Why do we celebrate Easter?

The word "Easter" occurs once in the Authorised Version (Acts 12:4), where the word is pascha, which is elsewhere translated "Passover," and is so translated here in the Revised Version. This shews that in the translators' minds Easter and the Passover corresponded. But the Passover is associated with the crucifixion: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7); and the Passover fell on the 14th day of Nisan, and might occur on any day of the week; whereas Easter is generally accepted to refer to the resurrection, and commences on a Sunday. The former mode of reckoning was mostly adopted in the east, and the latter in the west. At the council of Nice it was settled for the latter.

There is nothing in the New Testament respecting the keeping of Easter. Acts 12:4 simply refers to the Passover as a suitable time for Herod to deliver up Peter to destruction. Of course the Passover was observed by the Jews, and probably by the Jewish converts. The words sent out from the council were "that all the brethren in the east, who formerly celebrated Easter with the Jews, will henceforth keep it agreeably with the Romans and ourselves, and all who from ancient time have kept Easter as we." The crucifixion was observed on what is called Good Friday by fasting, etc.; the following Sunday commenced Easter as a festival.

The waving of the sheaf of the firstfruits of the harvest was typical of the resurrection of our Lord. The sheaf was waved on the morrow after the sabbath. Our Lord rose the first day of the week. That was the day of all days when our Lord rose triumphant from the dead, having brought to completion the great atoning work of redemption on the cross, the declaration on God’s part of His complete satisfaction with the work He sent His Son to perform. It was the outward and visible sign the the power of sin, death, and Satan’s power was shattered, that salvation could be offered to sinful men. That was the astounding event, the importance of which it is impossible to exaggerate. It occurred on the morrow after the sabbath, on the first day of the week.

But the question now arises, whether any custom of the apostolic churches in specially honouring this day is given us or not. We find that the inspired historian, in the course of his narrative of the labours and travels of the apostle Paul, shows us in a casual way (which makes the evidence not the less but the more powerful), that the early Christians were in the habit of assembling on that particular day of the week to commemorate the Lord's death in the appointed manner.

From Acts 20:7, it is plain that the saints should break bread on the first day of the week, not of the month or quarter. But it is the resurrection day, not the day of His death, as if we were summoned to be there in mourning as for the dead. But He is risen, and therefore, with grateful, solemn joy, we take the Supper on the day that speaks of His rising power. I cannot but believe that the Holy Ghost records the day for our instruction, as well as the object that called together the believers primarily. No doubt the apostle, passing through after a short stay, discoursed to those assembled; but they came together on that day to break bread. Have we consented to other thoughts and arrangements? Or do we act as if we believed the Holy Spirit knows and shows us the best and truest, the holiest and happiest way of pleasing God and honouring Christ? The death of the Lord keeps constantly before the soul our utter need as once guilty sinners, proved by the cross; the complete blotting out of all our sins by His blood; the glorifying of God up to, and above all in, death itself; the manifestation of absolute grace, and withal the righteousness of God in justifying us; the perfect glory of the Saviour; — all these things, and infinitely more, are brought and kept before us in those simple but wondrous words — "the Lord's death!"

From Pentecost and after the believers celebrated the memorial of the Lord's death on the first day the week, that is, on the resurrection day, as being the fittest time for rendering to God and to His Son their freewill offerings of praise, adoration and thanksgiving, whilst remembering at the same time the suffering love of the Saviour, "Who loves us and washed us from our sins in His own blood and made us a kingdom and priests, to His God and Father. To him be glory and dominion for ever and ever. Amen."

Of course, we are not to forget that while our eyes look back upon the Lamb slain, it is from the after-side of His resurrection that we contemplate this. "The first day of the week" speaks of resurrection out of death, and gives Him back to us in all the reality of a living person. While we remember His death, we do it in the glad knowledge of His resurrection, and with the Lord Himself in our midst. Who could celebrate the Lord's death but for this? Who could sound a note of praise did He not Himself first raise it? He says, "In the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto Thee" (Heb.2:12; see also Psa.22:22). Death, but death passed, do we celebrate; death which, thus seen, is only the depths of a living love which we carry with us, un-exhausted, inexhaustible, unfathomed, and unfathomable.

It has been said that one day is as good as any other for the celebration of the Lord's supper. But not so. The first day of the week is that chosen by Himself at Emmaus; and on the same day at Jerusalem, it was confirmed by Him; and a week later again confirmed. At Pentecost the Holy Ghost from heaven came amongst them consequent upon the Lord's triumphant ascension. In addition to this, the suitability of the first day is strikingly manifest. To show forth Christ's death on Friday would be to perpetuate His apparent defeat by death! To show forth His death on Saturday would be to announce the transient triumph of the grave! But to show forth the Lord's death on the first day of the week is to signalise His triumphant resurrection and full and irreversible victory over the world, and sin and Satan, death and the grave, by the glory of the Father.

Typically, the resurrection of Christ was prophesied in the annual Feast of Firstfruits, as recorded in Leviticus 23:9-14, “On the morrow after the Sabbath,” it was to be offered. Now “the morrow after the Sabbath” was an unusual day for the Jew, who kept the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week, and that by divine appointment. It looked forward to that new era, that wonderful “first day of the week,” when the Lord should break the bands of death and rise triumphant from the dead. He was the sheaf of the firstfruits of the harvest waved before the Lord.

These feasts had a prophetic intention beyond their annual instruction, and this intention has been realized. Of the first two Scripture says, "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast. … with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth." (1 Cor. 5:7-8.) All through time the true, spiritual feast which is attached to the commemoration of Christ's Paschal sacrifice, is holiness the joy of holiness to the Lord. The prophetic significance of the waving of the barley sheaf on the day following the Passover — that is, the fifteenth day — and also of the waving of the two loaves fifty days afterward, has received its fulfilment Christ kept the Passover sabbath in the grave. On the morn of the new week, He, the Firstfruits out of death, arose, and fifty days afterward — that is, at Pentecost — the Holy Ghost came down from heaven, and the firstfruits of the harvest of Jew and Gentile were presented to God. The stamp upon the calendar, made when Israel was in Horeb, is now discerned in the history of the death and resurrection of Christ, and in the descent of the Holy Ghost to earth. The dates of that calendar are written indelibly in the heart of His Church, and are recounted continually in every section of Christendom.