CHRIST AND OUR DEADNESS

"I AM the Resurrection, and the Life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he lire: and whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die." — St. John xi. 25.

"I am the Resurrection and the Life." Such are the solemn triumphant words which we have heard read at many a burial service, converting what would otherwise be a ceremony of utter darkness and gloom into an observance of sober joy and hope. Spoken in the presence of death and the grave, they serve to remind us of Him who has robbed the one of its sting and the other of its victory. They take us back to the hour when they were first uttered — the hour when the Lord of Life showed a sorrowing woman His power over death. They bid us think, too, of that hour when other sorrowing women, standing by another tomb, heard the words, "I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen, as He said."

We must have already been struck by the fact that the various gifts offered by our Lord for the satisfaction of our human needs all consist of life in some one or other of its forms. Does He call Himself the Light? "He shall have the Light of Life." Or the Way? I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Or the Shepherd? "I am come that they might have Life." Or the Bread? "I am the Bread of Life." Even where not expressed, the idea is implied. It is Life to which the Door gives entrance; Life that unites Vine and branches. And now the Life which has triumphed over hunger, thirst, darkness, barrenness, triumphs over its great enemy, death. In the presence of the dreadest fact of all, Christ makes His highest claim, calls on faith to make its final venture, bids His people trust Him to the uttermost. He who is the Light of life, the Way of life, the Shepherd of life, the Bread of life, is now "The Resurrection and the Life."

Christ the Resurrection and the Life.

It is important to observe, by way of analysis, that the verse in which our Lord makes this claim has two clauses, and that each of them is in its turn divided, the division in the second clause corresponding to the division in the first. The first clause is about Christ Himself; the second is about His people. The first begins with "I am"; the second with "He that believeth in Me." The first gives us two names for Christ; the second gives us two facts about His people which correspond to these names. The two names are Resurrection and Life. To the first name, "I am the Resurrection," correspond the words, "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." To the second name, "I am the Life," correspond the words, "Whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die."

Before studying the two names separately, it is worth while to notice the words "I am," which cover both the names in the first clause, and the words "he that believeth in Me," which cover both the facts in the second. His claim is not primarily, "I give you," but "I am." He gives of Himself. As a sovereign confers a title in virtue of being the fountain of honour, so Christ confers life as being Himself the Fountain of life. In this interview Martha has spoken to Him of a resurrection at the last day; but He would lead her from trust in a future event to trust in a living Person. Victory over death is His personal work. Our hopes of immortality are centred in Christ. Our trust in Him carries us beyond trust in His promises. Faith does not mean our belief that He will do this or that for us, but our belief in Himself. We believe that a promise will be kept because we believe in the one who makes the promise. So with Christ it is I am, not I give. "He that believeth in Me," not in My gifts. Faith in the Person is what involves faith in the promises. The best illustration of this is given in the words that follow. He asks, "Believest thou this?" Martha’s answer practically amounts to saying, "I do more than believe this — I believe Thee." "Yea, Lord," she says, "I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world." Christ is the Fountain of immortality, and he that is united to Christ is partaker of His immortality. The gift held out in "I am" is accepted by "whosoever believeth in Me."

The two names which our Lord here gives Himself indicate respectively two sides of His work: His power of raising the dead to life, and His power of preserving the living from death. "I am the Resurrection. . . he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." "I am the Life . . . whosoever liveth, and believeth in Me, shall never die."

1. The Resurrection.

This name implies and takes into account the great fact of death — a fact never to be lightly passed over. If some of the heathen moralists were wont to bestow too much thought on death, that was better far than belittling or ignoring it. It is told of the Sultan Saladin that when he sat in state, surrounded by banners and trophies, there was hung above them all the banner of Death, with the words, "Saladin, king of kings — Saladin, victor of victors — Saladin must die." While it is morbid to be always dwelling on death, it is good for us at times, as Samuel Rutherford put it, to "fore-fancy our deathbed." And our Lord’s words were not spoken with any indifference as to death. He who spoke them wept, groaned, was troubled, ere He could perform His work of mercy and power. Even in the moment of lightening the world’s sorrow He felt deeply what that sorrow was. "It is not with a heart of stone that the dead are raised." That very fact gives additional significance to His words. Death is mighty, but Christ is mightier. We can realise the mingled fear and joy of those who first heard that He could not be holden of death — that He was the living, the risen Lord. For it is on His own Resurrection that the very existence of His Church depends. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." His work did not end with the Cross. He was no mere martyr suffering at the hands of wicked men. There was a Divine purpose in His sacrifice, and that sacrifice was not complete until His victory over sin and death had been accomplished.

