Preparing Our Hearts for Easter

As a child, I loved reading the stories of the Bible.  Almost daily, I would pull out one of our ten, heavy, hard-bound volumes of Arthur Maxwell's The Bible Story collection.  The pages were thick and carried a distinctive musty smell.  The pictures always grabbed my imagination, conveying the emotion, atmosphere and purpose of the stories within each intricate image.  But, out of all the stories and pictures, the only one that drew me to tears was the story of Jesus on the cross.

In my childlike understanding of the story, I felt so sorry for Jesus and heartbroken because of the pain He endured.  However, my perception of the story ended there, and I was not able to fully understand Jesus, Easter, or the need for salvation until I was a teenager, independently studying the Bible for the first time.  Consequently, my concept of Easter became less about wearing a Spring dress and eating pineapple roasted ham because my heart was concentrated on celebrating the profound purpose of the cross.  From beginning to end, the Bible chronologizes the fall of man, the prophecies, life, death, and resurrection a Savior, and the ongoing call to salvation through Jesus Christ.  

Prophecy of a Savior

Within the first three chapters of the Bible in the Book of Genesis, the creation and fall of man takes place at the hands of Adam and Eve, creating a chasm between humans and God.  The rest of the Bible is a continuing story of God’s plan to offer restoration to the world through a chosen Savior.  In 2 Samuel 7:16, the prophet Nathan relays a message from God to King David, saying, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”  God’s promise tells us that He was establishing a divinely royal bloodline through David.  Another of the many Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, or “chosen one,” comes out of Isaiah:

Isaiah 53:3

But He was wounded for our transgressions,

He was bruised for our iniquities;

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

This verse and the context of this passage outline three very important things about the Savior.   It tells us that He would bear pain and death to pay the penalty of sin, and that He would be scorned, ridiculed and condemned in order to become Peace on Earth.  Most importantly, according to this prophecy and many others, His death would provide eternal life and fill the chasm between God and man.

Purpose of the Cross

The four New Testament Gospels tell the story of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, a descendant of David.  Within these books, we find parallels and confirmation from Old Testament prophecies that Jesus was the Messiah, and the conclusion of each book tells the story of how Jesus was plotted against, arrested, beaten, chastised, condemned, and killed upon a cross.  However, this was not just the death of a man, but the death of God for man.  Even Jesus stated in Matthew 20:28, “just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."  The purpose of the cross was not only for the Roman government and religious officials to execute Jesus as a penalty for claiming to be the Messiah, but it become an alter where God sacrificed His Son to pay for the sins of the world.  Amazingly, the cross, an instrument of torture and execution, has become something that means life to me.  When I look at the cross, I see the nails and bloodstains, but I also see a love offering and a victory that was won for me by God.  Symbolically, the figure of the cross extends vertically up to heaven and spreads horizontally out to the world, meeting at one point and one place in time.

Providence of Salvation

On Easter, while we remember the death of Jesus Christ, the true celebration is in His resurrection.  Because of His resurrection, Jesus overcame death and overcame the curse of death for the whole world.  Therefore, God has thrown us a lifeline through His Son, Jesus Christ, who is now the bridge that connects us back to God and back into eternal life.  In 1 John 5:5, the author states, "Who is it that overcomes the world?  Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God."  When we chose to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, we accept Him as our Savior and our lifeline.  In words best quoted from Jesus himself, He states in the iconic Easter passage John 3:16-17, “For God so loved the world that he gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.”

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