It’s Easter Sunday.  (Well, I still haven’t gone to bed yet from Saturday.)  Easter is significant for me for one primary reason.  It was on this day, in 1987, right after I had turned 18 years old, that I was baptized — Baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  This was at First Evangelical Covenant Church, 22 years ago!!

Since I had grown up believing the beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, a very anti-trinitarian religion, and had spent the previous 4 years struggling with my faith and desperately wanting to know the truth, particularly the deity of Christ, this public confession of my faith was definitely a life-changing moment in my life.  Unfortunately, it also meant being disowned (temporarily, that is) by my mother who was devastated, and treated like I’d been brainwashed by my father.

Back then, I was very smug, but yet, still teachable.  Because I’d learned JW theology inside and out, and read the Bible continuously, the other kids in the youth group weren’t accustomed to another non-Christian with so much knowledge.  When I first showed up at this church, by the invitation of a friend I’d met in High School, I had built up such an animosity towards this and other churches of “Christendom,” believing that their sole reason for existence was money.  (Oh how I remember the lumps in my throat as the collection plate was passed by!)

Shortly after that, I went to a Christian college appropriately named, “Trinity” where I double-majored in Youth Ministries and Psychology (having completed both within 4 years!).  I had to work myself through school since my parents refused to pay for it because I didn’t go to a school that THEY approved of.  While it’s true I could have chosen a better institution, Trinity was close enough to my hometown of Rockford, and it allowed me the immersion into true Christianity that I needed at that time.

Being surrounded by so many Christians, taking several Bible classes, going to chapel services 3 times a week, allowed me to get caught up to speed after spending 17 years of my life in a very distorted version of God’s truth.

It was here that the concepte of God’s grace and total forgiveness began sinking in.  Most of us have such a “works-oriented” mentality toward salvation, as if it was something to earn or achieve!  To think that ALL we have to do is to be broken by our own sin, realizing that we’re helpless to overcome it on our own, and confess it to God with a genuine intent to allow HIM to change us that we then have Eternal Life!  (Ephesians 2:8, 9).

This acceptance of God’s offer of salvation, (which is nothing less than an offer to have a restored relationship with Him which was severed as a result of our sin), is extremely personal and private.  Although there may be others witnessing the event, it is an interaction strictly between our spirit and God’s.  It is very much parallel to a man proposing to his girlfriend.  He asks her to make a choice to be in a loving relationship for the REST of their lives.  By him asking her, “Will you marry me?” he’s asking her to leave her former life and to join HIS.  It is the same thing with Christ.  He holds out His hand to us, asking us to join Him, to leave our former lives of sin, and to have a relationship with Him.

When the couple appears at the wedding, it is a public event, held before the church community.  The groom is there, standing at the alter, waiting for her.  It is SHE, the bride, who must COME to HIM!!  Her former caretaker, her father, hands her over to her new caretaker, the groom.  They pronounce to the world the commitment they had already made in private and expose their commitment to each other, TIL DEATH DO US PART.  — This is not unlike our baptism, which is also a public event.  Each of us, as the Bride of Christ, approaches the baptizer who represents the Groom.  These two have already made their promises to each other personally, but now is the time for it to be witnessed before the Church.   The dunking into the water, representing both Christ washing us free of our sin as well as the dying to ourselves, (i.e. the lowering as if in a coffin), and being born again into a new life with our now Husband, Jesus Christ.  While we commit to our earthly spouses, “til DEATH do us part,” to Christ we commit “til ETERNITY do us part!”

It was this stark realization I had that gave me a whole new reverence for marriage and the ceremonies that go along with it.  I do not know if God has that blessing in store for me again or not, but, it is a real, earthly metaphor, (that may be helpful during evangelism), to illustrate God’s gracious offer, to be totally forgiven, and to spend eternity with Him!

God Bless Everyone, and, remember:  HE IS RISEN!!