D.A. Carson explores John 11:1–53, highlighting the surprising elements in the resurrection of Lazarus. He discusses how Jesus’ delay in responding to Lazarus’s illness demonstrates God’s glory and plans. Carson emphasizes that through these unexpected actions, Jesus reveals Himself as “the resurrection and the life,” pointing to the ultimate sacrifice and resurrection.
Male: A couple of quick things before we bring “The Don” out. We call him “The Don.” He is good, isn’t he? Isn’t he good? I love the ability to take very important, enormous academic concepts and articulate them in a clear way that doesn’t diminish the big ideas and the central tenets of what he is trying to articulate. So I appreciate that.
You guys have had a lot of questions. I’ll just tell you this. This is put on by theresurgence.com. It’s a ministry of Mars Hill. We do that ministry to serve Christian leaders. We give away a lot of stuff online. If you go to theresurgence.com, there are free blogs, there are some free eBooks, vodcasts, podcasts. All of our conferences we give away for free. We had Tripp out recently (Shepherding a Child’s Heart author) to do a parenting conference.
All of that is there for free. You’ll find stuff there for free by C.J. Mahaney and John Piper and Tim Keller. Everything Dr. Carson is doing is being audio and video captured in high-def. It will all go on theresurgence.com, and it’s all free. If you want it, you can have it. If you want to share it with your people, you’re certainly welcome to do that.
In addition, one of the ministries of The Resurgence is publishing with our friends at Crossway. There are a number of books in our line up there. These lectures today as well as his sermon on Matthew 27 at Mars Hill Church tomorrow will all be compiled into a book. All of this content will be published as well in 2009 with Crossway. That will be forthcoming as well at Resurgence.
I know many of you are pastors, and so we want to make that ministry available to serve you. Going forward, we have some good things lined up in 2009. I think the plan is going forward in ‘09, if you’re from this region, inasmuch as possible, all these events are going to be free for you if you’re a pastor just so we can help the Northwest and Seattle, which we love so much, and just to thank you all who are serving Jesus in your churches and to do what we can to be a source of encouragement to you.
As well, if you’re a church planter or a re-planter, the Acts 29 Network is available to serve you. We do assessing, coaching, training, funding of church planters. The elders at Mars Hill give away over a million dollars a year to church planting. We want to help as many churches get started in as many places as we possibly can. If there’s an opportunity for us to serve you, we would certainly be honored to do that.
That being said, I want to thank you all for joining us and giving us some of your time. I’ll just go ahead and pray for Dr. Carson. He is a little sick and a little tired, so we’ll just pray that he is able to serve us well. We just thank him so much for giving us of his time.
Father God, we do thank you so much that you are a good God, a living God, a loving God, a gracious God, a merciful God, a patient God and, through Jesus, our God. We thank you, Father, for your kindness to us, to save us from Satan, sin, death, and ourselves. We thank you for the Scriptures, which we love, because it’s how you have chosen to speak to us so we might hear from you and have a relationship with you.
I pray for my friend Dr. Carson as he comes to teach. God, I pray against the Enemy, his servants, their works, and effects. I pray his mind would be clear. I pray for his health, Lord God, as he is battling a bit of a cold, that you would sustain his energy and allow him to use his gifts in full measure.
I pray for those of us who just had lunch and may be prone to wander a little bit in our thinking, that we’d be able to remain focused by the power of the Holy Spirit and to learn … to learn about Jesus who we love, Jesus who we serve. We ask all of this in Jesus’ good name, amen.
Don Carson: Well, lest I foolishly and thoughtlessly forget later, let me articulate my thanks to Pastor Mark and his remarkable staff. Only those of you who have done it know how many busy bees there are running around plugging things in and getting food and organizing things. It takes quite a lot of organization to do these things, and they do it remarkably well and smoothly. My thanks, as well, to the Henry Center for making this possible.
In this session, we’re going to focus on a passage which, in some ways, straddles the theme of the cross and the resurrection. This is the miracle of the resurrection of Lazarus, but in this account, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Yet at the end of the account, we’ll see he is focusing on substitution. Here we begin to find these two themes coming together in a dramatic narrative context, and that will be our focus for the next hour. John, chapter 11. I’m going to read the first 53 verses. It’s a long passage, but I want you to hear the whole story. John 11:1–53:
“Now a man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’ When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’
Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. Then he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’ ‘But Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago the Jews there tried to stone you, and yet you are going back?’ Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light. It is when people walk at night that they stumble, for they have no light.’
After he had said this, he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’ His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So then he told them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.’
Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’ On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Now Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home.
‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection of the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?’
‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’ After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. ‘The Teacher is here,’ she said, ‘and is asking for you.’ When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him.
When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.
‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept. Then the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’ Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ‘Take away the stone,’ he said. ‘But, Lord,’ said Martha, the sister of the dead man, ‘by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.’
Then Jesus said, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?’ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.’ When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’
The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, ‘Take off the grave clothes and let him go.’ Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. ‘What are we accomplishing?’ they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.’
Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’ He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.”
This is the Word of the Lord.
So often God surprises us. This is not because he is whimsical or arbitrary or bad-tempered. He is always entirely consistent with his own character. But his wisdom and his knowledge are so vastly incomparable to ours that he does all kinds of things we wouldn’t have predicted and certainly do not foresee. He surprises us!
Moses thought so. As a young man, he thought he would take over the leadership of the people and lead them out of slavery, but of course that didn’t work out too well. At the age of 80 (by which time he is an old man, after all, guarding sheep on the backside of the Midian desert), God calls him. Moses could think of all the reasons why this is a very bad idea. He has a speech impediment. He is an old man. It’s dangerous back in the courts of Pharaoh. He is settled now. He is a great-granddaddy. But God surprises us.
