Easter is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. If Jesus Christ did rise from the dead on the first Easter Day, then he is alive today and we can know him. Christianity is first and foremost about relationships rather than rules and our relationship with God the most important.

Why do we need Jesus?

Until we find that relationship there will always be something missing. People try and fill that emptiness in various ways: money, drugs, sexual promiscuity, work, music, family, sport or success. Nothing, even good things, can satisfy the hunger deep inside every human being.

The reason for this emptiness is that people have turned their backs on God. Jesus, who said, “I am the bread of life (John 6:35), is the only one who can satisfy that hunger. In relationship with our Creator we can find meaning and purpose, life beyond death and forgiveness.

Why the Death and Resurrection?

Jesus’ death and resurrection are based on historical evidence. He was not just a moral teacher; he claimed to be the unique Son of God who could forgive sins. C. S. Lewis said, “A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher.” He would either be insane or “the Devil of Hell”. Lewis came to the conclusion that Jesus was God. Of Jesus, Dostoevsky’s wrote “. . . there is no one lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic and more perfect than Jesus”. Jesus conquered death by rising to life. The evidence for the physical resurrection is very strong. The first disciples found his body absent from the tomb. In the next six weeks he was seen by over 500 people. The lives of the disciples were transformed and the church was born. Former Lord Chief Justice of England, Lord Darling said, there is “such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring a verdict that the resurrection story is true.

Why did He come?

Jesus’ reason for coming was “to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The word ‘ransom’ came from the slave market, where some one would pay to set a slave free. He gave his life by allowing himself to be flogged with a whip formed of leather strands weighted with several pieces of bone and metal. He was forced to carry a six-foot cross beam until he collapsed and then he was crucified, by having 15 cm nails hammered through his wrists and feet, a death described by Cicero as “the most cruel and hideous of torture”. Though this death was excruciating, it was the anguish of carrying our sins which was far worse than physical pain.

St Paul wrote of “the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20). Jesus gave his life in our stead because he loved us and did not want us to pay the penalty for all the things that we had done wrong. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). Jesus death set us free from guilt, free from fear, especially of death, and from addictions to any sin that holds us captive.

With sin removed, there is no barrier that can prevent a relationship between us and God. We are free to know and love him and free to love others. When we ask him to live within us, God’s Spirit gives us power to change and to experience “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5:22-23).

What do we have to do?

We can accept God’s gift by believing that God loves us and sent his son to die in our place. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). We can ask God to forgive us for all the things we have done wrong and turn from everything we know is wrong in our lives. We can thank God for dying for us and offering us this free gift of forgiveness and freedom and then we invite God to come into our lives by his Spirit, to live with us and guide us forever.