Easter is About New Life

Ted Koppel

What is largely missing in American life today is a sense of context, of saying or doing anything that is intended or even expected to live beyond the moment. There is no culture in the world that is so obsessed as ours with immediacy.

Ted Koppel

In our journalism, the trivial displaces the momentous because we tend to measure the importance of events by how recently they happened. We have become so obsessed with facts that we have lost all touch with truth. in a speech to the International Radio and Television Society, quoted in Harper's (Jan. 1986)

2 Corinthians 5:14-20For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!

2 Corinthians 5:14-20All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.

Christ’s love compels us

His love is the basis of all that we are and all that we do.

Easter, the crucifixion and resurrection, are the deepest demonstration of his love for us.

Christ’s love: an invitation

Easter is not

about a command.

It is about a loving

invitation.

“be reconciled to

God!” is a love filled

opportunity!

Here's the Good News (gospel): you're more sinful than you ever dared to believe; you're more loved than you ever dared to hope. Tim Keller

Jesus reaches to us in love• Reaching out to

reestablish a broken relationship: “come to me all you who are weary and heavily burdened”

• Reaching down to pull us out of the pit

• Reaching up: “Father, forgive them”

How do I respond?

• Reach out to God: honesty…who, what, where

• Reach in: Believe the truth of Easter and trust Jesus with your life.

How do I respond?

“They should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.”

Same power in us.

The New is Here!

• Life

• Purpose

• Attitudes toward our circumstances

• Response to trials

IN Christ, everything changes

• Change starts with our character

• Change affects all of our life: not mere cosmetics or surface

• Deepest, darkest parts of us

Don’t be afraid to be loved!I’m too bad: He paid the price.

I’m not ready: He came at just the right time.

I’m not sure: He gives faith as a gift.

Be reconciled to God!