If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. ~ Colossians 3:1-4
This is the day! Easter is here! It is the reason that undergirds all of Christendom, all which we believe, all which we practice, and all the seasons that follow. It changes everything. Thanks be to God for that. It’s time for Easter — Alleluia!
We know in our heads that Jesus’ resurrection is important, but do we know it in our hearts, too? Do our daily lives and our celebrations proclaim its importance to our loved ones and the world? As teacher Del Tackett asks often in his video series The Truth Project, “Do you really believe that what you believe is really real?” If we do, it changes everything. The death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ do — and should — change everything.
Those outside the Church ought to be looking at Christians, confusedly wondering what in the world the big deal is and why we are having the biggest party of the year. Palm Sunday through Holy Week, with its culmination on Easter morning, is truly the core, the center of our year as the Church and of our spiritual life as the body of Christ. God’s story and our story culminate in this week, and it’s simultaneously the beginning of everything we do the rest of the year.
What is it that happened early that Easter morning? After He descended to the grave, Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, was physically resurrected and made alive that third morning.
Question 64 of our catechism asks, and then answers:
“What does the [Apostles’] Creed mean when it affirms that Jesus rose again from the dead? It means that Jesus was not simply resuscitated; God restored him physically from death to life in his perfected and glorious body, never to die again. His tomb was empty; Jesus had risen bodily from the dead. The risen Jesus was seen by his apostles and hundreds of other witnesses.” (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)
According to 1 Corinthians if Christ was not raised our faith is futile and we are lost in our sins. This event is the hinge of our faith, and it changes everything.
The fact that this bodily resurrection really, actually happened matters. ... Multiple scholars have put together wonderfully detailed works demonstrating not only theological arguments but also historical and extra-biblical evidence that the resurrection really truly did happen.
It’s not uncommon today for us to focus on this evidence and proof of the Resurrection, which is very valuable! But author Robert E. Webber cautions us that “in our earnestness to defend the Easter fact, I wonder if we have so intellectualized the resurrection that it has become fact and not faith — or at least a weakened and misunderstood faith.”
We, of course, should ask, what happened, but we need to go a step further and ask why does it matter?
We have to not only know the Easter fact but also have an Easter faith. If Christ has indeed been raised, what does that mean for us now? N.T. Wright, in his book Surprised by Hope, proposes that, “What we say about death and resurrection gives shape and color to everything else.” Jesus was the first of humanity to be resurrected, to receive a new, physical, glorified body. It’s significant that He wasn’t just alive in some sort of “spiritual” form. Remember, the tomb was empty. His new body in some way “used up” the physical matter of His earthly one. The Jews of the time believed in life after death, but were expecting a physical, bodily resurrection at a future point in time… phase 2 so to speak. What they didn’t expect was that this would happen to Jesus three days after He died.
Jesus is still human and always will be, and this secures not only our future but brings hope crashing into our present. Jesus’ resurrection means death has been defeated, and will someday be banished completely. Because of this, earthly powers have lost their power — their power depends on being able to wield the weapon of death. Death no longer has power over us, it has lost its sting!
We follow Jesus in dying to our sins and being resurrected into the life of the Spirit now, a metaphorical resurrection. At His resurrection Jesus inaugurated a new kingdom — one that wasn’t what people expected — and He continues to be and will be different than what we expect.
But not only do we experience a resurrecting of our current state, we await a future bodily resurrection after we die. A common view of life after death, even in Christianity, is to think of heaven as a disembodied ethereal spiritual realm where we directly go the moment we die, and which remains in that state forever. However this view doesn’t align with the teachings of the Bible and the history of Christian and Jewish belief. N.T. Wright writes that, “what we have at the moment isn’t, as the old liturgies used to say, ‘the sure and certain hope of the resurrection of the dead’ but the vague and fuzzy optimism that somehow things may work out in the end.” Later in Surprised by Hope he writes that,
“Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden, dimension of our ordinary life — God’s dimension, if you like. God made heaven and earth; at the last he will remake both and join them together forever. And when we come to the picture of the actual end in Revelation 21-22, we find not ransomed souls making their way to a disembodied heaven but rather the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven to earth, uniting the two in a lasting embrace.”
