ASLAN TRIUMPHANT OVER DEATH - CHRIST IS ALIVE!

THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - "a willing victim who had commited no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead".

  C.S. Lewis wrote a magnificent passage illustrating "the silence of fulfilled mision" of Christ before those who were to take His life.  Aslan, the lion, is a figure of Christ. Edmond, one of the children, had betrayed Aslan and endangered his siblings by selling out to the wicked witch. The Queen of Narnia had seduced him by offering him a taste of turkish delight. By the terms of the law, that betrayal merited Edmond's death. There was only one way to save Edmond: Aslan must be delivered into the hands of the qeen, which had been the real objective in her scheme all along.

Quietly and without resistance, the more powerful Aslan submits to the queen's demanda. After he was humiliated, he was bound to a table of stone, which represented the law, and killed. Edmond's sisters, Lucy and Susan, were totally despondent as they grieved over their friend. Suddenly, Aslan appeared before them, triumphant over death. "What does it all mean?" they wondered. 

Lewis, at this point in the story, makes this brilliant observation:

"It means", said Aslam, "that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge only goes back to the dawn of Time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had commited no treachery was killed in a traitor's stead, the Table would crack and  Death  itself would start working backwards."

That incantation that Lewis speaks of is  the prior will of God, that He who knew no sin would willingly lay down His life to pay the price of sin - it was the day Death died. Christians believe not only that Jesus was raised from death, but that for all who trust Him there is new life now which cannot end.

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