If I had to summarize the Christian faith, it would be these words: Christ Jesus, for you. Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection was entirely for you. He was born for you, taking on your weak human flesh, the entire fulness of God coming to earth as a baby in a backwater town in Galilee. He came, proclaiming a message of repentance and calling people to turn to Him. By His death, He destroyed the power of death, robbing the devil of every ounce of his power.
When He rose again from the dead, He took with Him all the fear, all the weight, all the anxiety of death. The grave is no longer something to be feared; as one of my favorite hymns puts it “Even there I’ll sleep secure; though my flesh awaits is raising, still my soul continues praising: ‘I am baptized into Christ! I’m a child of paradise.'”
Because of Jesus, we have nothing to fear, not even death itself. No matter what the world and the devil throw at us, we have Jesus Christ. While we will all suffer and have our various problems in this life, but nothing can squash our resurrection hope: that at the Last Day, we will be raised with all the faithful to dwell eternally with God in a renewed creation, where sorrow, pain, and death are no more.
This hope is a gift, given to all the faithful by Jesus Christ. He won this hope for us, because we couldn’t possibly win it ourselves. Thanks be to God!