LYCOMING CENTRE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH

Volume 2010 Issue 4

“. . . so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” --- Romans 5:21

 

Dear People of the Resurrection,

 

By the time you receive this edition of Centre News we will be finishing up our plans for Easter. Nothing gets my preacher’s heart beating more intensely than the anticipation of preaching on Easter morning, announcing in the boldest terms possible that “He is risen!”  And because he is risen, nothing can ever be the same again. Not my life. Not your life. What is more, the entire world can never be the same again!

 

In his commentary on Romans New Testament scholar Anders Nygren makes this amazing statement:  “Paul is not saying merely that we have life for a time, after which life ends in death; nor is he aiming to explain the fact of such death. . . . What he is saying is rather that all that we call life . . . lies under the dominion of death. . . . Death rules supreme in this world. . . .”  But since the resurrection of Christ “the new aeon has become actual fact in our world. Christ stands at the frontier between the two ages, outdating the old and blazing the way for the new. . . . In the new aeon, which burst upon man with the resurrection of Christ, life has come to dominion still more mightily.”

(Commentary on Romans, pages 22-23).

 

Did you hear that?  Christ has come, bringing his life into the wreckage of this broken down world. He has opened up, even in these ruins, the frontier of a new world where grace reigns. He is not on a mission just to restore and renew us individually. He is on a mission to create a new universe, where grace reigns in life. He is that massive, that majestic, that decisive, that critical and towering and triumphant.

 

Friends, we can’t just apply this truth to our lives once a year on Easter morning.  The resurrection is way too big for that.  But we will worship him. And we will boast in the hope of living forever with him in his new death-free world of grace. Now that is good news worthy of the boldest proclamation. I can’t wait!

 

Easter blessings,

 

Billy