"I am the resurrection and the life.
He who believes in Me,
though he may die, he shall live.
And whoever believes in Me
shall never die."
--Jesus, John 11:25-26, NKJV
For those of us who have experienced the loss of someone we love through death, it is easier to understand why people grieve. Someone important to us has gone away, and they're not coming home this evening. They're not coming home tomorrow, or the next day, or next week. They've gone to a place from which there is no return. Their absence is eerie and obvious, and we know that they will never take their place at the table again. We miss them greatly, their voice, their face, the funny things they used to do. And we know we will never know them again in this life. And perhaps another reason why we grieve is because we know our own appointment with death and the grave is inevitable, and our ticket could be punched at anytime.
From the time we are born, we are on our way to our meeting with death. Dust we are, and unto dust we shall return. It has been the fate of every man and woman formed, ever since the birth of the first child Cain after his parents disobeyed God, ate the forbidden fruit, and were banished from the Garden of Eden and the tree that would give them eternal life, exiled to a bitter life of hard work, painful child bearing, familial strife, and eventual death. People who don't understand what really happened there in the garden opinionate that the punishment seems to them a little harsh. It was only a piece of fruit, after all. Why should eating a piece of fruit require that you die, when eating another piece of fruit would ensure that you never did?
But the consequences for Adam and Eve went far beyond the deterioration, death and decay of their mortal flesh. On the day they chose to disobey God and thereby bring about an end to their innocence, they died inside, a spiritual death that opened their eyes to the harshness of an existence away from the peace and presence of their Creator. Afterward, God provided an atoning sacrifice for their sin, the blood of a bull or a goat to wash over the transgression, and leather aprons to cover their physical nakedness. But He also put them out of their paradisaical home, specifically to keep them from eating from the Tree of Life. He assigned an angelic watch to guard the way, and placed a flaming sword that flashed to keep potential intruders back. From the day of Adam's fall forward, no mortal could be allowed to eat the fruit and live forever.
Because it would mean they would live forever in their fallen, sinful state.
God is all about redemption and reconciliation. That constant fellowship He enjoyed with Adam and Eve in the garden is what He still wants to enjoy today. Like Adam and Eve, we can approach a place of meeting with a sacrifice--for them a sacrifice of blood, for us a sacrifice of self--and God has promised that He will meet us there. When we praise Him, His presence rests upon our worship. When we pray to Him, He hears and answers. We even have His Holy Spirit living inside of us after salvation, the Spirit that quickened and brought life to our dead spirit, but that lively Spirit dwells inside a body that is wearing down and will one day wear out. The indwelling of the Spirit does not rejuvenate this mortal body. Though the Spirit lives, the body still must die. Because that is the only way we can be released from our sinful state and afterward enter the presence of God.
The Jews of Jesus' time understood that in this life death is inevitable. The breath of life would be exhaled from the body and returned to God, the body itself would be buried in the earth, and that eternal soul that makes us us would go to that holding place of the departed, there to await the resurrection and the judgment. Jesus described this very thing once when telling the parable of an unnamed rich man and the poor leper Lazarus (not the Lazarus of John 11). Both men died, and their souls entered that intermediate abode between death and the resurrection--two compartments divided by a great chasm. On one side there was suffering for those who lived unrighteous lives while on the earth; on the other those of righteous faith found comfort in the embrace of Father Abraham. But one thing was clear: until the resurrection, there was no coming back to life from the realm of the dead.
For the saints of old, death was the only way they could be reunited with their loved ones, the and also the only way to be fully reconciled to God. When Jacob thought his favorite son Joseph had been killed by wild beasts, he wept and cried, "I shall go down into the grave to my son." When the son born out of his sin died, David said, "Now he is dead, can I bring him back? He can't come back to me, but I can go to him." But these also lived in a hopeful expectation of the resurrection, the long awaited day when God would call them up from their graves, giving their eternal soul a new immortal body, and restoring them all to constant fellowship with Him. David praised the Lord in hope that his body would be delivered from the corruption of the grave. Daniel prophesied of the day the dust would give up the dead, some to everlasting life, others to everlasting judgment.
And at the tomb of Lazarus who had died, his grieving sister Martha expressed through her grief that same hope. "I know I shall see my brother again...in the resurrection. At the last day."
But Jesus had something else in mind.
"I AM the resurrection," he said. Maybe he even put one hand on her shoulder and the other over his heart. "I am the resurrection, and I am life! Whoever believes in me, even though he dies, he will still live." Yes, Lord, in the resurrection. But Jesus went on, adding a startling revelation in his response to Martha. "And whoever lives while believing in me WILL NEVER DIE!" Then in a dramatic display of power and glory, Jesus called a man four days dead back from the other side.
It was a new concept, this idea of never-death. Of course there are stories in the Bible of Enoch and Elijah who were taken to heaven without dying, although there is a good possibility they may yet return to face their mortality. But at the resurrection of Lazarus Jesus introduced a revolutionary new thought. He didn't fully explore the ideas with his disciples before He left this planet, merely giving them snippets of information that they could later look back on and say, "Oh! That's what he meant." Some have suggested He didn't give the full revelation in the Gospels because they were still living in the context of an exclusively Jewish means of salvation. Afterward, once the Gentiles got in, it was time for full disclosure. Before Jesus, death and resurrection was the only way to get to God. But after Jesus, there was the promise of another way.
"Behold, I tell you a mystery:
We shall not all sleep, but shall all be changed--
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.
For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible,
and we shall be changed."
--Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, NKJV
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