Should we care about Easter?

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ut o b a e r a c Should we

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modern remake of Ben-Hur was released in cinemas in 2016. It flopped. Big time.

The 1959 blockbuster movie, however, was a huge success.

And it came with a fascinating backstory. The film was based on the book Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ, written by Lewis Wallace in 1880 after a chance meeting on a train with an atheist.

Robert Ingersoll, a public speaker who was famous for his atheism, talked about his views with Wallace in great depth. His arguments against God were gripping and impressed Wallace deeply. But Wallace realised he’d never given God any real thought himself. He made the decision that, rather than just taking Ingersoll’s opinions as his own, he would find out more about Christianity for himself.

“[Ingersoll] had made me ashamed of my ignorance . . . I resolved to study the subject [of religion] . . . It only remains to say that I did as resolved, with results—first, the book Ben Hur, and second, a conviction amounting to absolute belief in God and the divinity of Christ.”

After seven years’ research, Wallace came to believe that the entire story of Jesus Christ was true, and so the book Ben-Hur: A Tale of Christ was published.

What would we find if we looked into the life, death and resurrection of Jesus? Like Lewis Wallace, are we prepared to think about Jesus seriously? After all, if Jesus’ story is completely true, then his resurrection is true. And anyone coming back from the dead has got to be worth finding out about . . .

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he significance of Jesus Christ depends on the truth of Easter: his death and resurrection. Christianity is not founded on rules or wise sayings, but on historical events. If those events did not happen, then believing in Jesus is a waste of time.

A Christian is not simply someone who tries to live a good life and obey the teachings of Jesus. Christians are people who have decided to trust Jesus to give them a new life as part of God’s family. They believe Jesus has done this for them through his death on the cross and his resurrection; both being actual events in history. That is why Jesus is called “saviour” more often than “teacher” by Christians.

But how could a man from 2,000 years ago affect our lives today? How can we possibly believe that he could come back from the dead? These questions are fair enough. We live in an age of science and information. We don’t need superstitions to explain the world to us. How can intelligent, logical people still believe Jesus rose from the dead?

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o understand exactly what Jesus has to do with us, we have to start at the beginning: our problem.

There are few who would deny that we live in a troubled world. It’s not just that the world is generally good, but suffers from a handful of bad eggs and nutters; we lock our doors, put passwords on our accounts and teach our children not to talk to strangers. Really, we know our world, our countries, our communities and even our own homes and lives are far from perfect.

People often ask: if God is allpowerful, why doesn’t he simply get rid of all the bad stuff? Think about it.

Imagine that tonight at midnight, God removes everything that’s wrong with the world. Anything that is not 100% morally perfect is destroyed. Where will you be? Do you see the problem? Even good people are not good enough to escape such a cleansing. Removing everything that’s wrong with the world would mean the end of all humanity.

God has the right to do it, but he doesn’t want to. He wants to save!

Saving, however, isn’t as straightforward as just letting everyone off. Imagine a judge who did that in a court! If you were listening to a court case and the defendant was clearly guilty, you would expect a fair sentence to be passed.

Justice demands it. If the judge just smiled kindly at the guilty person and said, “I’m a kind, loving person . . . you can go free”, he would be a bad judge. In order for justice to be satisfied, crimes must be punished.

We tend to think that our good deeds will make up for any bad things we have done. But would we seriously expect a judge to say we didn’t need to pay our speeding fine because we volunteer at a care home? How can God, being good, overlook our wrongdoings?

How could we trust God to be a fair ruler of the universe if he took a light view of our bad behaviours? There are consequences when we act wrongly. But in the end, we really owe the debt to God. It’s his world we are breaking. The Bible tells us the ultimate cost to our selfish actions is death.

W hat Jesus did NEW LIFE REJECTION DISCIPLES DEATH KING REAL SAVIOUR LOVED TRUTH SON HOPE YOU SINS PROMISES GOD FULFILLED SACRIFICE DEFEATED LORD RESURRECTION GUILTY EYEWITNESSES CROSS BIRTH LOVE JESUS STORY FORGIVENESS BIBLE JUDGE SUFFERING TOMB ROMANS JEWS

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his is where Jesus entered in. The Bible tell us that Jesus, the creator of all things, was born into his own creation as the weakest and most vulnerable thing: a baby. He was poor and he was ordinary. But his message was unmistakable: I am the answer. He said he had come to give new life and forgiveness to all who would trust him. The self-proclaimed ‘good’ people hated him because he showed up their pretence and failings. The only ones who received Jesus gladly were those who already knew they were messed up and needed saving.

Jesus was not a martyr. His execution on the cross was not a tragic end to an inspirational life. Jesus actually explained that it was God’s plan! His death was the whole point of why he came to earth in the first place. He paid the penalty we owe for how we have lived. He came to die in our place!

And then he came back to life . . .

The resurre ctio n NEW LIFE REJECTION DISCIPLES DEATH KING REAL SAVIOUR LOVED TRUTH SON HOPE YOU SINS PROMISES GOD FULFILLED SACRIFICE DEFEATED LORD RESURRECTION GUILTY EYEWITNESSES CROSS BIRTH LOVE JESUS STORY FORGIVENESS BIBLE JUDGE SUFFERING TOMB ROMANS JEWS

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his time, picture yourself in the courtroom scene: you have just been found guilty of owing a huge debt you could never pay back. A figure in the crowd steps forward and declares they will pay the entire sum for you. The judge accepts the offer and gives them 48 hours to settle your debt. Once it’s paid, you can never be brought to trial for it ever again. But during that 48 hours, although you have the promise that someone else will pay, you cannot be at peace. What if they back out? What if they don’t have enough money? However, as soon as you’re told the money has gone through and your account is settled, you know that you are truly free.

