There is a connection, but these days it is often forgotten, not known, or deliberately ignored. The secularization of much of Christianity, from the promotion of a social gospel (without Gospel) to consumerism (with Santa) at Christmas, includes the concentration on chocolate to mark the celebration of Easter.

In the newspaper was a list of what kinds of shops may legally trade on Easter Sunday, and just what they may sell. The rest will be breaking the law. Whatever guides that decision is somewhat incomprehensible, and frankly, quite silly. I may bet on the horses at the TAB, but I can’t make a sandwich to sell to another. So I can play but not work, make money through recreation, but not through a service to others (except in tourist “hot spots”). Sandwiches made prior to the day will pass, but not ones made freshly on the day. I sympathise with those who criticise the senselessness of such a law, but if they don’t want any law about Easter, then perhaps they should not claim the holiday (Holy Day) - nor increased pay rates for working it - either. Oh, but it is a good excuse for some kind of celebration, even forgetting the Christian significance, or rendering it innocuous by converting to chocolate egg eating instead.

For a nation of just 4½ million people, we in New Zealand manage to consume $(NZ)31,000,000 of chocolate at Easter ($7 each, including babies of course) and chomped through a whole $(NZ)383,000,000 worth in total last year. Many of us will eat far more than others as someone like me who, as a diabetic, has learnt to enjoy Easter without needing to eat chocolate which would do me no good… so someone else is eating my share! One of the biggest eggs on sale this year weighs 1 Kg and provides 22,400 kilojoules (5,350 nutritional calories) of energy - about 2½ times the daily energy requirement for one person. It would take over a day of walking, or 13½ hours of cycling, or 10 hours of jogging, or 7½ hours of swimming, to work it all off. Not for me… I’m too lazy for that! …or would, more likely, end up in hospital.

Now, the neglected connection… and of course, it has to do with new life.

Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?
(My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?)

Some of those standing at the foot of the cross where Jesus was nailed thought he was calling out to the prophet, Elijah. One of them offered him a sponge soaked in sour wine. Others suggested they wait to see if Elijah would come to save him. But again Jesus called out… and then he died.

Then we are told that the earth shook, rocks were split, tombs were opened, and the most significant event of all… the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, revealing the Holy of Holies.

The curtain between the Holy Place and the Most Holy Place (where no one was allowed to enter except the high priest on only one day of the year) was an elaborately woven fabric of 72 twisted plaits of 24 threads each. It was 60 ft high and 30 ft wide. The significance of this tearing apart was that, on the death of Jesus, there was no longer a separation between God and His people. Jesus had borne the powerful wrath of God for our sins, and fully experienced the hellish abandonment of God. The price was paid, the debt discharged, the way made clear for our legal righteousness before God.

This was no ordinary man, the soldiers and people at the foot of the cross conceded. The centurion, we are told, was filled with awe and said “Truly this was the Son of God!”

These are eye witness accounts. Not just one eye witness, but many.

But what happened on the third day - Sunday - was also remarkable. Despite Roman guards, a special seal, and a 2-ton rock obstructing the entrance, the confirmed dead, thoroughly embalmed (100 pounds of ointment and spices!) and well wrapped body of Jesus emerged alive from the tomb. Again, many eye witness accounts of his solid appearance. No wraith or spirit. He offered himself to be touched, and he ate a piece of fish to prove he was real. Even those who had been hostile towards him, and disbelieving, were convinced in spite of themselves.

So what am I to make of this?

I have a choice - either I can believe these accounts, or disbelieve them. If I disbelieve them, I have some serious problems to resolve. How otherwise to explain these accounts? There have been many attempts, but none of them stand up to rigorous reasonable, logical and forensic scrutiny. Indeed, the whole account, starting with my knowledge of myself and an examination of the evidences provided, has a certain coherence and credibility in relation to each other. For instance, I know I am far from perfect. I don’t know what I can do to rid myself of objective guilt - the reality that I frequently betray my conscience and break laws of all kinds - other than accepting the solution offered by the Jesus of Holy Scripture.

Jesus requires a personal commitment to Him if I am to accept His offer of legal righteousness before God. He bore my sins, and in exchange, I am imputed with His righteousness in the eyes of God. He makes all things new, and gives me a new life. This must involve a relationship. It is not a mere assent to the truth of these things, but an involvement with Him in the most intimate and personal of ways. He commands obedience - an obedience to His commandments to love God with all my heart, mind, body and soul. And in turn, to love my neighbour as myself. I am to love with Godly love, the unselfish and humble giving of myself to Him and to others. This is a very tall order, but it is a response to the great love He showed in giving Himself for me (and you) in this way. And that is just the beginning of the story… there is far more yet to come.

