At Easter, songs and hymns remind us of this great saving love. We remember that the death of Christ on Calvary was a momentous event. It is there that we were rescued from the dominion of darkness and that God cancelled the guilty verdict against us and nailed it to the cross. What a powerful image.
The proclamation of the cross of Christ is central to the gospel message. Paul proclaimed it to the Jews and to the Gentiles. “There is no difference”, he wrote, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…”. But there is good news. Every New Testament writer presents Jesus Christ crucified as the sacrifice of atonement that every person on earth can receive by faith in the shed blood of Christ.
It is this saving and transforming message that we are called to proclaim all over the world.
The New Testament creed is well summarized in 1 Corinthians 15: 3-4, “For what I received I pass on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…”
Christ crucified and resurrected is the summary of the Christian message. It’s the starting point from which everything else follows.
The hope of all humanity, of every person we meet on the street, lies in the great deed that God himself performed through the death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
People need the gospel message in order to find their way to God, to hope and to eternal life. God’s desire to see every man, woman and child come to know this saving truth does not change with time. We must talk about it again and again.
As we celebrate Easter, let’s set aside time to pray for the awakening of the lost to the great mystery of God’s love at work in the death and resurrection of Christ. By His sacrificial death, Jesus became the atoning sacrifice for everyone who believes. By His resurrection from the dead, He became our living hope. As Peter wrote, we were given “…new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”
The Finding the Hope booklet is written to help each of us communicate this extraordinary hope. It can be given to someone in the course of a conversation or left somewhere to be discovered. Let us know if we can provide you with a free quantity of these booklets.
Everyone must hear of the love of God in Christ on the cross. Let’s tell them now.