JESUS THE RESURRECTION AND LIFE
“Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus
of Bethany, of the village of Mary and her sister
Martha. And it was that Mary which anointed the
Lord with ointment, and wiped His feet with her
hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick. The
sisters therefore sent unto Him, saying, Lord, behold,
he whom Thou lovest is sick. But when Jesus heard
it, He said, This sickness is not unto death,
but for the glory of God, that the Son of God
may be glorified thereby. Now Jesus loved Martha,
and her sister, and Lazarus. When therefore He
heard that he was sick, He abode at that time
two days in the place where He was. Then
after this He saith to the disciples, Let us go into
Judaea again. The disciples say unto Him,
Rabbi, the Jews were but now seeking to stone
Thee; and goest Thou thither again? Jesus answered,
Are there not twelve hours in the day? If
a man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because
he seeth the light of this world. But if a man
walk in the night, he stumbleth, because the light
is not in him. These things spake He:
and after this he saith unto them, Our friend
Lazarus is fallen asleep; but I go, that I may awake
him out of sleep. The disciples therefore
said unto Him, Lord, if he is fallen asleep, he
will recover. Now Jesus had spoken of his death:
but they thought that He spake of taking rest in
sleep. Then Jesus therefore said unto them
plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your
sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe;
nevertheless let us go unto him. Thomas, therefore,
who is called Didymus, said unto his fellow-disciples,
Let us also go, that we may die with Him.
So when Jesus came, He found that he had been in the
tomb four days already. Now Bethany was nigh
unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off; and
many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary,
to console them concerning their brother. Martha,
therefore, when she heard that Jesus was coming,
went and met Him; but Mary still sat in the house.
Martha, therefore, said unto Jesus, Lord, if Thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died. And
even now I know that, whatsoever Thou shalt ask
of God, God will give Thee. Jesus saith unto
her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith
unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day. Jesus said
unto her, I am the Resurrection, and the Life:
he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall
he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth
on me shall never die. Believest thou this?
She saith into Him, Yea, Lord: I have believed
that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, even
He that cometh into the world. And when she had
said this, she went away, and called Mary her sister
secretly, saying, The Master is here, and calleth
thee. And she, when she heard it, arose quickly,
and went unto Him. (Now Jesus was not yet come
into the village, but was still in the place where
Martha met Him.) The Jews then which were with
her in the house, and were comforting her, when
they saw Mary, that she rose up quickly and went
out, followed her, supposing that she was going unto
the tomb to weep there. Mary therefore, when
she came where Jesus was, and saw Him, fell down
at His feet, saying unto Him, Lord, if Thou hadst
been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus
therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping
which came with her, He groaned in the spirit,
and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him?
They say unto Him, Lord, come and see. Jesus
wept. The Jews therefore said, Behold how
He loved him! But some of them said, Could
not this man, which opened the eyes of him that was
blind, have caused that this man also should not
die? Jesus therefore again groaning in Himself
cometh to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a
stone lay against it. Jesus saith, Take ye
away the stone. Martha, the sister of him
that was dead, saith unto Him, Lord, by this time
he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.
Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that,
if thou believedst, thou shouldest see the glory
of God? So they took away the stone. And
Jesus lifted up His eyes, and said, Father, I
thank Thee that Thou heardest Me. And I know
that Thou hearest Me always: but because of the
multitude which standeth around I said it, that
they may believe that Thou didst send Me.
And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud
voice, Lazarus, come forth. He that was dead
came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes;
and his face was bound about with a napkin.
Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go.” JOHN
x-44.
In this eleventh chapter it is related
how the death of Jesus was finally determined upon,
on the occasion of His raising Lazarus. The ten
chapters which precede have served to indicate how
Jesus revealed Himself to the Jews in every aspect
that was likely to win faith, and how each fresh revelation
only served to embitter them against Him, and harden
their unbelief into hopeless hostility. In these
few pages John has given us a wonderfully compressed
but vivid summary of the miracles and conversations
of Jesus, which served to reveal His true character
and work. Jesus has manifested Himself as the
Light of the World, yet the darkness does not comprehend
Him; as the Shepherd of the Sheep, and they will not
hear His voice; as the Life of men, and they will not
come unto Him that they might have Life; as the impersonated
love of God come to dwell among men, sharing their
sorrows and their joys, and men hate Him the more,
the more love He shows; as the Truth which could make
men free, and they choose to serve the father of lies,
and to do his work. And now, when He reveals
Himself as the Resurrection and the Life, possessed
of the key to what is inaccessible to all others, of
the power most essential to man, they resolve upon
His death. There was an appropriateness in this.