Easter Sunday. The celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. Many sceptics have become Christians while attempting to refute the Resurrection. To present all the evidences here would take too many words. The significance and explanations surrounding them have been debated strenuously, and the proof evidence presented continues to point to the only reasonable conclusion, namely, that Christ rose bodily from death.

To follow these evidences and the arguments every way concerning them, click on the following links. Go on, I dare you! Sceptics and scoffers beware. If you are prepared to give honest consideration to what you read here, prepare for (at very least) a seed of doubt to enter your disbelief.

Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh McDowell
Evidence for the resurrection of Christ by Peter Kreeft
Evidences for the Resurrection by J. Hampton Keathley III, M.Th.
Evidence for the Resurrection from “Contend for the Faith“, an Apologetics and Theology Resource.

A comment from Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Boston College:

The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into your heart before you answer.

What best to do with the Easter Bunny… and who thought babies didn’t eat chocolate?

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He asked his disciples to watch with him and pray. Instead, they fell asleep. This was the night of terrible anguish and agony, knowing as he did what was to come.

Just the physical pain on its own would have been enough. The flaying with a whip, its sharp pieces of lead cutting his flesh to the bone. His body already ripped and bleeding, the exhaustion of struggling to carry the heavy cross to his place of execution. The thick iron nails driven through the bones of his feet and his wrists. The lifting up so his body hung on the nails, each breath intensifying the pain. The most cruel torturous death. But there was more… He was innocent. Even so, he was mocked and humiliated, taunted and spat at. But still there was more… far more than just that. This innocent man was to bear the whole wrath of God which would be unleashed upon him.

So in the garden of Gethsemane he prayed, knowing all this. He asked that the cup be taken from him, but he knew that was not going to be. He had come for this purpose, and he would go through with it. “Not my will, Father, but yours be done.”

His friends could not stay awake to be with him one hour… not even one hour.

This past night we took it in turns, just one or two at a time. We came quietly and remained in silence, letting each other in or out of the chapel as the hours slipped gracefully by. There was no such cup for us to drink, our beloved master having already drunk it down to the very last drop. We watched with him in spirit, prayerfully remembering his terrible ordeal.

I stayed five hours, fully awake but mind and spirit there with him among the olive groves. I wondered… would I be like Peter and deny him too? But watching what it did to him, how could I, he who has since willingly borne what I would never now have to bear? He has done that in love, so where would be mine? No, it is not enough to say Thanks and just walk away. In the early morning Peter wept bitterly when the rooster crowed, and my heart went out to him too. The price was paid, the debt is discharged. I belong to him, he now owns my all. The words of the hymn put it well.

Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power;
Your Redeemer’s conflict see, watch with Him one bitter hour,
Turn not from His griefs away; learn of Jesus Christ to pray.

See Him at the judgment hall, beaten, bound, reviled, arraigned;
O the wormwood and the gall! O the pangs His soul sustained!
Shun not suffering, shame, or loss; learn of Christ to bear the cross.

(James Montgomery)

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Jesus was well and truly dead. He had been thoroughly scourged before being nailed to the cross - that is, repeatedly beaten and whipped with a 3-lash scourge that had pieces of bone or metal attached to the ends, tearing into the skeletal muscles to set the stage for circulatory shock. A crown of thorns had been pushed hard down on his head. Crude nails that were between 5 and 7 inches long and almost half an inch square had been hammered through his wrists and feet. The cross had been lifted upright such that his full weight had him hanging from it. Then after some time, when the soldiers decided he was dead, just to be certain they speared him through the ribcage, his right lung and pericardal sac and heart pierced releasing both blood and pleural fluids. Doctors tell us that just that wound in itself would have been fatal. Most unusually, his legs were not broken - but there was no need to do so as he was already undeniably dead.

Pilate required, and was given, official assurance that Jesus was dead. Any assumptions that Jesus was not dead after all that, and had only just swooned, fly right in the face of modern medical knowledge.

Later his body was embalmed in up to 100 pounds of spices and bound in bandages, these hardening as the spices and pastes dried. Even had he only swooned as some have suggested, and then woken up in the tomb, he was firmly encased. After an ordeal like that, who would have the energy to break out anyway? He was stuck!