As Christ is "The Resurrection" in virtue of having personally overcome death, He is also "The Resurrection" as the pledge of immortality in His followers. "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." "If we believe," writes St. Paul, "that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." There have, it is true, been hopes of immortality apart from Christ. Men have felt that the powers God has given them are too good to be allowed to perish as if they had never been; that the love which cements the hearts of husband and wife, brother and sister, parent and child, will not be left without its final satisfaction. But not until Christ had overcome death was the foundation laid of that firm trust which can look calmly and confidently through the gate of death to the undiscovered country beyond. A firm belief in God and a firm hope of immortality go hand in hand; and the same Lord who revealed the face of God as it had never been revealed before, showed I man also his own true dignity as born to hold eternal fellowship with God. Hence the appropriate symbols on a Christian tomb are not the urn, the death’s head, or the broken column, signifying nothing but corruption and decay, but rather the shield of faith, the anchor of hope, the cross of redemption; and their most becoming inscriptions are not those which extol the virtues of the departed, but those which speak of belief in i a world to come. The Christian hope centres in the Person of Christ. He proclaims Himself here as the embodiment of that hope, and by His own Resurrection the promise was sealed. We date our assurance of immortality from the hour

When from the grave He sprang at dawn of morn,

And led through boundless air thy conquering road,

Leaving a glorious track, where saints, new-born,

Might fearless follow to their blest abode.

But the name "Resurrection," as applied to Christ, covers more than His victory over physical death, either for Himself or for His followers. In His teaching, especially as interpreted by St. John, death is scarcely ever thought of in a purely physical sense. He sometimes even discouraged the use of the word to signify the dissolution of the body, preferring to employ the term "sleep." It is not, then, merely from death of this  sort that Christ delivers His people. He has come to raise men from the spiritual death in which they are involved, and to make them partakers of the divine life of fellowship with God. Those who hear Him and believe in God are described as having "passed from death unto life"; and St. John uses the same expression in his first Epistle to indicate those who, by their love to the brethren, show that they have undergone the same change. All His saving of the lost — all His response to our needs and sicknesses — all His work as the Way, the Bread, the Door, the Light, the Shepherd — may be regarded as part of the Resurrection-work of Christ. In all that we do to raise men from a life of sin to a life of righteousness — from trust in themselves to union I with Christ — we are aiding Him in the same ' work. "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live."

2. The Life.

Resurrection is an act; Life a condition. Resurrection points back to a previous state of life; it is life re-assumed after temporary withdrawal. Christ is the Restorer of life because He is the Giver of life; and He is the Giver of life because He has life in Himself. "In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." His Resurrection was but His re-assumption of what was His from the beginning. Wondrous fact though it was, it was not the greatest and most cardinal fact. Greater still is His possession from eternity of the Divine life. Life is the most difficult of all things to define, and many have been man’s attempts to explain its meaning and origin. The Christian view places the source of all life in God. "The system," writes Professor Flint, "of which the first word is, In the beginning there was nothing except space and atoms, has for its last word, Eternal Death; as the system of which the first word is, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, has for its last word, Eternal Life." God is the source of all personality and life, and all the fulness of God’s life is present in Christ.

"I am the Life... whosoever liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die." As Christ can restore the dead to life, so He can preserve the living from death. As salt has at once a quickening and a preserving power — a power to maintain as well as a power to bestow — so Christ, the Life, can make us partakers of His life, and preserve us from death. The life of the believer in Christ is ever striking its roots deeper and deeper, ever getting nearer and nearer to the source of life. Jesus can truly say, therefore, that such a man shall never die; for while his life on earth must end, the higher life by which he is united to Christ is immortal. When we fully realise what life in Christ may mean, it will seem almost absurd to think that the dose of earthly existence can terminate it.

