Easter: Joy in Jesus!
“And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’”
Matthew 22:37–40
Jesus’s summary of the commandments of Scripture is convincing and clear. He calls us to love the Lord God with all our heart, soul, and mind and love our neighbor as you love yourself. That is it—the call to the Christian and non-Christian is the same. First, God: love him and pursue him passionately! Second, your neighbor: love them as you would yourself!
We first might wonder what kind of god can demand our love? But what kind of god would he be if he didn’t? The Lord of everything—the Creator (Genesis 1:1) and Sustainer (Colossians 1:16–17) of all things—do we not owe him our love and life? Yet we all immediately run into a problem: sin. All have sinned, (Romans 3:23) and no one on their own wants to come to God nor love him nor love our neighbor for God’s glory.
Furthermore, we deserve the wrath of God for disobeying him (Romans 2:5). Praise be to God that he provided a way for our salvation through Jesus Christ! Jesus’s death on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension to power at God’s right hand shows he is very God of very God, and he alone has paid the penalty of our sins through his blood. (Romans 3:25) We are now justified by the gift of grace from God in Jesus received in faith.
This is the gospel—good news to us and to all people! This is what celebrate at Easter—that we now have found joy in God and have right relationship with him through our faith in Jesus Christ. What amazing good news to us all!
As those who know this good news, we now have the mission to spread it to every people and culture: first near and, in God’s grace, to the ends of the earth (Matthew 28:18–20). The Holy Spirit empowers and equips us each to take our place in accomplishing this mission (1 Corinthians 12:7). Everywhere, in everyone, in every way, we want to see God glorified and passionately pursued.
In short, the gospel is the good news that man has been reconciled to God through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. God is perfect, holy, and just, and as such cannot tolerate sin. All men have sinned and are no longer able to have relationship with God and deserve eternal punishment. Through the righteous life, substitutionary death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ man can now come into an eternal right relationship with God through faith, given by the Holy Spirit, in Jesus Christ. This Easter we invite you to trust in our Savior, Jesus Christ.