The tomb had a huge stone weighing up to 2 tons rolled across its entrance on a carved downward track, a seal fixed across it, and a Roman guard set in place. The seal served to prevent any duplicity by the guard such that he might help in surreptitious removal of the body. Roman guards were beaten if they fell asleep on the job, even executed, and dead men for certain if they quitted their post. Everything possible was done to prevent a resurrection - Jesus coming out of the tomb - as the rumours of the prophecy (and the words of Jesus himself) had already circulated that such was going to happen.

But on the third day afterwards, the seal was found broken, the stone moved and the tomb empty except for the grave clothes. Opponents of Christ at the time have not disputed that fact. When the disciples proclaimed the resurrection, and the message of the Christians grew bolder and spread further, their oponents could have easily silenced them by producing the body - had they stolen the body. Indeed, a number of points refute the claim that the body was stolen, not least of them being the great number of witnesses to the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, a total of over 500 people in various situations and groupings, people of integrity and where there is no evidence to undermine their testimonies, and also disbelieving hostile witnesses who were subsequently convinced it was Jesus.

Examine the evidences yourselves and try to refute them. Click here.

“What things?” asked Jesus of the two down-hearted disciples trudging the road to Emmaus. Find out here.

Easter Sunday, the day of Resurrection! Time to grab the Easter Bunny and eat all those eggs! Well, isn’t that how we celebrate? That is how a geat many folks prefer to think of Easter, rather than be faced with the real story of what this day is about. Will you dare to look at the evidence concerning the events of around 2,000 years ago and consider the absolutely massive ramifications that they have… or will you just munch on the chocolate instead?

Previous Easter posts

Easter Sunday… the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ. Many sceptics have become Christians while attempting to refute the Resurrection. To present all the evidences here would take too many words, but a summary list of salient points to address include:

~ this event occurred exactly as predicted
~ the Roman seal was broken and the Roman Guard (4 -16 man security force) gone missing
~ the huge heavy stone (1½ - 2 tons) was moved away, having to be pushed up an incline
~ Jesus was not in the tomb, but his burial bandages were left behind
~ over 500 eyewitnesses saw him alive, including disbelieving and hostile witnesses who were subsequently convinced it was He
~ the lives of His followers changed dramatically and despite torture and death they did not recant

The significance and explanations surrounding each of these points have been debated strenuously, and the proof evidence presented continues to point to the only reasonable conclusion, namely, that Christ rose bodily from death.

To follow these evidences and the arguments every way concerning them, click on the following links. Go on, I dare you! Sceptics and scoffers beware. If you are prepared to give honest consideration to what you read here, prepare for (at very least) a seed of doubt to enter your disbelief.

Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh McDowell
Evidence for the resurrection of Christ by Peter Kreeft
Evidences for the Resurrection by J. Hampton Keathley III, M.Th.
Evidence for the Resurrection from “Contend for the Faith“, an Apologetics and Theology Resource.

A comment from Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Boston College:

The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into your heart before you answer.

Easter Saturday… the day in between. The shops are legally allowed to open today, so all those eager consumers may race to the malls to empty their wallets. But just in case you caught a note of something-or-rather in that, I’m on my way too. I have some Easter Eggs to get, and a quilt top to take in to be quilted.

Yep, that is it here, sitting folded on my cutting board, with the backing fabric to go with it. And please note the fluffy yellow chick that sneaked into the picture. How could I leave it out, this weekend of all weekends?

Now what happened that the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ has become a celebration of chickens, bunnies and decorated eggs? What on earth is going on here? Just how “PC” have we been scared into being now? When folk wish me “Easter Greetings” with pictures of the Easter Bunny, and tales of him trotting along with baskets of coloured eggs, and baby chicks in tow… what is that all about? Do they really know and don’t like to speak of it, or don’t they know, only kind of know, don’t want to know… but just go for the sweet treats instead?

Has anybody out there heard of “the wrath of God” ? One thing that our Creator absolutely is not, is a hot-head. But did you know that, in this post-Christian era where God has been sanitized to represent LOVE which supposedly cancels out everything else about Him, the word for God’s anger or wrath actually occurs more frequently in the New Testament than does any statement concerning His love or mercy? True!

