Before one can return
to the issue of Lazarus’ sickness and death and God’s glory, it is necessary to
traverse the territory that is laid out before the reader with the exchanges
that take place between Martha and Jesus, and Mary and Jesus. Jesus goes
to Bethany, where He encounters the grieving sisters of Lazarus, whom He loved
(along with his sisters). Upon His
arrival, Martha greets Him, saying, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would
not have died. But even now I know that whatever You ask from God, God
will grant You” (John 11:21-22).
There is, it needs to
be said, a faith-rooted belief to be found in those statements. Martha, apparently believing Jesus to be the
Messiah, and combining that belief with some type of knowledge that part of the
work of Messiah will be to restore all things, along with the general belief in
the resurrection of the dead, appeals to her awareness of His powerful, healing
and restoring works, in hopes that a restoration to life will be granted to her
deceased brother. Jesus responds to Martha’s faith and messianic
understanding by saying, “Your brother will come back to life again”
(11:23).
Martha, who is merely
reflecting the general hope of Israel in that day, which was the resurrection
of the righteous dead (the Creator God’s covenant people) into their God’s good
and restored creation, replies by saying, “I know that he will come back to
life again in the resurrection at the last day” (11:24). Jesus’ response
to this is to flatly inform Martha that “I am the resurrection and the
life. The one who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and the one
who lives and believes in Me will never die” (11:25-26a). An interesting statement to be sure.
Jesus punctuates this
statement of response with an inquiry, saying, “Do you believe this?”
(11:26b) With this, Jesus confirms both Martha’s belief in Him as
Messiah, as well as the Jewish hope in the resurrection of the Creator God’s
covenant people into a renewed created order in which the God of Israel has put
down death and corruption (as they were most definitely not looking towards a
spiritual, dis-embodied, heavenly existence for all eternity), defeating the
evil that had been launched into the world at Adam’s fall, all of which was
connected with the coming of messiah at the last day. Martha’s
enthusiastic reply is “Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ (the
Messiah), the Son of God (King of Israel) Who comes into the world”
(11:27-parentheses supplied).
This worldview that
Martha presents is that upon which the Apostle Peter will seize in what is
generally referred to as his Pentecost “sermon” in the second chapter of
Acts. As a member of the nation of Israel, Peter himself had been looking
towards their God’s action in history, which would eventually culminate in the
resurrection of the righteous dead into the renewed creation. The
righteous dead were the saints---those who were the Creator God’s covenant
people, Israel. In that tremendous piece of oratory, Peter said, with an
ultimate reference to what had been wrought in the world via the Resurrection
of Jesus, that “this is what was spoken about through the prophet Joel” (Acts
2:16). Following that, Peter recounts Joel’s prophecy, which, prior to
the Christ-event, was generally understood as a presentation of that which
would accompany the resurrection of the righteous dead, Israel, in the last
days.
After quoting Joel,
Peter would go on to speak of Jesus, saying “God raised Him up, having released
Him from the pains of death, because it was not possible for Him to be held in
its power” (2:24). This was what the people of Israel, Peter’s fellow
Jews, were expecting to be said of all of their God’s covenant people in the
last days. Peter makes it clear that the expectation of Israel has been
fulfilled in Jesus, and that He had gone down into death and had been raised up,
experiencing these things as Israel’s representative.
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