Easter leads us to Newness Of Life

It is a known fact that the resurrection of Jesus, which we celebrate at Easter, is the foundation of our Christian faith. The meaning of Easter is Jesus Christ's victory over death and symbolizes the eternal life that is granted to all who believe in Him. Easter also symbolizes the complete verification of all that Jesus preached and taught during His three-year ministry. If He had not risen from the dead, if He had merely died and not been resurrected, He would have been considered just another teacher or prophet. However, His resurrection changed all that and gave final and irrefutable proof that He was really the Son of God and that He had conquered death once and for all. God has therefore given us a new birth into a living hope through His resurrection. Through faith we have been raised to walk in newness of life – to live the resurrected life. The resurrected life is one of restoration, transformation and elevation. The newness of the resurrection of Christ has as its immediate fruit the transformation of the fearful disciples into a new community that is the Church, the body of the risen One.

Very often, we find ourselves in prison, in the prison of fear, of imperfection, of blaming others, or the constant projection of an idealized image of ourselves to those around us. Sometimes the pattern of our life constitutes a prison from which we cannot break free. We become prisoners like Paul and Silas (Acts 16:24), become fearful like the disciples in the upper room (John 20:19) and disillusioned like the two disciples on the road to Emmaus (Luke 24:13f).