We were broke growing up. My dad pastored very normative-sized SBC churches, and my mom worked off and on to help make ends meet. To be honest, my four older brothers and I never knew we were poor. We had everything we needed, and that was enough. Somehow, Mom always found a way to make holidays special.
On Easter Sunday morning, we’d yawn our way into the dining room to find baskets with our names on them, stuffed with chocolates and plastic eggs concealing various candies and little trinkets. One Easter Sunday, when I was about four or five years old, I rubbed the sleep from my eyes with both fists, and what came into focus was more than I knew how to expect — a giant chocolate bunny towered over the handle of my basket. As both of my hands struggled to wrap around its edges, I remember thinking, “With this much chocolate, I could be the king of the world.” I unwrapped the foil … bit into one bunny ear … and my heart sank in disappointment. It was hollow! What a dirty trick to play on an unsuspecting little kid … a thin outer layer disguising an empty, hollow promise!
Christ’s death and resurrection should be practically transformative for all who call on His name. To believe in the cross and the empty tomb without reordering and reforming our lives accordingly is a thin outer shell disguising an empty, hollow promise. Recall these words of woe from the Lord Jesus to the hypocritical Pharisees: “You are like whitewashed tombs, which appear beautiful on the outside, but inside are full of the bones of the dead and every kind of impurity” (Matt. 23:27–28).
Christ’s cross and resurrection are elemental to the Christian faith. They are to us the very form of our confidence before God. But ours is a shell of a religion if that Christian confidence is not solid to the core with the rich substance of Christian thought and practice. A hollow, lifeless Christianity is an oxymoron. In it, we fool only ourselves. God is not pleased, heaven is not moved, and hell is not stirred by a workless faith.
Instead, Paul challenged the Corinthian Christians: “And he [(Christ)] died for all, so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised” (2 Cor. 5:15, CSB). That Christ was crucified and raised should put breath in the lungs, action in the hands, and direction in the feet of all who call on Him by faith. Saving faith changes not only the trajectory of our lives, but the purpose, the temperature, and the tone of our lives as well. We are now to “live … for the one who died … and was raised.” This Christianly reordering of our affections, attitudes, and actions is the normal Christian experience. Everything else is suspect, cavernous, and, ultimately, disappointing.
This Easter Sunday, many SCBaptist churches will see twice their normal Sunday morning worship attendance. Praise the Lord! Songs of celebration will be sung. Prayers of faith will be prayed. Sermons of substance will be preached. But what will you do? How will the reminder of the cross and the resurrection reform you this Easter? How will it change your words, your actions, and your attitude?
I believe a Palmetto State saturated with SCBaptists who are purposefully, actively living for Jesus will be a Palmetto State drawn to the Christian message through the visual catechism of Christian witness. The gospel is not a recommendation; it is a reckoning. Jesus Christ died for your sin, and He was raised. Believe it. And live it. Turn your affections and actions Christward, and be filled with the purposefulness of a substantive Christian faith built upon and governed by the cross and the resurrection.