Two billion believers are going to celebrate Easter, and our calendar has several public holidays at easter. For many centuries, Christianity was an obvious part of society and people, today certainly displaced by secularization in western society. However, readers still want to preserve and remember their cultural and historical heritage, therefore this article is important. And many want to know what Easter is really about, it’s not just bonfires, Easter bunny, eggs and other things:
Crucified God – the message of Easter!
God dies on a bloody cross to reconcile man with himself, can it be more dramatic than that? It is love that drives this astonishing event, as it says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”. Here we trace the reason why Jesus voluntarily walked the path of suffering on the tree of the Cross, so that man should not “be lost but have eternal life”.
Let’s look back to the beginning. Man was created for spiritual and familial fellowship with God. She rebelled and wanted to be her own god; a poison of selfishness, sin and evil polluted human nature, something the world and its history clearly shows. A look in any newspaper becomes compelling. Sin is a crime against God’s commandments and will, and who has not, for example, lied, slandered, stolen, treated someone badly, been unloving or selfish. This poison gives an inner emptiness and dissatisfaction as man now came outside of what she was created for, contact and fellowship with the source of life was simply broken.
But, Jesus came to us. The Son of God painfully stretched out his hands on the Cross, as if he wanted to embrace the hole world, but rough nails pierced the hands and feet of the Savior, our sins Jesus took on like a giant magnet, yes, our sins was the whipping of the Romans that beat the Master’s back bloody and the hammer blow that fixed the Lord with nails on the Cross. God the Father let this happen, because the punishment was laid on Him. Jesus would deal with the “sin problem” and its terrible consequences once and for all so that every man could be forgiven of his sins and be reconciled with God.
Jesus himself took the penalty for our sins instead of us. It is, now as in a parable, if you committed a lot of serious crimes in the community and you stand in a court and are sentenced to be tortured and killed to atone your crimes, but, then someone steps forward in front of the judge and says “I take his punishment on me instead of him”, and you go completely free. Jesus did this for us so that we can be acquitted and pardoned on the day of reckoning and judgment, and have eternal life in Heaven.
We can not earn this salvation, by for example bargaining with God, it is impossible to erase our evil, selfish living with good deeds. Sin must be reconciled, the price paid in full and the punishment suffered in order for eternal justice to take place; This Jesus did with love for us on the Cross. Salvation is a free gift of God’s grace. We turn to God, acknowledge our need for Jesus and His salvation, and believe. Then, in this choice of faith and confession, the miracle occurs, man is born again spiritually with a restored relationship with God, a spiritual fellowship that fills us with peace and joy, a blanket of love over our frozen soul.
And a crucified God, Jesus on the Cross, who rose from the dead on the third day and lives says to us: “Welcome home my dear child…
Written by Peter Kujala from Evangelist Kalom Baptist Church for Sarajevo Times