Habakkuk thought so. He is not a very well-known prophet, but he has a book named after him in the Bible. Habakkuk could understand that God might use one nation to chasten another nation. What he couldn’t understand at all is why God should use a nation which was sociologically by any figuring a more evil nation than the nation of the Israelites to punish the Israelites.
In other words, why should God take a more wicked nation to punish militarily a less wicked nation, even if his less wicked nation (maybe even especially if the less wicked nation) was his own covenant community? It doesn’t seem fair. But God does surprise us.
Sometimes it’s in the surprises that we begin to see what God is really doing. This chapter becomes so familiar to us after we’ve been a Christian for a while and we’ve read it through a few times. We know where it’s going and anticipate the answers each party gives and the discussion and so on. It doesn’t surprise us anymore.
I want you to read it again the way first-century readers would read it first coming through it. I think you’re going to discover in four separate occasions that God does just very surprising things. It’s in the very surprises that we begin to see clearly what Jesus is after when he says this amazing thing, “I am the resurrection and the life.” The first surprise is …
- Jesus comes up to a desperate plea for help, and he demonstrates his love by delay. Verses 1 to 16. The account begins with this request for help from Mary and Martha on behalf of their brother Lazarus. Now at this juncture, judging by the last verses of chapter 10, Jesus is in the far north, about 150 kilometers away, roughly 100 miles away. They send word to Jesus that “the one whom you love” is sick. Isn’t that a lovely expression even by itself?
Have you ever met a pastor (maybe one of the pastors here) who is the sort of person whom everyone in his flock thinks especially loves them? Do you know what I mean? They all feel a special closeness. There are some pastors who sort of specialize in maintaining a professional distance. There are others who have such a loving demeanor that even though with your head you fully recognize you cannot and should not claim any special inside track; nevertheless, with your heart, you feel peculiarly loved by them.
Jesus had that gift. The apostle Paul, for example, could be writing along in a heavy context dealing with justification by grace alone through faith alone, and he mentions the death of Jesus. Suddenly he blurts out, “… who loved me and gave himself for me.” The writer of this book, John, calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved.” Now the two sisters refer to Lazarus as “the one you love.”
There’s something wonderful about that. There’s something ugly about a kind of Christian confessionalism regarding Jesus’ love that is always so general it never loves me. Whereas the more you study Jesus and the more you come to terms with your own sin and guilt and need, the more you start saying, “Yes, the Savior who loved me and gave himself for me.” It’s already occurring in Jesus’ own earthly ministry. It’s such a minor aside, but you can’t help but notice it.
Now we’re told (verse 6) when Jesus heard the news.… This would have taken three to four days later. A healthy man walked 40 to 45 kilometers a day. It would have been pretty close to a four-day journey to get north. He has the news now. “When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death.’ ”
Well, it won’t finally end in death. As it happens, he is going to die, but it’s not going to end that way. It’s going to end pretty spectacularly, but not that way. “No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now that is a fascinating sentence. “It’s for God’s glory that God’s Son might be glorified through it.”
As the story unravels, we discover how dangerous it is for Jesus down in the South at this point. The disciples themselves recognize this could get Jesus into really hot water. As it turns out, this is his last trip south. This is when he is going to get arrested, when he is going to be beaten and flogged and finally crucified. Because he is going to raise Lazarus from the dead, he dies himself so that God will be glorified in Jesus, who was glorified by Jesus’ death.
You see, this is preparing for a theme that is actually developed a little more in the next chapter. Already in chapter 1 we’re told the disciples saw Jesus’ glory. Then in chapter 2 after Jesus has performed the miracle of the water into wine, we read at the end of it (chapter 2, verse 11), yeah, the various servants saw the miracle, but the disciples saw Jesus’ glory.
So who Jesus really is manifesting itself gloriously in the spectacular work he was doing, that sort of usage runs all the way up to chapter 12. Then in chapter 17, when there is the prospect of Jesus dying, Jesus says things like, “Glorify me with the glory that I had with you before the world began.”
Jesus knows that unless a seed of corn falls into the ground and dies, it will live alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. This is how he will be glorified: by dying to bear much fruit. Thus already the argument is being anticipated. He goes down to Lazarus to bring his friend back to life, but by going down, he puts himself in harm’s way. God’s glory is manifested in the resurrection, but it’s also manifested in Jesus, God’s Son, being glorified.
But the way he is glorified is being hung in damnable ignominy and shame and torture on the cross. He is glorified and returns to the glory he had with the Father before the world began by first hanging in shame to bear our sin in his own body on the tree. Humanly speaking, the trigger for all of that, the trigger for his going back south, where even his disciples know he is going to be in for it, is the resurrection of someone else. It’s almost a kind of substitutionary death, even in the narrative. Jesus goes down and brings him back to life by dying himself.
The really remarkable thing is not that. The really remarkable thing is verse 6. Now I don’t like to go around saying translations are wrong, but sometimes translations are wrong. In this case, just about all the translations are wrong. We read (verse 5), “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” The translation I’m using says, “So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”
You know, the original is very strong. It means therefore. “Therefore, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.” That’s what the original says. You just can’t get away from it. Now listen to the logic again. “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Therefore, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed away two more days.” In other words, the text is claiming that he shows his love … by delay. This is slightly bizarre.
Moreover (we’ll see the import of this in a moment), when he does say, “Let’s go back to Judea,” in verse 7, immediately the disciples say, “Yeah, that’s really dangerous.” Verse 9. Jesus says, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Those who walk in the daytime will not stumble, for they see by this world’s light.” We don’t catch the power of that because we walk day and night with a lot of electrical power around. But in an ancient village where there were no electrical power supplies, at night it was really dark.
When my family was young, we often used to take them up into the north woods of the UP or something like that, canoe in the middle of the lake at night, or take them out in an open field and watch the stars. It’s so very, very dark all around … dark enough on a moonless night you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. It was really dark. The contrast between day and night would speak volumes in that culture, but for somebody living in Seattle, it doesn’t mean very much because, after all, at night there are a lot of lights on.
