John 11:20-34 'I am the resurrection and the life'

John 11:20-34 Jesus' interviews with Martha and later Mary go over this ground. Martha knows that Jesus has the power to heal and His presence could have saved Lazarus from death. And in a statement of faith in the face of adversity, she says that she knows that God will do whatever Jesus asks. They have a conversation about resurrection. Martha knows that there will be a resurrection on the last day. She has her eschatology straight. But Jesus intends here to present a stronger case for who God is and who He is and what God's plan is. And that is to be a demonstration of His power in the current life and times of believers, not just at some future final judgment. He is here now, and is establishing His kingdom in power. This is the next of the 'I am's of Jesus recorded by John.

          Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me shall live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me shall never die." Bear in mind that Jesus said this before He Himself was crucified and rose from the dead (John 19-20). It is natural to think of the resurrection at the time of the end and the final judgment, just as Martha did, as being God's plan, but in doing so, we only have part of the story. Jesus gives us the rest of the story, by intervening with supernatural power in the here and now - in our lives, lived on the earth, today. And He also reveals that He is the agent of God's resurrecting power, and the source of life. Going back to the beginning of John's gospel, John recorded that in Jesus was life (John 1:4). Since He created life in the first place, it follows that He also can recreate life through resurrection.

          At this point, it seems to be appropriate to clarify what resurrection means. There are probably a large numbers of views popular in today's culture that are not supported by scripture. For example, there is the concept of Zombies - those who act as though they are alive even though they are really dead. Another example is the concept of ghosts, that is, the disembodied spirits of those who have died but live on in an ethereal bodiless form. But the most complete description of the Biblical understanding of resurrection is found in I Corinthians 15:35-54. Our current earthly body is a seed, which is sown as dead. It is sown in dishonor but raised in glory. The natural body dies, but the spiritual body is raised. The spiritual body will bear the image of Christ Himself.  It is an imperishable and immortal body, at which point, as Isaiah 25:8 says, death will be swallowed up in victory.

          The power of God to raise us up and give us eternal life and eternal bodies that bear His image certainly implies no limits to what He can do. Our understanding is limited to some extent because we have not seen these things. We don't know the exact order of events, but there are a few other people Jesus had raised to life (Luke 7:11, 8:41) that are recorded in the other gospels, which may well have taken place before this event. But in those cases, the death had been relatively recent. In this case, Lazarus had been dead for four days and his body would have started decomposing (John 11:39). God created Adam from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7); there is a common tendency to take the viewpoint (Deism) that once God set the universe in motion, He took His hands off and left man to follow His instructions with no direct intervention. Jesus here intends to show that this is wrong, by doing a work of power that is irrefutably divine intervention in the affairs of man. God answers prayer, and it is not just a psychological adjustment of our view of life.  He is involved in our life and in our world, and cares about our pain.