In recognition of Easter, The News invited Pastor Jon Pasiuk of Northview Community Church to discuss the importance of the occasion for Christians.
On Easter Sunday over two billion people worldwide will celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
For those of us who follow Jesus this event is more than just a miraculous display of God’s power over life and death. It is about more than the triumph of one man over the might of the empire that executed him. For us Jesus’s death and resurrection is about God himself taking action to reconcile mankind to Himself and heal humanity of its brokenness.
The Christian scriptures explain that God created the world and gave humanity a unique place in his world. However, humanity chose to reject God’s rule over His creation. Because of this act of treason against our maker, all of humanity is enslaved to sin and under His judgment. While we were made to know God, love Him and enjoy the beauty and goodness of the world he made, our sin has estranged us from our maker and filled our existence with pain, suffering, war, disease and death.
We believe that God has not abandoned his creation, and that God himself became a man to lead people out of this brokenness and give them eternal life as a friend of God. To do this, he had to bear the consequences of people’s rebellion by dying in their place.
This is why Christians celebrate Good Friday, for Friday was the day that Jesus Christ gave his life to take away the sin of His people. If someone believes in Jesus Christ and follows Him, their sins are gone and they are completely and totally forgiven.
This act of self-giving by God changes the way the whole world operates. Those who accept the forgiveness of their sins by God are commanded by God to forgive one another. Whatever hurt and wrongs we are asked to forgive each other for are nothing compared to the sin rebellion that we committed against God and he freely forgives.
Because of this, no one who follows Christ as their master ever has grounds for vengeance or hatred towards another human being. Jesus taught us to pray to God to forgive our sins as we forgive those who have sinned against us. He taught us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. He warned us that if we don’t forgive others, we would not be forgiven.
A few weeks ago I met a woman who had served as a missionary with her family in eastern India for several decades, sharing this message of God’s love and caring for people suffering from leprosy. One night in 1999, her husband and two sons were sleeping in their vehicle while conducting a medical camp in a remote village when a mob of radicals surrounded the vehicle and set it on fire, burning this woman’s husband and sons alive.
This woman had every reason to hate the men who murdered her family. She would have every reason to want vengeance except for the fact that Jesus Christ forgave her when she didn’t deserve it, and she too had to show the same love and forgiveness to those who took her husband and sons. Whenever she was asked for a statement in the legal and media investigations that followed she said,
“I have one message for the people of India. I am not bitter. Neither am I angry. I can forgive [the killer’s] deeds. Only God can forgive their sins. I have one great desire: that each citizen of this country should establish a personal relationship with Jesus Christ who gave His life for his or her sins. [Everyone] should know that Jesus loves him or her, and in turn they should trust Him and endeavor to love one another. Let us burn hatred… and spread the flame of Christ’s love.”
The miracle of Easter is not only that God has forgiven sins, but that death, the greatest consequence of sin, has been overcome. Though Jesus was murdered by the Roman government on Good Friday, on Sunday he stood before his disciples as a living, breathing human being.
The same power with which the whole universe was spoken into being had brought Jesus back from death with the promise that everyone who believes in him will likewise be victorious over death. For this widow and mother of murdered sons, she was given the strength to forgive by Jesus’s promise of eternal life; the hope that one day she will be reunited with her family, and that the great injustice committed against her was not final.
When Christians gather to celebrate this Easter, they do so as one family united by the fact that God has shown his love for them, forgiven their sins and given them the promise that death is not final. Though they come from almost every tribe, language and cultural group on this planet, they are united as a family by their hope in Christ and their obligation to love and forgive one another.
For Christians there is no greater reason to celebrate than Jesus’s Christ’s self-sacrifice and victory, and it is our hope that our community will celebrate with us.
Jon Pasiuk is a teaching associate pastor at Northview Community Church and contributes to a weekly podcast at northview.org/extra.
