I’m currently living in a world where Semana Santa or Pasqua (the week of Easter) is the biggest and most important holiday of the year. People begin to celebrate it 40 days in advance.
And then the week of Easter finally arrives and the people hear somberly honor Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ death. And then on Saturday they drink themselves into a stooper and no one is at church on Sunday. No one is there to celebrate the resurrection.
We’re missing the point here. It isn’t about Jesus dying, it’s about the resurrection.
Jesus was perfect, sinless, without blame therefore he did not need to die. He did not have to suffer the consequences of death but he chose to die anyway. He chose to die to pay the price for our sins; he became the sacrificial lamb. Jesus took on our sins and died for them.
But the death isn’t the point. He had to die. But anyone could die. I can die, you can die; in fact, we will all die. The point of the whole thing is that Jesus rose from the dead.
Death, sin, wasn’t defeated in a perfect man dieing. It was defeated when that perfect man rose from the dead. The point is Jesus rose again and he now lives. He defeated death in the resurrection.
The number one thing that matters is that Jesus couldn’t stay dead; he had to rise again. It is in his resurrection and life that we are able to find life through salvation. A dead god can’t bring life but a living God can.
