Chocolate eggs and the Easter bunny, blood and a crucifixion,
joy? How in the world do all those things go together and what’s the point of
it all? That’s a question I think many of us ask ourselves. It doesn’t make
much sense at first glance does it? J I thought I would answer a few questions surrounding Easter
in this blog post according to my best ability. First up:
Why do Christians
celebrate that Jesus died?
Christians believe that Jesus was God walking on earth and
celebrate his crucifixion because that was the time it became clear that Jesus really
was God. When Jesus rose from the dead his disciples finally understood that he
wasn’t only some wise teacher, he was God himself.
If Jesus really was God
then why did he not save himself and come down from the cross?
Jesus came to die in our place. If Jesus would have come
down from the cross we would have to suffer and die for all our mistakes,
he came to pay for our debt.
What do you mean
“Jesus came to pay our debt”? What debt are we talking about here?
In the Old Testament we learn about how God’s chosen people
(Israel) loved their God and lived in peace and harmony and everything was
good. A few years later they got bored with their goody goody lifestyle and decided
they wanted to do something else. They forgot about God and did everything that
they were not supposed to be doing: murder, rape, incest, idol worshipping etc.
God was furious with their behavior and punished them for
it. Israel eventually repented from their bad behaviors and went back to loving
their God and living in peace and harmony. Fast forward a few decades and the
people once again forgot what the point was with loving their God and living in
peace. They got tired of being kind and friendly people and went back to doing
whatever they wanted.
God got angry at their behavior again and punished them by
bringing down destruction on Israel. Hopefully by now you get the picture. This
cycle went on and on, century after century. You could simply say that this was
a time when Karma would apply.
A few hundreds of years later nothing had gotten any better
so God eventually came down to earth himself (in the form of Jesus) to set
things right. God is all about justice and when Jesus died on that cross he
died for all the things that his people
(we) should have been punished for. Jesus died in our place, now the old time
of karma is over and we are given grace.
When we love Jesus we are forgiven, we no longer have to pay
for our own mistakes. After our death we will stand in front of God and have to
pay for all the mistakes we have made in life. When we believe&love Jesus
we are told that we will be forgiven on that day, Jesus will be there to
proclaim something like: “this is my child, and his/her mistakes have been
forgiven”.
When we believe in Christ God also gives us the holy spirit in
life, through the holy spirit God starts to change us from the inside and
out. Punishment couldn’t change us, only God’s love could.
Okay, thanks for
clearing that up, so how does the Easter bunny fit into all this?
Good question. The Easter bunny has nothing to do with
Jesus, he is some kind of a folk legend similar to Santa Claus. Parents like to
convince their kids that the Easter bunny brings all the good stuff instead of
the parents themselves. J
What about Easter
eggs? Why do we eat chocolate eggs on Easter?
Chocolate Easter eggs is a modern invention and has nothing
to do with Jesus either. The chicken eggs, on the other hand, was traditionally
a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Christians started painting and decorate
hard-boiled chicken eggs as a reminder of Jesus’ rebirth when he rose from the
grave. The eggs were a reminder of the price Jesus paid when he died to pay for
our mistakes so that we could become forgiven by God.
Rebirth itself is also at the core of Christianity, Jesus
was reborn when he rose from the grave. We ourselves are considered reborn when
we come to faith in Jesus, become forgiven and give up our old ways of living.
We choose to love Jesus and therefore commit to living in peace, kindness and
love rather than however we want. J
Happy Easter everyone!
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