By Doug Redford
In 1984 Thomas Boswell, now a retired sports columnist, wrote a book entitled Why Time Begins on Opening Day. His premise was that opening day of the baseball season gives every major league baseball team the opportunity to start afresh. Whatever mistakes were made the year before, whatever disappointments occurred, the slate is wiped clean. All teams begin the new season with the same statistic—no wins and no losses.
Last Sunday, we celebrated the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Easter Sunday may be considered our Opening Day. On that morning, the women discovered that Jesus’ tomb had been opened and that he was not there. Because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, every person is given the opportunity to start afresh. Whatever sins have been committed, whatever disappointments in one’s life, the slate is wiped clean. “If anyone is in Christ,” Paul wrote, “the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17, New International Version). Paul describes our being “buried with [Christ] through baptism into death” and then entering into the “new life” Jesus provides (Romans 6:4). In a sense, we come forth from that “tomb” of the water to receive the new life only Jesus can give us. It is indeed a never-to-be-forgotten Opening Day!
Perhaps no one appreciated the wonder of this newness more than Paul himself. In 1 Corinthians 15, the Bible’s resurrection chapter, Paul mentions the people to whom Jesus appeared after he arose. The last individual mentioned in that list is Paul himself in verse 8: “And last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.” If ever there was someone who needed to start afresh, it was Paul, a notorious persecutor and murderer of Christians. But then came his Opening Day. His slate, though it was filled with all kinds of things in need of erasing, was still wiped clean. And as Paul notes, he was “abnormally born.” His Opening Day came some years after the original Opening Day. But it still came.
It may renew and encourage us when we take Communion to think back to the day of our baptism into Christ, when we came forth from our own tomb and our own record of sins was wiped clean. We may not have done things as hideous as Paul did, but we still needed (and still need) our sins forgiven. Jesus said, “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). And because his tomb was opened, so is ours.
Doug Redford has served in the preaching ministry, as an editor of adult Sunday school curriculum, and as a Bible college professor. Now retired, he continues to write and speak as opportunities arise.
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