An Easter Story: Jesus’ Life and Death

Happy Easter from TWR Canada! We hope that you will have a lovely weekend basking in the light of God's promises and story for our lives.

What can we learn from the biblical account of Easter? Regardless of where we are at in our faith journey, we can always learn something new from God’s Word. This week we reflect on what Jesus experienced between his triumphant entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his death on Good Friday and his miraculous rising from the tomb on Easter morning. May you rejoice in God’s magnificent story of his boundless love for the world!

In Jesus, we shed our old selves that are no longer slaves to sin. We rejoice in his sacrifice because of what it represents for us. We also consider his life and how, as Christians, we reflect gratitude for the biblical accounts of Jesus and how they provide us a blueprint of how our Saviour lived his life before his death with no sin, only love.

From the pages of God’s Word, we can appreciate the relatable parts of Jesus that make him human. Scripture details three occasions where Jesus wept (John 11:35, Luke 19:41, Hebrews 5:7-9), each near the end of his life and revealing a story from which we can learn. Jesus is “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews 4:15, KJV), indicating a humanly sympathetic response, as well as his love for us and his yearning to heal the world. In Matthew 26:36-46 and Luke 22:39-46, we also witness Jesus seeking strength as he prays to God.

It's hard for us to comprehend a sinless human nailed to the cross and in so much pain, but there is beauty in the unravelling and aftermath of all this agony. Jesus was sent to die for our sins so that through him we may experience undeserved grace and mercy from our Creator.

So, what can we learn? To be human is to experience life and death and everything in between. We can relate to Jesus in feeling betrayed by our friends, just as Jesus was betrayed and denied by his disciples (Matthew 26:56, Luke 22:54-62). We can relate to begging the Lord to carry us out of our pain, just as Jesus prayed and cried out. When we consider this, we ought to feel no shame in praying, crying or asking for help – for to feel weak and to need help are both human responses. This is what God is teaching us: because we are human, we are to acknowledge our need for him and seek him.

If Jesus has come and bore the wrath of our sins, what more do we need to do? And yet, there is always more to learn from Scripture. Jesus was human and we can relate to that part of him, but he is also equal parts almighty God, who is above us. From stories in the Bible, we learn about ourselves, the role we play in God’s master plan and how we can glorify him. We fall short but we keep learning and we strive to reflect Jesus in all that we do because what he has done for us, we could never repay. But because what he has done is so great, we can’t help but keep telling the story and adapting the same truth for generations young and old, and for audiences who speak different languages.

When TWR Canada receives testimonies of God at work through our ministry, we delight in each heart learning the good news of salvation for the first time and in the ways that it transforms their life. Their old self has died and because of the resurrection, because of the Spirit who works in us, we are driven to keep telling this story and continue learning from it. When someone discovers this, whether that’s through radio, social media, a media player, an app, or a radio home group, their lives are changed. God continues to work in each of us as our desire to become more like Christ naturally grows as a result of gratitude for what he has done.   

May the story of Jesus’ life and death bring you joy in the triumph of good over evil, victory of light over darkness, and defeat of death by the forces of love, peace and everlasting life.

Happy Easter from all of us at TWR Canada!