The Purpose of Easter: Why death, burial, and resurrection?
2015 April 5 Streaming
What is Easter? Where did it come from? What is its purpose?
Full Definition of EASTER
: a feast that commemorates Christ’s resurrection and is observed with variations of date due to different calendars on the first Sunday after the paschal full moon.
Let’s take a look at a little history.
In the early Church
The Last Supper celebrated by Jesus and his disciples was a Passover Seder. The early Christians too would have celebrated this meal to commemorate Jesus’ death and subsequent resurrection.
The first Christians, Jewish and Gentile, were certainly aware of the Hebrew calendar. Jewish Christians, the first to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, timed the observance in relation to Passover.
Direct evidence for a more fully formed Christian festival of Pascha (Easter) begins to appear in the mid-2nd century. Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd-century Paschal homily (A homily is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture) attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one. Evidence for another kind of annual Christian festival, the commemoration of martyrs, begins to appear at about the same time as evidence for the celebration of Easter.
This is not a full historical account of Easter but it can shed a little light on where the name came from and its intended meaning. We should be able to see the intent of the believers in that day to celebrate Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was their evidence of their faith in Christ and the atonement for their sins. So, it makes sense to establish a feast/festival or greeting which acknowledge and confirms this wonderful truth.
As we know the word Easter is not use Biblically. So, what was God’s purpose, intent and plan with the cross and His Son?