“I am He who lives, and was dead, and be­hold, I am alive forever­more” (Rev­e­la­tion 1:18).

The cross was a tool of unimag­in­able suf­fer­ing and hu­mil­i­a­tion in the Ro­man world. Cru­ci­fix­ion, their harsh­est method of ex­e­cu­tion, was the fate rec­om­mend­ed by the Jew­ish mob in their zeal to elim­i­nate Je­sus, the Mes­si­ah.

This sys­tem­at­ic bru­tal­i­ty be­gan with Je­sus be­ing stripped naked and beat­en across the back and chest with a Ro­man fla­gel­lum whip. De­pend­ing on the force used, this ac­tiv­i­ty would re­move sig­nif­i­cant amounts of flesh and some­times kill the in­di­vid­ual be­fore his cross ap­point­ment due to blood loss.

The cross meant death by as­phyx­i­a­tion due to the dif­fi­cul­ty of in­hal­ing, or by the in­abil­i­ty to prop­er­ly ex­hale and the re­sult­ing build-up of car­bon diox­ide in the blood.

Af­ter tak­ing up­on him­self the full wrath of God on our be­half, Christ died de­clar­ing, “It is fin­ished!” (John 19:30). His death was not co­in­ci­den­tal but a fun­da­men­tal part of God’s plan for man’s re­demp­tion.

It was an ex­e­cu­tion that had been re­hearsed thou­sands of times in the past, with the sym­bol­ic sac­ri­fic­ing of an­i­mals as man’s atone­ment for sins.

Je­sus’ death was our death, his bur­ial was our bur­ial, and his res­ur­rec­tion was our res­ur­rec­tion. By tak­ing our sins, once and for all, the guilt­less Lamb of God rec­on­ciled mankind to God and ob­tained for­give­ness for all those who would be­lieve on his name.

By faith, we no longer stand as con­demned sin­ners be­fore a holy and just God, but are favoured, adopt­ed and jus­ti­fied through the right­eous­ness of Je­sus Christ now im­put­ed to us.

How­ev­er cru­el the cross, its phys­i­cal im­pact ceased up­on the death of our Sav­iour. It had no pow­er af­ter this point. He who had raised many from the dead, had chal­lenged the pow­er of death to hold him cap­tive when he said, “De­stroy this tem­ple and I will raise it again in three days” (John 3:19). Some of his en­e­mies re­mem­bered this state­ment and se­cured his tomb un­til

the third day against any move by his dis­ci­ples to “steal his body and then tell the peo­ple that he was risen from the dead” (Matthew 27:63-66).

De­spite the se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, Je­sus rose tri­umphant­ly from the dead on the third day as he promised. A vis­it to the bor­rowed tomb in Jerusalem will un­veil the an­gel­ic an­them: “He is not here; for he is risen” (Matthew 28:6).

The res­ur­rec­tion is the cen­tral, val­i­dat­ing event of the gospel. It sig­ni­fies the fin­ished work of man’s re­demp­tion and de­liv­er­ance from sin and death and firm­ly es­tab­lish­es Je­sus Christ as the Son of God.

The res­ur­rect­ed Je­sus her­alds a new era of eter­nal life and sig­nals the con­clu­sive de­feat of death, man’s last en­e­my. The grave has been stripped of its ter­ror. “Thanks be to God who gives us the vic­to­ry through our Lord Je­sus Christ” (1 Corinthi­ans 15:57).

Tru­ly, God was in Christ, rec­on­cil­ing the world un­to him­self and to­day, we in­vite the risen Sav­iour to be the Lord of our lives.

Hal­lelu­jah! He is risen!