RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE

Death looms before the human mind as an unconquerable adversary. Instinctively, humans know that there is something gravely amiss about their inevitable demise. What is more, they fear the unknown that lies beyond death. When it touched the early disciples, even they struggled with the pain of bereavement, coupled with confusion over what the death of Lazarus meant in connection with the claims of the Lord Jesus Christ. Martha and Mary each affirmed ‘Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died’, vv. 21 and 32. They were apparently confident of His ability to forestall death by healing immediate sickness; however, to their mind, a four-day-old corpse seemed beyond even Christ’s reach.

The Lord Jesus quelled their fears with the glorious promise that the resurrection was not merely a prophetic event reserved for the end times, but that it was a present reality centred in His own person. In other words, the resurrection and the life are inseparable from the person of the Lord Jesus; He makes them both possible. Eternal life is not an abstract force or entity which is separate from Christ. Rather, it is defined as knowing’the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent’, John 17.3. The character of this new life emanates from His attributes and activities. Christ directed Martha’s attention away from a future day of blessing to the present reality of His power. She needed to look to Jesus, not merely to a prophetic deliverance. The future day of resurrection is entirely dependent on the Lord Jesus Christ’s person and work.

In the raising of Lazarus by the Lord Jesus, we see a picture of what He does for all believers. He takes those who were ‘dead in trespasses and sins’, Eph. 2.1, and raises them to newness of life through faith in His shed blood and resurrection, John 3. 3; Rom. 6. 3-11. Those who are spiritually entombed and bound by the grave clothes of sin are freed. Having been emancipated by the blood of Christ, they are also empowered to live victorious lives of obedience to the living God. The same power that raised Christ from the dead has now raised up His saints for His glory, Eph. 1.19-20.