Happy Resurrection Day: The day God's love and justice defeated the devil's hatred and injustice

In a famous movie dialogue from Dabang, the heroine tells the Robinhood Police officer who proposes to her, "Thappad se darr nahi lagta sahib; pyar se lagta hai." (Sir, I am not scared of beatings. I fear love.) Love is the crucial ingredient of God's character that makes the devil tremble. Many of us assume that the devil fears holiness and loud rebukes. On the contrary, he is not scared of self-righteous people's holiness or loud rebukes of spirit-filled prophets. He fears love, genuine love. Jesus Christ defeated the devil's hatred expressed in people's rejection by his love. He came to his people, but they chose to disown him. Even so, he chose to love them more, so much more that they didn't know what he had accomplished for them upon the cross.

Many people must have thought that God punished Jesus. They were right about this first aspect, but little did they know that God had laid their punishment upon him. Like sheep, they had wandered away, but, in his grace, the Lord swept their sins away. It was a Happy Good Friday because it revealed who is God's Son (Jesus) and who is not (Caesar). Even until his death, Jesus remained loyal to God and his people. God did not seem to answer his prayer as people thought he would. No help came. Still, Jesus entrusted himself to God. And, witnessing how he died, the Roman Centurion who had nailed Jesus to the cross exclaimed: Surely, he was God's Son!

Perhaps, the Centurion saw what he had not seen in many other claimants of the title, Son of God. The Centurion was loyal to his Emperor and knew his role was to hold his battalion together in harmony and defend Caesar's Kingdom, even at the cost of his life. Similarly, Rome would send help and enforcement to protect such loyal Centurions.  However, here's a Son of God who continues to entrust himself to God, his Father, despite being abandoned by his God and heavenly government. Jesus didn't deny God, his Father, nor did he deny his role as his people's Savior from sin that had led to their exile from God, curse, and death.

Furthermore, Jesus accomplished what was required to reverse exile, curse, and human mortality by paying for people's sins through his sacrificial death. Delight on the day you behave like the Son who clings to his father despite abandonment and keeps his father's people united and safe even to the point of his death. It is your Good Friday. On Sunday, Jesus Rose Again. God vindicated his Righteous Servant and declared him victorious over Pilate's verdict, sin, death, decay, and the devil. The Missing Body, the empty tomb, the visions of the Resurrected Jesus to many people for forty days, and finally to Paul en route to Damascus suffice for us to believe that God visited humans in a concrete and tangible form.

What is more, God in human form, King Jesus, will come again. He will judge humanity and raise us to reign with him forever in a heavenly Jerusalem on a renewed earth. In that world, there will be no devil, deception, destruction, death, or decay. People and animals would speak the language of nonviolence, love, and justice. In the coming age, when God sets things right, you may not get a dead fish or animal to eat its meat. Even animals would not feed on one another. The bear will lie down with a cow without harming it. Liars will not inherit eternal life. There will be no pain, suffering, or tears. The loving, living, loyal Lord will wipe them away. We would have perfect physical bodies that would never die again.

Peter, Paul, James, and others gave up their worldly lives for this Truth. If they were lying about Jesus' missing body and resurrected form, why would they jeopardize their life for a lie that would lead them to persecution and a painful death? Instead, they hoped for a better Resurrection. Jesus defeated the devil and his hatred with his boundless and unconditional love. Love has life; life is a result of love. God's love created and maintained the cosmos despite entropy and evil. May the Lord fill you with his love this Resurrection Day and use you to stand for the weak and right the wrongs done to your fellow human beings. The Resurrected Christ is the Lord and King of the world; Caesar is not.