They Say it's Easter....

Yes, today is Easter Sunday!! An incredible day, celebrating one of the biggest days in the history of Christianity. I say it's one of the biggest, because Christmas is the other biggest...you can't have one without the other, it just so happens.

But, it got me to thinking...I remembered someone asking why we wear crosses instead of the tomb with the stone rolled away, even though it's the resurrection we celebrate the most. Great question. My answer had been, initially, that it's because the cross is where our sins died. I guess you could say that's still my answer.

The point of Jesus dying on the cross was to be the ultimate sacrifice. A sacrifice, in Jewish culture, was a lamb taken to the altar to be slaughtered, in place of your sins. So, Jesus was just that. He just wasn't taken to an altar; rather, to a cross. On this cross, He bore all of our sins, and, when He died, so did our sins. Crazy, right?

So, this all seems good and dandy, the sins dying an' all. So, why is the resurrection so important? I mean, seriously, Jesus came to take away our sins. This is most effective way, dying. I mean, nothing's more ultimate than death, right?

Of course, maybe that's why the resurrection is so important.

Jesus dies for our sins, killing our sins, essentially, too. Now that we've got the ultimate sacrifice, what's next? We wouldn't know, would we. Step one complete, step two...???

The resurrection was to show where we go from there. What's the point of doing away with sins when they kept us from nothing? Except, that the resurrection not only showed God's power over death, but it also showed what our sins were keeping us from. They were keeping us from life.

So both the cross and the empty tomb, are equally important. The cross to remind us that Jesus died for our sins, giving us His life, and the empty tomb to remind us that we get life after that. Hm. Life after Death....eternal life after physical death....spiritual life after spiritual death...should we choose it. Sorry, tangent.

Fascinating, right? So, why wear the crosses instead of the empty tombs? I'd say as a reminder, perhaps. A reminder that our sins are dead and conquered. And, with them, our old selves died, too. We are dead to our sins. Alive in Christ. Alive because of Christ. Alive because of a life given to us by His death.

Easter is great.