What Jesus is saying is, “Listen. Even in this world, we walk where there is light. So I must walk by the light of my heavenly Father’s revelation. Then I won’t go astray, so long as I do what God wants me to do. If the Father wants me to go to Jerusalem, I’m going to Jerusalem. You can’t go astray if you do what your heavenly Father wants.” That’s what he means by this illustration.
Then he says, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.” In other words, after two days, he has learned apparently by supernatural means that Lazarus is now dead. Lazarus is sick. The messenger goes up. It takes about four days. Then two days later, Jesus declares, “Now it’s time to go, because Lazarus is now dead.” Then there’s a little exchange back and forth, and they get back there.
When they get back there.… Verse 17: “On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.” Whoa! If Jesus had set off as soon as he heard the news, then presumably when he got back, he would have saved only two days. But if Lazarus was in the tomb for four days, then presumably he still would have been dead by two days. Dead is dead. What’s the point of waiting two more days, and how does this prove Jesus loves him?
Well, we have to remember that where we live, in the Western world, we have some habits concerning death that no culture has ever had before. My mother was late getting married and was very late having children. I was a little late getting married and late having children. So when my grandfather died, believe it or not, it was way back in 1919. When my grandfather (her father) died, it was in 1919. Believe it or not, I never met him.
In fact, she was only 10 when he died. He died exhausted from the trauma of World War I. She was 10 years old. He died. They lived in a small flat in the east end of London. They put him in a small casket, a small bier, a small coffin. They laid it on the kitchen table, had a certain ceremony there, and then took him out to the grave and buried him, with due recourse to clergy. No embalming. No medical practitioner to pronounce the person was dead. You can’t actually be dead in this country until some doctor has said so!
In other words, you have to have some medical voice here to do it, and then the normal thing here is either you might be cremated, but if not, then you’re going to be embalmed. Many, many caskets nowadays are open caskets, aren’t they? People go by, and they say, “Haven’t they done a good job?” or, “Doesn’t she look nice?” I mean, for many places in the world, this is bizarre. This is bizarre!
Certainly in the first century, that’s not the way it was. In the first century, they tried to bury within one day because, after all, by that time, in that hot atmosphere, decay is already progressing at a good clip. Because there were no medical practitioners, in some instances, the person might not have actually been quite dead … a really good case of fibrillation and very, very little breathing.
So cases were known, therefore, where the body was being taken out within a day out to the grave, and then suddenly as the casket was being carried along, they would hear knocking from inside. Boy, that would get your attention in a big hurry, wouldn’t it? Lo and behold, he survived.
I was explaining this in London about 20 years ago, and one very old lady who was about the age of my mother came up to me and said, “You know, that’s just exactly what happened to my grandfather. He died in 1916, and we were taking him out to the grave, and we heard him knocking on the coffin on the way to the grave. He lived another 15 years!” You can’t do that in one of our funerals. Embalming fluids tend to discourage that, but it did happen in those days. As a result, the Jews had a certain kind of way of talking about this sort of thing.
What they tended to say.… Here is a quotation from a source who does almost certainly belong to the first century that the soul hovers over the body of the apparently deceased person for the first three days “intending to re-enter it, but as soon as it sees its appearance change …” That is, as soon as decomposition has set in irreversibly, its appearance is changed. “… then it departs, and then death is judged irreversible.”
Now I’m not for a moment suggesting Jesus believed this theory. I’m not suggesting that. I am suggesting it was the way in the first century that people explained these occurrences sometimes, within a day or so hearing a noise from the casket, with people apparently coming back to life.
Supposing Jesus had gotten there then within two days and then he had brought him back to life. What would people have said? Oh, we know perfectly well what they would have said. “Oh, it was only the second day. What do you expect? You know, the spirit hadn’t left yet. It was pretty cool but not completely unknown.”
By delaying two days, when he got there, you were beyond the three-day limit. The point is stressed repeatedly in the narrative. Did you notice what happens when they actually get to the tomb? “Take away the stone.” Verse 39. “ ‘But Lord,’ said Martha, the sister of the dead man, ‘by this time there is a bad odor. He has been there four days.’ ”
When Jesus did raise him from the dead, everyone could see this was a spectacular miracle, much more impressive than the son of the widow of Nain, for example, who was merely just being carried out to the cemetery when Jesus raised him from the dead. This was the only one like this in the Gospels. Now the text says, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. Therefore, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days.”
In other words, he couldn’t prevent his dying. If he walked back right then, he would still be dead when he got there. But by waiting these extra two days, the kind of miracle that was to be performed was so spectacular that Jesus would attract the kind of faith in him, in himself, in Jesus as the resurrection and the life as we shall see, that the people needed in order to understand just who Jesus is and what he can accomplish. It was an act of love to delay.
Mind you, it wouldn’t have seemed like that to the two women if they knew where Jesus was (and of course, they must have known or else they wouldn’t have known where to send the messenger). Then they would have calculated, “Four days out. Four days back. Eight days … he is here.” Eight days show up, and he is not there. Day nine he is not there. Morning on the tenth, and he is not there. Two days late.
I can imagine what was going through their heads. “Are you so flaming busy you can’t come back to the one who loved you and whom you loved?” The fact of the matter is, by the time the whole thing was over, by the time Jesus’ own death and resurrection were over, the point was well established. Jesus comes up to a desperate plea for help and demonstrates his love by delay.
Before we leave this first part of the chapter and get into the heart of it (which really has to do with the resurrection), it’s worth pondering this simple point just a wee bit more. Do you know how a little child (2 years old, 3 years old, 4 years old) has no concept at all of delay for the sake of increased advantage? They live only in the now. “Don’t worry, Jamie. Don’t worry. Supper is coming, about 15 more minutes.” “Now!” They exist only in the immediate. They want it right now. That’s it!