His wrath is His response to all unrighteousness. It is vehement furious anger. It is fury. And it is directed to all unrighteousness and sinfulness of men. And who has not sinned? All of us have sinned! What, you think that your own little sins don’t really matter, that they can be brushed aside? Well, just think again!

Imagine the searing heat of the inside of our planet, and think how a volcanic eruption spews it forth high into the atmosphere, then down in rivers of molten lava. Imagine being caught up in that. Would you not burn instantly to a crisp? Your little sins put you right in the firing line of God’s fury, to be nuked by it as easily as though caught in a lava flow. And thinking of that, you are now in position to think of what the Crucifixion was all about. Think of that scourging Jesus took. Ribbons of flesh hanging from his bleeding back as the whip cracked through the air to cut him further to shreds without mercy, the huge coarse iron nails hammered through his wrists and his feet, hoisted up there in the searing heat, parched from thirst, each breath causing more excruciating pain, and the shame, shame, shame… the humiliation of this treatment for the innocent Son, King of King, Lord of Lords, very God of very God!

The Crucifixion was not about bunnies and cute fluffy chicks and decorated eggs. Get real, everybody! It was about the Son of God bearing the wrath of a righteous God, taking what is due to us for our sin - yes, even those tiny little seemingly harmless sins that only go to make us human. This is about propitiation, about atonement, about taking it all on Himself for us so that, if we make Him our Lord, seeking His forgiveness, we do not need to suffer this payment for our sin.

So how did bunnies, chicks and eggs get in there? You have probably been told the same thing I was… that the eggs represent “new life” which has something to do with resurrection, the victory of life over death. Yes, but don’t just stop there. Our culture has generalized the specifics, sanitized the message, nullified it, removed it from our minds. Sit down to a breakfast of treats tomorrow, but don’t forget what this is really all about. If you have not made Him your Lord, turned yourself over to Him in every which way, then get your head out of the sand and note these words of Psalm 7… for (sorry to be so blunt) they surely apply directly to you.

11 God is a righteous judge,
a God who expresses his wrath every day.

12 If he does not relent,
he will sharpen his sword;
he will bend and string his bow.

13 He has prepared his deadly weapons;
he makes ready his flaming arrows.

Yep, serious stuff. His arrow is aimed at your heart, and all it takes is for Him to move His finger. That is the real message of Good Friday… the bad news part. God’s fury is couched in His justice, but only if you have made your peace with Him, have taken part in His offer of salvation - salvation from the furious wrath of our holy God - can you truly take part in the good news that dawns tomorrow on Easter Sunday.

So, on this day in between, reflect on the real story of this Easter weekend. The Easter Bunny tells a tall tale, delivering decorated eggs with those cute little chicks in tow - but don’t be duped by fantasy at the expense of reality! And meantime, I’m off to the quilt shop. I have a quilt to be quilted. Happy Easter to you too!

Today is Good Friday. Why is it good? As a child I used to think it was good because we had hot cross buns for breakfast - lovely and spicey, warmed in the oven, butter melting and dripping down our chins. And it was a day off school. Perfect! But apart from that, I thought it was pretty bad that Jesus was crucified - that anyone could be crucified. How was that good? It should really be Bad Friday instead.

On the radio news this morning I heard that the Muslims in Auckland were complaining that all the shops had to stay closed today. It wasn’t fair on them since they were being penalized by having to observe a holy day from a religion which wasn’t their own. Well, tough! They knew before they came here that New Zealand is a country whose traditions are founded on Christianity, not Islam. If they don’t like it, they are free to leave and live in an Islamic country where Easter means nothing. I have no sympathy with such a complaint. Also, I am not asking them to attend Church. But if they can’t go shopping, they might like to pick up a Bible and spend that time reading the true story about the historical Jesus. As I have written about in a previous post, they are thinking He is someone else instead. Not so. The Biblical account of the historical Jesus predates their own version by a good 600 years, and is the actual eye-witness accounts of those who knew Him, lived with Him, listened to Him, and in many cases died for their belief in Him. To read about Him, it is to the Bible that one really must turn.

So on Good Friday our shops remain closed. I know that is an imposition on those who are not believers. They have to give up one day of shopping, a day of consumerism, a day of letting the moths fly their wallets. But to a child’s eyes, that is a small price to pay for those wonderful hot cross buns for breakfast!

