Let us rejoice in Christ’s resurrection by gathering together and boldly and publicly proclaiming to all the only gospel of the risen Savior, and that He and He alone is Lord.
Every year, Easter provides a special occasion for us to reflect upon the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, a subject of which we should never grow weary. The implications and ramifications of Jesus’ work on Calvary are unsearchably deep, so we must always guard against thinking that we have properly comprehended all that there is for us to glean.
The Individual
Our modern age tends to emphasize the self, the individual. Social media encourages self-aggrandizement—self-help, self-promotion, and loving oneself are all wildly popular in our culture. This at times tends to leak into our manner of reading Scripture and can affect the things we emphasize.
Typically when contemplating the Passion of Christ, we stress the personal aspects of it—Jesus died for my sins, He is my personal Savior, was raised for my justification, and so on. Now, this is all very true and praiseworthy, and it is proper to meditate on these realities. However, in doing so we must not miss the grand, universal, and cosmic consequences of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus died, yes, for individuals and for His people collectively, but He also died and was raised to inherit a kingdom.
Authority To Rule
When God placed Adam in the garden of Eden, He gave to him authority to rule and have dominion on His behalf. Adam would have continued to exercise this blessed authority had he remained obedient to God and vindicated the word and commandments of God, yet Adam, of course, failed in this endeavor and he was subsequently expelled from the kingdom that was in Eden, leaving himself and all his posterity under the curse of sin and death. Christ on the other hand came as the second Adam, tasked with the very thing that the first Adam was unable to do—to vindicate the word and rule of God against His adversaries.
The promised reward to be inherited by the Son upon the completion of this work was a kingdom—rule, dominion, authority, and a people for His own possession. Jesus, in His living of a perfectly sinless life, fulfilled all the righteous requirements of God’s law and in His atoning death, He defeated the adversary, crushing the head of that ancient serpent, as was His prerogative to do. And when He emerged from the grave on the morning of the third day, His work was confirmed. He had accomplished all that was required of Him and death itself has been conquered, having lost its sting forever.
How We Celebrate
As we celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection this Easter, let us bring to mind the fact that Jesus has indeed defeated our sin and delivered us from death but in so doing, He has also established a kingdom of abundant life, having been anointed Lord and King over all. And all men everywhere are called to submit to Him as Lord, to repent of their sin and live by faith in the one who died and was raised.
Let us rejoice in Christ’s resurrection by gathering together and boldly and publicly proclaiming to all the only gospel of the risen Savior, and that He and He alone is Lord.
