What is Easter really about?

What is Easter really about?

When it comes to the Easter story, I think a large proportion of people have heard the gist of it. We know there’s a guy called Jesus and He died on a cross. It’s a very strange concept when you think about it and some of you might be curious as to why we celebrate someone dying?
A man called James Bryan Smith writes in one of his books,

“They say all musicals can be broken down into ‘boy meets girls, boy loses girl, boy gets girl.’ What if you isolated one section, ‘boy loses girl’ and tried to explain the whole story with that single episode? Our understanding would be limited and distorted.”

James Bryan Smith

The same is true for the Easter story. We may not have heard the whole story – just parts – and therefore our understanding of it is limited. When taken out of context, of corse it sounds weird and pointless. Why do Christians celebrate Jesus dying on the cross? What is the whole story here? As it is Easter, I want to have a go at sharing the whole story.

In the beginning…
There was God and nothing else. So God decided to create the world and everything in it – and out of it. Could He have done that with a big bang? Maybe?
But despite how extravagant and beautiful the world was, it wasn’t enough for Him. So He created us. Why? To be His servants? To mindlessly be under His control?

1. Why are we here?

No. The very reason we exist is because God created us to love us. He created us to be His children and have a relationship with us. What do good parents do for their children? They take care of them, protect them, provide for them, give them lots of good gifts and love them with everything they have. And all they desire in return is for their children to love them back, be thankful and listen to them.

This is the reason we exist. Not to be slaves, but to be loved. He gave us everything! First of all He gave us Himself… to love us, protect us and provide for us. And on top of that He gave us our friends and family, our talents, the beautiful world around us, all for us to enjoy. Why? Because we are His children. And all He wanted in return was us, to love Him and each other. He didn’t decide to control us like puppets on a string. But instead He chose to give us our own free will and make our own choices. He wanted us to CHOOSE to love Him. Why would he do this? He is an incredibly powerful creator of the universe and we are a tiny species in comparison. So why would He create us to love us? The answer is this. Because His love is just as incredible as His power, and He wanted to pour it out on His children, on us.

He’s not just a powerful king, He’s a good King and we were special to Him. We are enough for Him.

But we are quite a forgetful species, and eventually we forgot who God was and what He’d given. So we turned our backs on Him and started trying to do things our own way. However, no one is perfect and we all started getting things wrong, hurting other people and ourselves.

2. What went wrong?

This is the part of the story that is hard to accept for most people. Because this is where we have to see ourselves as the ones who messed up, and we don’t like doing that. We like to defend ourselves. But we can’t deny that this world is not messed up! Betrayal, insulting, fighting, stealing, slavery, discrimination, cheating, lying, deceiving, hurting, abuse, murder, etc. This is what Christians refer to as sin. And whether we play a “small” part in that or a big part in that, we play a part none the less. We’ve all made mistakes. No one is perfect.

Here it’s important we remember that God is good! In fact He is so good and so holy that He can’t physically be around sin. He HATES it! So the more we sinned, the more we separated ourselves from Him. This is where people think God can sound extreme. He’s obviously not a good God if He didn’t accept us as we are? If He expected us to be perfect?
But you see the reason we were separated from God is because He IS good. If you buy some new white trainers and then walk in the mud and stain them, they are no longer white trainers. They’re stained. If our good God accepted the wrong stuff we do – stuff that hurts us and other people – how can He still be good? He couldn’t. He’d be blemished. Therefore in order to be good He can’t accept anything less. You might hear some people saying that He accepts it all because he loves us. But the fact He loves us is the very reason He can’t accept it. On the contrary, He HATES it because He knows the damage and the hurt it causes to everyone and everything it touches. Sin destroys people lives!

What He hated the most though, was that it took us away from Him. When we chose to go our own way, that meant a life – and an eternity after life – without our Creator. You need to be perfect to get to Heaven, so us trying to get to Heaven on our own was like people trying to jump to the moon. Some people jump as high as they can, some don’t try at all, but whatever the effort, no one is going to make it to the moon without someone taking them there. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t earn our way to heaven. We could try to be good but we would never be perfect. We weren’t going to make it.

