Why do Christians spend months preparing for
Christmas, but give only a single day to the
resurrection? If Christ is risen, why doesn't
it feel like the center of everything? Why does
it feel like something we affirm, but don't actually
live in? That's what I want to explore. In the
last episode, I asked, what if you removed every
reference to the demonic from the Bible? How
would it change your understanding of the gospel
of salvation? I want to ask something similar
here. What if you took out the resurrection?
Not denied it, just removed it from the center.
What would be left? And more importantly, would
we even notice? It was after an Easter service
several years ago at our PCA church. And if I'm
being honest, it just felt flat. Not heretical,
not terrible, just underwhelming. Like we had
just walked through the single most important
claim in human history. And somehow it landed
like any other Sunday. So we're walking out and
a friend of mine turns to me and says something
that stuck. He says, why do we give basically
two hours a year to Easter, but months to Christmas?
And that question disturbed me because he was
right. Without the resurrection, there is no
Christmas. You might never have even heard of
Jesus. And that was the moment it hit me. What
you celebrate most, you value most. And if that's
true, then what we give our attention to, is
revealing what we actually believe matters most.
Not what we say, but what we live around. And
whether we mean to or not, the way many churches
treat Easter says something, and it raises a
question. Why so little time? Why so little attention
for the resurrection? And this is really what
I've been trying to point out the whole time.
Where you start matters. Because if you begin
with a view of man where his primary problem
is guilt, inherited from Adam, a will that can't
and won't choose God, then everything that follows
is shaped by that. And you can see this play
out over time. Centuries of debate about the
will, about how fallen we are, about what we're
actually capable of. And all of it is trying
to answer the same question. How do we fix what
went wrong in Adam? And if that's a central problem,
then salvation becomes focused on fixing that
fallenness, on dealing with that guilt. on restoring
what was lost in terms of right standing or status
before God. And that leads almost inevitably
to this. The cross becomes everything. Because
that's where the problem is solved. That's where
guilt is dealt with. That's where the breach
is healed. But if the problem goes deeper, if
what we inherit from Adam is not just guilt,
but death, corruption, mortality, then salvation
can't stop at the cross. Because the deeper problem
hasn't been touched yet. And that's why the resurrection
isn't optional. It's not a confirmation that
the passion was effective alone. It's the answer
to the deeper problem. Now to be clear, again,
none of this means forgiveness isn't real. It
is. Sin does create a rupture, a breach, a real
turning away from God. And forgiveness is the
release from that. It's the lifting of the debt,
the restoration of communion, the end of condemnation.
That matters. But here's the problem. Forgiveness
alone doesn't solve everything. Because even
if every sin were forgiven, we would still die.
We would still be subject to corruption, still
bound to decay, still living in a world where
death has the final word. So if salvation is
only forgiveness, then the cross is enough. But
if salvation is the defeat of death itself, then
forgiveness is not the end of the story. It's
the beginning. The cross removes the barrier.
The resurrection gives life back. And this is
where the question of what we call original sin
really matters. Because if the problem is primarily
guilt, then what we need is forgiveness. And
the passion addresses that. But if the problem
goes deeper, if sin is rooted in death itself,
in corruption, in a humanity cut off from the
source of life, then forgiveness alone doesn't
get to the root. Because why do we sin in the
first place? Because we are afraid. Because we
are mortal. Because we try to protect ourselves
in ways that God often forbids. As scripture
says, we are held in slavery through the fear
of death. And that's exactly where the work of
Christ goes further. Because in the resurrection,
death is not just acknowledged. It is destroyed.
It doesn't just answer what we've done. It answers
what we've become. And the Apostle Paul says
this more bluntly than anyone. If Christ has
not been raised, Your faith is futile and you
are still in your sins. So what does that mean?
Most of us hear still in your sins and think
still guilty. But Paul is saying something more.
Imagine this. It's the difference between walking
out of a courtroom and walking out of a grave.
One deals with your record. The other deals with
your reality. Or again, it's like being told
your medical bills are completely paid. while
the disease is still in your body. Or a man on
death row is pardoned, but the prison is burning
down around him. Forgiveness clears your record.
It does not save your life. And that's Paul's
point, because for him, sin isn't just a list
of wrongs. It's a power that leads to death,
a condition that traps us. So if Christ is not
raised, then death is still undefeated. The grave
still holds us. Corruption still wins. Which
means we're not just guilty, we're still in it.
Still inside the problem. Still bound to the
same end. So, still in your sins doesn't just
mean nothing has been forgiven. It means nothing
has been broken. Nothing has been reversed. Nothing
has actually changed. And if nothing has actually
changed, then we don't need better language about
salvation. We need resurrection. And this is
exactly where Paul goes next. We were buried,
therefore, with him by baptism. into death so
that we too might walk in newness of life. This
isn't just forgiveness. This is participation.
Because Christianity is not about escaping the
body. It's about the body being redeemed. And
maybe that's the real issue. We haven't rejected
the resurrection. We've just reduced it, turned
it into evidence, turned it into proof. I remember
this personally. I used to do organized street
evangelism. And at some point, Among thoughtful,
educated Christians, something became obvious.
We didn't really know how to explain why it mattered.
And that should bother us. Because if the resurrection
is central, and we can't explain why, then we
don't actually understand the gospel we're preaching.
We could defend it. But we kept circling back
to the cross. The resurrection became the evidence.
The cross stayed the center. And I think this
helps explain something else. In much of Western
theology, the cross and the resurrection are
not always held together as a single act of salvation.
The cross is where the real work happens, where
sin is dealt with, where atonement is accomplished,
and the resurrection becomes necessary. But almost
as a kind of confirmation, Christ had to rise,
but mainly to show that the cross worked, to
prove who he was, to validate what had already
been accomplished. But notice what that does.
It quietly reduces the resurrection, not by denying
it, but by assigning it a secondary role. Necessary,
but not central. Important, but not decisive.
And once that shift happens, salvation becomes
something completed on the cross, while the resurrection
becomes something that confirms it. But that's
not how the apostles speak. For them, the resurrection
is not just the result, it's the victory. And
you can actually see this embodied in Pascha.
In the Orthodox Church, Easter is not a moment.
It's something you're prepared for and then something
you live in. There's great Lent, weeks of fasting,
prayer, repentance, not as an end in itself,
but as preparation so that when the light comes,
it actually feels like life. And then it begins.
Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down
death by death. And you hear this for weeks,
50 days, not two hours. Because that's what victory
looks like when you actually believe it. And
to be clear, this doesn't mean the cross is minimized.
Far from it. In orthodoxy, the cross is everywhere.
It is venerated. It is brought out before the
people. It is kissed. It is honored. And the
church sings, Before thy cross, we bow down in
worship, O Master. And thy holy resurrection,
we glorify. They're put together. It's not one
or the other. It's both. Always together. Because
the cross is never understood in isolation. It
is always seen in light of the resurrection.
Not as the end, but as the path. Because this
isn't just a theological adjustment. It's a shift
in how you see reality itself. What is normal?
What is final? What has the last word? So the
question isn't just, do you believe Christ is
risen? The question is, are you still living
as if death is normal? If sin really flows from
the fear of death, and we treat death as normal,
then sin will never be conquered. Because if
Christ is risen, death is no longer the engine.
And the only question is whether we will actually
live in that reality. It's the enemy that's been
defeated. And life, real life, has already begun.
Christ is risen. And if that's true, then death
is not normal. So don't just believe it. Live
it.