Christ the Lord is Risen Today

There is a unique experience attached to Easter Sunday for the believer – the feeling of gathering with the family of God to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. It’s something akin to scrambling down the stairs as a kid on Christmas morning, overcome with excitement and fulfilled anticipation.

  

Even though the Gospel is something we live by (or at least aim to live by) on a daily basis, there is a special, felt power in the approach and arrival of Easter each year. Christ The Lord Is Risen Today, formerly referred to by its composer as “A Hymn for Easter Day”, seems to capture that intangible, familiar feeling.

  

Once he died our souls to save

Where's thy victory, boasting grave?

  

Death in vain forbids him rise

Christ has opened paradise

Alleluia!

  

Victory, rejoicing, gratitude.

  

When the hymn’s lyrics were originally penned, there were no “Alleluias” if you can imagine. It was not until the song was rearranged and the “Alleluias” added that it really began to come to life and find its home in the Church. Since then, these words, rich in theology and abounding in joy, have been shouted and sung by countless saints, ourselves included.

  

Not only that, but all of heaven has been singing “Alleluia” since long before a single hymn was ever written.

  

Christ the Lord is risen today

Earth and heaven in chorus say

Alleluia!

Raise your joys and triumphs high

Sing ye heavens and earth reply

Alleluia!

  

How powerful to know that we rejoice in Christ’s resurrection not only as an earthly congregation but with the angels in heaven! We are singing a song of praise right alongside those who are face-to-face with the Living God.

  

And what’s more, we can sing these words with even deeper gratitude than any angel could, for we have been rescued from something darker and adopted into something greater than any one of them could claim. Mankind was made in God’s image and remade in His death and resurrection. As the song puts it:

  

“Made like Him, like Him we rise. Ours the cross, the grave, the skies.”

  

Christ’s redeeming work is OURS. Even the angels cannot claim this miracle as their own. And someday, when we are reunited with Christ in heaven, joined together with our heavenly Father, our earthly family made new, and all of the heavenly hosts, we will sing with purer and louder joy than we ever knew possible – Easter Sunday finally realized in all of its fullness.

  

How beautiful the sound will be – the saints and the angels shouting “Alleluia” in one chorus for all of eternity.