Defying Gravity

When my children were small, I loved to wrestle with them on the family room floor. Eventually the three of them would pile on top of me, hold my shoulders down, and count to three while I lay there looking exhausted. They felt pretty proud of themselves when they won! Only as they grew older did they realize they only won the wrestling matches because I let them win! When it was time to get up, there was no way some preschoolers could hold a grown man down.

When Jesus died on the cross, it looked like he was down for the count. With his lifeless body locked tightly in the tomb, his enemies must have walked back to their homes that evening, satisfied that this person they considered a blasphemer was finally out of the way. But the power of death couldn't hold down the Lord of life! "It was impossible for death to keep its hold on him" (Acts 2:24). Like the mighty Samson, who flexed his arms and snapped the Philistines' ropes as if they were threads, Jesus burst forth from the grave.

The word *grave *comes from gravis, which means "heavy." It's also the source of our terms *grieve *and gravity. Death has a powerful downward pull. "The soul who sins is the one who will die" (Ezekiel 18:20), and we all have sinned. In the spiritual realm, these facts are just as inescapable as the law of gravity in the physical realm. Only by divine intervention can we escape the pull of the grave.

Nearly 2,000 years ago, God dramatically intervened. Consider what the New Testament tells us about the grave of Jesus.

It was a new tomb. Near Calvary "was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid" (John 19:41). The tomb had been prepared—probably at considerable expense—as a burial place for the owner's family, but no one's body had been placed there yet. Usually a gravesite is a place of old stones, old bones, and fading memories. But Jesus' body was placed in a new tomb, which is fitting since he came to institute a new covenant and bring new life for all who receive him.

It was a borrowed tomb. The owner, Joseph of Arimathea, had been a secret disciple of Jesus. He and Nicodemus bravely asked Pilate's permission to take Jesus' body down from the cross. They wrapped the Lord's body in linen with about 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes, and placed it in the tomb. No need to buy a burial plot or make any long-term arrangements. It was going to be a short stay.

It was a secure tomb. "Take a guard," Pilate told the Jewish leaders. "Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how." So they put a seal on the tomb and posted a guard (Matthew 27:65, 66). But no seal, no stone, no soldier, no security measures could keep Jesus in the grave. No story about a stolen body could obscure the facts. In a profound sense, his resurrection makes our own tombs secure.

It's an empty tomb. The resurrection is a fact. The prophets foretold it, Jesus predicted it, witnesses confirmed it, skeptics couldn't deny it, the church grew because preachers proclaimed it, and millions have found salvation because of it.

The risen Savior replaced the downward pull of the grave with the upward call of God! No wonder the weight on our shoulders seems lighter and the burdens a little easier to bear. If you have been released from the gravity of death, what else can drag you down?

It's Easter. Let your spirit soar.