Is Easter Actually a Pagan Tradition? Live Q&A for April 17, 2025
Is Easter Actually a Pagan Tradition?
Hello! Very thankful for the biblical teaching being carried out through your ministry! It has helped me through many trying times in my walk with Christ. I really enjoy the Q&A on YouTube as well.
Something that I have been challenged by in the past few years has to do with traditions/ holidays in the church or even outside the church. I’ve been approached by many other Christians who believe things like holidays are “commandments and doctrines of men” and therefore should not be given credence by observing them. Those who hold this view have a plethora of Scripture to back up their reasoning.
Are there biblical foundations to traditions of modern-day Christianity, i.e., Christmas, Easter, etc.? Also, I have heard that these traditions have pagan roots. Is this historically true? I personally really enjoy a lot of the traditions and holidays because they lift up Christ, however this topic seems to be appearing more and more in my walk with Christ. Thanks!
Kyle, this is a super easy question to answer: Celebrating the resurrection of Jesus is not pagan in the slightest. Believers have done this from the very beginning of Christianity.
Now, Christmas is a little more complicated, because there is no pattern in the New Testament for believers marking or emphasizing the birth of Jesus on the Christian calendar. Let’s leave Christmas to the side for now and just talk about Easter.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is emphasized again and again in the New Testament. You can’t get away from it. It is prominent in the gospels, it is prominent in Acts, it is prominent in the letters of the New Testament.
And, from very early times Christians celebrated Easter (or, resurrection Sunday) and it was an important part of their calendar as believers.
One way we know this is from a dispute in the early church known as the Quartodeciman Controversy. This was a dispute over when Christians should celebrate Easter – should it be according to the Jewish calendar and the date for Passover, or should it always be on a Sunday?
Some believers – the Quartodecimans – believed that Easter should be celebrated three days after the Jewish Passover, because in the gospels that’s when the resurrection of Jesus was revealed to the world. Because the day of Passover is the 14th of Nisan on the Jewish calendar, the day of the week changes every year (like would be true for the Fourth of July or December 25).
Other believers said that the resurrection of Jesus should always be celebrated on a Sunday, because that was the day of the week that it happened in the Gospels. So they said Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday after the first full moon that happens after the vernal equinox.
In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox marks the start of spring. It is normally on March 20 or 21, and the first full moon after that date this year was on April 13. That makes April 20 the first Sunday after this full moon. Interestingly, in 2025 Easter will be the same on the Gregorian (mostly used in the west) and the Julian church calendars (the Julian calendar is used by several churches in the Orthodox communion).
Here’s the point: this Quartodeciman controversy was a big deal in the early church. Why was it a big deal? Because they celebrated Easter, and they thought it was important to get the date right or at least be united on the date.
Isn’t it all pagan?
Not at all. Some people say that the name “Easter” is pagan in its origin, but it’s more likely that it comes from the Germanic word for “dawn” – and the resurrection of Jesus Christ was revealed to the world at dawn on Sunday.
If someone doesn’t like the name “Easter,” then call it “Resurrection Sunday.” That’s no problem. In Swedish, they call Easter påsk, from the Greek and Latin, “pascha” which was their word for the Jewish Passover.
What about Easter eggs or Easter bunnies? These can be silly distractions, and you don’t need to pay any attention to them at all. Or if you do, use them to point to Jesus. This is how we do it with what we call “Resurrection Eggs.”
Would it have been possible for Judas to repent and be forgiven?
In Matthew 27:3, it talks about Judas repenting and in verse 5, he hanged himself. We often talk about how there is no sin that Jesus’ blood cannot wash away and God cannot forgive. I wonder, what if Judas repented and didn’t let the condemnation drive him to suicide, but asked for forgiveness? Would he be forgiven?
Hypothetically, Judas could have been forgiven of his sin because the Bible is true. Any sin can be dealt with by bringing it to Jesus in humble confession and a spirit of repentance, trusting in the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ to cover that sin. Paul identified himself as the chief of sinners, so I guess maybe Judas wasn’t the chief of sinners. If God could forgive Paul, he could have, in theory, forgiven Judas.
I want to stress that phrase, “in theory,” because Jesus said something about Judas that tells us otherwise. Jesus called Judas the son of perdition. Perdition means destruction or lostness. In Hebrew idioms, to call someone the son of something means that they are they are typified by that thing. For example, the “son of ice cream” would eat a lot of ice cream. The son of perdition is somebody totally marked by destruction, lostness and judgment.
