2 April 2017
I dunno about you guys, maybe it is because I am getting older, but it
feels like we have just celebrated Christmas.
And now it is Easter already.
Time flies when you are getting old.
Christmas and Easter are always linked together. But for most of us, Christmas is always
celebrated in a grander way than Easter.
Christmas is like the climax at the end of the year. Whereas Easter is just another long weekend
of second-rated celebration somewhere in the month of April. But do you know that if there is no Easter,
Christmas would have no meaning at all?
Whenever the early Christians preached Christ, they preached about the
empty tomb. They do not talk about
Bethlehem at all. In fact, two of the
gospels, Mark and John, does not even mention anything about the virgin birth
of Christ. But the resurrection of Jesus
is constantly brought up again and again in every part of the New
Testament. Without the resurrection,
there would be no Christianity at all. In
Romans 4:25, Paul says that Jesus was delivered up for our trespass and raised
for our justification. Christ’s death on
the cross for our sins was so complete, so satisfactory, that God affirmed the
Son’s righteousness by raising Him from the dead, demonstrating His power and
victory over sin and death!
During Easter, we are also reminded of another Chinese festival, Cheng
Beng, where most Chinese would visit the tombs of their loved ones. It reminds us of our mortality. That from the moment we are born, we start to
die.
Death is a curse upon God’s perfect creation. Romans 5:12 tells us that just as sin entered
the world through one man, Adam, and death through sin, death came to all men,
because all have sinned. We die because
of sin. Sickness and old age are merely
symptoms of the one great cause of death, which is Sin.
When Jesus rose from the dead, he broke the power of sin & death
forever.
Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though
he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25~26)
What Jesus is saying here is, death for the Christian is not the end. It
is merely the continuation of life into the presence of God. Death holds no terror for the child of
God. That is what Paul meant when he
says that death has now lost its sting, and the grave has lost its victory. For to live is Christ and to die “is gain” (Phil
1:21)
And one day, when Jesus comes again, we will be given a new and
incorruptible body, scripture tells us. What
will our new body be like?
What was Jesus’ resurrected body like? He could enter into a room without opening the door. The disciples were able to recognize him and
communicate with him. He could also eat food together with the disciples. And the Bible tells us that when he appears we
shall be like him (1 John 3:2),
which
means our new glorified body that God will give us one day will be similar
to the resurrected body of our Lord.
which means we will still be able to
eat! And we like that, don’t we?
Not only that. We will see our loved ones again who have died in the
Lord. Our loved ones who have died in the
Lord are not only a part of our past, they are also a part of our future!
Because He lives, I can face tomorrow
Because He lives, all fear is gone
Because I know, He holds the future
And life is worth the living just because He
lives!
