Understanding the meaning of Resurrection Sunday and the significance of Jesus’s victory on the cross
Every year during the first of Spring, my family would celebrate Resurrection Sunday, also known as Easter, with a big cookout in my aunt’s backyard. As a child and teenager, I didn’t fully grasp its meaning.
All I knew and looked forward to was the good food and games with my family, including the infamous Easter egg hunt. As I grew in Christ and learned the true meaning of Resurrection Sunday, my heart was full and broken at the same time.
Here’s why.
What is Resurrection Sunday?
Throughout the four gospels- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John- we learn about Jesus Christ’s life, seemingly tragic end, and legacy.
We are told about Him preaching the Gospel to help people understand God’s teachings and grow in relationship with Him. We learn how He went through the land healing the sick and afflicted. We also learn about Him casting out demons and their submission to Him.
Yet, He was seen as a threat by the religious leaders of that time. They chastised Him for healing on the sabbath day. They accused Him of being Beelzebub, the prince of demons, and called it blasphemy when He identified himself as the son of God. Thus, they plotted against Him every chance they got.
What they didn’t realize was that this was all a part of God’s divine plan to set humanity free from our eternal enemies of sin and death once and for all. But we cannot fully understand the meaning of Resurrection Sunday unless we go back to the beginning of creation with Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis.
God created mankind in His likeness and for His glory. However, Satan despised mankind and used Adam and Eve to attack God where He knew it would hurt most.
When Adam and Eve were tricked into eating the forbidden fruit, sin and death entered the scene, leading to the fallen world we now see and live in today.
Satan must’ve felt so proud seeing God’s creation fall, knowing that he could now continue to influence them through their sinful natures. He likely relished that mankind would suffer a fate similar to his in the end due to sin. However, God already had a divine plan for our freedom up His sleeve. It involved Jesus Christ.
The thing about sin is its high cost, which is death. There’s no way around it. In the Old Testament, the blood of animals would be used to atone for it. However, this was never adequate to wash away the stains sin left behind.
So God used a virgin to send His only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to the earth to pay the ransom for our lives. Jesus, aka God himself in the flesh, sacrificed himself by meeting an unspeakable and brutal death.
He was spat on, humiliated, and beaten to the point that He wasn’t recognizable. A crown of thorns was placed on His head, and He was nailed to the cross in shame and, seemingly defeat.
They mocked Him, stating that if He truly was the son of God, He should save Himself. However, they didn’t understand that His desire was not to save himself. It was to save humanity.
Make no mistake. Jesus had legions of angels at His command, and His freedom could’ve come swiftly at His order. It wasn’t nails or the authority of men that kept Him on the cross, it was His love for you and me.
Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?
Matthew 26:53
From noon until 3 pm, the whole land was dark. It wasn’t the beatings, the torture, the mockery, or the humiliation that had hurt Jesus the most. It was when God turned His back on Him because of the sins of the Earth. Since the beginning, Jesus was with God, and for the first time, He was completely separated from Him.
Thus His finals words,
About three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (which means “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”).
Matthew 27:46
Jesus then gave up His spirit. What happens next is significant to the meaning of Jesus’s life and death on earth.
The curtain in the temple was torn in half, there was a great earthquake, and tombs were broken open. Holy people who had passed rose to life and appeared to numerous people in the city. Jesus was taken to be buried in a tomb.
On the third day, Mary Magdalene and the “other Mary” went to Jesus’s tomb, where an angel met them. The angel proclaimed that Jesus was not there—He had risen.
Thus, Resurrection Sunday is a sacred day meant to celebrate Jesus’s triumph over sin and death through His resurrection from the dead, restoring humanity to a relationship with God.
In the next section, we’ll explore how this loving act of God is His saving grace for humanity today.
What is the powerful Significance of Resurrection Sunday
Jesus was God’s plan from the beginning of time. Even before He’s officially introduced to us in the Bible, we see His presence back in Genesis. God knew that we would fall, and He wanted us still.
However, Satan used us as pawns to get back at God. But, in the war for souls, God delivered a checkmate that Satan has never been able to come back from. And he never will.
Here’s how Jesus sealed the deal for us and what we should celebrate as the true meaning of Resurrection Sunday.
God’s people can now have a direct relationship with Him
At Jesus’s death, the veil in the temple was torn. If we go back to the Old Testament, we learn that the veil separated the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place (where God’s presence resided). Exodus 26:35
Unholy and unclean people could not just approach God, who is pure and holy. Thus, the veil represented a barrier that existed between us and God because of our sinful natures. Entering this most holy area pre-Jesus meant certain death.