Jesus used that title speaking of Judas, so we know that Judas didn’t repent. Well, he didn’t repent in sincerity. He had regret, which is a type of repentance, but it isn’t true repentance unto God. I don’t doubt at all that that there was a type of repentance going on in Judas. He felt bad, he felt sorry, but he didn’t truly repent, and he went to destruction. We have to make a distinction between the theoretical or hypothetical possibility and what actually happened.
Did Judas have the capability NOT to betray Jesus?
In theory, yes. God did not make Judas betray Jesus. God did not force or compel him to do so. Nobody should think this for a moment that Judas said, “I love Jesus, and I’m loyal to Jesus, and I want to do all that honors Jesus, but God is making me betray Him. Oh, what shall I do?” Friends, it wasn’t like that at all. We have to get that idea out of our minds. God allowed Judas to act according to the great wickedness that was already in his heart. According to the wickedness that was in Judas’ heart, there was no other way that he could have gone.
Now, in theory, could Judas have had a less wicked heart? Could he have had simply a weaker, less believing heart, like Peter had? In theory, he could have. But he didn’t. Here’s the important thing to note. There is no sense in which God made Judas sin. That sin came from Judas himself.
One other thing that’s helpful to notice about Judas is that the Bible only gives one motive for what Judas did. Now, there may have been other motives that the Bible doesn’t speak about. But the Bible describes only one motive for Judas’ betrayal of Jesus, and it is greed. The Bible says that Judas did it for the sake of the money. How wretched. He didn’t even sell out the Savior on the basis of principle, but just for money. Terrible, terrible thing. Let’s remember that when we’re thinking about Judas.
Why did Jesus have holes in his hands and feet and a pierced side of His body when He was resurrected after 3 days? I thought resurrected bodies should be perfect bodies.
Most scholars and Bible students believe that, yes, in general, our resurrection bodies will be perfect. For example, let’s say that you had some terrible accident and lost some fingers or a limb. Your resurrection body would have those fingers. Your resurrection body would have that limb. We think of our resurrection bodies as being in perfection. By the way, there’s a side issue here. People often ask, “How old will we be in the resurrection?” Many people try to think what the perfect age is. Maybe the perfect age is 20, or maybe it’s 25, or 30, and if so, they assume that’s the age we’ll all be in heaven. My friend Gayle Erwin had the best idea of all. He used to say that in heaven, we’re all going to be eight years old, because that was the best time of life. And there’s something to that. Wouldn’t it be amazing to get up to heaven, and we’re all eight-year-old kids loving heaven and loving Jesus more than ever? That would be awesome.
Back to your question, the whole issue is that there was a very specific purpose for God retaining the wounds of Jesus in His side, hands, feet, and maybe even something in His facial expression. We know that Jesus was beaten severely as part of His sufferings, and there were instances in the resurrection when He was not immediately recognized by people who might otherwise have known who He was. Perhaps there’s some kind of carryover, and that maybe His face didn’t look exactly as they knew it; maybe it looked like a man’s face who had been beaten.
We certainly know that the nails in His hands were actually in the lower hand or the wrist. The gash remained in the side, because when Jesus met with His disciples a week later, He invited Thomas to put his fingers into the wounds.
Why did they remain? Well, I think we can only say these things are wonderful memorials to God’s love and Jesus’ amazing sacrifice for us. God wanted it to be remembered throughout all eternity. In Revelation, when John has his heavenly vision, he hears a lion, the lion of the tribe of Judah. When he turns and looks, he doesn’t see a lion. Instead, he sees a lamb as if it had been slain from before the foundation of the world. I can’t tell you exactly what that looks like, but normally they would kill a lamb by slitting its throat. It seems that John saw, in some kind of symbolic, visionary way, a lamb with a bloody throat because it had been sacrificed. That’s saying something very important and significant about Jesus. That’s the whole point of it. These are great memorials to the love of Jesus.
Regarding John 17:1, how was Jesus glorified at the cross?
Regarding John 17:1 where Jesus asks God the Father to glorify Him, how was Jesus glorified at the cross?
John 17:1 – Jesus spoke these words, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and said: “Father, the hour has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son also may glorify You.
The love and self-sacrifice displayed at the cross of Jesus Christ gave unbelievable glory to God the Father, and it glorified the Son Himself. Jesus said something remarkable in John 12:32 – “And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all peoples to Myself.”