It is Easter Sunday, the day we celebrate the real goodness of Easter, that makes sense of the Friday beforehand. Do you believe it was possible, that it could really have happened, that Jesus rose alive from His death? There is some incredibly strong evidence to support that it happened. If you don’t believe that it did, on what basis don’t you believe it? Have you actually investigated the evidence before making a judgement? Or are you simply prejudiced by your own uninformed scepticism? If you have not looked into the evidence, then do be honest about it. And think about this… that if Jesus did indeed rise alive from such a hideous and certain death, then that is something that needs to be taken pretty seriously indeed. There is far more to the story than just a plain simple response. If you have not already done so, then start checking out some of the evidence which can be found from here on. You could be in for surprises!

Are you someone who thinks that folk who lived around 2000 years ago were less intelligent than ourselves? Do you think they were easily duped, could not reason as well or as effectively, and that their minds had less processing power than do ours today? For one thing, I doubt that most of us could remember details anywhere near as well with our easy reliance on writing it down and storing it in various forms for quick and accurate retrieval. Without the need to memorize as folk did back then, our minds could be said to have become somewhat lazy, relatively speaking. And while memorizing doesn’t necessarily mean comprehension, there is still nothing to indicate that intelligence is greater today than in any other age of homosapien existence. Critics were just as astute and cynical, their reasoning just as precise, and their observations requiring particular attention to detail for reports and later accurate recall. Only the arrogant can waive aside the evidence that convinced so many back then and since that the man who died so hideously had truly come alive and walked free from his embalment and burial.

For the Resurrection to have any significance, Jesus had to be well and truly dead first. It must not be forgotten that He was scourged beforehand - repeatedly beaten and whipped with a 3-lash scourge that had pieces of bone or metal attached to the ends which would tear into the skeletal muscles setting the stage for circulatory shock. A crown of thorns was pushed on to his head. Nails that were between 5 and 7 inches long and almost half an inch square were hammered through his wrists and feet. He was speared through the ribcage, his right lung and pericardal sac and heart pierced releasing both blood and pleural fluids. Just that wound in itself would have been fatal. Most unusually, his legs were not broken - but there was no need to do so as he was already undeniably dead. Later his body was embalmed in up to 100 pounds of spices and bound in bandages, these hardening as the spices and pastes dried. Even had he only swooned and then woken up in the tomb, he was firmly encased. The tomb had a huge stone weighing up to 2 tons rolled across its entrance on a carved downward track, a seal fixed across it, and a Roman guard set in place. Pilate required, and was given, official assurance that Jesus was dead. Any assumptions that Jesus had only just swooned fly right in the face of modern medical knowledge.

Not only did He die, but Jesus also rose in the same physical body in which He died. There are many alternate explanations for the disappearance of Christ’s dead body, but none of them satisfy the facts of the case. Many sceptics have become Christians while attempting to refute the Resurrection. To present all the evidences here would take too many words, but a summary list of salient points to address include:

~ this event occurred as predicted
~ the Roman seal was broken and the Guard gone missing
~ the huge heavy stone was moved away
~ Jesus was not in the tomb, but his burial bandages were left behind
~ over 500 eyewitnesses saw him alive, including disbelieving and hostile witnesses who were subsequently convinced it was He
~ the lives of His followers changed dramatically and despite torture and death they did not recant

The significance and explanations surrounding each of these points have been debated strenuously, and the proof evidence presented continues to point to the only reasonable conclusion, namely, that Christ rose bodily from death. To follow these evidences and the arguments every way concerning them, click on the following links. Go on, I dare you! Sceptics and scoffers beware. If you are prepared to give honest consideration to what you read here, prepare for (at very least) a seed of doubt to enter your disbelief.

The content of Judah’s Journal is copyright. If you are NOT reading this on Judah’s Journal, then it has been copied from there and is re-published illegally - in other words, stolen. Those who would do that are common thieves and lack moral integrity. Judah’s Journal

Evidence for the Resurrection by Josh McDowell
Evidence for the resurrection of Christ by Peter Kreeft
Evidences for the Resurrection by J. Hampton Keathley III, M.Th.
Evidence for the Resurrection from “Contend for the Faith“, an Apologetics and Theology Resource.

A comment from Peter Kreeft, Ph.D., professor of philosophy at Boston College:

The historical evidence is massive enough to convince the open-minded inquirer. By analogy with any other historical event, the resurrection has eminently credible evidence behind it. To disbelieve it, you must deliberately make an exception to the rules you use everywhere else in history. Now why would someone want to do that?

Ask yourself that question if you dare, and take an honest look into your heart before you answer.