You know, there are some Christians like that too. They want certain blessings from God. “Now!” They can’t trust God for any sort of delay that might be a mark of his love and for their own good. The distance in his understanding compared with mine is far superior than the distance between my children’s understanding when they were 3 or 4 and mine.
Sometimes God, out of love, treats us to a good dose of delay. It may change our perspective. We may learn some other things. We may learn some patience. We may learn that God has something more spectacular to show us. Part of walking by faith is persevering with God in self-conscious choice that he really does know what’s best, even when in our little narrow focus it doesn’t quite feel like it.
- Jesus comes up against devastating loss and consoles grief by diverting attention to himself. You see, it’s one thing to say that there’s going to be delay, and then it’s going to work out. But now Jesus actually takes attention away from the problem and focuses on himself. On the delay side, there were some old hymn writers who wrote things like this:
You fearful saints, fresh courage take
The clouds you so much dread
Are big with mercy and shall break in blessing on your head
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust him for his grace.
Behind a frowning providence he shows a smiling face.
His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour.
The bud may have a bitter taste
But sweet will be the flower.
Blind unbelief is sure to err
And scan his work in vain
God is his own interpreter,
And he will make it plain.
That’s all fair enough, but Jesus now goes one step beyond that. He actually diverts attention to himself. Look at the text (verses 17 to 27). Verse 17: “Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. Bethany was two miles from Jerusalem. Many Jews had come out to Mary and Martha to comfort them from Jerusalem. Then Martha heard Jesus was coming.” Apparently some of the disciples had gone on ahead to warn her. “She went out to meet him. Mary stayed at home.”
Verse 21. Martha says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” That probably should not be read in a nasty way, as if Martha were saying, “It’s all your fault. You should have been here.” It probably merely is the anguished cry of someone who is living with, “If only.… If only you had been here, you could have healed him. If only …”
Then she realizes what she said. She realizes what it sounds like. She realizes it sounds like blame, and she quickly adds, “But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.” Don’t read too much into that. It’s as if she is saying, “I know you can bring him back from the dead if you really want to.” She is not claiming so much, because after all, once Jesus actually is at the graveside and wants the stone to be moved, she says, “Lord, there’s already a bad odor. You don’t want to do that.”
In other words, she has no confidence that’s what he is going to do at this point. She is talking in generalities. That’s all it is. “Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ ” Oh, that’s a marvelously ambiguous utterance, isn’t it? Does he mean in five minutes or at the end of the age? She responds, assuming the reference is to the end of the age. “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
She is orthodox. She believes there is a resurrection at the end of time. “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.’ ” Now that is a strange expression. “I am the resurrection and the life.” It’s really two claims. “First, I am the resurrection” (elucidated in verse 25b) and, “I am the life” (elucidated in verse 26).
Notice how the argument goes. “I am the resurrection and the life. I am the resurrection. Anyone who believes in me will live, even though they die.” That is, they will be brought back from the dead even if they do die in resurrection existence. “I am the life. Whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” That is, you gain life now already, eternal life from Jesus. In that sense, you never, never, never die. You gain eternal life now, and it goes on into eternity. “I am the resurrection, and I am the life.” It still is a bit of a strange expression.
I am just about old enough to remember when Kentucky Fried Chicken swept this country, one of the first of these sort of chains of fast food restaurants followed in due course by McDonald’s and Wendy’s and all the rest and more recently by coffee shops and so on. When Kentucky Fried Chicken first started, then we saw Colonel Sanders’ face everywhere. Billboards. We heard it on the radio. We heard his voice on the primitive TVs and so on.
“Finger-lickin’ good chicken” with his secret recipe of 11 herbs. There was a great deal made of the fact that this was real Kentucky Fried Chicken, so much so, so hard was this pushed everywhere with Colonel Sanders’ face on all the billboards, that we would have understood if he had said …
Now as far as I know, he never did say this. But if he had said, “I am Kentucky Fried Chicken,” nobody would have understood him to be making an ontological remark. That is, as if he were claiming himself actually to be a chicken, Kentucky Fried or otherwise. Nobody would have imagined he would sort of flap his wings … “I am Kentucky Fried Chicken.”
People would have understood from the context that by saying, “I am Kentucky Fried Chicken,” he would have meant, “Kentucky Fried Chicken is so much bound up with me and what I do and what I provide in my secret recipe of 11 secret spices that nobody can have proper Kentucky Fried Chicken unless they have it from me.” Isn’t that what they would have understood?
Or another example. I’m from Quebec, and I remember when the then-French president Charles de Gaulle came to Quebec and gave a number of inflammatory speeches. Amongst the things he said in his life.… He was a very colorful character. When France was falling apart one more time and the government was dissolving and it was not clear if France after World War II was going to descend into civil war, it was such a mess.
Somebody said, “You know, where is the state now?” De Gaulle simply said, “L’etat c’est moi” (“I am the state”). He had the clout that he could pull that off. In one sense, it was true. In one sense, of course, if you’re thinking ontologically, it doesn’t make any sense at all. De Gaulle died. France is still there, as far as I know.
On the other hand, at a certain level at that point in history, de Gaulle and his personality and the strength of his character, he was the only thing that was holding all the strands of government together. The state was de Gaulle. Without de Gaulle, there was no state.
That’s the kind of thing Jesus is saying here. Without any trace of arrogance, he is simply telling the truth. He is saying, “Apart from me, there is no resurrection, and there is no life. You believe there is resurrection at the end of the age. Good. That’s orthodox. Good for you. You ought to believe that. That’s true. But I’m claiming something more. Without me, there is no resurrection and no life. I am the one who brings resurrection and life.”
In other words, he is not asking if she believes that he is about to raise her brother from the dead when in verse 26 he says, “Do you believe this?” Rather, he is asking if her faith that there will be a resurrection at the end can now extend to deep trust in Jesus as the only one who grants eternal life and will resurrect the dead on the last day.
