Easter

This Easter morning across America children are searching for Easter baskets filled with goodies or colored eggs allegedly placed by the Easter bunny. These are fun activities, and it is quite appropriate to be joyous and happy on this day. However, it is important to remember the reason we celebrate this day, and teach your children the significance of Easter Sunday. On this day, 2,000 years ago, a group of women were walking to Jesus’ tomb. They were His followers, but three days before, Jesus had been crucified, and laid in the tomb. All of His followers were deeply grieved at their Lord’s death. How could this happen? Wasn’t He the Messiah? Isn’t the Messiah supposed to rule the world and set up the Kingdom? Their own lives were in danger because of their association with Jesus. He said “I will never leave your nor forsake you.” What happened? Why did He die?

Jesus did warn them that He would have to die, but then rise from the dead:

“And it came about that after Jesus finished all these words, He said to His disciples, ‘You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man is to be delivered up for crucifixion’ ” (Matthew 26:1, 2).

“Then Jesus said to them, ‘You will all fall away because of Me this night, for it is written, “I will strike down the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered.’ But after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee’ ” (Matthew 26:31-32).

Jesus also told them the reason He was going to die:

“I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep….the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.” (John 10:11, 17).

“just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:28).

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you – unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again according to the Scriptures” (1Corinthians 15:1-4).

This is what the Gospel is: that Christ died for our sins, and rose from the dead; and Easter Sunday is when we celebrate His resurrection. On this day, about 2,000 years ago, Christ conquered sin and death forever.

“Christ died for our sins once for all, the just for the unjust, in order that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit.” (1Peter 3:18)

God told the prophet Hosea, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death” (Hosea 13:14 NKJV).

“then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?’ The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1Corinthians 15:54-57 NKJV)

As the women walked to the tomb, they were the first human beings on earth to witness discover that the tomb is empty, that death, the ultimate worst enemy of mankind is defeated, that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead. He is alive, but by His sacrifice on the cross He paid for our sins, as was prophesied in the Old Testament:

“Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried…He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall upon Him…By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and for His generation, who considered that He was cut off from the land of the living…But the Lord was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring…As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; by His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, as He will bear their iniquities.” (Isaiah 53:4-6, 8, 10-11)

Easter Sunday is a joyous day because it is the day Christ rose, but it is by His blood shed on the cross that our sins are paid. God became man, out of His great love for rebellious mankind. He suffered to redeem us.

"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" (2Corinthians 5:21).

A person might ask, how then do we get this victory over death applied to us? How do we "become the righteousness of God in Him"? Jesus answers, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through Him…Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life” (John 3:16-17, 5:24).

Jesus said that we need to believe in Him to obtain everlasting life. The Greek word for believe is Pisteuo, which means two things: 1)to accept something as true, and 2)to trust or depend on someone for something. To be saved, we must accept the Gospel as true and put our trust in Christ alone as our only salvation from death.

We must not trust in our own works or abilities, whether it be going to church, giving to the poor, being nice, or taking communion. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Ephesians 2:8, 9). We are not saved by our deeds, but by God’s grace in sending His Son to die for your sins, and that we believe in Him. However, it is of course important that a Christian do good works, since it pleases God, whom we should earnestly desire to serve because of His magnificent, unfailing love towards us; though we were sinners in open rebellion against God, He died for us. Even as Christians, we still sin - a lot - and yet He is still gracious and loving towards us. Therefore, He is deserving of our allegiance, and we should strive to be totally commited to Him. We love Him because He first loved us.

The Resurrection story, the Gospel message, is what we need to tell our children after all the eggs and baskets have been found. It is the Gospel that we need to tell our friends and relatives as we sit down for Easter dinner. I encourage you to read Isaiah 53, 1Corinthians 15, and the Gospel accounts of Easter; it helps us put Easter into at least some of the perspective it deserves, as finite as our human minds are.

Happy Resurrection Day everyone.

Salute to John Wycliffe

Christians should remember our brothers and sisters of the past and their accomplishments. One good man worthy of remembrance is John Wycliffe, the first man to translate the Bible into our language. This is a speech I delivered at my Worldview class about John Wycliffe:



“Even though there were a hundred popes and though every mendicant monk were a cardinal, they would be entitled to confidence only in so far as they accorded with the Bible.” The idea behind these words that John Wycliffe spoke is foundational to the Protestant Reformation. Although Wycliffe lived 200 years before the Reformation, his teachings are very similar to those of Luther and the other Reformers. He was the first glimpse of the light, the religious truth and the freedom that would soon come.

