Why Christians Cherish Easter So Dearly

Easter holiday is celebrated by today’s Christians to mark the end of the holy week, whereby they remember crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Jesus had his last meal with his disciples on the evening of a Thursday (commemorated as Holy Thursday), was arrested during the night, tried Friday morning (Good Friday), condemned, crucified, and died before sundown on Friday.

And, according to the Gospel accounts, he was bodily raised from the dead on the third day — Sunday, the day of Easter.

Unlike the Eucharist and the crucifixion, which seem to almost make a mockery of any traditional notion of God, the Easter story is fairly easy to comprehend as the logical consequence of the previous episode.

We Christians are crazy enough to believe that God can be killed, but not so crazy as to believe that God must stay dead.

Belief in the bodily — literal, not metaphorical — resurrection of Jesus Christ is the belief on which every other Christian belief rests. It’s how we know that this bizarre 1st-century preacher was not just a preacher, but actually the Son of God. He rose from the dead.

But Christians celebrate Easter not just for historical reasons. They believe that Jesus’ triumph over death on Easter wasn’t just his triumph — it was ours, too. This is a bit harder to explain.

Now, Christians will readily admit that sin and death seem to be as powerful as ever. But we see this almost as the comical staggering of a stage character who has just been stabbed. Sin and death have been revealed to be things we can overcome.

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