We can’t wrap our minds completely around that future hope — we can’t fathom all that it is yet to come, and to pretend we can creates a weak and boring picture. We imagine a fuzzy dream-like world that we are only sort of present to. Muffled sounds, cloudy, serene images. But that day and time will be more present and real than anything we now know, and we will experience and see it more fully than we ever could see reality today. As Amy Lee says, “the chief beauty of heaven isn’t its desirability over hell.” What is to come is more glorious than anything we could imagine.
This future hope can and should interpret our present lives. We pray for God’s Kingdom to come, and for His will on earth now. And we become part of that work as His church, a visual representation of that Kingdom to the world.
And until that glorious day, every Easter we will proclaim, Christ is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!
Almighty God, who through thine only-begotten Son Jesus Christ hast overcome death, and opened unto us the gate of everlasting life; We humbly beseech thee that, as by thy special grace preventing us thou dost put into our minds good desires, so by thy continual help we may bring the same to good effect; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
Why is it called Good Friday? And what’s so 'good' about it? Why refer to it as 'good' when it commemorates such a shamefully dark day of suffering and inevitable death for Jesus Christ? Here's a sufficient answer...
For Christians, Good Friday is a crucial day of the year because it celebrates what we believe to be the most momentous weekend in the history of the world. Ever since Jesus died and was raised, Christians have proclaimed the cross and resurrection of Jesus to be the decisive turning point for all creation. Paul considered it to be “of first importance” that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised to life on the third day, all in accordance with what God had promised all along in the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:3).
On Good Friday we remember the day Jesus willingly suffered and died by crucifixion as the ultimate sacrifice for our sins (1 John 1:10). It is followed by Easter, the glorious celebration of the day Jesus was raised from the dead, heralding his victory over sin and death and pointing ahead to a future resurrection for all who are united to him by faith (Romans 6:5).
Still, why call the day of Jesus’ death “Good Friday” instead of “Bad Friday” or something similar? Some Christian traditions do take this approach: in German, for example, the day is called Karfreitag, or “Sorrowful Friday.” In English, in fact, the origin of the term “Good” is debated: some believe it developed from an older name, “God’s Friday.” Regardless of the origin, the name Good Friday is entirely appropriate because the suffering and death of Jesus, as terrible as it was, marked the dramatic culmination of God’s plan to save his people from their sins.
In order for the good news of the gospel to have meaning for us, we first have to understand the bad news of our condition as sinful people under condemnation. The good news of deliverance only makes sense once we see how we are enslaved. Another way of saying this is that it is important to understand and distinguish between law and gospel in Scripture. We need the law first to show us how hopeless our condition is; then the gospel of Jesus’ grace comes and brings us relief and salvation.
In the same way, Good Friday is “good” because as terrible as that day was, it had to happen for us to receive the joy of Easter. The wrath of God against sin had to be poured out on Jesus, the perfect sacrificial substitute, in order for forgiveness and salvation to be poured out to the nations. Without that awful day of suffering, sorrow, and shed blood at the cross, God could not be both “just and the justifier” of those who trust in Jesus (Romans 3:26). Paradoxically, the day that seemed to be the greatest triumph of evil was actually the deathblow in God’s gloriously good plan to redeem the world from bondage.
The cross is where we see the convergence of great suffering and God’s forgiveness. Psalms 85:10 sings of a day when “righteousness and peace” will “kiss each other.” The cross of Jesus is where that occurred, where God’s demands, his righteousness, coincided with his mercy. We receive divine forgiveness, mercy, and peace because Jesus willingly took our divine punishment, the result of God’s righteousness against sin. “For the joy set before him” (Hebrews 12:2) Jesus endured the cross on Good Friday, knowing it led to his resurrection, our salvation, and the beginning of God’s reign of righteousness and peace.
Good Friday marks the day when wrath and mercy met at the cross. That’s why Good Friday is so dark and so Good.
