He is alive!

History has lists of great men and women- conquerors, rulers, inventors, philosophers, leaders, teachers and so on. All of them lived and died. Their final resting places are visited by tourists and pilgrims. But there is only one person, in the entire human history, who lived, died and came back to life. Even today His tomb is lying open as a proof of His resurrection.

The empty tomb is the sign of victory over death, death that is the outcome of God’s justice. God is holy, righteous and just and His justice demands the death of a sinner (Rom.6:23).

God created mankind in His own image with the freedom of choice or free will. He told them the consequences of both aligning with His will as well as going against it, and expected them to honour Him with their choices. Missing this mark was called sin. Mankind failed miserably and inherited suffering and death as its consequences. However, knowing human helplessness God in His infinite love and mercy made a plan to overcome death. So before expelling Adam and Eve from the garden God made a covering for their guilt and shame which was the foreshadow of a later event that would remove sin’s guilt and shame. There began a long drawn enmity between Satan and mankind. Then a promise was made that the son of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. This was again the promise of the ultimate victory of Jesus over sin, death and Satan.

All through history people made wrong choices and aligned themselves with Satan. The Bible makes it clear that all have misused their free will and missed the mark. So the consequences were terrible and ultimately it would lead us to eternal destruction. We are dead in sin and liable to face the justice of the holy God. But God knew that we would never be able to face it. That’s why He promised to crush Satan’s head by sending the Son of the woman.

It happened thousands of years later when God incarnated as the Son of a woman. He lived a sinless life and offered Himself as the perfect sacrifice fulfilling the justice of God. Now we don’t have to try fulfilling the justice of God, but instead in God’s mercy He is accepting the sacrifice of Jesus as our death. When we personally accept this and surrender to His Lordship, God is giving us the garment of righteousness removing the guilt of sin and shame. Satan tried to crush Jesus’s heel on the cross but Jesus crushed Satan’s head by His resurrection. When He declared from the cross “it is finished”, justice was done and the sins of mankind were atoned for. When He rose from the grave victory was established. Now all those who put their trust in this victory can pass from death to Eternal Life!

So if you want to celebrate victory over sin and death and move on to Eternal Life, come unto Jesus! He is Alive and Able to Save!

The Passover

Friday,19 April 2022 is the starting of Pesach or Passover for the Jewish people, a week of commemoration of the deliverance from slavery in Egypt. It is Good Friday for Christians in our part of the world. The passion week of Jesus happened to be coinciding with the jewish festival this time. The Passover, continued with the feast of unleavened bread, begins at sunset on Friday. However, the actual events in history, one was the foreshadow of the other.

Through the Passover, God brought about the great deliverance in the life of the people of Israel, who were slaves in Egypt for generations. The history of the Israelites in Egypt begins with Joseph being sold as a slave and brought into that country.

“So when the Ishmaelites, who were Midianite traders, came by, Joseph’s brothers pulled him out of the cistern and sold him to them for twenty pieces of silver. And the traders took him to Egypt…. Meanwhile, the Midianite traders arrived in Egypt, where they sold Joseph to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Potiphar was captain of the palace guard” (Gen. 37:28‭, ‬36 NLT).

The Bible says that God was with Joseph and blessed him in his work that he eventually becomes the Prime minister, next only to the Pharaoh.

Later his father, brothers and families move into that country and live under the favour of the Pharaoh. They prosper there and multiply into great numbers. Jacob dies in Egypt.

“Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.” So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king” (Exo.1:8‭-‬11 NLT)


Thus, as Israel’s descendants were enslaved and illtreated they cried to the Lord for deliverance. God brings up Moses in spite of and in the midst of unfavourable circumstances. As a baby he was preserved in the palace against the decree of the King that every male Israelite baby below two years should be slaughtered.

God prepared Moses for 80 long years before he could embark on the mission. Still he felt incompetent but God had to keep reassuring him of who is in control.

Thus through the test of ten plagues Pharaoh yielded to the supremacy of the Lord God, the tenth being the death of the first born. Before the angel of death carried out this final test the people of Israel were instructed to sacrifice a lamb and smear it’s blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses. When the angel went about, he would pass over these houses with the blood sign on the doorposts. Thus the event was called the Passover. Along with the preparation they were to eat unleavened bread because they were to leave in a hurry and hence no time for the dough to rise. This became a memorial event called Pesach, celebrated annually.

However, except as the foreshadow or typology of the death of Jesus the sinless lamb of God, Pesach and the feast of unleavened bread has no direct significance to the Christian. Jesus was celebrating Pesach with His disciples at His last supper. Then on Friday His precious blood became the mark of deliverance and redemption for all those who believe and take refuge in Him. For them, the death penalty of sin has passed over, for ever. Hallelujah!

Have you experienced this Passover?! Is the blood of the Lamb of God the mark of your deliverance and redemption?!

Another Easter!

Another Good Friday! Another Easter! The celebration continues year after year. An opportunity for the Christian community to celebrate just like other religious communities have. Does it have any significance beyond that?

Have you ever wondered what motivated God to sacrifice his own Son, his only begotten Son?

Jesus’ crucifixion reveals God’s hatred towards sin.

I can not fulfill the righteous laws of the Most Holy God. God’s Word calls this condition sin. The Bible says, “There is no difference; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
(Romans 3:23). The penalty for this is death. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:23).

I cannot earn forgiveness of my sins by paying money, or by doing good deeds, or by the help of saints, or by climbing mountains, or by keeping vows, or by any other means. The Bible says, “There is no salvation except by shedding blood” (Heb. 9:22).

“The soul that sinneth, it shall die; the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father; neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son: for the righteousness of the just shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him” (Ezekiel 18:20).

God the Father was silent when His only begotten son was sweating blood and pleading from the Garden of Gethsemane, “remove this cup from me if you will”. The Father turned a deaf ear to the cry of His beloved son who was hanging on three nails on the cross, bleeding from head to toe, groaning in agony, asking “my God my God why have you forsaken me”. God the Father allowed His dear Son to be tormented up on that cross and that shows how much He hated sin.

Jesus’ crucifixion reveals God’s love for me.

Jesus is God who became a human for us humans. He is the Creator who took the form of His own creation. Because He is infinite, He voluntarily relinquished His glory in order to be a finite man. Since He is eternal without beginning or end, He confined himself to time, human history, and a geographical territory. He, while being sinless, allowed Himself to be tortured and killed for our sins. Jesus did not come into the world to be hailed as a saint, or a spiritual leader, or a teacher, or the founder of a religion, a prophet or a martyr, but to carry the burden of sin of the whole world on His own shoulders and endure the wrath of God, so that we might be forgiven of our sins. Lonely and despised, ignored by the Father, abandoned by all, hanging on that cross, He shed even the last drop of His blood as the sacrifice of sin for you and me.

He did all this out of His love for us. The Word of God says, “Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?”
(Romans 8:32 NLT)

“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)

“But God demonstrates His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5: 8)

Jesus’ crucifixion reveals my only hope

Because Jesus took away my sins and became the ransom sacrifice for me, I can trust in Him for my forgiveness. No one else in human history has paid the penalty for all the sins of mankind with his own blood. The Bible says, “There is salvation in no one else; there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

In him we have redemption and forgiveness of sins. Jesus calls all who are struggling with sin to come to Him. He is knocking at the door of your heart, hoping you will invite him inside. He will change your life. That is why he came and that is why he died and rose again. Will you invite him in as your Savior and Master?

He promises to be with you forever and never to leave you. (Heb. 13: 5)