FROM THE PULPIT: HE LIVES! OUR EASTER AND ETERNAL JOY

Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Alleluia! Alleluia! So ring out the voices of Christendom throughout the world today (the Eastern Orthodox bodies next Sunday) as we celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Today stands in sharp contrast with the mood of Good Friday as we consider our sorrow over the sins of which our Lord's head slumped in death on Calvary's cross.

There on the place called Golgotha, the Place of the Skull, we learn the price for our rebellion and sin as the gaunt and emaciated frame of the enfleshed Son hanged in shame and sorrow.

It is our sin that put Him there. We are the ones who shouted: "Crucify Him! Crucify Him!" It is our rebellion for which He was reviled and rejected by men. It is for our wayward souls that He was forsaken by God. It is for our lives that He died to give us life eternal. However, Good Friday was not the last word. Thanks be to God, for if it was, if Christ had not risen from the dead, then the believer is still in his sins and still under the wrath of God.

Today we learn in no uncertain terms, though, that God accepted the vicarious sacrifice of His Son for the sins of the whole world and that now, not even death itself could hold our conquering Savior. No wonder our joy is great this day. In Christ the terrible sentence we had brought on ourselves by our sin was visited and by believing in Him we are spared the judgment of God on sin.

The resurrection is the basis of the Christian's life and salvation and the source of his greatest joy. In the resurrection of our Lord we learn that the wages of sin, namely death, have now been overcome. Our Lord Jesus paid the ransom for our sin with the precious blood He shed on the cross. Through faith in Jesus we now have been given, not what we deserve, but what God desires to give to all men: pardon for sins and the gift of eternal life that is in Christ Jesus.

Our joy is magnified on this day because the "It is finished!" of Good Friday is punctuated with the "He is not here, but is risen!" By rising from the dead on the third day Jesus guarantees all our sins are forgiven us through faith in Him. Believing He died for our sins and rose from the dead on the third day we will share in the joys He has prepared for us by His death and resurrection from the dead.

The apostle Paul proclaims that Jesus is the first-fruits of the resurrection, that just as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. This is joy that fills our hearts this day: the assurance that though I the believer die, I will live because Jesus is risen and lives. Not only that, but according to the power by which He is able to subdue all things, I will in my own flesh, with my own eyes see Him and be with Him for eternity.

So confessed Job in the midst of his misery and suffering and so was his confidence as he longed for these words to be etched in stone: "I know that my Redeemer lives!" So also is every believer's confidence in the face of suffering, affliction, death, sorrow and despair: my Redeemer lives and because He lives He will give me aid in all the trials and temptations of life and bring me safely to His eternal kingdom. For, if death itself cannot even prevent us from receiving eternal life from the Lord of life, neither can the woes and sorrows of this age.

This is why the apostle Paul, who himself was well acquainted with suffering and grief, could write these rousing words of joy: "What then shall we say of these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

As it is written: 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

This is why our joy is heightened on Easter Day: the victory of Christ over sin, death and the devil is held before us as His glorious resurrection is proclaimed to us and applied to our lives. We who believe on His name know we share in His victory over the sorrows of this age and over death and the grave. The believer knows because He lives, their Easter joy is also eternal joy for every one who believes in Him has this joyous, unshakable confidence: they too will live and live forever because Jesus is just the first of many, the first-fruits of a great harvest which will glorify His name for all eternity. Christ the Lord is Risen Today! Alleluia! Alleluia!