This is the truth behind the resurrection too. It’s not just a neat trick or a stunt to get our attention.

If Jesus is still dead, there is no way of knowing whether or not we still have to pay for our own wrongs and mistakes. But his resurrection is the proof that God accepted his payment on our behalf. If Jesus is alive, we can know for sure that the account is settled, we’re forgiven by God and we’re welcomed into his family right now.

One writer in the Bible told Christians: “If Christ has not been raised [from the dead], then your faith is useless and you are still guilty” (1 CORINTHIANS 15:17). That is why the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, as historical events, are central to Christianity. Without them, we are still guilty before God and due to face him in his courtroom when we die.

But can we really believe this story?

The evidence NEW LIFE REJECTION DISCIPLES DEATH KING REAL SAVIOUR LOVED TRUTH SON HOPE YOU SINS PROMISES GOD FULFILLED SACRIFICE DEFEATED LORD RESURRECTION GUILTY EYEWITNESSES CROSS BIRTH LOVE JESUS STORY FORGIVENESS BIBLE JUDGE SUFFERING TOMB ROMANS JEWS

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e cannot prove beyond any doubt that Jesus walked out of His grave after He was executed. We weren’t there to see it with our own eyes. But we can look at the evidence, listen to the experts (many who are not Christians), take the subject seriously like Lewis Wallace did and make up our own minds. Here are some significant factors to consider:

ww The empty tomb: The claim that Jesus had come back to life would have been rubbished instantly if his body had still been in its tomb. All the authorities had to do was show the corpse to people.

But none of the Jewish or Roman leaders were able to produce the body of Jesus.

Roman authorities had posted a 24 hour armed guard around Jesus’ tomb and then sealed it with a massive rock. Even so, the Bible tells us the authorities had to admit that he had somehow gone missing. ww The radical change in Jesus’ followers: The men who were the first leaders of Christianity were the same ones who ran away in fear when Jesus was arrested and executed. After his death, they were depressed and confused. Yet only a few weeks later they were boldly telling everyone that Jesus was alive. They were hounded, beaten, imprisoned and most were eventually killed for spreading their message. Clearly these men really believed they had seen the risen Jesus.

ww The Bible’s eyewitness accounts: There are four different accounts (by eyewitnesses and an historian) of Jesus’ life in the Bible, written in the years shortly after his resurrection. If they had been false in any way, they would have been discredited instantly because the people first reading them were the people alive during Jesus’ life. The fact that so many believed these retellings, and the fact that the accounts were so widely spread, indicates that they matched the reality. ww Historical records: The Bible isn’t the only text that talks about Jesus. There are Roman documents, along with writings from Jewish teachers, Roman senators and historians of the time, that agree on the existence of Jesus, his death on the cross and the certainty that his followers believed he was God.

Caring enough to take it serio us ly THIS IS REAL LOVEUNOT THAT WE LOVED GOD, BUT THAT HE LOVED US AND SENT HIS SON AS A SACRIFICE TO TAKE AWAY OUR SINS. (1 JOHN 4:10)

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ure. So Jesus’ followers could have gone all ‘mission impossible’ to steal Jesus’ body through a sealed, guarded stone tomb. And then they could have gone to their deaths (some of which were pretty grim, involving stuff like beheadings and hungry lions) to protect their lie that Jesus had actually come back from the dead. They could have misled millions of people over the last 2,000 years and pulled off the most impressive heist in history. It’s possible. It’s also highly unlikely.

The most straightforward explanation of all the evidence is that Jesus did actually walk out of his own grave. He was who he said he was. He died for our wrongs; he rose again to offer us a new and forgiven life with him right now, and forever. This is the way he totally transformed his first followers’ lives; it is the way he can impact ours too.

The story of Jesus doesn’t end with his resurrection. We’re told that God wants us to “turn to him.

For he has set a day for judging the

world with justice by the man he has appointed, and he proved to everyone who this is by raising him from the dead” ( ACTS 17:30-31). The time will come when God really will get rid of everything that is not 100% good.

Before he was executed, however, Jesus promised his followers: “Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust also in me. There is more than enough room in my Father’s home. If this were not so, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? When everything is ready, I will come and get you, so that you will always be with me where I am” ( JOHN 14:1-3). We don’t have to face Jesus as our judge. He invites us to know him as our saviour—our saviour who promises us a new life with him now and a place in his good, perfect home after we die. In fact, we are told that God sent Jesus to die for us “so that he could adopt us as his very own children” ( GALATIANS 4:5).

Trusting Jesus isn’t just about getting a place in heaven; it’s about belonging to God and living life as an important part of his family!

Such a significant subject deserves investigation. Lewis Wallace could have just accepted Robert Ingersoll’s arguments without looking into it himself, but he didn’t. C. S. Lewis, who famously turned from atheism to trust Jesus in 1931, once said: “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”

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hat you make of Jesus and the Easter events is up to you. If you want to think more about who Jesus is, the best way to start is by reading the accounts of his life in the Bible. Our Daily Bread Ministries also has lots of other booklets available which explain Easter in more detail and go over the evidence more thoroughly. You can read them online at ourdailybread.org/easter.

Ultimately the key question we’re left with is this: if there is any chance that Jesus really did come back from the dead, isn’t it worth taking it seriously?

Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright 1996, 2004.

Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved. © 2016 by Our Daily Bread Ministries. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United Kingdom

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