In short, if she can trust him to be, in that sense, the resurrection and the life. If she answers positively, then the raising of Lazarus itself becomes a kind of acted parable of the life-giving power of Jesus. She says (verse 27), “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
Now this is a remarkable exchange. Jesus comes up against devastating loss and consoles grief by directing attention to himself. But we need to think about that even pastorally. This is a pretty young crowd, but I see some older gray hairs or few hairs amongst us. The older you get in ministry, of course, then the more people you’re likely to deal with who are on death’s door.
The church was at one time known in England as the assembly of those who knew how to die well. But in much of the Western world, death is the last taboo topic. Even in pretty conservative churches, you can talk about homosexuality and AIDS and distinguish between anal and vaginal intercourse, and nobody will bat an eye. Talk about death, and everybody is nervous.
If I have a group of students sitting around our table and we want to talk about something controversial and throw the topic, the conversation hums. If I say instead, “I’d like to tell you how my dad died,” you could cut the air with a knife. There’s sort of embarrassment all over the place. You’re not supposed to do that.
Then when we do start dealing with death, so often it’s in circumlocutions and vague generalities and hope and, “Well, I’m sure the Lord will hear your prayers. We’re praying for you, dear sister.” What Jesus does is something quite different. He says, “If you’re going to talk about death, you’d better talk about me, because I’m the only one who can answer it. I give life now, and I resurrect people to life, resurrection life, on the last day. He directs attention to himself.
A pastor friend of mine tells me that a few years ago he had a young parishioner, a young man (17 or 18) from a rotten background, who was wonderfully converted and then within six weeks or so of his conversion was diagnosed with a vicious melanoma and was given just a few weeks to live.
As he lay dying in the hospital, church people would go in to visit him and wonder what to say to a kid. He was 18! He had just become a Christian, life turned around. Now everything was being snuffed out. What do you say to him? They quickly discovered that what he wanted again and again was to have this chapter read to him or 1 Corinthians 15 (the Resurrection Chapter).
Do you see? When you reach that stage of facing reality, you don’t want smarmy bits. You want Jesus. You want the promise of resurrection. You want the truth that only Jesus makes alive. You want to see again that Christians know how to die well because we know the One who has the keys of death and hell.
What Jesus does is not come up to Martha and say, “I’m sure the local synagogue will help you out with the food supplies for the next two or three weeks. I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fine memories of our dear Lazarus. It would be wonderful if you could form a small circle with other grieving people, a kind of special counseling house group, mutual therapy session for grieving people.”
Don’t misunderstand me. All of those things may or may not be helpful, but I will say this. They’re not very helpful unless in those sessions, they focus on Jesus who really then does remind us of what the ultimate issues are about and who alone can resolve them. “I am the resurrection and the life.”
You who are in vocational ministry, you who give sucker to those who are dying, make sure you do not become embarrassed to talk about death. Make sure also you direct people again and again and again and again to Jesus who alone has triumphed over death in this final sense and brings us into his consummated resurrection kingdom in due course.
- Jesus comes up against implacable death and displays his sovereignty over it by tears and outrage. Verses 28 to 44. “After Martha had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. ‘The Teacher is here,’ she said, ‘and is asking for you.’ When Mary hears this, she gets up, and she goes. Now Jesus had not yet entered the village.” He remained where he was waiting for Mary to reach him, because he knew full well that if he got to the house, there would be so many people pressing in, there would be no place for private conversations.
This time, however, “When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said …” using exactly the same words Martha had.
Probably the two sisters had talked together and had said very much things along this line: “Oh, if only Jesus had been here. Oh, if only Jesus had been here!” Now Mary likewise says, “ ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled.”
Now you have to face the fact that there are different cultural connections with mourning. Although I was brought up in French Canada, my parents were both born in the United Kingdom. The Brits have this sort of stiff-upper-lip approach to reality.
You know, you’re thought to have done well at a funeral if somehow you get through it and there’s not more than a little tear that has come down. Somehow you managed to get through it, stiff upper lip all the way. People say afterward, “How did she do when they buried her husband?” “Oh, she was greatly sustained. She was very courageous.” That’s fine. That’s part of that cultural way of taking these sorts of things.
On the other hand, if you go to a Greek funeral, it’s like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, only now it’s for a funeral. If you go to an Arab funeral, the way you show honor is precisely by mourning all over the place, letting it all hang out, tears and ejaculations and cries. Otherwise, you’re not really respecting the dead.
If one of those people comes to one of our funerals in Britain, then they think, “What a bunch of cold fishes. They mustn’t have loved them very much. Look at that! One tiny little tear trickling down a cheek.” In fact, in Jesus’ day, not only was the cultural emphasis on the emotional display side, but the stipulations of the day were that even a poor family was supposed to hire at least two professional flute players and a professional wailing woman.
That is to say the flute players would be there not playing lovely little polkas but dirges. It would make you weep just listening to it. The professional wailing woman’s job was, any time things got too quiet, then she was supposed to burst into tears and really let it get right properly cranked up. Then everybody was sort of drawn into it. Everybody was a bit frayed in any case, and now everybody was drawn into it again. That’s for a poor family.
Now this family was filthy rich. After all, the spikenard Mary could put on Jesus’ feet was worth a whole year’s wages, and that was just one little bottle of ointment. Probably they had a whole flaming orchestra there. Then we’re told there were a lot of people from Jerusalem. They were in the upper crowd, so that although they were in the little village of Bethany, some people from Jerusalem had come out.
You have to picture this scene. Mary is coming to Jesus, but the crowds come too. “When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was …” Now our English translations have “… deeply moved and troubled.” I don’t know why, but almost all of our English translations have something like “deeply moved and troubled.”
