April 8, 2024
Resurrection Matters. Resurrection alters things. Resurrection creates new life and renewal. When the truth of Easter lays hold of us we live as a changed people. Not because of any personal accomplishments, but because of what was done on our behalf. Jesus’s resurrection gives us a new identity. This is so beautiful, after Jesus resurrection, the basis of our identity is not in the choices we make or what we accomplish, but who we are, our identity is found in who Christ’s resurrection has made each of us to be.
The life of the disciples after meeting the resurrected Jesus reminds me of this. “On the evening of the first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ After He said this, He showed them His hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord (John 20:19-20).”
It was the first day of the week. The disciples had locked themselves away out of fear. Everything Jesus had taught, everything He had said or done… it all seemed like some distant memory now.
However, we see these same disciples again in Acts 4, preaching to the Jewish leaders they had been hiding from. “When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).”
Something happened in that locked room that radically transformed them from fearful, anxious followers into powerful witnesses that refused to be silenced, they would not be ashamed of the gospel, they would not stop proclaiming what Jesus had done, even at the cost of their own lives.
What I want to suggest about these followers is that they began to live, not out of who they were, but out of who the resurrection had made them to be. Their encounter with Christ was so deeply rooted in their hearts and minds that they never forgot what Jesus had done in his suffering, death and resurrection. Acts, well the rest of the New Testament tells us, that this was the story they told, over and over again, for the rest of their lives.
The resurrection was everything to/for them. It was both and end and a beginning as we observed on Friday's devotion. It was the end of who they had been, and the beginning of who they truly were meant to be. When Jesus came back to life, they came alive too.
Let us give Easter/Resurrection the place it deserves, let us not relegate it to a day on the calendar but to a defining moment we celebrate over and over again, day after day for the rest of our lives like those first disciples.
Christ has risen. The grave is empty. Everything is changed.
Romans 6:4
We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
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