Spoiler Alert!

How do you feel about spoilers? In 2011, the University of San Diego performed a study regarding the impact of spoilers on the experience of moviegoers and fiction readers. The study showed that spoilers could actually increase the enjoyment for someone engaging with a story. This was because of something called perceptual fluency.

Perceptual fluency is the idea that once someone knows the end of the story, they are better able to interpret the plot as it unfolds. Someone can begin to reconcile difficulties as the story unfolds in the moment. Knowing the end better enables us to experience the present.

While more recent studies have challenged the 2011 study, I think it was onto something. Once we know how the story ends, we are better able to enjoy, interpret, and live in the present. God has given us a way to live our lives with perceptual fluency because of what we celebrate at Easter.

Easter is God's way of giving us a “spoiler” for the end of history. The resurrection of Jesus offers us a preview of the zenith of the story God is writing. Easter is a shadow of what is going to happen to all creation at the end of the story.

This is why Paul called the resurrection of Jesus the “firstfruits” (1 Corinthians 15:23). Jesus rose first so that all creation might one day experience resurrection as well. The apostle echoes the same hope to the church at Thessalonica: “For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:14).

Jesus died and rose so that, through faith in Him, all of His followers will one day be resurrected to life. The lost are also promised a resurrection called the “resurrection of judgment” (John 5:29). All creation will be brought to glorious new life, freedom from bondage to death and decay, “and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Romans 8:21). We await a new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13).

Because of Jesus' resurrection, our funeral is not the end. For followers of Christ, “goodbye” is actually “see you later” to those who are also united to the Savior. The empty tomb means that every force of evil and decay will be destroyed. One day God will wipe every tear from our eye and evil will be no more (Revelation 21:4).

This is only possible because God entered into creation as a man, died on the cross, and rose again from the dead. Through faith in Jesus, all may rise again to life alongside the world He came to save (John 3:17). The empty tomb changes everything.

Once we fully grasp this Easter spoiler, our faith and confidence remain firm when life seems uncertain. It grounds us when chaos abounds. It calls us back again and again to God as the glorious governor of all history.

The best part is that Easter isn't a spoiler to a fictional plot but rather a spoiler to the factual trajectory of all history. The empty tomb is a spoiler alert to the world that death, sin, and evil will not get the last word. God “has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

Thank God for spoilers! Praise God for the resurrection! May we live in the light of Easter, “steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).