The Empty Tomb: Okay, So What?

You may have already forgotten about Easter, and Jesus’ sacrifice for you on that horrible cross, but I haven’t. The fact that there is an empty tomb in Jerusalem means Jesus is who he said he is – God, manifest bodily into our world as the Son of God. As C.S. Lewis says,

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing people
often say about Him: “I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher,
but I don’t accept His claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not
say.

A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said
would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a
level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be
the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice.

Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or
something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and
kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God.
But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great
human teacher.

He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity)

(While reading this in June of 1995 the Light came on for me and I was born
again.)

Eternal Perspective

Perhaps life has turned upside down and you cannot make any sense of it. The fog has rolled in and God seems nowhere to be found. How could a loving God let this happen to me? Where is he when I need him? Why won’t he fix this??

But … with a resurrected, and very much alive Jesus, there can be new meaning to your life, beyond this life. Our current problems, and even our disasters, can now take on a different, less overwhelming perspective.

This is the key: The empty tomb affords us an Eternal Perspective.

And this helps 2 Corinthians 4:16-18 make sense:

Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  17  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

And finally, since Jesus is who he said he is, it would seem ridiculous to just “ho-hum” our way through the typical Sunday morning church thing – just phoning it in – paying only nominal attention to the teachings and commands of this Son of God. Not allowing it to interfere with our day-to-day living?

This Easter season – which is, in fact, 365 days a year – I challenge you to let the true significance of this empty tomb in Jerusalem, and a risen and very much alive Jesus, flow over you and through you. You’re a bright person; you decide how that should affect the details of your life.

But affect them it most certainly must.