His love for His friends drew Him back at the risk
of His life to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem:
it is as if to His eye Lazarus represented all His
friends, and He feels constrained to come out from
His safe retreat, and, at the risk of His own life,
deliver them from the power of death.
That this was in the mind of Jesus
Himself is obvious. When He expresses His resolve
to go to His friends in Bethany, He uses an expression
which shows that He anticipated danger, and which
at once suggested to the disciples that He was running
a great risk. “Let us go,” not “to
Bethany” but “into Judaea again.”
His disciples say unto Him, “Master, the Jews
of late sought to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither
again?” The answer of Jesus is significant:
“Are there not twelve hours in the day?”
That is to say: Has not every man his allotted
time to work, his day of light, in which he can walk
and work, and which no danger nor calamity can shorten?
Can men make the sun set one hour earlier? So
neither can they shorten by one hour the day of life,
of light, and toil your God has appointed to you.
Wicked men may grudge that God’s sun shine on
the fields of their enemies and prosper them, but their
envy cannot darken or shorten the course of the sun:
so may wicked men grudge that I work these miracles,
and do these deeds of My loving Father, but I am as
far above their reach as the sun in the heavens; until
I have run My appointed course their envy is impotent.
The real danger begins when a man tries to prolong
his day, to turn night into day; the danger begins
when a man through fear turns aside from duty; he then
loses the only true guide and light of his life.
A man’s knowledge of duty, or God’s will,
is the only true light he has to guide him in life:
that duty God has already measured, to each man his
twelve hours; and only by following duty into all
hazards and confusion can you live out your full term;
if, on the other hand, you try to extend your term,
you find that the sun of duty has set for you, and
you have no power to bring light on your path.
A man may preserve his life on earth for a year or
two more by declining dangerous duty, but his day
is done, he is henceforth only stumbling about on earth in the outer cold and
darkness, and had far better have gone home to God and been quietly asleep, far
better have acknowledged that his day was done and his night come, and not have
striven to wake and work on. If through fear of danger, of straitened
circumstances, of serious inconvenience, you refuse to go where God i.e., where duty calls
you, you make a terrible mistake; instead of thereby
preserving your life you lose it, instead of prolonging
your day of usefulness and of brightness and comfort,
you lose the very light of life, and stumble on henceforward
through life without a guide, making innumerable false
steps as the result of that first false step in which
you turned in the wrong direction; not dead indeed,
but living as “the very ghost of your former
self” on this side of the grave miserable,
profitless, benighted.
John apparently had two reasons for
recording this miracle; firstly, because it exhibited
Jesus as the Resurrection and the Life; secondly,
because it more distinctly separated the whole body
of the Jews into believers and unbelievers. But
there are two minor points which may be looked at
before we turn to these main themes.
First, we read that when Jesus saw
Mary weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came
with her, He groaned in spirit and was troubled,
and then wept. But why did He show such emotion?
The Jews who saw Him weep supposed that His tears
were prompted, as their own were, by sorrow for their
loss and sympathy with the sisters. To see a woman
like Mary casting herself at His feet, breaking into
a passion of tears, and crying with intense regret,
if not with a tinge of reproach, “Lord, if Thou
hadst been here, my brother had not died,” was
enough to bring tears to the eyes of harder natures
than our Lord’s. But the care with which
John describes the disturbance of His spirit, the emphasis
he lays upon His groaning, the notice he takes of
the account the Jews give of His tears, all
seem to indicate that something more than ordinary
grief or sympathy was the fountain of these tears,
the cause of the distress which could vent itself
only in audible groans. He was in sympathy with
the mourners and felt for them, but there was that
in the whole scene with which He had no sympathy;
there was none of that feeling He required His disciples
to show at His own death, no rejoicing that one more
had gone to the Father. There was a forgetfulness
of the most essential facts of death, an unbelief
which seemed entirely to separate this crowd of wailing
people from the light and life of God’s presence.
