As Easter approached this year, I pondered details about Jesus’ death and resurrection that were obscure to me in the religion of my youth. For several decades Easter was, to me, mostly a non-event. Although I was drawn to the Christian celebrations I saw around me, inwardly I felt proud that I knew better than to believe a “pagan” holiday celebrated on Sunday had any spiritual importance. Sure, the resurrection happened, but it had no significance for me other than the promise that someday our bodies would rise from graves. Moreover, celebrating on Sunday negated whatever value there might have been in remembering the resurrection.
I was blind to the impact of certain recorded facts. For example, the plain reading of Luke 23:43 and 56 tells us that when Jesus died, His spirit went to His Father. Further, one thief who died with him could be confident that he would be with Jesus in paradise that very day. Yet for years I believed Jesus’ breath went to God while He honored the Sabbath by lying lifeless in the tomb, His personality non-existent, inaccessible to His Father until Sunday. Jesus might die, I believed, but Sabbath was eternal.
Moreover, I never saw that the anger and fear of the Pharisees was so great that they broke the Sabbath to plead with Pilate to secure Jesus’ tomb. They were terrified that, as He had said, Jesus’ tomb would be empty on the third day. They, the sticklers for the law, were so fearful of Jesus that they rationalized breaking the Fourth Commandment to strike a deal with the Roman governor (Mt. 27:62). By rejecting Jesus as the fulfillment of the law, they trampled on the law itself.
The event that takes my breath away today, however, is God’s ripping the veil between the Holy and the Most Holy Places the moment Jesus died (Mk. 15:38). At the moment He died, Jesus committed His spirit to the Father in the Most Holy Place—the presence of God—and God immediately accepted Jesus’ blood and sacrifice. At that very moment God notified the world that the full price for sin had been paid: He removed the barrier that separated us from Him.
Moreover, Hebrews 10:20 identifies the curtain God ripped as representing Jesus’ body. It was the promise of Jesus’ physical sacrifice—even before it occurred in history—that protected humanity from being destroyed by God’s holiness as a result of sin.
In an act our pastor Gary Inrig describes as “divine vandalism”, God ripped that temple curtain and declared the debt of sin between us and Him was gone. Something new was beginning—and on Sunday morning the unimaginable happened: having already shed the “blood of the eternal covenant” (Heb. 13:20), Jesus “abolished death” (2 Tim. 1:10) and revealed the heart of the new covenant: He had fulfilled all God demanded of us.
I am overwhelmed that because I have believed in the Lord Jesus, I am forgiven. I am sealed with the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:13-14), and I have Jesus’ resurrection life and the promise of future glory. Because of Jesus’ blood and resurrection, I have “crossed over from death to life,” and I will never be condemned (John 5:24; Rom 8:1).
Now I can celebrate! On this day I honor the Lord Jesus and praise Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for accomplishing within the Trinity all that is necessary for my eternal security. I go to church and worship; I smell the Easter lilies and eat Easter brunch with a house full of brothers and sisters in Christ—and we rejoice because we no longer scoff at Easter. Instead, we praise Jesus for His death and life, and we stand before God and call Him our Father.
Our prayer is that you, too, will rejoice in Jesus this Easter season. The curtain is ripped! The tomb is empty! He is risen! †
(Adapted from the editorial in Proclamation!, March/April, 2008)
- May 18–24, 2024 - May 16, 2024
- We Got Mail - May 16, 2024
- Should We Leave the “Isms”? - May 9, 2024