Resurrection, Reconciliation, Restoration

I can’t think of any bigger understatement than saying what we celebrate during Easter is ‘significant’. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus absolutely changed everything! When Jesus died and rose again – three days later – it reversed the centuries old curse of sin and death that was over all humanity.

RESURRECTION

Jesus fulfilled hundreds of impossible to fulfill prophecies about the messiah that had been written centuries before but the most amazing of all was that after three days in a grave, he was alive! What did this mean? In the history of the world no one had ever lived and died a sinless life. Jesus – God in the flesh – did.

In that instant the sin that we’re all born into was stripped of its power. Things on this Earth would never be the same. As John ends his account of Jesus life he says:

But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

His resurrection proved he was who he said he was.

RECONCILIATION

What does this mean today? It means absolutely everything! What Jesus did made a way to be free from the power that sin once held over us. So, where sin makes us strangers and even enemies of God, Jesus death and resurrection makes us sons and daughters of God.

This type of reconciliation had never been known and now it’s accessible to anyone who believes. In Romans 5:10-11 the Apostle Paul says:

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

RESTORATION

Not only did Jesus’ resurrection set into motion the reconciliation available to all who believe, but we now get to be agents of his reconciliation while we await the restoration of all things. Additionally, the book of Revelation tells us of this day that will come:

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.”