“It was the darkness between God and His creatures
that gave room for, and was filled with, their weeping
and wailing over their dead.” It was the
deeper anguish into which mourners are plunged by looking
upon death as extinction, and by supposing that death
separates from God and from life, instead of giving
closer access to God and more abundant life, it
was this which caused Jesus to groan. He could
not bear this evidence that even the best of God’s
children do not believe in God as greater than death,
and in death as ruled by God.
This gives us the key to Christ’s
belief in immortality, and to all sound belief in
immortality. It was Christ’s sense of God,
His uninterrupted consciousness of God, His distinct
knowledge that God the loving Father is the
existence in whom all live, it was this
which made it impossible for Christ to think of death
as extinction or separation from God. For one
who consciously lived in God to be separated from
God was impossible. For one who was bound to God
by love, to drop out of that love into nothingness
or desolation was inconceivable. His constant
and absolute sense of God gave Him an unquestioning
sense of immortality. We cannot conceive of Christ
having any shadow of doubt of a life beyond death;
and if we ask why it was so, we further see it was
because it was impossible for Him to doubt of the
existence of God the ever-living, ever-loving
God.
And this is the order or conviction
in us all. It is vain to try and build up a faith
in immortality by natural arguments, or even by what
Scripture records. As Bushnell truly says:
“The faith of immortality depends on a sense
of it begotten, not on an argument for it concluded.”
And this sense of immortality is begotten when a man
is truly born again, and instinctively feels himself
an heir of things beyond this world into which his
natural birth has ushered him; when he begins to live
in God; when the things of God are the things among
which and for which he lives; when his spirit is in
daily and free communication with God; when he partakes
of the Divine nature, finding his joy in self-sacrifice
and love, in those purposes and dispositions which
can be exercised in any world where men are, and with
which death seems to have no conceivable relation.
But, on the other hand, for a man to live for the
world, to steep his soul in carnal pleasures and blind
himself by highly esteeming what belongs only to earth, for
such a man to expect to have any intelligent sense
or perception of immortality is out of the question.
2. Another question, which may,
indeed, be inquisitive, but can scarcely be reprehended,
is sure to be asked: What was the experience of
Lazarus during these four days? To speculate
on what he saw or heard or experienced, to trace the
flight of his soul through the gates of death to the
presence of God, may perhaps seem to some as foolish
as to go with those curious Jews who flocked out to
Bethany to set eyes on this marvel, a man who had
passed to the unseen world and yet returned. But
although no doubt good and great purposes are served
by the obscurity that involves death, our endeavour
to penetrate the gloom, and catch some glimpses of
a life we must shortly enter, cannot be judged altogether
idle. Unfortunately, it is little we can learn
from Lazarus. Two English poets, the one fitted
to deal with this subject by an imagination that seems
capable of seeing and describing whatever man can
experience, the other by an insight that instinctively
apprehends spiritual things, and both by reverential
faith, have taken quite opposite views of the effect
of death and resurrection upon Lazarus. The one
describes him as living henceforth a dazed life, as
if his soul were elsewhere; as if his eye, dazzled
with the glory beyond, could not adjust itself to
the things of earth. He is thrown out of sympathy
with the ordinary interests of men, and seems to live
at cross purposes with all around him. This was
a very inviting view of the matter to a poet:
for here was an opportunity of putting in a concrete
way an experience quite unique. It was a task
worthy of the highest poetic genius to describe what
would be the sensations, thoughts, and ways of a man
who had passed through death and seen things invisible,
and been “exalted above measure,” and
become certified by face to face vision of all that
we can only hope and believe, and had yet been restored
to earth. The opportunity of contrasting the
paltriness of earth with the sublimity and reality
of the unseen was too great to be resisted. The
opportunity of flouting our professed faith by exhibiting
the difference between it and a real assurance, by
showing the utter want of sympathy between one who
had seen and all others on earth who had only believed, this
opportunity was too inviting to leave room for a poet
to ask whether there was a basis in fact for this
contrast; whether it was likely that in point of fact
Lazarus did conduct himself, when restored to earth,
as one who had been plunged into the full light and
thronging life of the unseen world. And, when
we consider the actual requirements of the case, it
seems most unlikely that Lazarus can have been recalled
from a clear consciousness and full knowledge of the
heavenly life unlikely that he should be summoned to live on earth with a mind
too large for the uses of earth, overcharged with knowledge he could not use, as
a poor man suddenly enriched beyond his ability to spend, and thereby only
confused and stupefied. Apparently the idea of the other poet is the wiser
when he says:
“‘Where wert thou,
brother, those four days?’
