Shortly after God brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt, he promised them that he would reward their obedience and punish their disobedience. Sadly, their story was filled with much more of the latter than the former. God, being slow to anger, put up with their sinfulness for hundreds of years. He repeatedly sent them prophets to warn them of the coming punishment and to implore them to return to the Lord. Nevertheless, they did not listen. In the 7th century BC God used the Babylonians to take Judah and Jerusalem captive and exile many of the people for seventy years.

God was faithful to his word and brought the people back to their land after the seventy years were over. But the exile had not cured the people of their sinful ways. After the return to Jerusalem, the people of God continued to harden their hearts and continued in their sinful ways. Once again, God sent prophets to his people to teach them the right way to live in a covenant relationship with God so that they would receive his blessing and not his disfavor. One of those prophets God sent was Zechariah. This was the message God gave to Zechariah to speak to his people: “Thus says the LORD of hosts, Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the fatherless, the sojourner, or the poor, and let none of you devise evil against another in your heart” (Zech. 7:8-10). God had sent the same message through earlier prophets to his people but they had failed to listen. The people in Zechariah’s day, like their ancestors before them, “…refused to pay attention… They made their hearts diamond-hard lest they should hear the law and the words that the LORD of hosts had sent by his Spirit through the former prophets” (7:12).

Zechariah’s prophetic message is reiterated in the next chapter. The command of the Lord was to “Speak the truth to one another; render in your gates judgments that are true and make for peace; do not devise evil in your hearts against one another, and love no false oath, for all these things I hate, declares the LORD” (Zech. 8:16-17).

God’s expectation for his people has always been that they conform their lives to his moral standards and character. God’s goodness, justice, love, and mercy are supposed to overflow into our lives and be worked out in everything we say and do, from our speech to our performance on the job and in school to our dealings with our neighbors and those that society rejects. But God’s expectation that our lives reflect his character is not a burdensome expectation. In fact, we are most truly human and most fully what God intends us to be when we mirror his character. What’s holding you back from displaying the character of God in your life?

All around us we are witnessing the rebirth of life. Every spring, the world comes back to life as flowers bloom, trees put out their leaves, and birds begin nesting. It is beautiful the way God designed the rhythms and seasons of the earth. We know that God is the true Giver of life and we get a beautiful reminder of that every spring. Spring is also significant because it is when we celebrate Easter. We celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus every Sunday with the communion, but very early in Christianity the church also began a yearly celebration of Jesus’ resurrection around the time of the Jewish Passover feast, when Christ was crucified.

And Jesus’ death and resurrection is truly something to be celebrated! But for those of us who have grown up knowing the facts about Jesus’ death and resurrection, it is so easy to forget the significance of those events. Because of how easily we forget its significance, we need frequent reminders of the gospel. We constantly need to be called back to marvel and wonder at God’s love for us seen in the fact that he would choose to send his Son to bear the punishment we deserved. We constantly need to be reminded of the significance of the resurrection for us—it is the only reason we can have salvation and it is the foundation of our hope in God. And we also need to be reminded that we are living with resurrection power.

Paul mentioned this resurrection power in Ephesians 1:17-21 in his prayer for the Ephesians. He prayed that “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places…” The power of God that raised Jesus from the dead is the same power that is at work in believers today. No one and nothing can challenge God’s power—not even sin and death. You, Christian, are living with resurrection power working in you. There’s nothing that God’s resurrection power cannot overcome in you. So today, remember the resurrection of Jesus. Marvel and give thanks to God that the same power that raised Jesus from the grave for our salvation is the same power that is now at work in us.