For many, Holy Week is a forgotten celebration. The only remnant of it left in their lives is Easter, and Easter is nothing more than a celebration of Spring and a chance for kids to get candy for some reason. Talk about missing the boat.
The events of Holy Week are not only historical, they are critical to any of us having life after death versus suffering after death. Jesus had to do what He did or God’s Law would scoop everyone of us up and drop us in the same bucket with the most evil people who ever lived and Satan himself. We are all sinners. Something had to be done about that. Holy Week is the celebration of the fact that somebody did.
In his life, Jesus did many miraculous and beautiful things. He fed thousands of people, healed many sick, freed many from demons, gave us clearer insight on God and life after death, laid out a morality based on love and more. None of these were his main purpose, however. He was born the way he was (from a virgin mother) so that he could fulfill God’s Law on behalf of the whole species and so that he could bear the required punishment for the sin of all mankind. To do this he had to be sinless.
The Bible says that we are all born sinful–altered from how God created humans and resulting our in being selfish and hostile to God. Jesus’ unusual birth allowed him to be without our genetic deformities. His life stayed within the bounds of God’s Law. Making Jesus the only sinless human since the beginning. This is why there is no alternative path to eternal life. There is only Jesus. Jesus said of the way to Heaven, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.”
For God, sin demands death. This is more complicated than it seems on the surface. Our life includes our physical body which easily becomes non-functioning and decays away; but it also includes our (mind, consciousness, soul). This is not caused by our physical body. It interacts with our physical body. This aspect of ourselves God has made to be eternal. Death for our soul constitutes being forsaken/exiled from God, and it is miserable. Such a thing could happen anywhere, but the plan of how this judgment is to be executed is to resurrect/recreate an indestructible body for all and to cast both that body and our soul into Hell.
That sounds harsh, but it seems appropriate when you understand that it takes the rejection of an enormously costly rescue attempt by Jesus. Jesus was forsaken and physically died for us that first Holy Week. His voluntary sacrifice makes a whole different narrative possible.
It seems strange to us that one person’s actions could potentially result in the satisfaction of a condemning law for all people. That isn’t our idea of fairness. But if you understand that one person’s decision (pick Adam or Eve) resulted in a modification of our DNA to make us sinful, and that this was inherited by everyone; the idea seems less out there. Jesus was doing what needed to be done to save the people he loved.
If you still celebrate Holy Week, celebrate it again with a fresh appreciation of how much those events have changed your life and eternity. If you are skeptical or unsure of such things, I exhort you to read one the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’ death and ask God to keep your sinful nature in check if possible. Perhaps you will see this story through a different set of “eyes” and understand that God is real, He loves you, and the road to eternal life in joy has been cleared for you by Jesus.
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