Today is the day that most people who identify as Christians call Easter. Those who celebrate it in a spiritual sense are setting this Sunday aside to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Such a holiday is not mentioned in the New Testament. The word Easter does not occur in our Bibles except for some versions, notably the King James, uses it incorrectly for the word Passover. The only observance we are commanded to remember in the New Testament is communion which we know occurred every Sunday in the early church (Acts 20:7).
I suspect the celebration of Easter started because both Jewish and Gentile Christians had holidays they enjoyed in their past. The Jews had the Passover, the Feast of the Tabernacles, the Festival of Weeks (Pentecost) and the Sabbath. The Gentiles had festivals celebrating the coming of spring. Evidently, some Christians started a special Sunday to remember Christ’s resurrection sometime after the first century. A council of men set the date for Easter in 325 AD. They based it on the phase of the moon after a certain date.
We don’t celebrate Easter as a religious holiday for the simple reason that it is not commanded of us. It amounts to adding to the Word of God. Does that mean we don’t celebrate the resurrection? Absolutely not!
We celebrate Christ’s resurrection every time we meet. We teach it, pray about it and sing about it. I think Paul puts it best when he presents his argument about the resurrection of the dead. “And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable” (I Corinthians 15:17-19). In other words, if Christ isn’t risen we need not meet!
Thanks be to God for the gift of His Son.
For the elders, Dave Benner