Because of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, that veil was torn in two, and now we can approach God as we are through Jesus. We can speak with Him, have fellowship with Him, and truly rest in His presence…in His holy arms. No priest is needed as Jesus is our high priest.
Now, nothing can separate us from Him. Glory to His name!
We are cleansed through Jesus and thus can approach God.
If we go back to Leviticus, we see all the things that made God’s people unclean and thus unapproachable to God. For example, menstrual periods and any bleeding from a woman that wasn’t secondary to her period.
This is why the plight of the bleeding woman and her healing by Jesus was so significant. Take a look at this scripture,
“When a woman has a discharge of blood for many days at a time other than her monthly period or has a discharge that continues beyond her period, she will be unclean as long as she has the discharge, just as in the days of her period.
Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period. Anyone who touches them will be unclean; they must wash their clothes and bathe with water, and they will be unclean till evening.
Leviticus 15:25-27
Now fast forward to the story of the bleeding woman from the Bible.
Just then a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak. She said to herself, “If I only touch his cloak, I will be healed.”
Jesus turned and saw her. “Take heart, daughter,” he said, “your faith has healed you.” And the woman was healed at that moment.
Matthew 9:20-22
Not only was she healed from a prolonged ailment, she was cleansed by Jesus ending her separation from God. With His death and resurrection, Jesus has done the same for all of us. No matter what has made us unclean, we can approach God through the cleansing we are given in Jesus Christ.
No more bathings, waiting seven days, and sacrificing burnt and sin offerings. The holy and powerful name of Jesus does it all.
Jesus brought the establishment of a new covenant between God and His people.
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.
“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Hebrews 9:15
And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.
Luke 22:19-20
Jesus fulfilled the laws of the Old Testament perfectly and ushered in the new covenant. Under the new covenant, anyone who believes in the life and death of Jesus and accepts Him as their Lord and Savior, can be washed of their sins and granted eternal life with God.
There are no great works and nothing you can do to “earn” God’s love and salvation. He has given it freely through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross if you will receive it by faith.
We are set free from sin and death
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.
Roman 6:14
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—
Roman 6:6
because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.
Romans 8:2
Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.
John 8:34-36
Jesus’s death granted our salvation. No longer can sin and death dig their claws in and drag us down. So every time shame, guilt, or inadequacy tries to enter your thoughts and weigh in on your life, remind them that you are saved and set free through the blood of Jesus. You are a new creature in Christ.
Jesus’s death and resurrection grants us access to the Holy Spirit.
The disciples were saddened when they realized that Jesus would be leaving again. But He promised them (and us) a gift, stating it’s better that He goes so that the gift can be received. That gift is the Holy Spirit.
But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.
John 16:7
Through the establishment of the new covenant, we have become the temple of God as He dwells in our hearts and minds. Jesus, God in the flesh, was one man traveling by boat and on foot, teaching and healing the spiritually and physically sick.
We now have an ever-present help as we face the trials and tribulations of life on our walk with Christ. We are never alone.
We have the gift of salvation
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
John 3:16
Not only do we have freedom from sin, but also the consequences of it—death.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
John 5:24
The Bible tells us that Jesus will return to the Earth. This time not as a baby born in a manger, but on a cloud in power and great glory (Luke 21:25-28).
The Book of Revelations speaks on the second coming of Christ, the final judgement and the second death of those who do not receive the salvation of Jesus Christ.
Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.
Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done.
Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.
Revelations 20:11-15
No man knows the day or the hour upon which Jesus will return. The Bible warns us to be ready at all times.
Final thoughts on the meaning of Resurrection Sunday
Jesus is the lamb of God that was sacrificed for your sins and mine. However, make no mistake, He is also the lion of Judah. Jesus went willingly to the cross and gave His life to defeat sin and death once and for all.
He was never a victim, but a victor, and now so are you.
If you have accepted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, your name is now written in the Lamb’s book of life. If you have not, I encourage you to recite the following words:
Jesus, it’s me. I surrender my life to you. I believe that you came and died for my sins. I accept you as my Lord and Savior. Change me and give me your heart. In your Holy name, I do pray. Amen.
Congratulations, and welcome to the kingdom! You just made one of the best decisions that any human can make. Find a church home and seek God daily.
You can also use this site for encouragement. Its goal is to be an arrow and guiding light pointing you to the One who gave His all for you.
May God cover and keep you in His great love, wisdom, and protection.
Until next time,
-Dr. Jay
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