There lives no
record of reply,
Which, telling
what it is to die,
Had surely added praise to
praise.
“From every house the
neighbours met,
The streets were
fill’d with joyful sound,
A solemn gladness
even crown’d
The purple brows of Olivet.
“Behold a man raised
up by Christ!
The rest remaineth
unrevealed;
He told it not;
or something seal’d
The lips of that Evangelist.”
The probability is, he had nothing
to reveal. As Jesus said, He came “to awake
him out of sleep.” Had he learned anything
of the spirit world, it must have oozed out.
The burden of a secret which all men craved to know,
and which the scribes and lawyers from Jerusalem would
do all in their power to elicit from him, would have
damaged his mind and oppressed his life. His
rising would be as the awaking of a man from deep
sleep, scarcely knowing what he was doing, tripping
and stumbling in the grave-clothes and wondering at
the crowd. What Mary and Martha would prize would
be the unchanged love that shone in his face as he
recognized them, the same familiar tones and endearments, all
that showed how little change death brings, how little
rupture of affection or of any good thing, how truly
he was their own brother still.
To our Lord Himself it was a grace
that so shortly before His own death, and in a spot
so near where He Himself was buried, He should be
encouraged by seeing a man who had been three days
in the grave rise at His word. The narrative
of His last hours reveals that such encouragement
was not useless. But for us it has a still more
helpful significance. Death is a subject of universal
concern. Every man must have to do with it; and
in presence of it every man feels his helplessness.
Nowhere do we so come to the limit and end of our power
as at the door of a vault; nowhere is the weakness
of man so keenly felt. There is the clay, but
who shall find the spirit that dwelt in it? Jesus
has no such sense of weakness. Believing in the
fatherly and undying love of the Eternal God, He knows
that death cannot harm, still less destroy, the children
of God. And in this belief He commands back to
the body the soul of Lazarus; through the ear of that
dead and laid-aside body He calls to His friend, and
bids him from the unseen world. Surely we also
may say, with Himself, we are glad that He was not
with Lazarus in his sickness, that we might have this
proof that not even death carries the friend of Christ
beyond His reach and power.
There is no one who can afford to look at this scene with
indifference. We have all to die, to sink in utter weakness past all
strength of our own, past all friendly help of those around us. It must
always remain a trying thing to die. In the time of our health we may say,
“Since Nature’s
works be good, and Death doth serve
As Nature’s work, why
should we fear to die?”
but no argument should make us indifferent
to the question whether at death we are to be extinguished
or to live on in happier, fuller life. If a man
dies in thoughtlessness, with no forecasting or foreboding
of what is to follow, he can give no stronger proof
of thoughtlessness. If a man faces death cheerfully
through natural courage, he can furnish no stronger
evidence of courage; if he dies calmly and hopefully
through faith, this is faith’s highest expression.
And if it is really true that Jesus did raise Lazarus,
then a world of depression and fear and grief is lifted
off the heart of man. That very assurance is given
to us which we most of all need. And, so far
as I can see, it is our own imbecility of mind that
prevents us from accepting this assurance and living
in the joy and strength it brings. If Christ raised
Lazarus He has a power to which we can safely trust;
and life is a thing of permanence and joy. And
if a man cannot determine for himself whether this
did actually happen or not, he must, I think, feel
that the fault is his, and that he is defrauding himself
of one of the clearest guiding lights and most powerful
determining influences we have.
