For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
- 1 Corinthians 15.16-19 (NIV)With the passing of Easter, we celebrated the death and resurrection of Christ. An odd celebration, to be sure, I don't know of any other religion that holds up the death of their head leadership figure like Christians do. I was at the Lincoln Road's Easter Friday service, and they did a good job drawing parallels between OT occurrences and NT ones. Such as Eden vs Gethsemane. And talked about a story that made the sacrifice of Christ a bit more "modern" and easier to understand. I wasn't at Lincoln's Easter Sunday service, since Simply had their first baptismal, so I didn't see how the finishing of the story went, but I've noticed that we often skip over the "so what" factor.
Why do we celebrate the death of this man? Why don't we look more carefully at Christ's compassion or teachings? People generally agree that Jesus is a good teacher. Why not talk about that? Paul talks about this in 1 Cor 15. He states that our faith is futile, and that we are to be pitied more then all men. What is he talking about?
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- Romans 6.23 (NIV)So sin and death goes hand in hand. In Genesis 3, God blocks the way to the Tree of Life because Adam sinned, and to prevent the sinning from staying with them forever, He prevented them from living forever. We sin (break the law), therefore the punishment (application of justice) is death. Death is the final word. Nothing came after that. In the OT, substitution with animals are allowed, but that required the continual sacrifice of animals, because we will always continue to fall short of God's standards.
In NT, Christ stepped forward as the sacrifice. So His death is important because we paid our punishment. His resurrection is important then, because sin and death are linked, and by surpassing death, Jesus surpassed sin. So if He didn't resurrect, then the system really hasn't changed, we still fall short of God with no way of making up for it. Our faith would be futile, and we would still be working our salvation.
Paul goes one step further. He says that if we don't have Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. There is no purpose in in prayer (without Christ, the connection between humans and God would be limited to a select few), or living a self-controlled, self-less life. Without Christ, we should be going for money and comfort because there is nothing after our time on earth, so might as well eat, drink and be merry, while we still can. Why be disciplined if we're all going to die anyway?
But there is more then this life. Christ has ensured it.
