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The Importance of Why

This past Sunday was Easter, the single most significant day in history.

Many Christians around the world gathered to praise God for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, an event that signaled the end of the old creation and the ushering in of the new. It is the pinnacle of history, when God raised Jesus from the dead. For the first time death had lost its grip on someone forever. Things would never be the same.

In 1 Corinthians 15 the apostle Paul writes what is one of the most important passages of all time. He writes that everything hangs on the resurrection; if Christ did not rise from the dead, then Christianity is worthless. It is the linchpin of our entire faith.

In this age of skepticism and hunger for evidence, many Christians have engaged the world with arguments and proofs of the reality of the resurrection. This is a good thing and I wholeheartedly encourage people to check out videos and articles that do a credible job of demonstrating the viability and reality of the Christian claim. An unintended side effect, however, has been a lack of focus on what the resurrection accomplished.

To put it simply, we are so focused on whether it actually happened we've forgotten to focus on what it means.

We read 1 Corinthians 15 but stop at verse 19, where Paul declares Christians to be the most pitiable of people if the resurrection is not true. We forget to keep reading the rest of the chapter, where Paul in no uncertain terms talks about what it means for us. He talks about the victory of Christ over the power structures of this world, including death itself. He discusses the bodily resurrection we will all experience at the end; how Christ's resurrection is the first fruits and we are the harvest.

For a long time I only thought that the resurrection had to happen to prove that Jesus was the Son of God so that the cross meant something. In reality it is so much more. It is from the resurrection that the very life of the Christian flows out of.

It is important to remember that the resurrection is an actual, historical event. Jesus truly did rise bodily from the dead. Let us, in our fervor to vindicate Christianity, forget to meditate on why Jesus rose from the dead and what it means for us today.

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