Easter is Christianity’s holiest day of the year. It’s the day we remember the ultimate demonstration of God’s loving power: when Jesus Christ, God’s son, destroyed the power of sin and death.
God created human beings to be in a loving relationship with him. But from the time Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Eden, humanity has rebelled by pursuing its own pleasures and desires.
The Bible is an eons-long account of God’s never-ending pursuit of restoring that loving relationship with humanity, and humanity’s continuous rebellion. God tried wind, fire, flood, men and women with special messages — you name it.
But humanity remained hard-hearted.
God finally chose to come here himself in the person of Jesus to teach and demonstrate what he has to offer.
His teachings called into question religious leaders’ practices — to which they took great exception. His teachings called into question the harsh ways people treated each other. Such admonishments cut so deeply to the heart of the wrongness of an ingrained way of life that it angered people.
So angry were they, so afraid of losing power and authority, they killed Jesus, whose body was placed in a tomb, and a stone was rolled across the entrance. The troublemaker was dead, and life, as usual, could go on.
The religious establishment and the people did not realize what they had done or who they were dealing with. And their act of killing him put into action the final phase of God’s plan.
Three days after being placed in that tomb, Jesus burst through death’s gates. He came back to life to demonstrate God’s life-giving, unequivocal and undeniable power.
The sin of rebelling against God in the Garden of Eden now has a cure. The sin of refusing to obey God now has a cure. Humanity’s sins can be forgiven.
God’s pursuit of humanity and restoration of that desired loving relationship now has an advocate and an avenue through which to love God completely. It is by acknowledging Jesus is the Son of God, and that he overcame the power of sin and death for all who believe in him.
This is the Gospel’s good news. This is Easter’s great news.
The Rev. Mark Broadhead is pastor at Laurel Hill Presbyterian Church and First Presbyterian Church of Crestview.
This article originally appeared on Crestview News Bulletin: BROADHEAD: Humanity remains hard-hearted, but God prevails