All the German translations (and in this case, the Germans have it right) have, “He was outraged and troubled.” That’s what the verb here means. It just does not mean “deeply moved.” It means he was “outraged.” He was flaming angry and troubled. “ ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. Jesus wept.”
What on earth is going on here? We might ask, for a start, why he is weeping. We quote these verses often at our funerals to point out that Jesus wept also at funerals, so it’s okay for us to weep. But it’s not much of a model, because Jesus knows perfectly well that Lazarus is coming out in about three minutes. It has a wee feel like crocodile tears, doesn’t it?
One commentator comes up with a wonderful suggestion that Jesus is weeping because he feels forced into performing a miracle. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m going to have to raise him from the dead!” How bizarre is that? No, the only thing that makes sense here (as far as I can see) is he is outraged, and he weeps for exactly the same reason. The text tells us he is outraged, and he weeps. He is troubled.
When he sees all this vast array of mourners (Mary mourning and the mourners mourning) and the crying and the death and the loss and the decay, he knows what he is going to do. But he understands as no one else in that crowd did the sheer ugliness and terror and chain of sin and the curse and the death that came upon it, all of it happening because of guilt in the world and brokenness and decay.
You see, there is a sense in which we ought to be outraged by death. It’s not the way it’s supposed to be. We weren’t created to die. It’s the way it will be because of where we stand with respect to the fall. It’s the way it will be until the new heaven and the new earth. But this is outrageous.
It’s not the way it’s supposed to be, and it stems from human guilt and human rebellion and human loss and human victimization and human perpetration and human sorrow, human rebellion, human idolatry across vast centuries, vast eons, all coming down to the present. One more funeral. One more death and people crying and weeping. Jesus is outraged, and he is deeply troubled, and he weeps in exactly the same way he can look over the city and weep.
It’s not just a theological point for him. It is a theological point, but it’s not just a theological point to put in a book. We ought to be outraged by death. It is the last enemy. But thank God it doesn’t have the last word. Even the responses of the crowd are simultaneously good and bad in everything they say. John is such a subtle writer.
“Then the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ ” Well, that’s true. He did love him. On the other hand, his tears don’t prove the point, because after all, Jesus knows full well he is going to raise him from the dead in about three minutes. They really misunderstand. Others said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Implication: “He really isn’t much good after all, is he? When you really need him, he is not there.”
The response is, “Yes. On the one hand, yes, of course he could have.” In fact, even the delay itself was for their good because he loved them. The crowd responds so shallowly to all the movements going back and forth. Do you see?
Verse 38: “Once more deeply outraged, Jesus comes to the tomb. It’s a cave with a stone across the entrance. ‘Take away the stone.’ ‘But, Lord,’ said Martha, the sister of the dead man, ‘by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days.’ Then Jesus said, ‘Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?’ ” That is, the glory of God displayed.
Oh, yes, it will be displayed in this resurrection. It will be displayed in the next chapter by the fact that Jesus anticipates his glory being displayed in his own death. “So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.’ ”
Do you see? When you are praying in public, it’s not exactly the same as a private prayer. When you are praying in public, it’s partly pedagogical. You are teaching something, and that ought to be borne in mind. “When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ ” Some wag has said that if Jesus had not stipulated, “Lazarus,” every tomb in Jerusalem would have emptied.
“The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face.” There are a lot of things I wish I knew further about what went on. Have you ever thought what kind of conversations Lazarus had with Mary and Martha later? “Hey, dude, what was it like on the other side?” The short answer is we don’t know. Christians across the centuries have often wrestled with that very question. Did he keep quiet, or is John just being discreet?
In fact, in the nineteenth century, there was an English poet called Alfred, Lord Tennyson, who in his poem “In Memoriam” he wrote the words …
Behold a man raised up by Christ:
The rest remaineth unrevealed;
He told it not;
Or something sealed the lips of the Evangelist.
We just don’t know. The only thing I can infer from that is that God doesn’t want us to know. God could have told us if he wanted us to know, but in point of fact, the focus is not really here on Lazarus. It’s on Christ. It’s Christ who was the resurrection and the life. In the surprising developments through this passage, hear this. Jesus comes up against implacable death and displays his sovereignty over it in tears and outrage.
- Jesus comes up against moral and spiritual death and gives life by dying himself. Verses 45 to 53. “Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him.” It was, after all, an astonishingly impressive miracle. “But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. ‘What are we accomplishing?’ ” That is, by their attempts to curtail his ministry, to trim his sails a bit.
“Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him.” Now what they were afraid of is not only a diminishing of their popularity, but if Jesus started a movement that really seemed to be attracting significant numbers of people, the Romans could have understood this as an incipient rebellion and sent in the troops. There could be only one result of sending in the mighty Roman legions to a little country like Israel.
If the troops come in, well, the Romans “… will come and take away both our place and our nation.” The word place means temple. “They’ll come in and take our temple away and our nation.” It would also take away their individual perks too. “Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all!’ ” The particular word that is used is condescending and vituperative. “You bunch of nincompoops, bunch of fatheads! Be a bit realistic.”
“You don’t realize that it’s better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” That is a remarkable sentence. There are two levels of irony. The first level is this. He wants Jesus to die, and he thinks by this means the Jesus movement will be stilled. As a result, the Romans won’t come in and destroy the city. He wants one person (Jesus) to die instead of a whole lot of people who would die if the Roman troops came in.
Translated, it’s what the Germans would call political reality. “We have to bump this guy off. Trump up some charges against him. Get rid of him. It’s the only thing that’s going to work. You’re a bunch of nincompoops. You’re a bunch of pansies. You can’t figure out what has to be done. What has to be done is to get this guy bumped off. It’s better for him to die than the whole nation perish.”
The irony? They bumped him off, and 40 years later, the nation perished anyway. The Roman troops came through, and Jerusalem was sacked, burned to the ground, every stone of the wall taken down from every other stone. Nothing of the temple was left. It was destroyed utterly. That’s the first irony, because by the time this was written, the writers knew it was ironic.
