How Christ’s Resurrection Changed Everything
JEREMY ROYAL HOWARD
DOUG POWELL
After Easter: How Christ’s Resurrection Changed Everything
© Copyright 2015 by Jeremy Royal Howard and Doug Powell
B&H Publishing Group
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-4336-0816-2
Dewey Decimal Classification: 232.97
Subject Heading: JESUS CHRIST—RESURRECTION / JESUS CHRIST—APPEARANCES / SALVATION
Unless otherwise stated all Scripture quotations are from the Holman
Christian Standard Bible® Copyright 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by
Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission.
Chapter 4: Salvation Through Faith
Chapter 6: Mission to the World
Guide
THE REIGN OF DEATH
When you think of Christmas, what comes to mind? Family? Snow? Presents? Baby Jesus? Those are some obvious answers, but what about curse? Death? Punishment? Christmas should make you think of these things as well.
Too often we think of Jesus’s birth as a quaint nativity scene and nothing more. We envision a beautiful baby, the centerpiece of a hay-strewn floor in a rustic room aglow with lantern light. The animals have gathered to warm themselves and behold the child. We see Jesus’s parents also, simple and earnest folk, kneeling at his manger. They’re aware that their child is special, but they don’t yet grasp the fullness of it. All of this is true enough, but there’s something more.
That something more is a human problem so profound that no mere human—no matter how wise or strong or upright—could ever hope to solve it. The solution required nothing less than divine intervention, action on an infinite scale. How would God move? By sending an angel army? By rolling up the sky like a scroll? No, none of that.
He sent a baby.
The feel-good scene of the nativity was Jesus’s first step in fixing the human problem, a fix that would involve his eventual humiliation, torture, and public execution on a cross. This violent end wasn’t ill fate or a tragic mix-up; neither was it simply miscarried justice. No, God the Father planned Jesus’s sacrificial mission before the creation of the world, and Jesus began to accomplish that mission from the moment of his birth as the one born both human and divine.
What was required of Jesus was perfection from start to finish. No sin, no moral slackness, no self-centeredness. He was to live a blameless human life, adhering always to God’s law. He had to get right what Adam and Eve and every human after them got so tragically wrong. Only by this standard would Jesus be fit for the task given him. And so it is that Christmas began the work that was completed on Easter morning.
The world wasn’t tainted when God created it. It was pristine, pure, unmarred by sin. God called all he made “good” (Genesis 1:4,10,12,18,21,25), and when ...
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About After Easter: How Christ's Resurrection Changed EverythingAfter Easter provides a brief case for the historical reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and describes the impact of His rising from the dead. Each chapter ends with a few simple thought-provoking questions for individual reflection or small group discussion. The full Gospel of John is also included, making this the perfect leave-behind tool for personal evangelism. After Easter, everything changed.
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