The Glory of Easter!—Part 1

Quotations on the death and resurrection of Jesus

I cherish the memories I have of celebrating Easter as I grew up. Our church gathered every Easter morning on the top of a hill where we watched the sun rise, sang songs of praise, and thanked Jesus for having risen, bringing new, never-ending, transforming life. That life will continue to grow through our relationship with Him.

I believe that the Lord uses many things in nature to remind us of spiritual truths, like the sunrise reminds us of Christ’s resurrection from the darkness of death into the glory of a new dawn.

In celebration of Jesus’ wonderful gift of the resurrection, I’d like to share a few quotes with you from a variety of Christian authors on the subject.

• I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.—John 11:25–26

• The best news of the Christian gospel is that the supremely glorious Creator of the universe has acted in Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection to remove every obstacle between us and himself so that we may find everlasting joy in seeing and savoring his infinite beauty.―John Piper

• The joyful news that He is Risen does not change the contemporary world. Still before us lie work, discipline, sacrifice. But the fact of Easter gives us the spiritual power to do the work, accept the discipline and make the sacrifice.—Henry Knox Sherrill

• No matter how devastating our struggles, disappointments, and troubles are, they are only temporary. No matter what happens to you, no matter the depth of tragedy or pain you face, no matter how death stalks you and your loved ones, the Resurrection promises you a future of immeasurable good.—Josh McDowell

• The devil, darkness, and death may swagger and boast, the pangs of life will sting for a while longer, but don’t worry; the forces of evil are breathing their last. Not to worry … He’s risen!—Charles R. Swindoll

• Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him, everything else thrown in.—C. S. Lewis

• Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.—Pope John Paul II

• The story of Easter is the story of God’s wonderful window of divine surprise.—Carl Knudsen

• Easter is the demonstration of God that life is essentially spiritual and timeless.—Charles M. Crowe

• After death, something new begins, over which all powers of the world of death have no more might.—Dietrich Bonhoeffer

• Immanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent [coming] splendor.—Charles H. Spurgeon

• God proved His love on the Cross. When Christ hung, and bled, and died, it was God saying to the world, “I love you.”—Billy Graham

Maria: We can hold on to the reassurance of God’s great love for each one of us, knowing that “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

• Death used to be an executioner, but the resurrection of Christ makes it nothing but a gardener. When he tries to bury you, he’s really planting you, and you’re going to come up better than before.—George Herbert

• Jesus’ resurrection is the beginning of God’s new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord’s Prayer is about.—N. T. Wright

• The earliest Christians believed in the resurrection not because they couldn’t find a dead body but because they found a living Christ.—Barry McCarty

• While the resurrection promises us a new and perfect life in the future, God loves us too much to leave us alone to contend with the pain, guilt and loneliness of our present life.—Josh McDowell

• If I am to inherit Eternal Life, I must cultivate a correspondence with the Eternal.—Henry Drummond

• Jesus Christ did not come into this world to make bad people good; He came into this world to make dead people live.—Author Unknown

• The point of the resurrection … is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die. … What you do with your body in the present matters because God has a great future in store for it. … What you do in the present—by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself—will last into God’s future. These activities are not simply ways of making the present life a little less beastly, a little more bearable, until the day when we leave it behind altogether. They are part of what we may call building for God’s kingdom.—N. T. Wright

• Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus Christ is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection. It was the resurrection which transformed Peter’s fear into courage and James’ doubt into faith. … It was the resurrection which changed Saul the Pharisee into Paul the apostle and turned his persecuting into preaching.—John Stott

Maria: It was the resurrection that sent the disciples courageously into all the known world of their day, and the resurrection that helped the martyrs fearlessly face death. The resurrection of Jesus is the great motivator!

• Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to reward the rewardable, improve the improvable, or correct the correctable; he came simply to be the resurrection and the life of those who will take their stand on a death he can use instead of on a life he cannot.—Robert Farrar Capon

• To preach Christianity meant (to the Apostles) primarily to preach the Resurrection. … The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the (book of) Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the “gospel” or good news which the Christians brought.—C. S. Lewis

• In short, I didn’t become a Christian because God promised I would have an even happier life than I had as an atheist. He never promised any such thing. Indeed, following him would inevitably bring … demotions in the eyes of the world. Rather, I became a Christian because the evidence was so compelling that Jesus really is the one-and-only Son of God who proved his divinity by rising from the dead. That meant that following him was the most rational and logical step I could possibly take.—Lee Strobel

• If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said. If he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.—Timothy Keller

• Suppose God the Father had taken the view many modern Christians take—the view that says that anything Satan wants must be bad for God’s people? It’s the same view that implies that if Satan wants one thing to happen, God must want the exact opposite to happen. The result? God would have canceled the Crucifixion. If God had done that, none of us would be saved!

• The truth is, Satan and God may want the exact same event to take place—but for different reasons. Satan’s motive in Jesus’ crucifixion was rebellion; God’s motive was love and mercy.—Joni Eareckson Tada

Maria: When we ponder the vast love and mercy that we have received from God through Jesus’ life on earth, His crucifixion and ultimate resurrection and victory over death and sin, how can we not praise Him, follow Him, trust Him, love Him, and tell others about Him?