Easter is the greatest season of the year for Christians. Easter is the season during which Jesus of Nazareth, God’s only begotten Son, provided a way of salvation for all who believe on His name.
During what we call Easter, Jesus became the Passover Lamb for humankind. He took on Himself the sins of the world, and He shed His blood on a cross to pay a once-for-all price for sin. Jesus died a cruel, agonizing human death and was buried in a human grave.
All of this happened during the Easter season, but Easter is not about death.
It is about life.
The Bible declares that on the morning of the third day after Jesus died, Sunday morning, the Spirit of God raised Jesus to life again. Man’s final enemy, death itself, could not hold God’s own Son. Jesus rose victorious. He conquered sin and death.
For almost 2,000 years, the message of the Christian church has been a declaration of victory and hope.
“But now Christ has been raised from the dead,” wrote the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:20. And because Christ lives, “all shall be made alive” who believe in Him.
The Christian message of victory and hope declares that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). This doctrinal conclusion is an echo of Jesus’ own words that He came into the world to save the world and that whoever believes in Him will not die but will have eternal life (John 3:16–18).
Jesus is the source of victory for believers.
Jesus is the Fountain of forgiveness from sin and the Provider of hope for eternity in the presence of God.
Easter is the core of the gospel compressed into events that transpired in a few hours — failure, forgiveness and future.
Around the globe, Christians celebrate Easter. Throughout the centuries Christians have celebrated Easter. It is a day filled with meaning like none other.
At the same time, Easter is the time of greatest criticism toward the Christian faith. The greatest criticism is that Christians dare believe “God was in Christ” as in no other. That declaration makes Jesus unique in all of history. What arrogance, critics say, to believe Jesus was any different from Mohammed or Buddha or other great religious figures.
Yet the Bible teaches that Jesus was unique. He was “the only begotten Son of God.” His birth was miraculous, for He was conceived in the womb of a virgin — a miracle of the Spirit of God.
Jesus is the One “who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6–8).
Jesus was unique. He was unlike any other. That is why He could do what no other could do, why He could accomplish a unique mission. And that is the other reason critics charge Christians with arrogance.
Christianity teaches there is no other way of salvation except faith in Jesus. Critics call this exclusivity the height of arrogance. They point to a few teachings about God found in other religions that are similar to the Christian concept of God. This proves that God is greater than Christianity and can be found in ways other than Jesus, they assert.
Not many argue the fact that God made Himself known to all peoples. The story of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:1–9) was a time when all people saw the truth of God.
But the people did not honor God, and as a result God confused their languages and scattered them across the earth, the Bible says. Obviously, they took with them some grasp of truth.
Talking about unrighteous people, the apostle Paul wrote in Romans 1:19, “Because that which is known about God is evident within them for God made it evident to them.”
Paul adds, “For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”
Of such, the apostle wrote in verse 25, “They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”
The shreds of truth sometimes found in other religions demonstrate only that humankind has fallen away from the truth and that all are in need of a Savior.
If Christianity were only one choice in a supermarket of religious beliefs, no one would criticize.
But faith in Jesus Christ is not one choice among many for having a right relationship with God. It is the only way.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through Me” (John 14:6).
Obviously, Jesus as God in human form is more than any mind can completely understand, but the message is still the same. Jesus is the only way of salvation and forgiveness of sin, because only in Jesus was God reconciling the world to Himself.
This Easter season Christians everywhere continue the celebration of God’s activity to redeem a lost and dying world. We celebrate God’s invitation to forgiveness and life eternal through faith in Jesus, the Christ.
We celebrate the hope that is within us in the knowledge that, because of faith in Jesus, we shall spend eternity in the presence of the one and only Creator God.
Is it any wonder that for Christians Easter is the greatest season of the year?
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