The Christian “Holy Week” began penultimate Sunday with Palm Sunday, marking the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ, riding a donkey, into Jerusalem. That was the tradition of Israeli kings. It was followed by his arrest, facilitated by one of his closest disciples on a trumped up charge of blasphemy. Judas Iscariot was unarguably the sharpest minds of all 12 disciples. No wonder, he easily secured the position of treasurer, but he was also a thief. Jesus’s arrest was quickly followed by a kangaroo trial and subsequently his crucifixion. But, according to Scriptures, Jesus rose from the dead the third day, fulfilling his prophecy that he would be killed but he would rise again after three days. This is the surmise of the “Holy Week” also known as Easter that ends today.
Christians accept that the events of the Holy Week were an integral part of God’s plan to restore Man to preeminence after the Fall in the Garden of Eden due to the Original Sin. God had originally made Man “in our our image” to be his look-alike spiritually. And he had put him in charge of the rest of his creation and placed him in the Garden, a kind of heaven on earth. God’s intention, from start, had been for Paradise to be on this earth where man would be master. When he sinned through disobedience and unbelief, God punished him with eviction and a shortened lifespan and Satan, who deceived him to disobey God, displaced him as ruler of the earth.
But then, God is faithful to his word. He had said “Let us make man in our image.” To abandon him meant to recant God’s pledge. It would have suggested a denial of Himself but we are told He cannot deny Himself. So He would have to come up with a plan for man’s eternal salvation once for all. That was how Jesus Christ came to be born a man in order to offer himself as that once for all sacrifice for man’s redemption, sanctification and salvation. It is this vicarious sacrifice that Christians have been remembering this week-long. Floyd O. Rittenhouse wrote, “This is the week when, throughout Christendom, the final awesome events of Christ’s earthly ministry are remembered with reverence. This is thought to be the anniversary of the culmination of His thirty-three years among men, of His divine mission for their eternal salvation. This … “holy week” began with the most triumphant scene of His temporal sojourn and ended with the climax on the cross.”
Christ’s death on the cross was a victory over the devil, sin and death. It is a “free ticket” to eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Still God leaves man free to decide whether to accept the offer of salvation or reject it. God would have said “I forgive you, son, you’re free, go your way.” But that would negate His original plan to “make man in our image”. Even in this new dispensation, man would remain a free moral agent. He may choose life in Christ or damnation with the chief liar. Many have apparently made the right choice but their conduct betrays them. As the epistle of Titus [1:16] says, “They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good.” 2 Timothy 3:5 describes those that hate God as “having a form of godliness but denying its power.” The Old Testament book of Jeremiah [17:9] tells us, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand?”
In deed, who can understand man’s heart? Man possesses so much religiosity, his thoughts are elsewhere but God-centred. Take Nigeria for example. There are churches at every street corner. Some have even turned their homes to worship places. Rich Muslims have moved mosques into their compounds and hired imams to call prayers. Which is good if the intention is godly but often it’s not. More often than not, many use religion to cover their “little foxes.” 2 Timothy 3:2-5 warns that in these “last days”, “People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, … lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”
In our nation, these festive days, people will wear their religion on their sweetly painted faces; it is in their Sunday best as they walk their way or drive to church. They would work themselves into a frenzy, trying to outdo each other in the way they sing and dance. It’s as if they would sing and dance the Almighty down to earth. But in the dark recesses of their twisted minds, they plan and plot unrighteousness. As Proverbs 6: 16-19 puts it, their “hands shed innocent blood”, their “hearts devise wicked schemes” and their “feet are quick to rush into evil.” The book of James [1:27] tells us succinctly: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” Just this simple but the stubborn heart won’t bend to it. The result is what the Scriptures say, “Righteousness exalts a nation but sin is a reproach.” This reproach is the moral burden our country has been carrying all this long.