So if this is the case, then surely everything we have heard about God being an angry God and judging everyone is true? Right? Wrong. Because the story didn’t end there.
If you read the bible, you see time and time again that our King constantly kept trying to make a way back to him. In fact, the bible is FULL of stories of God making a way back to Him, finally resulting in Him coming down and saving us Himself.

3. Why would he save us?

Jesus emptied Himself of all his glory and came down to our broken world in order to save us, to make a way back for us. He suffered some of the most inhumane brutality in history, ending with His death on the cross. Just watch ‘The Passion of Christ’ if you want an idea of what that looks like. He took the punishment that was coming for us so that we didn’t have to. Anything and everything that you and I have ever done or will do wrong, He took the punishment for it to clear our name, so we could be innocent again and able to come back to Him. He gave us a fresh start. A clean slate. The second Jesus muttered those words, “It is finished,” he made it possible for us to go to Heaven and have a relationship with him again

But why? If He hated sin, why would He do that? The answer is simply this. Yes He hated sin, but He loved us more! We are His children and He didn’t want to be separated from us. He wanted us home! He gave His life so that He could bring us back to Him and everything He’d given us. He knew who He’d created us to be, who we truly are and His love for US was unconditional. It was bigger than our failures. Ultimately, we didn’t understand the consequences of our actions, but He did. He loved us and he wanted us back, so he did something about it.

The best thing about this story is that it STILL doesn’t end there. Jesus didn’t stay in the grave. Three days later, He rose from the dead, defeated death itself, triumphant and bringing us back to our purpose of being His children that He loved, who know Him and love Him and each other. Without this part, the rest would be irrelevant. But it’s true, and there were many witnesses. There is more evidence than you think. He’s alive! This is the King we follow. This is why we celebrate! This is why it is good news! The King we follow isn’t dead. He was so powerful, that He defeated death itself and brought us home.

This is what Easter is about. A powerful, good God who loved us so fiercely that He gave His own life to spare ours and made a way back to Him. This is what Christians mean when they say they believe they are going to heaven. Heaven is where God is. We are going to where God is because we believe in Jesus and what He did, and we are forever thankful. We are not saved because we are trying to be good enough but because HE is good enough. We are not saved by our own efforts, but by His. It is a gift He has freely given us amongst all the rest He gives. But we haven’t just got heaven in the future, we can have life to the full with Him today! He is with us now.

4. What now?

We have the chance to go back to our original purpose and live a life of being loved by and loving God if we simply believe and choose Him. To turn away from whatever we were following and follow Him. It’s a decision that only we can make.

If we do decide to choose this, when we understand who Jesus is and what He’s done, a feeling of gratefulness comes over us where we want to serve Him and give Him our whole life. And Jesus says the way we can do this is simply by loving others and telling them about Him. That is His heart. For us to know and love Him, love others and help them know Him too. I mentioned this in ‘The Fourth Secret to Happiness,’ but loving others fills us with a joy that nothing else can really give. It is a source of happiness and purpose for sure!

I made that decision for myself officially when I was 14 years old, and I have never once looked back. Life is still full of ups and downs but I have Jesus who loves me unconditionally, who protects me like He always has and always will. He has given me life to the absolute full. I may not know where the ride of life may take me, but I know who I’m riding with. It’s not even just me, but all my friends and family who have also accepted Him. We can see all the good things He has given for us and all He continues to give to us and we will be forever thankful! There are no words to express how amazing He is. There is no greater love. And we will always remember. That is who my God is, and this is what Easter is really about.

If you would like to give your life to God, you only need to pray. You simply have to say that you know you’ve messed up and are sorry, but that you believe Jesus, the Son of God, came down to die in your place and rose again. Pray that you want to give your life to follow Him from now on. That’s it. If you do decide this, please feel free to contact me. I will be very glad to chat to you about it.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but shall have eternal life.

John 3:16