Easter People

Living Between Already and Not Yet Easter, 2026

Easter generated a series of new beliefs and new ways of living that made Christiansstand out in the religious world of antiquity

– N.T. Wright

Ask the average attender on Easter what it means that Jesus rose from the dead and they will tell you it means that there is life after death. One popular Evangelical preacher writes, “Death is not the end for those who know and love Jesus Christ. Rather, it’s the beginning of eternity in the Father’s house… (and) one day Jesus will return and usher in the new heaven and earth.”

That message is true and it’s given hope to millions, including me, but to the first Christians that was the last thing Easter meant. I mean, it meant that last of all. The first and biggest meaning of Easter was that there was life now, before we die. Even now “we walk in the newness of life,” (Rom. 6:4). Even now “‘ live for God … (and) Christ lives in me,” (Gal. 2:19-20). Even now, we are “raised with Christ… (who) is seated at the right hand of God,” (Col. 3:1). Easter meant that a new and other set of realities had broken in. On Easter, “there began a new story… a new age, a new shape of the world.” Everything we once postponed for heaven – the “Day of the Lord,” the age to come – had begun. Nothing of the old had passed away yet something new, entirely new, had come and now, after Easter, two things were true at the same time. Yes, it was still dark, but the day was already upon us. The Kingdom of Heaven had fully come, but not in its fullness.

This meant that we were alive, but not yet fully alive. It meant that our suffering could be hard, maybe agonizing, and yet “light and momentary,” (2 Cor. 4:17). It meant that our church could be fully human, deeply flawed and yet “shine like stars in the universe holding out the word of life,” (Phil. 2:15-16). It meant we could be “buried with Christ by baptism into death,” yet all the while “walk in the newness of life,” (Rom. 6:4). We could be “earthen vessels,” and at the same time, “possess an extraordinary power that comes from God,” (2 Cor. 4:7). We could be “wasting away (yet) renewed day by day,” (2 Cor. 4:16). We are already. We are not yet.

That’s what Easter meant to early Christians. The world they lived in both hated them and needed them to make sense of everything else. We live in the same world. Part of the reason so many are overwhelmed today is that we’ve forgotten the first meaning of Easter. Paul said, “If in this life only we have hope, then we are miserable” (1 Cor. 15:19), yet we’ve found the other to be just as true: If in the next life only we have hope, then we are miserable. This series, then, will wrestle with the question, “What does it mean to be people of the resurrection? Why does it matter? How do we practice it consistently and daily?” We’ll look at Ephesians and Colossians, reading them as if they were manuals for discipleship showing us how to live between the already and the not yet.