For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised

1 Corinthians 15:17

The return of spring, with all its promise of new life, and of warmer and longer days still to come, is a welcome reminder to us that, even after the darkest and coldest winter, the flowers will soon be in full bloom again, the trees will bud, and the grass will grow as green as ever before.

So the season of Easter, with all its pagan overtones of fertility – its chocolate eggs, its baby bunnies, and even its name (a lasting, but little known, reference to the ancient Babylonian ‘god’ Ishtar) – comes around again, and sees the established Christian churches celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, "the Lord of all Creation", from the cold and silent tomb.

We do not know precisely when that ‘greatest event in human history’ actually took place; but ‘Easter Sunday’ is as good a time as any to mark it. And a real celebration it should be for us, too – for two main reasons in particular.

First, the permanent triumph of God’s Son Jesus over sin, death and the grave was not just for himself alone: his death and resurrection are able to save all those who will put their trust in his selfless sacrifice, as the Apostle Paul confirms: "So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death...that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4).

And secondly, if it had not been for the victory of Jesus in the battle to take our sin away through his own cruel death, there would have been no escape for any man or woman from the eternal winter of the tomb, and none of us would ever have been able to look forward to the coming of the ‘springtime’ of eternal life in the Kingdom of God’s Son.

In 1 Corinthians 15 – the Bible’s great ‘resurrection’ chapter – the Apostle Paul sums up the hopeless state we would have been in without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ: "For if in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (verses 20-21). Thanks be to God for His wonderful gift of the resurrected Jesus!