A double consciousness spoke in these words : Our Lord knew that He was standing near the grave of a dead disciple : He felt perhaps even more vividly that He was standing in the midst of a dead world. He spoke these words with reference to the occasion He was then dealing with; yet there was a larger meaning in them, and the meaning that was for the moment was only a fragment of their infinite truth.
We are arrested by — L The immediate Occasion of the Words.
IL Their eternal Application.
L
The Immediate Occasion.
"I am the resurrection, and the life."
1. The 'promise. — Martha had expressed her faith in the common doctrine of the resurrection at the last day. Christ
ST. JOHN XI. 25, 26 467
neither denies it nor assents to it, but passes over it as if it had little power to assuage the actual suffering of death. If it be true, it is a far-ofif event, ages hence, at the last day ; it hardly touches the present fact of death. It has nothing definite, im- mediate, or specially consolatory in its character, being simply an affirmation of future existence. So little power had it that Martha did not think of it till led to it by Christ's question. She doubtless shared the vague belief of the Jews, that "her brother would ascend some time or other on angels' wings into a place somewhere above the stars " ; but how could that comfort her ? She could not bridge the gulf of time and space between herself and that event. She could get from it no assurance that her brother would ever be known by her ; that the ties sundered by death would ever be joined again. There her brother lay in the tomb, dead, fast passing to corruption, soon to become as the dust of the earth, and there he would lie for ages, dead. She herself would soon die and lie beside him, and sleep the long sleep of utter forgetfulness. What comfort is there here for yearning human love that longs for nearness and response ?
Martha regarded the resurrection in the last day not neces- sarily as a spiritual fact or as one having a spiritual bearing, but as a mere matter of destiny like birth and death, a distant mysterious event. Christ draws it near, takes it out of time, vitalizes it, puts it into the category of faith, and connects it with Himself.
(1) "/ am the resurrection, and the life." For belief in\ some future great event, Jesus substitutes belief in His own' person. It is as if He had said to Martha, " Your faith is not settled on its proper object ; you are clinging to a doctrinal truth instead of leaning on a living person; you are thinking of an event, something in the distant future ; you should think of me. / am the resurrection, and the life. It is not of the rising of the dead at the last day that you should think ; that is indeed some- thing to look forward to, but I am the resurrection in my own person; it is not apart from me." Christ draws her eyes away from one reality to another and a greater — from the grim fact of death to the greater fact of His own person and power and love ; He confronts her with this dilemma — she must pronounce either ^ death or Himself to be the greater reality !
468 THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE
^ There is a wide difference between belief in a doctrine and trust in a person. We can believe a doctrine but we cannot trust it. We can grasp it with our minds, but it makes no appeal to our hearts ; like Martha, we may believe in the resurrection without believing in Him who is the resurrection and the life. This is a mistake we often make. We believe in the abstract doctrine and forget the living Person. Half our Christian faith is assent to various propositions instead of trust in a personal Eedeemer, who is Himself the substance and explanation of them all. " I," said Jesus, " I am the resurrection, and the Hfe." ^
(2) " I am the resurrection, and the life." In turning Martha's attention to Himself, Jesus substitutes a present for a future object of trust, a living object for a dead. Martha can think only of that remote time when she and her brother will be re- united. Jesus says, I am the resurrection, and the life, here and now. In Me the dead live. It is not as if Lazarus had gone to nothingness. He has passed away indeed from you, but to Me he lives, for I am the life, and in.Me the dead live.
The intention of our Lord was plainly to make an immediate comfort out of what is generally held to be a prospective joy. People commonly explain the passage still as belonging to a period which is yet to come. They understand it to mean that, when Christ shall appear again, there will be a resurrection, and that then the dead shall live. Doubtless this is in the words. But is this all ? Is this the first and chief meaning ? No, Christ was decidedly and definitely leading the woman's mind away from what she felt would be to what then actually was. "Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrec- tion 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."