The Resurrection and the Life.
SUCH the Lord Jesus Christ declares Himself to be. And if we believe the narrative there can be no misunderstanding of His words. They are found in the eleventh chapter of the Gospel by John—the chapter which tells the wonderful story of the resurrection of Lazarus. The friend of Jesus, the brother of Mary and Martha, had died. Jesus met the weeping sisters when their brother had been dead four days, and decay and dissolution had already begun. They each said to Jesus, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here, my brother had not died." Jesus responded by saying, "Thy brother shall rise again." They knew that He meant that Lazarus should live again bodily. Martha said, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus declared, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." Even then He could break the power of death, and make anew the decaying body; yet He "wept." Why did He weep? By what power does He raise the dead? He wept in sympathy with those mourning sisters. His heart was touched by their woes and sorrows. More than this: He saw in those mourners there the mourners of all time, those who have followed to the last resting-place of earth those whom they loved; those who have heard the grave-clods fall upon the narrow house which confined the loved and the lost; those who saw the grave close its hungry, merciless portals over all their earthly hopes and fondest aspirations. Jesus saw all those, and wept in sympathy with the mourning hearts of every age. To all earth's mourners He declares, "I am the Resurrection and the Life." What power has He to raise the dead? Death came by sin. "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death." Men die because man sinned; and no power has man in himself to lift himself above the sin, or save himself from death. Long and arduously have men sought thru philosophy and science and superstition for the secret of life, the fountain of perpetual youth, but all the seekers are locked in the grave, and the devil, who has the power of death (Heb. 2:14), opens not the doors of the prison-house. Isa. 14:17. There is but one way to life, the reverse of the way in which man found death. Man found death by sinning; he will find life by righteousness. "In the way of righteousness is life; and in the pathway thereof there is no death." Prov. 12:28. Jesus Christ lived the righteous life. He "did no sin." He kept God's commandments, and abode in His love. He died to release man from the claims of death, and to forever break its power; He lives to give man life forevermore. As He had no sins of His own the grave could not hold Him. Acts 2:24. And, blessed be God, all who forsake sin and believe in Jesus Christ will be clothed with the same righteousness, over which death has no power. In God's purpose they rose with Him when He arose; and therefore when God calls them from the grave at the sounding of the last trump, it is said that He brings them with Christ from the dead. 1 Thess. 4:13-16; 2 Cor. 4:14. Would we have the assurance of that resurrection now? God gives it in the earnest of the Spirit to every believer in the power which that Spirit gives to enable us to overcome sin, in making the Spirit dominant over the flesh. For "if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies, thru His Spirit that dwelleth in you." Rom. 8:11. That life is the power to overcome, the power to renew heart and affections, the power to live a new life over sin, the power to heal and save the poor, mortal body. This is "Christ in you the hope of glory;" this is the manifestation to all men of the power of "the Resurrection and the Life," in frail but believing humanity.