So why would he choose to die? Because of his love for the Father. As the Word, Jesus had always been in the Father’s presence (John 1:1), so he was in on all his Father’s plans, dreams and joys, including the Father’s ultimate plan, dream and joy of bringing us humans and our universe into existence. And the Word knew exactly what his Father’s great dream for us was. It was to share with us the love and life they’d always enjoyed together, in an endless world of joy and surprises. But the thrill of actually bringing this new world of beings into existence was the Father’s gift to the Word (verses 2-3).

It tells us something of the love the Father had for the Word, and then the love the Word had for the Father as well, because when the Father’s great plan for us began to come unravelled after the serpent got his oar in, the Word reacted. He knew how the Father felt about us and how much he loved us, and how dearly the Father wanted to share his blissfully happy life with us. No way, therefore, was the Word going to let that dream dissolve into nothing.

Now we see the Word’s love in return: the Father had given him the job of creating humans, so the Word willingly took upon himself the job of saving them. The Word, being our Creator, could save us too, by taking on a human body and dying, because in his death he could destroy death and in his rising from the dead he could lift us from the dead too, giving us a new life and a new beginning by re-creating us into humans just like himself.

So why did the Word die for us? For the love of his Father. It was for love that God gave the Word the joy of creating our world, and it was for love that the Word gave his life to God to save it. What God was the Word was. It was for love, therefore, that Jesus died, not because he had to.

But was it anger that drove God to have Jesus tortured? Not according to Jesus. In his words, “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son.” It was done in love, not anger. But how can giving up one’s Son to be tortured be an act of love? Because Jesus agreed with it. The cruciifixion was done with the full consent of Jesus “who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age,” Galatians 1:4.

Jesus gave himself. He wasn’t forced into it. This was something he and his Father planned together from the very beginning. Jesus would be “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world,” Revelation 13:8 – but Jesus totally agreed with it, and he told us so himself: “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life…I lay it down of my own accord,” John 10:17-18. Jesus gave his life willingly, by his own free choice.

But why did Father and Son agree to such a horrible death for Jesus? Because “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends,” John 15:13. God loves us, but how would we humans know it? By the greatest proof of love there is, the giving up of one’s life for another. “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8.

Jesus willingly died for us at our worst, when we were enemies of God. His love, therefore, went much further than dying for a friend. He died for people who weren’t friends at all, who wanted nothing to do with him or his Father. But if going to the Cross and to a shocking, undeserved, horrible death of his own choosing would help convince rebellious, hateful. stubborn, disinterested humanity that God truly loves them, then it was all wonderfully worth it.

What kind of God, then, would kill his Son? A God who has a Son who loves humanity as much as he does. But God wasn’t killing his Son in the first place. It was Jesus’ own choice to die.

But how does God adopt us through Jesus Christ? Romans 6:5 – “If we have been united with Jesus in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.” God adopts us by uniting us with Jesus, in both his death and his resurrection. And what does that unity accomplish for us? Verse 11 – “count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” And what does “alive to God” mean? It means God now lives his life in us, Galatians 2:20 – “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

The life we now live as Christians belongs totally to the living, resurrected Christ, so that he can now live his life – God’s life – in us. That’s why “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,” Ephesians 2:6. God raised us up with Christ so that we’re part of his family now, able to live as he lives, just like a couple who bring their adopted baby home for the first time and that child now truly becomes part of their family, living from now on as that family lives.

And when God raised us with Christ, that’s what happened to us, “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God,” Colossians 3:3. We are now part of the God family. The life that God lives is the life we now live, or as Paul puts it in verse 4, “Christ, who is your life.” He is our life now. The life he lives is the life we live, because he’s now living his life in us, just like an adopted baby lives the life of the family he’s in, and that family lives its life in him.

And what’s that life like for us? Ephesians 1:3 – “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” As the Father’s adopted children, he can now bless us with everything he’s got. That’s our future, forever. And the secret by which God made that future for us possible? It’s the secret pictured by Easter: it’s Jesus Christ.

Jesus died to remove a huge obstacle that stood in the way of our adoption. What obstacle? We weren’t the least bit interested in being adopted! We didn’t like God. We didn’t want him involved in our lives at all, and we certainly didn’t want to be stuck with him forever! It’s not surprising, then, at Easter, that we ignore Jesus’ death, the very thing that made our adoption possible, and much prefer stuffing ourselves with chocolate.

