So if this whole thing started with a celebration, and we're invited to be a people of celebration, what is it, exactly, that we're celebrating?
Here a passage from George MacDonald that I read just the other day might be of service: "Jesus did not just die to save us from the punishment of our sins; he died to saves us from our sins"--that is, he died to re-orient our nature away from sin and towards life.
In other words, Jesus didn't just save us from having to pay the fine for our jaywalking. He actually works in our hearts so that our compulsion to jaywalk is no longer reigning over us, causing us to put ourselves and others in danger.
The old church fathers often talked about how we have been delivered from these enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. We barely (if at all) believe the last one exists; we'd much rather coddle our flesh than conquer it; and the world seems to have a lot of nice things going for it, thank you very much, why talk so harshly about it?
Clearly we Christians can 'overdo' the propensity to identify our enemies. The results of over-eager condemnation have been well-documented. What has been far less well documented has been the consequences of pretending those enemies do not exist.
To live a life where sin (and the result of sin, which is death) no longer reigns--that's something worth celebrating. Anything less, and we are far, far too easily pleased.
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