’t simply send his Son, but he gave him up for us. And he didn’t only give him up for us, but he received his Son back, too, risen, triumphant, clutching with his nail-pierced hands our salvation – the prize, the victory. Christ is risen! The stone which the builders rejected has been made the very cornerstone; it is God who did this and it is a miracle to us all! Only the Lord created this new day; only he gets the glory for it. Our job is to rejoice over it, to be thrilled with it.
Let no one think that this day, the day the Lord has made, is one simple day that will pass and be forgotten. No. The prophecy speaks not of a 24-hour day but of a new age. It’s the day in which God has made the rejected stone into the very cornerstone. He has made the rejected Christ into the very center of His whole plan and will and purpose and eternal relationship with us – Christ, the Resurrection and the Life. This day will never end, because Christ is risen forever. No one can wrest salvation from his nail-pierced hands; he has conquered sin and death. “It is finished!”, he cried from the cross, and now he sits at the right hand of the Father on high. Yes. He is truly risen.
What is this “resurrection”? Why is Jesus’ resurrection unique? Doesn’t the Bible tell us about other people who rose from the dead? Yes, God in his power raised others from the dead. There was Lazarus, for example, or the widow’s son or Jairus’s daughter. But the key thing is this: they all died again. That wasn’t resurrection in the ultimate sense. Jesus Christ is, so far, the only one in all human history who has risen in the true resurrection. He is the firstborn from the dead, never again to die.
No one here should think today that Easter is simply about “life after death”, that we Christians get all excited about Easter because it proves that death isn’t the end. That’s just wrong. There’s a vast, an immeasurable, difference between “life after death” as most people think of it, and resurrection. Those who don’t know Christ talk wishfully about “life after death”. But the followers of Jesus know there is a resurrection coming. We don’t rejoice over the mere fact that this life isn’t the end. God forbid! In fact, you could say we rejoice over the fact that this life is the end! What I mean is, God has put a definite end to this life, the old life, the life lived in a fallen, sinful world. In the death of Jesus, God closed the book on this chapter of the story. “It is finished”, Jesus cried. And in the resurrection, God unveiled the new chapter, the actual never-ending story; he gave birth, through the Son, to a new creation – redeemed, indestructible, full of grace and glory.
The apostle Paul tells us that Christ is the firstborn from the dead, the firstfruits of those who will rise like him, those who have a share in him. Therefore, we who have a share in Christ can shout together with Paul, “Death has been swallowed up in victory! Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?”
Jesus Christ says, “I was dead, but now I am alive forever, and I have the keys of death and hell.”
So for those who are in Christ by faith there is a sure victory, a glorious hope. He has made them new creations, children of God, as Jesus told the Sadducees (Lk. 20:36): “They can never die again, but they are like the angels, and they are the children of God, for they are the children of the resurrection.” The apostle Paul writes, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, all has become new!”
For this glorious purpose the Father sent the Son into our rebellious, dying world: to make a new creation starting in his very self, to become the first of many children of the resurrection, to freely bestow perfect, eternal salvation to each who believes. “For God so loved the world that gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
Friends, eternal life is not simply life-after-death; it is new life. It is the life which our risen Savior possesses within his very self and gives to whomever he wants (John 5:26): “For as the Father has life in himself, so he has given it to the Son to have life in himself.”
Because he is risen, because he is triumphant over sin and death, and because he is the very Son of the Father – “light from light, true God from true God” – he has the power and right to bestow this life on whomever he wills (John 10:28): “I give them eternal life and they will never be lost, nor can anyone take them out of my hand. My Father, who gave them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of my Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Because he is the Father’s beloved Son, in whom all the Father’s pleasure abides, we have confidence that we too are pleasing and acceptable in God’s sight – because the Father accepts us in the Son! “Our life is hidden with Christ in God,” the scriptures tell us. There is no safer place where our life can be hidden than with the triumphant, victorious, conquering, risen Son who sits at the right hand of the Father.
Jesus’ people don’t wonder about life-after-death, because in their union with Christ they have already died and new life already fills their souls in him. We aren’t waiting for life-after-death, but for the final revelation. The apostle Paul writes (Col. 3:3): “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God, and when Christ, who is your life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory.” This is our whole hope, and it is a sure, fixed, unmovable hope – because He is risen.
On this Easter day there is no more important question each of us must answer than the one Jesus asked Martha by the grave of Lazarus. Jesus said (Jn. 11:25): “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even if he dies, yet shall live. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
I ask you, “Do you believe this?” Perhaps you are not sure. Perhaps you have never taken the step of faith to receive him. He waits for you, He calls you. Through the Holy Spirit the risen Christ invites you into his fellowship, into the reconciliation of Adam’s children with God. He offers you grace – the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life. There is no more important question, no greater need in life, than this. For this, for you, the Father gave up his Son and then received him back into glory. He wants to receive you, too, together with his Son, through his Son, with his Son, cleansed by Christ, reborn in Christ, and a child of the resurrection and child of God, just as Christ promised. Don’t delay. Receive him and become a child of the resurrection.
And if you do believe with your whole heart, then you can say together with me, “Christ has risen! He has risen indeed!”