This past weekend in New Zealand we have been blighted with reduced trading hours - nothing happening on Friday, nothing happening on Sunday. It is all a bit of a pest for those who really wanted to go shopping on Friday and Sunday, and since we are a secular society, why inflict the observance of Christian holy days upon everyone in this manner? Well, I personally am not for inflicting Christian holy days upon any unbeliever, no more so than I wish to observe Ramadan, not being a Muslim. However, I do find it interesting that many unbelievers still expect to have those days off from work as paid holidays regardless, or if worked then paid double time with a day in lieu - a bit like wanting to have your cake and eat it? Well, I guess that is only human after all.

Lots of things are only human. I thought for quite a long time that most folks were basically good and decent types, and on the surface most of them still look that way. But there is good news and bad news about folks being only human.

The good news is that most of us actually are quite decent types, pretty much honest and reliable, caring, friendly and generally law-abiding. We mow our lawns, tidy our houses sometimes, sympathize with someone having a hard time, donate to charity, and try not to let the wind blow the supermarket trolley into other cars in the car park. We don’t tell big lies (well, try not to) and only little white ones occasionally, and don’t like to hurt people’s feelings if we can help it. Mostly we are not too bad - on the whole.

The bad news is that, as much as we might sometimes like to think of ourselves this way, we are not (strictly speaking) all that good either. Very few in their most honest moments would dare to swear they are perfect. Not many at all would consider themselves to be holy - maybe possibly “self righteous” occasionally, but not in all honesty actually righteous. Afterall, it is not humanly possible to be anything like that - not really, not when you accept that humans are fallible and sometimes do wrong things. So the bad news is that we fall short of being holy and righteous, or at least the epitome of whatever that is.

Ecclesiastes 7:20 There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins.

More bad news… Although it is not very popular to think of God this way, it is He who is the epitome of what is holy and righteous. Most folks are more comfortable with the idea that God is Love, and some even go as far as thinking that His unconditional love for us means that He doesn’t really mind very much if we are not quite as good as we ought to be. It is common thinking that God will overlook those little sins, the ones that make us only human but not really all that bad, and everything will be just fine regardless. This is where the bad news comes in… God doesn’t overlook anything. There is a bit of a problem. Certain things just don’t go together.

1 John 1:5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.

At some point in a person’s life, they get to make a choice. Even putting off making that choice is still making one regardless. You can not sit on the fence on this one. The choice is basically to walk in the light, or to walk in the darkness. There is no twilight in this analogy. It might be a bit more comfortable if there was, but ultimately you have to choose one thing or the other - no fence-sitting allowed.

This Easter weekend I couldn’t help thinking a lot about Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ movie. I guess those are appropriate thoughts given that Good Friday is all about remembering what happened to Jesus a couple or so decades short of 2000 years ago. That movie was terrible - it was both excellent and terrible at the very same time. I guess I had been taught the “sanitized version” from Sunday School onwards, probably because nobody really wanted to give little kids nightmares - and in a way that is quite understandable. But the sanitized version (which doesn’t have much blood showing, and you don’t feel the pain) goes nowhere near like the real thing, and the real thing is most certainly shocking and terrible. There are times that it is good to get shocked - when it brings you to your senses, helps you to appreciate the real message and so respond more appropriately to it.

There are lots of messages concerning Easter - the gen on what it is all about. To me it is pivotal to what Christianity is all about, what God is all about, and what our relationship to Him is all about. To exist and walk in the light of God, to have a restored relationship with Him (who does not overlook sin), and to become spiritually alive, we are entirely dependent upon His grace - His gift to us of new life in Him.

And here is the Good News from Golgotha…

John 3: 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Lots of folk these days will scoff that the resurrection of Christ did not take place, that people just do not “rise from the dead” (or else they could not truly have been dead in the first place). It is interesting that many of the arguments against this event taking place are less credible - less logical and rational - than those supporting the account of events in Holy Scripture. Rather than get into the arguments here right now, for those who are interested there is some good reading to be found in Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ. One thing that always amazes me - that people who are only human can assert that God, the One who created the universe by His word, doesn’t have the supernatural abilities required to resurrect a dead Jesus. What makes far more sense to me is that indeed He does, and that it all works together exactly in the way that Christians have believed ever since the very first Easter weekend.

John 1:12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

2 Corinthians 5: 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!
2 Corinthians 5: 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin [a sin offering] for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.