But there’s a deeper irony, and it’s an irony John the evangelist sees. He writes (verse 51), “He did not say this on his own.” That is, he wasn’t speaking only what he thought. He was speaking better than he knew. “As high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one.”
You see, there’s a deeper irony. This is not saying Caiaphas was not giving his opinion. It is saying God was using Caiaphas. But God was not using Caiaphas the way God used Balaam’s ass. Do you remember Balaam’s ass in the Old Testament, Balaam’s donkey? The donkey rebuked him and spoke, but the donkey was not giving his considerate opinion. It was just a flat-out miracle.
Here Caiaphas is giving his considered opinion, but he is speaking better than he knows. “It’s better for one man to die than for the nation to perish.” He meant that purely in political terms. John perceives God is using Caiaphas as high priest this year to speak a deeper truth than Caiaphas himself recognized.
Yes, it was better for one man to die that others might live, because the only way Jesus will become the resurrection and the life is by dying himself. That’s the deepest irony of all. Jesus comes up against moral and spiritual death and gives life by dying himself. It was an old Puritan who wrote the lines…
He, death in death laid low,
Made sin. He sin o’er-threw,
Bowed to the grave,
Destroyed it so,
And death by dying slew.
He destroys the grave by being put in the grave. He destroys death by dying. He destroys sin by being made sin. Do you not see? It’s the very nature of substitution, the basis on which he says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
What we must see is that these sorts of themes are central to the Bible, central to the gospel, central to the whole Bible. These are the frameworks in which we need to address people. It’s right to say that the gospel comes along and improves your marriage and challenges you about how to handle your finances or rear your kids or whatever. The gospel has all of those peripheral benefits, I’m sure. But at the end of the day, it deals with the ultimates of life and death and sin and guilt and resurrection and eternal life. It deals with these ultimates.
One of the more moving passages of a fairly recent writer who I’ve read for some time.… He is a Canadian author called Coupland who wrote some years ago Generation X and then wrote more recently Life After God. In his preface, he writes these lines. “Some facts about me: I think I am a broken person. I seriously question the road my life has taken, and I endlessly rehash the compromises I have made in life.
I have an insecure and vaguely crappy job with an amoral corporation so that I don’t have to worry about money. I put up with halfway relationships so as not to worry about loneliness. I have lost the ability to recapture the purer feelings of my younger years in exchange for a streamlined narrow-mindedness that I assumed would propel me to ‘the top.’ What a joke.
I tell you with the openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again, so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me to give, because I no longer seem capable of giving; to help me to be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me to love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”
Coupland, I have some wonderful news for you. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even though he dies, will live again. Anyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” It transforms absolutely everything. Let us pray.
Forbid, Lord God, that we should ever become so shallowly familiar with these accounts that we can no longer read with afresh eyes that remind us how startlingly wonderful, creative, fresh, earth-shattering, death-defying, and sin-freeing Jesus was in his own death and resurrection on our behalf. We join the church in every generation, and we too cry, “Yes. Even so, come, Lord Jesus.” In whose name we pray, amen.
We have a few minutes for questions.
Question: “How do you connect the young and healthy with resurrection theology?”
Don: That’s a very good question, and it’s a question that has to do not simply with the young and healthy but with the young and healthy and the way our society is engineered. You see, 150 years ago, most families lost 30 percent of their children.
Even if you were young and healthy, you had lost some siblings. Because there wasn’t the embalming, the distancing, the coroner’s office, the undertaker and all of that, death was much more immediate, so that even if you were young and healthy you were made more aware of the fragility of life.
The problem in my view is not simply the being young and healthy. It’s being young and healthy in such a way that that part of society is cocooned off from the older part of society or from the sick part of society. It’s one of the reasons why it is healthy in a church to use some energy to work with AIDS people or poor people or an old folks’ home or something like that, partly so you can experience how other people are living in this world.
To see that, to share it, to talk about it, to understand your days are numbered here is hard to see when you’re 23 or 27 or 30 in fine health, and the kids are doing well at school, and everything is wonderful. Let me tell you, the years slip by, and you wonder where they’ve gone. My wife has almost died twice from cancer. She has lost her parents. I’ve lost my parents. We’ve had other family members who have gone. I’m only 62. I’m a very young 62. You can tell, I’m sure.
But at some point, don’t you have to start saying, “What will I do with the years I have left? How do I prepare for eternity?” I think it is the responsibility of older Christians to talk about these things with younger Christians and to include them in your sermons when it is appropriate to do so, because the text demands it.
Now what I would say is that very often preachers tend to focus on those people in the congregation who most mirror them. You get a preacher, for example, who has been married for about four years and has one child now, not very old. Inevitably that preacher will use a number of predictable illustrations.
“This text says, ‘Fasten on the pure milk of the Word,’ just like my baby just sort of fastens on, hangs on, and sucks. That’s the way we’re supposed to approach the Bible, as the pure Word of God.” I’ve heard that illustration from young preachers so many times. Alternatively, I could mention one well-known preacher who finally went to his reward. In his mid-80s, every cotton-pickin’ sermon he preached, he was talking about death. I wonder why.
You see, if you’re a pastor to the whole people of God and your congregation is not a narrow profile of twenty-somethings, or if you’re trying to pull in people from the community of a broader range, make sure your applications cover a broader range of people than just the twenty-somethings who have the 1.2 children you have (or whatever it is).
You need, in your imagination, to be casting out to think through how the gospel applies to the singles and to the divorced and the old people and those who are suffering from Alzheimer’s and on and on and on and on and on because that too is part of the recognition that the church of God, unless it’s a very, very narrow demographic really is to be made up of a mixture of people. You can do some things to help foster that, it seems to me, in the long haul. None of this is easy. I do think it needs to be done, however.
