The Weekly Word: Easter is all about you

By Rev. Daniel Larson, Cross Lutheran Church

“Happy Holidays!”

We don’t usually say this in the month of April, do we? However, this is the time of year when we celebrate perhaps the most important holiday of all … Easter.

Why? It is because Easter is all about you! But wait a minute! Isn’t Easter about Jesus?

Yes, Easter is not so much about colored eggs, candy and the Easter bunny; it is about Jesus. But Easter is also about you!

At Easter we celebrated that Jesus rose from the dead. This miracle is certainly worth celebrating, especially since Jesus suffered so much and died in such a cruel way.

But Easter is so much more than that. In fact, knowing the significance of Easter is really a matter of life and death! You see, Jesus could have chosen not to die. He had the power to stop his crucifixion.

He had the power to walk away from his murderers and from those who cried out, “Crucify him!” He had the power to leave earth and return to heaven where he came from.

But Jesus willingly chose to live as one of us, but never sinned, not even once. He was determined to suffer and die. Now, why would anyone leave paradise in order to do that? It is because Easter is all about you!

God’s son looked down from heaven, saw us in all our sinfulness and wickedness, and chose to love us anyway. We have not loved God perfectly with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength. We have not loved our neighbor perfectly as we love ourselves.

These are the reasons why God should have made us pay the penalty for our sins; to pay with our own lives for our transgressions against him. Instead, God chose to send his sinless son into this world to take our place under God’s law; to take our sins upon himself and to suffer and die as our substitute.

And the best part of all this is that Jesus came to life again! He did not stay dead. And because Christ conquered death for us, this means that we too shall live after we die.

Oh yes, we will still have to endure our physical death, but just like Jesus, we too shall arise from our graves, and through faith in him, will join him in heaven.

This is why we can say that Easter is all about you!

Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19).

Trusting in him as your savior from sin, he assures you that you will rise from the dead and live forever with him. What a wonderful savior you have in Jesus!

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We invite you to worship with us at Cross Lutheran Church every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. and to learn more about the kind of life you can have with your living redeemer.