Easter Day.

"The Lord is risen!"

"He is risen indeed!"

This ancient liturgical response for Easter Day rings out with as much force today, as it has ever done. This, indeed, is the central message of the Christian faith. The Christmas story is of great importance - the message that Almighty God, the Creator of all that is, has entered the dimensions of time and space, that He had created. The message that He, the Holy One, Who cannot look upon sin, has taken upon Himself the flesh, and nature, of a sinful mankind. What a message! Little wonder that we celebrate it every year. But if the story stopped at that point, then it would be little more than the sentimental, overly-romanticised, soppiness that the world has turned it into over the intervening centuries.

So, on Good Friday, we remember the death of that Infant, now grown to full Manhood. As I've mentioned in the previous post, it was a cruel, agonising death; so shameful that no Roman citizen could suffer it. It was a death that He did not deserve - but that we did; and He died in our place, bearing the punishment for our sin.

Yet even that is not enough. A Christ Who had died, and remained dead, would not be the Saviour Who offers eternal life to all who place their trust in Him. Writing to the believers in Corinth, Paul emphasises the point: "For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ must still be dead. And if He is still dead, then all our preaching is useless and your trust in God is empty, worthless, hopeless;" (I Cor 15:13-14,TLB).

So we rejoice on this day, that we worship a living Saviour; One Who has conquered death, and hell, and the grave. "An empty tomb is there to prove my Saviour lives." And because He lives, we know that we, too, will live. If His return should be delayed, then death will, for the true disciple of Jesus, give way to victory. Hallelujah! What a Saviour!