Two of humanity’s greatest problems are sin and death. The older I get, the more I realize how devastating they are, and also how little we can do to fix them.
Take sin. When you’re young, you might think that sin is no big deal. My mother used to keep a bottle of pop in the fridge. Money was tight, and I wasn’t allowed to have any. Sometimes I would sneak a sip. To cover up my transgression, I would fill the bottle with water to the level it was before. No big deal. A small infraction. Nobody got hurt. My mother didn’t even notice, except when I took it too far, and her pop tasted watered down.
It’s easy to look at sin like that: wrong but inconsequential, fun, but not anything that would affect anyone. Now, half a century later, I see almost daily how damaging sin is. It corrodes everything it touches. It devastates lives, families, and society. I’ve seen sin in all its ugliness. Sometimes it feels like a lot of pastoral work is arriving at scenes of destruction, dealing with the damaging effects of sin, and realizing there’s no way to undo its damage. The effects of sin have ravaged our world and each of our lives.
Likewise, death is ugly. Whenever somebody talks about death being just a natural part of life, I cringe. We weren’t meant to die. Show up at an accident scene or a children’s hospital and tell me that death’s not ugly. You can’t.
Death robs us of those closest to us, and one day each of us will face our own death. Instinctively, we’re meant to recoil; it was never meant to be this way.
The older I get, the more I realize how serious and intractable these two problems are. I’m sick of sin and death. I want a world that’s free from both. No amount of human ingenuity, no amount of counselling, education, or medical expertise can untangle or unravel these two problems. They affect us all, and the damage is worse than we realize.
The older I get, the more of sin and death I see, the more I’m grateful for Easter.
On Good Friday, God dealt with the first of our two greatest problems. Jesus dealt fully and finally with the problem of sin at the cross. There was no other way for this problem to be remedied; there’s no cure for sin that could be more complete. Jesus has not only freed us from the penalty of sin but has defeated its power in our lives and one day will free us from its very presence.
There’s no more guilt or condemnation for the believer. We can live knowing that all our sins have been dealt with decisively at the cross.
On Easter Sunday, God dealt with our second great problem. The resurrection of Jesus marks the death of death. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we can look death in its face with defiance. Death is still ugly, but also defeated; one day, we will live forever in resurrected bodies that will never die.
Sin and death are ugly, and nobody has ever found a solution for them. They’ve been terrorizing humanity for millennia with no hope of relief. There were no cures for either until God dealt with our sins on Good Friday and with death on Easter Sunday.
The older I get, the more profoundly grateful I am for Easter. It’s the answer to our two greatest problems, and it’s the best news the world has ever heard.