The Greatest Event in History

44 It was now about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over the whole land until the ninth hour, 45 while the sun’s light failed. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two. 46 Then Jesus, calling out with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!” And having said this he breathed his last. 47 Now when the centurion saw what had taken place, he praised God, saying, “Certainly this man was innocent!” 48 And all the crowds that had assembled for this spectacle, when they saw what had taken place, returned home beating their breasts. 49 And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance watching these things.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Lk 23:44–49). (2016). Crossway Bibles.

Some time slightly less than two thousand years ago on a Friday, a carpenter’s son stood silent before the fifth Roman governor of the Roman province of Judea, Pontius Pilate.  The local leaders in Jerusalem had plotted to kill the man, named Jesus.  The plot sped with unchecked momentum when gossip began spreading Jesus had raised another man named Lazarus from the dead.

Innocent of any crimes, Pilate tried to let the man go.  But the crowd would not be placated and Pilate decided to let the crowd choose between freeing Jesus or an insurrectionary named Barabbas.  The crowd chose Barabbas.  The Roman historian Tacitus later recorded that “Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition [of his divinity] was checked for a moment.”

The Romans nailed Jesus of Nazareth to a cross.  The Protestant reformer Martin Luther said that there, on that cross, the greatest sinner that ever would live breathed his last and died.  The sky went dark.  The ground quaked.  The curtain in the Jewish temple tore in half, most believing it was the act of a vandal.  The first person of the Trinity turned His back on the second person of the Trinity and even the sun refused to shine on Christ as the sins of mankind, past, present, and future were placed on Him to satisfy God’s wrath. The curtain tore because Immanuel was with us. We no longer were separated from God by the veil. Christ restored us to God.

Had Jesus of Nazareth just died, the world would have moved on.  Plenty of other men claimed to be God’s chosen Messiah.  We don’t remember any of them.  We remember this one who laid down his life for others, guilty of no crime and executed as a common criminal.  Something unique happened to Jesus.  But what?

More than two billion people on the planet believe this Jesus is the Christ.  On the Sunday following his execution, we believe He rose again from the dead.  Our faith in Christ is in vain if Christ did not rise.  Some claim they can believe in Christ and a metaphysical resurrection or they can take him as a great philosopher.  But the Apostle Paul notes all of Christianity is dependent on the belief in a physical, bodily resurrection, not a metaphor.  Jesus himself said He was the I Am, the God of all creation. Jesus himself predicted he would physically, bodily rise from the dead.

Unfathomably and counterintuitively, in times of serious persecution, faith in Christ has spread around the world.  While seemingly in decline in the West, Christianity outpaces Islam as the world’s fastest growing religion. More and more Muslims are having unexplained dreams of Christ and converting.  Underground in China, most experts believe there are now more Christians than there are total Americans.  The Chinese leaders’ fear of this has led to the persecution of Christians thereby causing growth in Chinese Christianity. The passive indifference of Western secularists had left Christians to their own devices to divide and collapse.  Now, the growing engaged hostility in the west to Christianity is sending it into revival.  Like a plant, it blooms evermore through the pruning of persecution.

When Christ died, his own half-brothers (first cousins to some) would not come to his execution.  On the cross, “[w]hen Jesus saw his mother and [the Apostle John] standing nearby, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son!’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother!’ And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.”  (Jn 19:26–27). John had to take Mary because none of Jesus’s closest relatives were there even to comfort his mother.

Despite ruthless persecution after the resurrection, Jesus’s brothers became leaders in the church.  James, Jesus’s brother (not to be confused with the Apostle), became the leader of the church in Jerusalem and is the author of a book of the Bible.  Jesus’s other brother Jude also wrote a book of the Bible and stated something profound.  He said it was Jesus, his brother whose divinity he rejected in Jesus’s life, who rescued His people out of Egypt.  James and Jude and all of Christ’s earthly family would be exterminated by the Romans for doubling down on their belief that Jesus is God Himself.

My sisters love me.  They would never be willing to die insisting I was God.  Jesus’s siblings and their children all died professing him Lord.  Perhaps because He is.  If you are at all open-minded and curious, get on your knees and sincerely cry out to Him. If I and the billions of Christians alive and now in the grave are right, He’ll answer. Happy Easter.

24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, 25 to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Jud 24–25). (2016). Crossway Bibles.