But God has us covered anyway, verse 22, for “he has reconciled you by Christ’s physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish, and free from accusation.” Through Jesus’ death, our disregard for God, displayed so embarrassingly at Easter, has been dealt with. Despite our short-sighted, arrogant attitude toward him, he never turned his back on us, verses 19-20, ”For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.” We weren’t the least bit interested in making our peace with God, but God made his peace with us. Through Jesus’ death, he blasted through the first obstacle to our adoption, and knocked it down completely. Nothing was going to hold him back from his marvellous plan for us.

But there was one more obstacle to our adoption as God’s children. Easter, however, tells us how that obstacle was removed, as well. And what was this obstacle? We were still horrible people. We were raw recruits straight out of this world with all the horrible attitudes and ignorance of this world still attached to us. Jesus’ death had made us “holy in God’s sight and without blemish,” yes, but that didn’t suddenly make us into thoughtful, kind, Godly-minded people as well. We were still abominably selfish. Some serious cleaning up of our minds needed to be done. But God had us covered there, too. How? Through Christ’s resurrection.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he took humanity with him. He was now in the position, with all the power and authority given him as head of the church, to complete the second part of the process of our adoption – creating a whole new life for us – a completely new creation, in fact!…(continues in part 4)

It was decided before our world began, Ephesians 1:4-5 – “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ.” This was the plan, signed and sealed before anything in our universe came into existence, that God would adopt us into his family to share his life and love with us forever. This is why he created human beings in the first place. We are not an evolutionary accident, and nor is our universe. We came straight out of the heart of God with a clear aim in sight.

But notice the means by which God would eternally adopt us as his children. It would be “through Jesus Christ.” Why Jesus? Because “all things were created by him and for him,” Colossians 1:16. Not only would Jesus be the one to design and operate God’s plan, it was also “for him” – for his pleasure, too. And nothing could’ve pleased Jesus more than bringing God’s plan of adoption to pass.

But how could he bring it to pass when we weren’t the least bit interested? Right from the very start we didn’t want anything to do with God’s plan – and we still don’t, as we see every Easter when we show God we’re far more interested in eggs and rabbits than we are in him. So now what was God going to do? On the one hand, he certainly wasn’t going back on his word to adopt us as his children, but neither could he go back on his word about us dying forever if we ate off the wrong tree. But that’s where Jesus came in and saved the day. He would die our death in our stead.

It was a remarkable solution. The law of death for our disobedience still stood, God couldn’t go back on that, but he would fulfill it rather than us. In so doing, the demands of the law would be met on behalf of all of us. When Jesus died we all died with him, 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, so that the law of death was fulfilled for us too. No longer, then, would death retain its eternal power over us. Because of Jesus we could now stand before God, “holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation,” Colossians 1:22.

But that wasn’t all Jesus did for us…(continues in part 3)

Clouding the season this year, though, are the increasingly dour predictions of our future on this planet. More people in high places are becoming deeply concerned about the fragile state of our global economy and how long the Earth’s resources can keep up with our appetites. Put that together with the massive expense and destruction of natural disasters, war and all the other awful things wrecking people’s lives every day, and our obsession with chocolate eggs and rabbits becomes rather silly, don’t you think?

The original Easter, however, wasn’t the frivolous nonsense it is today. Easter in its original meaning got serious about our future. It looked it straight in the eye and asked the question we finite humans need answering most of all, which is: “What happens to us after we die?” And wouldn’t any sane-thinking person want to know that? We’ve got enough cemeteries around clearly demonstrating to us that one day this human life of ours comes to an end and the lights go out, so it’s quite normal for us to wonder if there’s a life after this one. But how many people actually do wonder? Even at funerals do they wonder? I imagine some people at funerals believe in an afterlife for the person who died, but asked how they know there’s an afterlife and where they got their proof of an afterlife from, I wonder how many could answer. It all seems terribly vague in people’s minds what kind of life awaits us, if any, or how it comes about.

What a tragic situation to be in. Think of all the work we put ourselves to in trying to survive this life, and all the deep thoughts and opinions we have about life, but no idea (or real proof) about what happens after we die. But Easter itself is the clue that tells us what happens. It’s right under our noses every year, because Easter not only supplies the answer to “What happens to us after we die?” it also supplies the proof….(continues in part 2)