It is the end of a long day. It was a good day. There is no other day like it on the calendar, no greater day in church history or for that matter in all of history. Today, Easter Sunday, we celebrate Christ’s resurrection!

Paul writes to young Timothy in 2Timothy 2:8: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel! Pretty simple, definitely not complicated, yet nevertheless quite radical!

Christianity is not some sort of mind numbing philosophical narcotic to help us manage our lives better; it’s a radical relationship with the very alive Jesus Christ, a relationship with the living God! Jesus Christ was Crucified, he died a horrible and violent death for our sin, then rose from the dead! He’s alive! He is physically alive! He is not some sort of disembodied spirit, like a ghost. He has risen as a human being, exalted and sits at the right hand of the Father! This is the cornerstone of our faith that somehow we push to the margins of our lives.

This is radical stuff! There is nothing religious about this at all! The idea of God dying on a cross is sheer foolishness,? Preposterous! How could he? Why would he? How dare he? This is utterly scandalous! What kind of God is he who would die on a cross? What kind of god would choose to be crucified to show his love for us?

Let’s change gears for a moment. For resurrection to happen, what must first take place? Of course, in order for resurrection to take place there must be a death. Something has to die in order to be resurrected and of course that’s the rub. We don’t want to die.

There are many types of death. There is physical death, which is our greatest enemy, but there are other types of deaths as well. It is a type of death when our dreams go unfilled; it is a type of death when a relationship disintegrates; it is a type of death when we experience rejection…. when we are misunderstood and judged;

It is a type of death when we experience shame, and failure, when life doesn’t turn out how we had planned. It is a type of death when you face the unknown, when you leave the security of the familiar for waters unchartered. And of course there is a death because of our sin.

We do everything in our power to keep from dying. We resist dying, we try to hang on, to preserve our lives…but the truth is, grace is only understood when you have died. Without the cross there is neither grace nor resurrection.

Like a sponge Christ has absorbed our sin. We have been set right with Christ not because of being so morally stellar in our relationships or by our impeccable obedience to a set of rules! We have been set right because of Christ’s faithfulness, not ours. Christ not only died for me, on my behalf, but he died because of me as well. He was crucified because of my sin. It is my sin that killed him. Harsh, but true.

And when you owe your life to someone … it changes how you live and the only appropriate thing you can do is say thank you.