The meaning of Easter in hymns
This is the story of Easter. The story of a God who became a man to respond with love to the hatred of men.
He proved this love by dying on the cross and taking upon himself all the filth of human sin.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead; and by his resurrection we are assured that all his promises are real, his victory is real - the eternal life promised by him is real, and by the resurrection of Christ, we have an unswerving hope in our salvation.
And when Christ comes again, all who belong to him will reign with him forever!
Therefore, in Christ alone, today and always, we live and walk.
As the well-known hymn says,
In Christ alone
Who took on flesh
Fulness of God in helpless babe
This gift of love and righteousness
Scorned by the ones He came to save
The Bible says in John 1:14 that
the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus Christ, the Creator God, who created everything by the Word that is Christ, came in the flesh — the very Word of God incarnate came into the world to dwell among us.
What does that mean to us?
That God is close to us, and that He loves us and wants to be with us, to the point of leaving His glory and coming to be a man in the filth of this world.
This tells us that we can respond to this drawing close by drawing close, and we can confidently take this open path.
The Word became flesh and dwelt among us!
He came to be with us, but more than that: he came to make us his children.
To all who received him, he gave them the power to be made children of God.
John 1:12
The next question is then, "How did God make us His?", And "How did He demonstrate His deep love for us?"
In the hymn "How deep the fathers love for us" we hear:
Behold the man upon a cross
My sin upon His shoulders
Ashamed, I hear my mocking voice
Call out among the scoffers
Can we hear our voice in the midst of those who mock Jesus?
We are there, in the midst of the crowd, making fun of Jesus and his sacrifice, with our vain words, with our proud thoughts, with our wrong behaviors, with our disordered priorities, with our lives of independence from God.
Jesus had to come to the world, God had to become man, because man was lost in his sins, far from God because of his disobedience.
The human condition was desperate, as described by Paul, the Apostle:
10 As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one. 11 There is none that understands; there is no one who seeks God. 12 All have gone astray and become unprofitable together. There is none that doeth good, there is none. - Romans 3: 10-12
We were far off, scattered like stray sheep, each trying to find his way alone and by his own means.
Each one trying to control their life and the life of others. Each one to build gods in the image and likeness of our fallen humanity.
The original Sin is to want to live apart from God, as if he did not exist and each of us could be his own God.
And when man wants to be God and forgets the true God, he is blinded to God’s will.
Worse than that, Sin blinds us even to our own sin!
How does God deal with sin?
God punishes Sin, all sin. But the greatest sin, our rebellion toward the King of the universe, is the most grievous sin that gives rise to all others - and deserving of the greatest punishment: eternal separation from God.
But…
But God proves his love to us in that Christ died for us, while we were yet sinners - Romans 5: 8
Christ died for us! On the cross with him sin and death were preached, and thus all the enemies of man were vanquished, and being thus offered freedom in Christ!
What does that tell us?
That God is righteous because evil does not go unpunished and good does not go unrewarded.
That God is love and loves us to the very point of coming to suffer his own righteousness that should come upon us because of our sin ...
That we do not have to be afraid of God because he loves us ...
That He wants us as friends and as children ...
Only in him can we hope ...
... a hope that is firmly rooted in the historical certainty of the resurrection.
The hymn "Jerusalem" says
See the empty tomb today
Death could not contain Him
Once the Servant of the world
Now in vict’ry reigning
After the cross and victory, comes the coronation: the cross is the victory of God over all his enemies, the resurrection is the coronation of Jesus as king and Lord of the Universe.
It is the certainty of the hope of eternal life.
In the resurrection, Jesus shows that his victory on the cross is real - if Jesus did not rise, his crucifixion would represent only one more Messiah frustrated and overcome by the instituted powers. The resurrection shows us that everything Jesus said about himself was true: he is really the Son of God.
Jesus came to serve us in suffering the wrath of God; but he is no longer the suffering servant, the Nazarene carpenter, or the Rabbi of Galilee: he was exalted by God the Father as the Lord of the universe.
20 But the truth is that Christ rose from the dead. He was the first fruit of the harvest of millions who died and who will also be resurrected. 21 For as by a man came death, even by a man came the resurrection of the dead. 22 Just as everyone dies because of Adam, so will they all live for Christ’s sake. 23 But every one at his own time: Christ is risen as the first fruit of the harvest; then those who belong to Christ will be resurrected when He returns. 24 And then shall the end come, when Christ hath destroyed all governments, and authorities, and powers, and deliver up the kingdom unto God the Father. - I Corinthians 15 - New Testament - Easy to Read Version (Free translation)
What does this tell us? That by the resurrection of Christ we have a firm hope in our resurrection. With Christ we will be resurrected, and with him we will reign forever!
And this completely transforms the understanding we have in our life here on earth: we no longer live obsessed with our happiness and well-being in this world, but we have our focus on eternity.
We live with our feet on earth and our eyes in eternity.
This is what Easter does ...it shows us who God is, who we are, and what awaits us in eternity with Christ, if we receive Him as Lord and Savior.
What do we need to be effective participants and beneficiaries of all these things? We need faith. It is not faith itself that saves; it is the grace of God, his love and mercy undue - but offered - to sinners.
As Francis Schaeffer put it, faith is the stretching out of the hand, a desperate hand that opens to receive Jesus' sacrifice for salvation.
Another excerpt from a hymn:
When darkness seems to hide His face
I rest on His unchanging grace
In every high and stormy gale
My anchor holds within the veil
Easter is nothing but an inspiring story, if we do not respond with faith to the wonderful gift of God that he offers us in Christ.
If we put our faith in him, he will be our rock and we will have eternal security. If we do not reach out with the desperate hand, we will voluntarily deprive ourselves of this incredible gift, and we will continue to be lost in our sin, not just in the present but for eternity.
Christ is the beginning and the end. It is in him that our faith is founded - all our trust, all our hope, lies in him.
This is the story of Easter. This last hymn sums up in a sublime way the result of these incredible events, which are death on the cross and resurrection of Christ.
Death could not hold You, the veil tore before You
You silenced the boast, of sin and grave
The heavens are roaring, the praise of Your glory
For You are raised to life againYou have no rival, You have no equal
Now and forever, Our God reigns
Yours is the Kingdom, Yours is the glory
Yours is the Name, above all namesWhat a powerful Name it is
What a powerful Name it is
The Name of Jesus Christ my King
We are given the opportunity to be one with the supreme King of the universe, the one who is unparalleled and incomparable, and to whom belongs all the glory. The name above all the names - Jesus.
So let’s not approach Easter as just a calendar feast, or the mere celebration of a historical tradition; let us allow this truth to transform us, and to take hold of our life forever, for all eternity.
