Resurrection Hope Extends Beyond Easter Sunday

Even when death looms, the Good News remains.

As the COVID-19 pandemic brought global suffering and death to so many over the past several weeks, Christians eagerly anticipated Easter Sunday with its promise of new life.

Now that the holiday has come and gone, Christians might be tempted to move on. With the scope of the suffering around the world, and trajectories continuing to warn that the worst isn’t over, it would be easy to set aside any Easter joy and hope. But Jesus’ resurrection is not reserved for a single Sunday. Easter may have passed, but the hope of Resurrection is new every morning because Jesus is physically risen from the dead.

Jesus died for our sins, physically rose from the dead, and appeared to many eyewitnesses as recounted in the Gospels and throughout the Epistles. In the New Testament, hope is a confident expectation that God has fulfilled and will fulfill his promises of redemption for his people and for the world in his Son, Jesus Christ.

Christians especially need to remember this word during times of suffering. As Paul himself attests, because we’ve been justified by faith in Jesus Christ, we have both peace with God and hope in God when we suffer (Rom. 5:1–5). This hope “does not disappoint” (v. 5, NLT).

I understand how it can be hard to keep the Resurrection at the forefront when death threatens us, our communities, and those we love.

In 2018, my beloved Auntie, who raised me as if I were her own son, died a horrible death. It was the culmination of a long and painful battle with multiple sicknesses, and hope seemed hopeless.

As I cared for her in those final weeks, I often felt like the hope of Jesus’ resurrection was a biblical and theological truth that I intellectually affirmed but was not sustaining ...