We Know the End of Our Story (That’s What Easter Tells Us)

Because of Easter, we who have chosen to give our lives to Jesus know how the story of our life ends.  That doesn’t exempt us from troubles on earth, but it can make the struggle easier.

Image by Shubham Dhage, provided by Unsplash via Wix. Cropped.

When I was a high school teacher, one day one of my students asked me, “Mr. Faletti, how do you stay so calm?”

I responded that, while it might partly just be my temperament, the main reason is that “I know the end of the story.”

“What do you mean?” my students asked.  “How do you know the end of the story?  What story?”

“I have given my life to Jesus,” I explained, “so I know that I will live with him forever, unless I walk away from him.  That makes it easier to handle whatever happens along the way.”

Seeing things from the perspective of eternity was a novel idea for most of them.

Jesus’s Easter resurrection is our assurance that our story will end well

If Jesus hadn’t risen from the dead, it would be easy to dismiss the Christian faith as pie in the sky.

When Jesus called himself a “good shepherd” who walks ahead of his sheep and helps them find pasture (John 10), he added, “I lay down my life for the sheep” (John 10:15).

But he didn’t stop there.  He told us that he would rise back to life, saying, “I lay down my life in order to take it up again” (John 10:17).  Christians celebrate this at Easter because it makes an enormous difference in our lives, both now and when we die.

Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (John 10:10).  The apostle Paul wrote that we are “baptized into his death . . . so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom. 6:3-4, NABRE).  We experience a foretaste of the abundant life with God now, even though we will not experience its fullness until we reach eternity.

Jesus promised that he would live in us (John 14:20) and send the Spirit to live in us (John 14:17).  Moreover, Jesus said, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him” (John 14:23, NRSV).  Thus, Jesus tells us that all three Persons of the one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – dwell in each person who is willing to live according to his word.

That is the source of the abundant life God offers.  And it means that we not only know the end of the story, we are also allowed to experience God with us along the way.

This is what Easter tells us.  Our destiny is to live forever, and the risen Lord is with us along the way.

What do we need to do to live with Jesus?

Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26, NABRE).

This is an assurance we can build our life on.  If we believe in Jesus, then our dying will be only a bodily death: we will live forever.  In that sense, we will never truly die: the body may wear out or be snuffed out, but we will live on.

What must a person do to have this assurance?

In many instances, as in the statement above, Jesus says that this life is for those who “believe” in him.  (If you don’t believe in him, he will not force you to live with him forever.)  But when Jesus talks about “believing,” he means anchoring our life in him.

In John 8:51, Jesus says that “whoever keeps my word will never see death,” and in John 14:23 (quoted above) he says that it is those who keep his word who receive the indwelling of God.

To keep Jesus’s word means to line up our lives with his teaching, his character, and his example.

In other places, he explains that to be like Jesus means to be willing to take up our cross and follow him (Matt. 16:24; Luke 9:23) and lay down our life for others (1 John 3:16) as he did for us.

This means that the new life of Easter is intimately connected with the sacrificial death of Jesus on Good Friday. 

The apostle Paul wrote: “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20, ESV).  Paul also wrote that “if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him” (Rom. 6:8, ESV). 

The Cross and the Resurrection are two sides of the same coin, calling us to a sacrificial but abundant life now and eternal life with God when our time on earth has ended.

It helps to know how the story ends

When my daughter was a pre-teen, she was reading a book where a character she cared deeply about suddenly appeared to have been murdered.  She turned to the end of the book to see if the character was indeed dead because, if so, she didn’t want to read any further – it would be too painful and depressing.  She wasn’t trying to find out the full ending in advance; she just wanted to know that her favorite character would be alive at the end of the story.

Knowing the end of the story does not mean that what we do in this life does not matter.  On the contrary, it matters all the more because God is alive in us and working in us for his good purpose (Rom. 8:28; Phil. 2:13).  Jesus wants to infuse his new life into everything we do so that it reflects the eternal perspective he gives us.  He wants to guide and strengthen us as we deal with the disappointments, complexities, and opportunities of life, so that what we do reflects his character.

I do not always remember to live this way.  It would be the height of hypocrisy and hubris to suggest that I do.  I am far from perfect.  But God understands that.  We do not earn eternal life by our own doing.  The life Jesus offers is a gift, not something we earn.  God is working to form us in his image, dealing with our imperfections and sins as he prepares us to live with him forever.  Knowing that our story ends with us alive with him helps us not to lose heart.

We don’t need to know the whole story of our lives to approach each day with hope.  We just need to know that he is living in us now and that we will be alive with him in the end.

We know the end of the story and a little bit more: Jesus is alive!  Because of him, we will live forever.  And he lives in us now as we face our daily challenges.

That is what Jesus tells us at Easter, and it is enough.  Happy Easter!