Easter, Jesus, and the ResurrectionSample

To reduce the gospel to anything less than the resurrection of Jesus is to make it something it is not. Worse, it’s to miss what God has done and his good news.

If Jesus didn’t rise, Christianity is a sham. Or worse, a lie. Faith becomes pointless. We’re still in our sins. Future hope is dashed. Those who are dead are gone. The Bible says if we hope in Christ for this life only, we are pitiful and to be pitied more than all. Fools gathered in an institution, worshiping a lifeless lord, holding onto a lie while dying in our sins.

But Christ is raised from the dead. And that means everything!

Hear what the New Testament scholar NT Wright has to say: “Christianity, you see, isn’t a set of ideas. It isn’t a path of spirituality. It isn’t a rule of life. It isn’t a political agenda. It includes, and indeed gives energy to, all those things, but at its very heart is something different. It is good news about an event that has happened in the world, an event because of which the world can never be the same again. And those who believe it, and live by it, will (thank God!) never be the same again either” (1 Corinthians for Everyone, 206).

Today, read the Biblical hope about Jesus’s resurrection and just how central it is.