#DailyDevotion Do You Believe You Will Never Die In Christ?
John 1117When Jesus got there, He found that Lazarus had been in the grave four days already. 18Bethany was near Jerusalem, not quite two miles away, 19and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. 23“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. 24“I know he’ll rise again,” Martha answered Him, “in the resurrection on the last day.” 25“I am the Resurrection and the Life,” Jesus said to her. “Anyone who believes in Me will live even if he dies. 26Yes, anyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe that?” 27“Yes, Lord,” she told Him, “I believe You are the Christ, God’s Son, Who is coming into the world.”
When a love one dies many people often try to comfort us with true but perhaps we feel trite sayings and we dismiss them. We want to grieve. Martha may have felt that way when Jesus tells her, “Your brother will rise again.” Her response “I know he’ll rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” is an acknowledgment of that truth but comes off to me also a bit dismissive. She knows and believes Jesus could have healed her brother and he did not come but let her brother die. She loves Jesus but she doesn’t want to hear about what is going to happen on the last day. She misses her brother now. And people do need to grieve.
Then Jesus delivers a whopper, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. Anyone who believes in Me will live even if he dies. Yes, anyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe that?” Jesus is the Resurrection Martha is looking forward do and he is the Life which raises the dead. While the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body they did not know yet that Jesus is the Resurrection. Yes it is his resurrection from the dead which is the cause of the bodily resurrection of all the dead on the Last Day. Jesus, like Lazarus, like all your loved ones is going to experience death. But he is also going to rise from the dead on the third day. Jesus’ resurrection is not like other people who were raised from the dead. All others die again. Jesus will never die again. Such is the resurrection he brings about on the Last Day. When he raises the dead on the Last Day everyone who believes in him will be raised to everlasting life, never to die again like him.
Verses 25 and 26 are always most comforting me and are the reason Christians do not say their loved ones are dead but have fallen asleep. Now pay attention. This is most important. When Adam sinned, he died the very moment that forbidden fruit touched his lips. He passed that death down to us. We are all conceived and born dead and merely wait for that mortality to meet its execution on the body when we breathe our last. Jesus says though that all who believes in him even if he dies (bodily) lives. If we have faith in Jesus our spirit which was dead when we were conceived is now made alive. Indeed, if we have faith in Jesus, Jesus says we will never die. Yes, if you have faith in Christ Jesus you will never die. Your body may die you do not. You do not experience death when you breathe your last and close your eyes. You have escaped death’s grip on you. It cannot harm you. When you breathe your last and close your eyes you are with the Lord Jesus Christ. You are still very much alive in him. You merely await to be called up out of the grave never to die again by Jesus.
O Resurrection and the Life, Jesus Christ, grant us such faith in you that we possess eternal life now, never to die but to await the resurrection and transformation of our bodies to be like your glorious body. In your name we pray. Amen.