“I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD.” — Psalm 118:17
The Beginning of Life
On April 9, 1945, the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was led from his cell at Flossenbürg concentration camp to the gallows. He had been imprisoned for two years for his involvement in a plot against Hitler. The camp doctor who witnessed his execution later recalled that Bonhoeffer knelt in prayer before walking to the scaffold. His last recorded words, spoken to a fellow prisoner that morning, were: “This is the end. For me, the beginning of life.”
Bonhoeffer had spent years writing about what it meant to follow a crucified and risen Christ. His theology of discipleship centered on this claim: that the Christian life takes its shape from the death and resurrection of Jesus. To follow Christ means to pass through a kind of death, a real relinquishing of your old life, and to receive a new life that belongs to God. He had written those ideas in books. On that April morning, he walked them out with his feet.
The readings for Easter Sunday carry this same pattern from start to finish. A psalmist declares that God has brought him through severe trial into life. A woman weeps at a tomb and then hears the risen Jesus speak her name. An apostle stands in a Gentile household and announces that God raised the crucified Christ on the third day. And Paul tells a congregation that their life is now hidden with Christ in God. In each text, death is the road, and life is what waits on the other side. The question Easter presses on every reader is whether we believe that pattern holds for us too.
Delivered Through the Fire (Psalm 118:1–2, 14–24)
The psalmist has been through something severe. “The LORD hath chastened me sore” (v. 18). The language throughout the psalm is the language of someone who faced death and survived: surrounded by enemies, pushed to the edge, brought low. And yet the psalm is a thanksgiving hymn. The psalmist sings because the outcome has already been decided: “I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD” (v. 17).
This declaration sits at the center of the Easter readings because it captures the logic that every other text in this set will develop. Life comes through the passage of suffering, and the one who survives gives testimony. The psalmist approaches the temple gates (v. 19), enters, and praises God. Then comes the rejected cornerstone (v. 22), the day the LORD has made (v. 24), and the call to rejoice. Israel sang this psalm at its festivals, celebrating God’s faithfulness in delivering his people. The early church heard something more in it: a preview of what God would do on Easter morning, when the one who truly passed through death would truly come out alive on the other side.
A Name Spoken in a Garden (John 20:1–18)
Mary Magdalene arrived at the tomb while it was still dark. John’s detail about the darkness is doing double duty. It was early morning, and Mary could see very little. She found the stone rolled away, the tomb empty, and she assumed the worst: someone had moved the body.
Everything in this passage turns on recognition. Mary looked at Jesus and saw a gardener (v. 15). Two disciples entered the tomb, saw the linen cloths, and went home (vv. 6–10). The resurrection had already happened, but the people closest to Jesus had yet to grasp it. Then Jesus spoke one word: “Mary” (v. 16). She recognized his voice, and the grief of Good Friday broke open into the reality of Easter. Jesus sent her to the other disciples with a message that reframed everything: “I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (v. 17). The relationship between God and his people now runs through the risen Christ. Mary arrived at the tomb carrying death. She left carrying a commission. The pattern of Psalm 118 played out in a single morning: severe suffering, then life, then testimony.
The Sermon (Acts 10:34–43)
Peter stood in the house of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, and preached the resurrection to Gentiles. This was the first time the Easter message crossed outside the boundaries of Jewish faith and community. Peter summarized the entire gospel in a handful of sentences: God anointed Jesus, Jesus went about doing good and healing, the authorities killed him, and God raised him on the third day (vv. 38–40).
Two details in Peter’s sermon connect directly to the theme of dying and living. First, Peter identified himself and the other apostles as witnesses “who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead” (v. 41). The resurrection was physical, bodily, confirmed by shared meals. The life on the other side of the cross was real life, the kind you could sit down to dinner with. Second, Peter announced that “whosoever believeth in him shall receive remission of sins” (v. 43). The life that Jesus won through death is now available to everyone who trusts him. The psalmist’s declaration, “I shall not die, but live,” has expanded from one man’s thanksgiving to the offer God makes to every nation. What began as a song at the temple gates is now a sermon in a Roman soldier’s living room.
Hidden and Waiting (Colossians 3:1–4)
Paul wrote to the Colossian church with a claim that sounds strange until you read it through the lens of what came before: “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God” (v. 3). Paul was writing to living, breathing people, and he told them they had already died. He meant that through baptism and faith, believers have been joined to Christ’s death. The old life has ended. And the new life, the resurrection life, has already begun, even though its full expression remains hidden for now.
This is where the dying-and-living pattern reaches its most personal application. The psalmist passed through suffering into thanksgiving. Jesus passed through the cross into resurrection. Peter announced that passage to the nations. And Paul told the Colossians that they themselves had already entered the same sequence. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (v. 1). The imperative follows the indicative. Because you have been raised, live accordingly. And Paul added one more layer: “When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory” (v. 4). The full revelation of this new life still lies ahead. Believers live in the overlap between resurrection accomplished and resurrection fully displayed.
Walking Out of the Tomb
Every text in this set traces the same arc. Suffering gives way to deliverance. Death gives way to life. Grief gives way to recognition. And the life that comes through the other side always produces testimony, witness, and mission.
Easter asks you to locate yourself inside this pattern. Bonhoeffer walked to the gallows and called it the beginning of life because he had spent years learning to trust the God who raises the dead. Mary walked to the tomb in the dark and left carrying the first Easter sermon because Jesus called her by name. Peter stood in a Gentile’s house and declared that the same life is available to everyone who believes.
The risen Christ meets you wherever death still has a grip on your life: in grief, in guilt, in the habits and identities that keep you bound to an old way of living. His resurrection is the ground you stand on this morning. The life he offers is already yours, hidden with him in God, waiting for the day when it will be fully revealed. Until that day, you do what the psalmist did, what Mary did, what Peter did. You declare the works of the LORD. You go and tell.
Points to Ponder
- Bonhoeffer called his execution “the beginning of life.” How had his years of following Christ prepared him to see death that way? What would it take for that kind of confidence to form in your own life?
- Mary arrived at the tomb carrying grief and left carrying a message. Where in your life has God turned a place of loss into a place of commission?
- Peter’s sermon in Acts 10 is the moment the Easter message crossed its first major boundary. Who in your life still stands outside the reach of your testimony? What would it look like to carry the message to them?
- Paul told the Colossians that their life was “hid with Christ in God” (3:3). What does it mean practically to live as someone whose deepest identity is secured in Christ, even when circumstances suggest otherwise?
- Psalm 118:24 says, “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” The early church read this as Easter. How does the resurrection reshape the way you approach every ordinary day that follows it?
A Prayer for Easter
Father, you brought your Son through death and into life on the third day. You rolled the stone away and spoke Mary’s name in the garden. You sent Peter to Cornelius with the news that the risen Christ belongs to every nation. And through Paul you told us that our life is already hidden with Christ in you. On this Easter morning, anchor us in the resurrection. Where grief still holds us, speak our names. Where guilt still binds us, remind us that the debt has been paid and the tomb stands open. Where we have grown timid in our witness, give us the boldness of Peter in a stranger’s house. Teach us to live as people who have already passed from death to life, and who wait with confidence for the day when Christ will appear and we will appear with him. We pray in the name of the risen Lord. Amen.
“When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” — Colossians 3:4
Josh Cehulik 