Playin' Dress Up For Easter

I am not sure I understand the move from a risen Jesus to the Easter bunny, but I do think that there can be some helpful imagery in the practice of dressing up for Easter.  In fact, I might suggest that the implications of Easter are all about what you wear. 

Paul says it this way in Romans 6:3-11 – “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that he died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

The great news of the resurrection is that in Jesus’ resurrection, you and I can be changed. The point is clear – the implications of the resurrection of Jesus gives you and I hope to overcome sin in our own lives. Since Jesus conquered sin and death, His resurrection power gives us the hope of killing sin in our own lives. 

This newness of life is pictured in Scripture as a change of clothes. Paul writes in Colossians 3:9-10 “do not lie to one another, since you took off  the old self with its evil practices, and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.”

Paul uses the picture of a change of clothes to reveal what should happen to a Christian who truly understands Easter. The sin and evil practices that once dominated his life should be taken off and the Christians should put on a new change of clothes.

So maybe Easter is all about clothes. But not bowties and suits – rather, a life decorated by the righteousness of Jesus that comes from truly understanding your new life in Jesus as a result of Easter Sunday.

Easter Monday is the test of truly understanding the reality of Easter Sunday. If Jesus died for your sins and conquered sin and death on your behalf then I pray that you and I may know Him and the power of His resurrection this Easter Monday (Phil. 3:10).