Risen

Risen. Risen indeed!

At long last old Adam had been undone, made right, restored.

Ever since the first Adam fell the history of humanity had followed an unrelenting cycle of birth, life, sin and death. But suddenly on that Easter day something astounding happened, a Man rose from the dead never to die again! Unheard of. Amazing! Good news!

Jesus, the second Person of the Trinity had come in the likeness of real human flesh, into the midst of our broken estate and was tempted in every way as we are. The devil had turned on Him this way and that, seeking in some way to bring Him down, but at every twist and turn, Jesus said ‘Yes’ to the Father, and fulfilled all righteousness.

Following His final ‘yes’ in the Garden of Gethsemane he went through a false trial, and was condemned to die a most cruel death, but the death he would die would be far more than any death that had happened before or since. The perfect, sinless, Son of God in human flesh takes our sin, all that was wrong about us, all that separated us from God, to Himself, and bears the judgment of a holy and just God on it.

Darkness, desolation….. the cry goes up, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” A personal and intimate cry. As Jesus enters fully into our place in judgment, something takes place in the Trinitarian relationship/experience that had never happened before. Something explainable and perhaps best left to the hidden experience of God.

Darkness, desolation, but hold on He is not defeated, another cries goes up, “It is finished!” and then he dies. Real physical death.

A burial.

Then, then! Easter morning. Resurrection! Jesus rises from the dead. He was alive again. Satan, sin, death and hell had been defeated. It was done, the price had been paid, the debt had been cleared, old Adam had at last been undone, and ‘normal’ relations restored, man reconciled and in full relationship to God!

Easter day was and is the most climatic day in human history for in one big swoop human history was transformed in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

O loving wisdom of our God!
when all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.

O wisest love! that flesh and blood,
which did in Adam fail,
should strive afresh against the foe,
should strive and should prevail.

And that the highest gift of grace
should flesh and blood refine:
God’s presence and his very self,
and essence all-divine.

O generous love! that he who smote
in Man, for man, the foe,
the double agony in Man
for man should undergo.

John Henry Newman