We’re All Cracked Up!

Did your parents hide your Easter basket on Easter morning? One year my basket would be hidden in a bottom cabinet behind the pots and pans. Then the next year it might be inside the dryer. I loved finding my basket full of marshmallow peeps, a few Cadbury Eggs, and jelly beans that had sifted to the bottom through the plastic green grass.

There were only plastic eggs in the basket those mornings because the real eggs were used for the egg hunt after church. Now egg hunts are fun, but to this day the best part about the egg hunts at our house is the Egg Battle that follows. For the Egg Battle, each person wraps their hand around an egg with a little of the top or bottom showing. Then one person hits the bottom of their egg to the top of the other person’s egg. The one whose egg cracks loses. The losing egg is usually sprinkled with salt and eaten while the champion continues to the next round. In the end, there is only one victor.

We come up with some odd ways to celebrate holidays, and often the traditions we follow don’t have much to do with the meaning of what we’re celebrating. Why again am I eating a chocolate bunny? (I’m not sure, but I like it!) My family didn’t start doing the Egg Battle to reveal biblical truths, but it turns out that our Egg Battle may be the most truly “Easter” thing we do outside of time at church that morning.

That’s because Easter is about celebrating Jesus becoming the Victor over sin and its penalty of death. You and I fall short of meeting Creator God’s requirements just like our first parents Adam and Eve did in the garden. They chose to disobey God and death came as a result of their disobedience. Now, we are all born from that same line and under the same curse of sin and death. Thankfully, God sent Jesus, His Son, to rescue us.

Jesus was born of a virgin and escaped Adam’s cursed lineage. Free from the curse of sin at birth, Jesus then chose to be obedient to God’s will and lived a perfect life. Then, at the end of His ministry, Jesus took on death, sin’s curse. The unblemished Messiah hung on the cross, took His last breath, and died. Yet, on the third day, He rose again. But how?

“God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip.”

Acts 2:24

Death couldn’t hold the perfect man, and in the end, Jesus stood the Victor over sin and death. And as the Victor, He offers all who will trust and hope in Him the same victory over sin and death. He offers us His righteousness so that our sin’s penalty is removed and we can live forever with Him and the Father.

“O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 15:55-57 states

On our own, we’re all cracked up! But Jesus invites us to stand with Him on the podium of His Easter Victory. Believe in Him and live!