JESUS is building up to the great self revelation of himself as God who is author and giver of life. He has deliberately waited for Lazarus to have been dead four days in order to enhance the force of the revelation he is going to give, and leave no doubt in the minds of his disciples, and to us who read the history today, that he did truly raise Lazarus from death, and so has the power to raise from the dead.

The whole gospel has been concerned to give us an ever increasing and deeper revelation of Jesus as both God and Saviour from sin and its consequences. Death is the consequence of sin, and Jesus shows himself here to be the real Saviour for us.

In Martha, who first comes to Jesus when she hears he has arrived, we have a good example of the struggle for faith we all have as Christians. It is not part of our testimony to faith that we have to hide the struggle in faith, and growth in faith, that we experience. Martha shows great progression in faith in Jesus, but also shows that she still has much to learn. In verse 21 Martha shows great faith in Jesus by saying that she knew Jesus had the power to heal sick people however serious that sickness was. She also shows great faith in verse 22 when she says she knows that God would give Jesus anything he asked for. But here also in verse 22 we have the struggle in faith common to us all in differing degrees. She expressed faith in the power of God to do anything, and faith in the fact of Jesus being in the favour of God and able to receive anything from God; but we also can perceive, behind the statement, hope of a miracle she can’t quite believe in. Plainly by this statement she hopes the situation of Lazarus’ death was not irretrievable, but plainly she can’t conceive how it can be. Here we observe the conflict we all have from time to time. We believe the truth about God, but doubt that the truth can be effective in life in this world. God could raise the dead, but she could not really believe that God would answer a prayer from Jesus that he would raise Lazarus.

Jesus takes her so lovingly forward in understanding and faith. In verse 23 he tells Martha that Lazarus would rise from death. Martha shows her struggle in faith because she can only believe in life at the end of the world (v.24). Then Jesus makes the tremendous statement of verses 25 and 26, which he proves as true when he brings Lazarus alive from the tomb.

Let us enter into this revelation for the good and comfort of our souls. Firstly Jesus gives another wonderful ‘I am’. Here he says ‘I am the resurrection and the life’. By this we understand that Jesus has the authority and power to raise us from death and the power and authority to give life. It is the answer to Martha’s hope against hope of verse 22. Jesus tells her and us that he is truly God, and life and death are in his hands. Jesus also is telling us that he is the one who wins victory over sin and death. Death is the consequence of sin, and as the resurrection and the life for sinners, Jesus is the one who bears the consequence of sin in the place of the sinner.

The result of Jesus being the resurrection and the life is truly tremendous, full and complete. For those who are his believing disciples, death has ended completely and fully for ever. Even though we have to suffer, like Lazarus, physical death, this does not mean that we have died or are dead, because we will live more gloriously beyond the grave. Further for those who live their lives in faith in Christ they can never die. What is the reason for this?

The reason for this is in the nature of the salvation that Jesus has purchased for all believers. By his death, seen to be complete and sufficient by his rising from the dead, Jesus has paid the full price of our sin so that we are just in the eyes of God. This means that we are restored to the state Adam lost, but now it is won and we are not on probation like Adam was. The spiritual death Adam lost is returned to us. We are raised to new life, which is the nature of the new birth every believer experiences. This new life is already eternal and immortal because it is ‘created to be like God in holiness and true righteousness’ (Ephesians 4:24). We are restored to fellowship with God in the spiritual realm and ‘sit with Christ in heavenly places’ (Ephesians 2:6). Because in this new life we are holy we have become the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are already possessed of the life which is eternal and holy and which can never end. Death has been destroyed for us and so we can never die.

However we still live in and with our sinful flesh in this life, and this must be got rid of before we can enjoy this new eternal life in its purity and fulness, and this is the reason we still have to go through the experience of physical death. When we believed, the real person we were in Adam died in Christ on the cross (see Romans 6), and the new person in Christ was raised, because we were raised with Christ to this new life. When we die physically our sinful bodies, our sinful flesh, also dies, and we are given a new resurrection body, and our redemption becomes complete.

So it is that whoever believes on Jesus can never die; and though we have to die physically, we are still alive and never experience death in our real new born person. For us to be sure of this, the raising of Lazarus has been given us, so that we may see Jesus is the resurrection and the life.