John Wycliffe was probably born around the year 1324 near Richmond in Yorkshire, England. He studied at Oxford University, and became master of Balliol college in 1361. In 1372 he received the degree of doctor of theology. Wycliffe was well-educated and highly respected even by his enemies as a scholar, philosopher, and theologian.

Wycliffe was critical of the Roman Catholic church of the time. He held that the Roman church had too much power in civil government and that the church was gouging the common people to become too wealthy, and he did not keep quiet about his views; Wycliffe was a vocal critic of what he believed were false, unbiblical doctrines of the Roman church.. Wycliffe translated the Bible into the English language, the common language of England. Most of the church hierarchy did not want the common people to be able to read the Bible for themselves, and they thought English was too rough a language for the Holy Bible, ignoring of course what the Bible itself says that all Christians should know and study Scripture. But Wycliffe wrote in the preface to his translation his disapproval of the immoral lives of Catholic clergymen, a condemnation of the worship of saints, images, and of Transubstantiation, and he also included an assertion that all people read the Bible for themselves.

The Church did not like being crossed and criticized like this at all, and hoped to silence Wycliffe; they often pressured England for his arrest. But he was protected by the respected duke of Lancaster, and they feared his great popularity with the people, so he was able to teach and write in relative safety. Therefore, the Church settled to simply harass Wycliffe all his life. Eventually, Wycliffe died of a stroke in 1384. But Wycliffe’s followers continued his work. They were called Lollards or “poor preachers” as they liked to call themselves because they lived like the common people and did not dress richly like the Catholic priests. Seventeen years after Wycliffe’s death, the Church ordered his books burned and punished all who taught his ideas. They also had his bones dug up and burned.

John Wycliffe’s actions earn him the dubbing by historians, “morning star of the reformation” because of the closeness of his teachings to the Protestant Reformation that ignited Europe 2 centuries later. All of Wycliffe’s criticisms of the Roman church were reiterated in the Reformation. John Wycliffe was not perfect in his teachings, but he was still far ahead of his time during the middle ages in his insights on Biblical Christianity. He believed salvation was not by works, that the pope did not have authority over the Bible, that the Catholic dogma of transubstantiation was false, and that worship should be given to no one except Christ. All of these principles were key components of Protestant theology in the Reformation.

Wycliffe taught that salvation was not by works. The Catholic church taught that Christ died for our sins, but we still had to work to get that applied to us. A person had to partake of Seven Sacraments that were necessary for salvation, such as water Baptism, Holy Eucharist, and Penance; they also taught that a person could buy forgiveness from some sins by indulgences, that is, giving money to the church. So it was man’s merit who was meriting the merit of Christ. This is a works gospel, not the Biblical Gospel of grace, that Christ died for our all sins and rose from the grave, and whosoever believes in Him has everlasting life. Salvation by grace through faith alone, not of works, is a crucial doctrine that both Wycliffe and the Reformers taught.

Wycliffe was the first person to completely translate the Bible into English. Before that, English speakers had to read or hear Latin for the common Bible translation, and no one knew Latin except the priests. This prevented the common people from understanding anything what the Bible said. Wycliffe changed that so people who could read English could read for themselves what the Bible said, and people who were illiterate could listen to Bible readings in their own language. That every man have the opportunity to read the Bible for himself is an attitude that the Protestant Reformation strived to establish.

Wycliffe demanded that the Bible be the main source of authority rather than the pope. The Roman Church considered the pope as equal, if not higher than, the Bible. But the Reformation went back to early Christianity, Jesus and the Apostles; man is fallible but God’s word is infallible, and the supreme authority on all matters regardless of what any man says, whether he be king, pope, or pauper. Authority given to the Bible as priority rather than pope and clergy was Luther’s foundational premise that brought Christianity back to God’s truth, and Wycliffe shared that premise.

Wycliffe himself did not impact Martin Luther, the Father of the Reformation, but Luther was influenced by John Huss of Bohemia who was a student of Wycliffe’s works. Huss read Wycliffe’s writings and came to share many of his views. Wycliffe’s theological and philosophical influence strongly effected Bohemia. Wycliffe’s translation of the Bible into his own language inspired the Bohemians to make a translation of the Bible into their language. And Luther translated the Bible into his German language. Wycliffe’s brave act of translating the Bible into the language of the masses set a precedent for the Reformation.

John Wycliffe was a man of God in a time of spiritual darkness, who bravely stood up against the strong powers of Europe for the sake of Christ. We should salute John Wycliffe for his work to translate the first version of the Bible in our language, and remember the way God used him for his contribution the Protestant Reformation and the return to Biblical Christianity.