Question: [Inaudible]
Don: It’s very hard to answer that question, because we all have different sins and faults and so on, don’t we? For some pastors, it’s refusing actually to talk about death, especially if they’ve been through certain kinds of counseling courses. Then the whole aim is simply to make them comfortable, to make them at peace with themselves, to avoid talking about suffering or eternal things or anything like that.
Listen. If you’re a pastor, you ought to be talking to everyone in your congregation at every age sooner or later about what happens when you die. Good grief! Doesn’t Jesus say as much? “Do not fear him who can destroy body only. But fear him who after destroying body cast body and soul into hell.” “What shall it profit a man, if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
There are so many, many, many texts that warn us to think of things with eternity’s values in view. If you’re dealing with people who seem to be on the edge of eternity, sooner or later you have to talk about those things, don’t you? You’re not doing them any favor if you don’t. So for some people, that’s the biggest problem.
I think they have not developed the habit of talking about these things comfortably in the context of their own churches all the time so that when they’re by a sick bed or a deathbed, they’re still not talking comfortably about it. It can be quite complicated. I suspect that’s a pretty common one. It’s not solved simply by resolving that when somebody is on a deathbed, you then make sure you bring up eternity.
It’s resolved, first of all, by living and thinking and preaching and talking about eternal issues all the time in the context of your ministry. You’re not just trying to save people from the streets of Seattle. You’re trying to save them for the new heaven and the new earth. You’re trying to save them from hell.
Of course, this has huge implications for how to live on the streets of Seattle. I don’t want to deny that for a moment. Whereas there are some people who are going around saying, “You know, you don’t want to be so heavenly minded you’re no earthly good,” that by and large is not our problem in the West. We’re so earthly minded, we’re good for neither heaven nor earth.
Question: What book (or books) do you recommend for dealing death and resurrection?
Don: That’s also a difficult question, because authors write at different levels. If you’ve already read quite a bit on the resurrection and you’ve had some seminary background, you’re a pastor and you’ve worked with some Greek and Hebrew and this sort of thing, the best book by far on it is The Resurrection of the Son of God by Tom Wright.
It’s about 800 pages, and it’s not one I’d recommend for everybody. It’s really a very impressive piece of work. I don’t agree with everything Tom writes, not even everything in that book, but it is a remarkably good piece for all kinds of issues.
One that is worth looking at from.… Oh, it’s older, and in some ways, it’s not as compelling, but it’s much shorter. It’s called Who Moved the Stone? It talks about the resurrection of Jesus in about 140 pages from attempts to explain the resurrection … “Jesus never really did die. He only swooned or fainted. People even point out, after all, it was only three days. It wasn’t the fourth day.”
Yeah, but the difference in that case, of course, is there was also a javelin that went and pierced his pericardium. There’s not much doubt that he was dead in that case. It answers those sorts of things in a helpful way.
If you’re talking about the resurrection existence of believers in a new heaven and a new earth, I suspect what I’d do is start with one of the better mid-level commentaries on a passage like 1 Corinthians 15. Let’s say Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians 15. Read that through carefully and see what things you find in footnotes and so on.
Also, some of the better Bible dictionaries have some good articles on this subject (New Bible Dictionary, for example, or Zondervan Pictorial Bible Dictionary, which has the same texts). Look up the articles on resurrection, new heaven and new earth, things like that in there. Then follow some of the references and sources and so on that they would recommend.
Question: Do you think cremation is wrong, either biblically or theologically?
Don: No. There are some people who have a lot of sensitivity to this issue, but if you think there is something ontologically wrong with it, then it would mean somebody who dies in a house fire or bombed up in a war can never be resurrected on the last day. On the other hand, that’s surely no worse than somebody who died so many thousands of years ago that their body has completely decomposed.
How the resurrection is going to work on the last day ontologically, I don’t have a clue. I mean, I’ve read a lot of stuff on how to think about it, but there is nothing I can see that is intrinsically wrong with being cremated. In other words, there is nothing in the Bible that commands that you be buried. When it says people should be buried within a certain amount of time or the like, it’s simply following the culture of the day, not because there’s a theology of burial.
In Britain today, for example, the vast majority of people (Christians and otherwise equivalently) are cremated and not buried, partly because it’s a small island and eventually you’d run out of ground. We don’t even think in those terms here because we still do have so much ground. But it’s difficult to think or imagine any theological reason why it is wrong or betraying the side or somehow disrespecting things to be cremated as far as I can see.
Question: What are your thoughts on the practice of offering redemptive prayer for the deceased?
Don: If by “redemptive prayer for the deceased” you mean praying that they might be accepted into heaven or praying that their sins might be forgiven at this juncture after the fact or the like, the practice is common enough in Catholicism, where Catholicism is of a conservative variety because they believe in purgatory.
That is to say, if you have not committed the kind of sin that consigns you immediately to hell, you may go to purgatory and suffer for a certain period of time there before you’re released into heaven. If you offer masses and offer sacrifices and prayers, then perhaps the person will get out of purgatory a little sooner and get to heaven.
With all due respect to any Catholic friends who might be with us, it’s just impossible to justify that from the Scriptures. It really is very difficult indeed as far as I can see. The Bible as a whole keeps insisting again and again and again and again that death marks the end of when you can make a change. When you have Jesus’ account of the rich man and Lazarus, for example, the rich man does not say, “Tell my brother to offer up a few sacrifices for me so I might have another chance and get out of this place.” It’s too late.
As far as I can see, the tenor of Scripture is that by the time you have died, there is no point in praying for you. Pray for the ones left behind. Pray for comfort for the mourners. Pray that more people will see the significance of death and the fragility of life. Pray the gospel will be made very clear. Pray for all kinds of good and useful things. But pray now for this person’s soul within a biblically faithful form of Christianity? I think that’s pretty hard to justify.
