He is risen! (Slightly early, but I couldn’t wait.) What a celebration Easter Sunday is and has been for the Christian Church.
Have any of you continued to have a small question hopping in your mind every time Easter comes around? Why is a pagan, German bunny always tied to a historic Christian celebration of Easter?
Without wasting much of your time, yes, the birth of the bunny (or hare) connected to Easter is likely from a bit of German folklore in the early modern period. But if Christ can redeem a sinful and evil world in his grace and for his glory, what match is a little pagan symbol of a bunny!!! (Anyways, no sophisticated opinion here.)
Read Romans 14:1-12. Christian freedom applied to areas like pagan holidays, personal opinions, political parties, and other areas may help us preserve the unity of the faith in Christ and the bond of peace. Now that we “kind of” got this out of the way, let’s move to the main thing!
Christ, the Son of God, did what he said he would do! He would die for the sins of the world, and on the third day rise. Sometimes, as modern Christians, we forget the distaste and undesirability connected to a resurrection for the ancient people in the New Testament. But oh! what a foreign and far-off concept resurrection was for the ancient people. It was, may I say, unbelievable!
If the resurrection of Christ did not happen, Christianity crumbles in an instant. No wonder why secular critics devote their lives to discrediting and discounting the credibility of a real resurrection of the Messiah. It’s the Achilles’ heel of the Christian faith.
But the historical evidence and the goodness and power of Christ’s resurrection together fuse to bring about resurrection life and resurrection hope that people cannot resist!
Come and see the empty tomb, and perhaps you will be freshly gripped by the power of the resurrected Christ once again this year.
Friends, we as LifeWay exist to fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Love God. Love others. Make disciples.
The resurrected Christ through his reigning Spirit has been on mission in the Church for over 2,000 years. Let us continue to press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus through resurrection life and power.
Grace and peace,
Tim