The message of Easter assures us that God has not gone out of business. It is His personal guarantee that no matter what happens in our world, or how bad it may seem to us, He is in final control. This is a magnificent view, the long view. But where does it touch your life and mine?
The Psalmist tells us that humans have been made “a little less than God,” As Genesis puts it, “we are made in God’s image, and after His likeness” (Genesis 1:26). Whatever else this may imply, it means that we share in the ongoing purpose of God and that we can participate in the victory that belongs to Him. We see something of this in our quest for self-fulfillment. We want to find meaning in our existence.
The trouble is that on the road to personal victory or fulfillment there is a formidable obstacle which the Bible calls simply “the world.” Again and again God reminds us that the world is our problem. “Everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world” (I John 2:16). Another New Testament writer asks, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (James 4:4).
What is going on here? Doesn’t Genesis say that everything God made was good? This is rather confusing. Yet John and James are not talking about the physical world of beautiful landscapes and colorful sunsets. They are talking about a world that is hostile to God, a world that greed and lust and hate and oppression would destroy or make unproductive. God wants our world to be one of moral and spiritual beauty.
The world, as John defines it, can defeat us. It can bring to nothing what we have perceived as a shining purpose. All of us are vulnerable at any age to the pressures of people about us. One young woman remorsefully told the story of betrayal: “Everything he said to me seemed so right!” Sometimes even religious rituals may be offered to make evil an occasion of celebration. Remember: the Ku Klux Klan has its chaplains. The Apostle Paul said, “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold” (Romans 12:2).
The kind of faith of which Easter speaks provides a winning strategy. John says, “Who is it that overcomes the world but he who believes in Jesus, the Son of God?” (1 John 5:5). If we believe that Jesus is God’s Son, that He brings us an authentic word from God, and if we want our lives to be what God intends, then the power of the world can be overcome.
Dr. Harvey Cox tells the story of a psychologist who had a woman patient in her mid-twenties who complained that she had become nervous and fretful because her life had grown so hectic. The reason, she said, was “too many weekends, too many discos, too many late hours, too much talk, too much wine, too much pot, and too much love-making.” The therapist at this point asked her mildly, “Why don’t you stop?” The patient stared blankly into space for a moment, and then her face brightened. It was as if she had a revelation. “You mean I don’t really have to do what I want to do?”
The truth of Easter is that we do not have to do what the world has programed us to do. God created us to live on a higher plane. He is able and willing to give us a new way of looking at life and a new way of making decisions. That is why the early Christians, following the resurrection of Christ, went everywhere proclaiming the value of repentance and faith in Christ. Life can be different. Once we finally decide that it will be so in our own case, we discover that whatever is born of God overcomes the world. Easter makes it possible for us to share this message with others every day of every year.
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