Our freedom does not depend on what happens in Scandinavia, freedom depends on a free USA! Democrats in the media are trying to fundamentally change America through immigration and it’s impossible to assimilate 1.5 million poor, unskilled, immigrants that oftentimes aren’t even literate in their native language. Our antiquated immigration laws are being abused by lawyers advising caravan after caravan on how to make their way to the border so they can skirt our asylum laws. This travesty is supported by the Democrats and the media. We have mayors and city Councils that oppose federal law and embrace the sanctuary movement despite the Supreme Court’s ruling on the plenary powers of the presidency. ~ MLS 4/2/19
What is so damn hard to understand about this? It's not. It's just that one political party in America seeks power by any means necessary in a unified, full-throated support of illegal criminality with mass media in its pocket, promoting said criminality to attain said power, while the other party unfortunately contains members who sit idly by, complicit in the lawlessness. Last week, Levin reminded listeners, “It is clear that the Democrats and the media are attempting to fundamentally transform this country through immigration, among other means,” and furthermore explained the impossibility of maintaining our civil society with such rampant disregard and abuse of law...
“It is impossible for a country to be a civil society — to have a civil society — with this kind of invasion, whether the media like to talk about it or not, whether the media attempt to call us names or not. The fact of the matter is, a country exists for its citizens. Citizens don’t exist to accommodate politicians, to accommodate the media, to accommodate foreign governments and aliens who seek to come into this country illegally,” Levin said.
“The issue is what does America need, what does the American citizenry want? Not what families who come here illegally demand. Not what other governments want. This is our country. Red, white, blue, whatever color people are, whatever their religion, this is the country of the American people. This government is set up to represent the American people. We don’t represent the whole world in this country. These are American institutions. That’s an American constitution. It’s an American culture,” he said.
“We pay our federal income taxes or we go to federal prison. We follow the rules, we pay our way, we ask nothing from anybody. That’s the way I was raised. And the minute people cross the border, their hand is out for a program, for civil rights, for whatever the issue is. We have never, ever seen anything like this: the breakdown of law and order supported by a major political party and the American news media. We have never seen anything like this in our country. This is flat-out tyranny, whether it’s immigration, whether it’s health care, whether it’s the attack on the Electoral College. Whether it’s the attack on the last election, trying to take out the president of the United States. You are witnesses to tyranny. That’s what’s taking place in this country. And I’m not kidding,” Levin said.
There is a difference between shutting down the border for commerce and suspending all immigration at our border.
The good news is that the media are finally admitting that the president has the authority to close the border. The bad news is that they are obfuscating the distinction between shutting off the entire border for commerce and suspending immigration requests at the border. The Trump administration would be wise to push back against it immediately and clarify this distinction.
The media is in full meltdown mode over Trump’s threat to “shut down” the border, as they predict doom and gloom for our economy, loss of jobs, and loss of revenue. We might even face an avocado shortage, according to the New York Times! Imagine that.
Never mind that the cost of one year’s border flow could add up to at least $150 billion for taxpayers. Never mind the fact that Border Patrol is completely shut down and is basically a conveyor belt to complete the criminal conspiracy of evil smugglers rather than deter it.
Never mind the countless migrants are coming in with dangerous diseases because, according to CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions.”
Never mind the fact that our schools will be flooded with unassimilable illegal immigrants creating fiscal and cultural problems, as well as a breeding ground for transnational gang recruitment, when the laws on the books were designed to protect Americans from this very outcome.
Never mind that while the status quo continues, the worst criminal alien murderers and rapists who were deported are now reemering through the frontier without any agents to challenge them.
But how ’bout those avocados?!
The media is missing the point about the president’s inherent and delegated authority to deny entry at the border and the most prudent way to use it. Through statute and case law, the president’s 212(f) authority overrides all other immigration processes, including asylum requests, but it’s important to remember that it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. It’s not an on-or-off circuit breaker on the operation of our border. There are modules on that switch that the president can engage to strategically address the current situation.
Horowitz continues to dig into the statute to demonstrate how we can keep the ports open to commerce, have our secure borders, and eat our avocados too! It's unfortunate that all it would seemingly take for this effort to gain traction is for American politicians and press to get on board with a pro-American agenda (not for polity, but for its sovereign People) to save the nation it professes to represent instead of constantly aiming to tear down everything that makes us exceptional. As long as we ignore lawfulness (in all respects really), the civil society crumbles into lawlessness...and our southern border seems to be daily displaying a detrimental example of that.
