The UK Easter Retreat ended with a powerful invitation to meet the resurrected Christ and experience new life through Him.
During the closing service, Pastor Andrew Clark looked through a number of key verses in John chapters 19 and 20 to demonstrate how Christ’s salvation work was completely finished (John 19:30) – and how this is revealed to us through the cross and resurrection.
It is not any of our own works or efforts that save us, but so often we return to legalism, self-accusing and self-torturing, as if we want a harsher punishment from God. We return to the mindset that God accepting us is about what we do.
The root of this kind of thinking is pride and a failure to believe that Christ did everything for us on the cross. Salvation is about what Christ did for us, not anything we can do. The antidote to all our pride is the cross.
In John 20 it describes how Mary is deep in sorrow, and doesn’t recognise the Lord who has risen. The disciples, too, lock themselves in a room in fear in the days after Jesus’ resurrection (John 20:19). These were Jesus’ disciples who knew Him so well and loved Him. And yet they were still ruled by fear. The resurrected Lord was not ruling in their life yet.
Some of us can have an image like this too. We know the message of the cross and resurrection in our heads, yet we don’t accept it intimately and personally. And because of that we can continue to live in self-condemnation. We act like we have to still add a little more to the cross, and we do not accept Christ’s words that “It Is Finished”; that there is nothing left to add for us to be acceptable to God.
What is the turning point for the disciples? It is when they recognise the risen Lord. In Mary, her weeping turns to joy (John 20:16), and when Thomas sees the resurrected Lord his heart is filled with joy: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).
This is the joy that the Lord wants each one of us to experience this Easter. He wants us to know the resurrected Lord personally. To “stop doubting, and believe” because the Lord declared “It is finished”, and the risen Lord is God’s reassurance for us that it was more than enough. When this becomes the foundation for our relationship with God, then peace and joy will fill our hearts.
Pastor Andrew finished with a challenge to members: “Do you truly know Jesus, or do you only know of him? It is not the same thing. You can know the Easter story and yet be distant from the peace and joy. You need to know the joy and not be ruled by pride, or confined in fear that your failures may make you unacceptable to God. He has already paid it all. It is done. It is finished. He is risen!” May we be the ones who can know the resurrected Lord and experience His joy and peace all our days.