no neutral ground

If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

Romans 10:9

Easter. For some, it is a day of colored egg hunts and baskets full of jellybeans and chocolate bunnies. For others, it means a day off of work. Plenty of people acknowledge it’s a “holiday” of some sort, but don’t give it much thought at all. In fact, going back to school or work after the weekend, you may hear, “Did you have a nice Easter?” But this is generally asked as a pleasantry. The Easter holiday is culturally neutral.

For believers, though, Easter commemorates the most important event in history—in all eternity. It is the hinge on which our faith rests. Jesus, fully Man and fully God, paid the penalty for our sin by dying on the cross in our place. Then, on the third day—Easter Sunday—He rose again in victory over death. In His conquering of both sin and death, we can trust Him as our Savior, surrendering to His Lordship. We believe that by His work—not our own—we are reconciled to God, to be resurrected with Christ (John 6:40; 11:25; Romans 8:11). And as the Apostle Paul wrote, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, our faith is worthless, and we are to be pitied (1 Corinthians 15:12-19).

No neutrality here. Either Jesus is who He says He is—and Easter’s celebration of Resurrection Day is valid…or Jesus was a liar (or crazy), and we’re just as deluded. The niceties of “Happy Easter” become really strange when you think about it. If it’s true, we must be extraordinarily elated over the New Life in the Risen Christ! If it’s not, it’s just plain coo-coo, so it shouldn’t really be a “thing” at all.

There’s a very famous quote from C. S. Lewis (from a 1942 speech and published in Mere Christianity in 1952) that addresses this topic:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

No neutral ground.

Among all His own claims to be God and the Messiah (John 8:58; 10:30; 14:6; Mark 14:61-62—to list just a few), Jesus said Himself, “The one who is not with Me is against Me.” In other words, no neutrality. No, “Jesus was a good teacher” (which you hear a lot by church people and atheists alike). No, “Jesus is Way-Shower” (per the Unity Church, for instance). No, “Jesus is a created being and the brother of Lucifer” (Mormonism). And no, “Jesus is one of many gurus/prophets who can show us how we can realize our oneness with God—to be like God” (Hinduism…and even some current “little gods” false teachers like Steven Furtick).

Friend, we either believe Jesus is the Second Person of the Triune God, Emmanuel, and Savior of the world…or He is not. Is Easter a day for dress-up and bunnies? Or is it a celebration of the Risen Christ, conqueror of sin and death? We must choose a side. The battle is heating up…so, are you for Him or against Him?

Heavenly Father, the enemy hisses so many lies—in so many ways—to confuse people and keep them from knowing the Truth of Jesus Christ. Lord, open the eyes of the blind, lift the veils of lies, and reveal that there is only One Way back to You.