This week brings into sharp relief all that Jesus has been doing and teaching. It leads to these last few days where we see the full extent of our rebellion towards God. He has made us, and we are his, and yet we’ve turned that on its head and placed ourselves over God and in our words and actions, made God subject to us. 

Yet we see Jesus, fully man, but not stooping to where we have. He came to do the will of his Father and lived in complete submission to God. 

In these final few days, we see the enormous cost of righting the wrongs of a world that has turned its back on its Creator.  

God in the flesh, hanging in our place on the cross, a symbol of shame and lowliness and yet hanging there in our place is the Creator of all things, the One who has all power and authority, the One who was perfect in every way.

And in what appears to be a final act comes the words “It is finished”, and life is extinguished.

How devasting those words seem! How futile! Christians, of all people, are to be most pitied for having misplaced their hope in One who dies! 

On the third day people came to the tomb. It was empty! The questions fly, “Where is he?” “What happened to his body?” “Who would do this cruel thing to us?” More despair, futility, hopelessness! 

BUT, there is the unchanging truth! 

Death could not hold him down. He is risen!

The first-born from the dead. The promise to all his followers of their own resurrection.

Eternity with God, in his presence because the God who created all is also the God who redeems, and the God who conquers sin and death, the God who raises all, and finally the God who judges all. 

This is the unchanging truth. Not one part of it can be changed, left out, overwritten. 

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God….The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1, 14)

If our scientists are right in telling us how old this world is, then this unchanging truth has been unchanged for at least that long. 

We are not left in despair and futility.

For Christ has finished the work of salvation, our sins are forgiven in him. And our future is secure because, having been raised from the grave, death no longer has victory over Christ and Jesus offers that same resurrection to those who are in Him.  

This is the unchanging truth we proclaim to the nations, for the message of Easter is forgiveness of sin and the promise of an eternity with our King. It is not futile. It does not leave us in despair. For our King lives and we will live with him!