When Jesus spoke of being lifted up, He was referring to being lifted up on a cross. He wasn’t speaking about being lifted up in praise or lifted up in exaltation, but rather being lifted up upon a cross, because a cross was lifted up off the ground. It might only be a short distance off the ground, perhaps a few feet or half a meter, but it was lifted up. With that in mind, Jesus said, “When I’m lifted up on the cross, I’ll draw all men to Me.”
There is no more honored or exalted person in all of history than Jesus of Nazareth, and it wasn’t just because of the amazing things that He taught. It wasn’t just because of the stupendous miracles that He performed. It wasn’t just because of His stand for righteousness or the way that He confronted corruption and religious error. Most significantly, it was because of His death as a sacrifice for sins to defeat the powers of darkness and to set the captives free. It was in His death and resurrection that Jesus attained His greatest glory.
Now, this idea was completely counterintuitive to the Roman mind and the Hebrew mind. There was nothing even remotely so shameful as execution on a cross. But God took what was the ultimate in shame and humility, according to the human thinking, and He made it something which glorified Jesus Himself. Thank you for asking a question that gets us to the very heart of Good Friday and of Easter Sunday.
Do you have advice on how to handle being married to a Jehovah’s Witness (or anyone else) who refuses to discuss religion?
If a person is married to someone of another religion, I think the Apostle Paul gives pretty clear counsel on how they need to handle that. The first principle is this: as much as it is within your ability keep the marriage together, keep it going, and hold things together in your marriage. Don’t think that you’re more spiritual by leaving your spouse. Sometimes people get the idea that it would be more spiritual for them to leave their spouse. Paul was very anxious for his readers to not give in to that kind of thinking. As much as possible, Paul wanted believers to stay with their unbelieving spouse.
Paul did write in 1 Corinthians 7:15 that if unbelieving spouse is determined to leave, then you can let them leave. But as much as you can, stay with them, because God may use you to bring them to salvation. There’s a spiritual benefit for them being around you in your home.
So first of all, I wouldn’t advise seeking a divorce because you’re married to a Jehovah’s Witness. If they refuse to discuss religion, then all you can do what Peter spoke about. When Peter addressed wives of unbelieving husbands, he said that you should live in such a way that you can win them without a word. That should be our goal. I want to win them to Christ, and if at all possible, I want to do it without a word.
Why is Daniel absent from Daniel 3?
Why is Daniel absent from Daniel 3? I would be interested in any ideas you have on Daniel’s absence. My idea is Nebuchadnezzar wanted to spare himself the public humiliation of having a top minister publicly refusing to bow so he conveniently sent Daniel out on assignment.
Of course, we don’t know, so we can only speculate. But I would say that your idea is a great speculation. I would share in your speculation that Nebuchadnezzar didn’t want to lose Daniel in this situation, and he knew Daniel wasn’t going to bow, so he sent him away on state business, and he just wasn’t even involved with it. I think that’s a very plausible idea.
This whole situation gives us an illustration. I would not say that this is an argument for what’s called the pre-tribulational rapture, but it’s an illustration of it. While the Hebrew children were in the fiery furnace of tribulation, Daniel is a picture or a type of the church who’s just not even there. I won’t say that these are arguments for a pre-tribulation rapture, but I think it is an illustration of the principle.
What is the difference between true grace and hyper grace? If we are not under the law but under grace, does it mean we don’t need the Old Testament law and commandment and we should just walk in love (love God and your neighbor)?
I just read your book about grace, and I’m a bit confused. I would like to know the difference between true grace and hyper grace. And if we are not under law but under grace, does it mean that we don’t need the Old Testament law and commandments, and that we should just walk in love (love God and your neighbor)?
I would describe “hyper grace” is grace that ignores what it says in Titus 2:11-12 – For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age.
I want you to notice this. It says that the grace of God brings salvation, and then it says that grace teaches us how to walk rightly before God. Grace saves us, but it also teaches us. That’s kind of the problem I see with the person in what we might call the “hyper grace” movement. They’re not perceiving or understanding or listening to what grace would teach them about how to live a life honoring to God. Because that’s what we want to do. We want to live lives which are honoring to God. So, we need to hear. We need to listen. We need to respond to what grace would teach us.
And of course, we don’t reject the Old Testament. Jesus didn’t reject the Old Testament. Jesus said that He did not come to replace the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them. The Scripture being read by the New Testament Church was the Old Testament books.