This miracle is itself more significant
than the explanation of it. The act which embodies
and gives actuality to a principle is its best exposition.
But the main teaching of the miracle is enounced in
the words of Jesus: “I am the Resurrection
and the Life.” In this statement two truths
are contained: (1) that resurrection and life
are not future only, but present; and (2) that they
become ours by union with Christ.
(1) Resurrection and Life are not
blessings laid up for us in a remote future:
they are present. When Jesus said to Martha, “Thy
brother shall rise again,” she answered, “I
know that he shall rise again in the resurrection
at the last day,” meaning to indicate
that this was small consolation. There was her
brother lying in the tomb dead, and there he would
lie for ages dead; no more to move about in the home
she loved for his sake, no more to exchange with her
one word or look. What comfort did the vague
and remote hope of reunion after long ages of untold
change bring? What comfort is to sustain her through
the interval? When parents lose the children
whom they could not bear to have for a day out of
their sight, whom they longed for if they were absent
an hour beyond their time, it is no doubt some comfort
to know that one day they will again fold them to
their breast. But this is not the comfort Christ
gives Martha. He comforts her, not by pointing
her to a far-off event which was vague and remote,
but to His own living person, whom she knew, saw,
and trusted. And He assured her that in Him were
resurrection and life; that all, therefore, who belonged
to Him were uninjured by death, and had in Him a present
and continuous life.
Christ, then, does not think of immortality
as we do. The thought of immortality is with
Him involved in, and absorbed by, the idea of life.
Life is a present thing, and its continuance a matter
of course. When life is full, and abundant, and
glad, the present is enough, and past and future are
unthought of. It is life, therefore, rather than
immortality Christ speaks of; a present, not a future,
good; an expansion of the nature now, and which necessarily
carries with it the idea of permanence. Eternal
life He defines, not as a future continuance to be
measured by ages, but as a present life, to be measured
by its depth. It is the quality, not the length,
of life He looks at. Life prolonged without being
deepened by union with the living God were no boon.
Life with God, and in God, must be immortal; life without
God He does not call life at all.
In evidence of this present continued
life Lazarus was called back, and shown to be still
alive. In him the truth of Christ’s words
was exemplified: “He that believeth in
Me, though he were dead yet shall he live; and whosoever
liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.”
He will doubtless, like all men, undergo that change
which we call death; he will become disconnected from
this present earthly scene, but his life in Christ
will suffer no interruption. Dissolution may pass
on his body, but not on his life. His life is
hid with Christ in God. It is united to the unfailing
source of all existence.
(2) Such life, now abundant and evermore
abiding, Christ affords to all who believe in Him.
To Martha He intimates that He has power to raise
the dead, and that this power is so much His own that
He needs no instrument or means to apply it; that
He Himself, as He stood before her, contained all
that was needful for resurrection and life. He
intimates all this, but He intimates much more than
this. That He had the power to raise the dead
it would, no doubt, revive the heart of Martha to
hear, but what guarantee, what hope, was there that
He would exercise that power? And so Christ does
not say, I have the power, but, I am. Is any
one, is Lazarus, joined to Me? has he attached himself
confidingly to My Person: then whatever I am finds
exercise in him. It is not only that I have this
power to exercise on whom I may; but I am this power,
so that if he be one with Me I cannot withhold the
exercise of that power from him.
They who have learned to obey Christ’s
voice in life will most quickly hear it, and recognise
its authority, when they sleep in death. They
who have known its power to raise them out of spiritual
death will not doubt its power to raise them from
bodily death to a more abundant life than this world
affords. They once felt as if nothing could deliver
them; they were dead deaf to Christ’s
commands, bound in bonds which they thought would
hold them till they themselves should rot away from
within them; they were buried out of sight of all
that could give spiritual life, and the heavy stone
of their own hardened will lay on their ruined and
outcast condition. But Christ’s love sought
them out and called them into life. Assured that
He has had power to do this, conscious in themselves
that they are alive with a life given by Christ, they
cannot doubt that the grave will be but a bed of rest,
and that neither things present nor things to come
can separate them from a love which already has shown
itself capable of the utmost.