From this it is obvious that Life, like Resurrection, cannot possibly be used here in any merely physical sense. It must transcend any such idea as the mere prolongation of existence. While the promise of Christ doubtless indudes immortality, it indudes far more. It means life on a higher plane, life hid with Christ in God. It means fellowship with God, and participation in His nature. It unfolds the idea dimly present to the mind of Abigail when she said to David, "The soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of life with the Lord thy God." Christ draws a line, not so much between present and future, as between higher and lower. The gulf between this world and the next is less wide than that which here and now separates life with God from life without God. "He that hath the Son hath Life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not Life."

Thus, if the act of turning to Christ is necessary for our restoration to life, the condition of abiding in Him is equally necessary for the preserving of our life. As the Way is to the Door, so is Life to Resurrection. If many of us feel the need of being raised up by Christ from our state of spiritual deadness, there are others who feel their chief need to be that of preserving the life that they have, lest they lose it or fell from it. For such it is good to remember that Christ is not only the Resurrection, but the Life; that Resurrection, indeed, is only the entrance into Life; that He who said "Come unto Me," said also "Abide in Me."

What our Lord promises us here, then, is Life under two aspects — its renewal and its continuance. He is the Resurrection; therefore the dead who believe shall live. He is the Life; therefore the living who believe... shall not die. The two Sacraments of the Church afford illustrations of the same twofold truth. Baptism, the first sacrament, speaks to us of renewal, of the new birth, of our burial with Christ, and our rising with Him to newness of life. "God," says St. Peter, "hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And again, "The like figure whereunto Baptism doth also now save us... by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ." It accordingly takes place but once; it is a single act; it symbolises the conferring of the new life. But if Baptism answers to the one claim, "I am the Resurrection," the Lord’s Supper answers to the other and fuller claim, "I am the Life." It represents to us a perpetual communion with the living Christ; the possession of Him within us as the source and means of life. "He that eateth of this Bread shall live for ever." It is no single act, performed only once on each individual, as Baptism is; it represents a continuous process, like the assimilation of food; an abiding and progressive life. The one is the lighting of the flame, the other its tending and feeding. The one is the birth, the other the growth. The one speaks of regeneration, the other of sanctification. In His sacraments, then, as in His words, we have pledges of the Eternal Life which Christ imparts. They are signs and seals attesting the twin truths that Christ is always able to revive us if we are dead, and to sustain us if we are alive. And it is this quickening and sustaining power that we all want. Deadness is our chief curse, life our most pressing need. Amid all the deadness of our spiritual state, there is hope for us if only we lay hold on Christ. "In Him, he who is dead is sure of life, and he who lives is sure never to die."

"I am the Resurrection and the Life" closes our series of meditations on the I am's of our Lord. It will be noticed that these have not been treated in the exact order in which they appear in Scripture. But if any apology be needed for this, one can point to the precedent set by the author of the Fourth Gospel himself, who arranged his material in such a way as would best serve the end he had in view — the presentation of Jesus to the world as Christ the Son of God. The purpose aimed at in this little book (to compare small things with great) has been to present what may be called a ladder of spiritual progress, by climbing the several steps of which the follower of Christ may experience His response to each successive need. The order of such experience is not, of course, the same in every case; it is capable, indeed, of infinite variety. But the order followed here would seem to be one in which our Lord often presents Himself to His people, as affording a gradually increasing satisfaction for needy souls. We are in darkness, and He reveals Himself as a Light that we may see, and follow, and possess. This Light, however, serves but to show the poverty of our estate; and accordingly His next offer is that of a Door to shelter us; a home where we can remain and dwell with Him. But even this restingplace reminds us that we have still far to travel ere we reach our journey’s end; and our cry for direction is met by a Way — a way of Truth and Life by which we shall at length reach the Father. Even on the way, however, we are helpless; we wander from it, we faint, we are scattered abroad; we want a living guide, a Good Shepherd who will give His very life for us, and who knows us all by name. Scarcely is this want in its turn supplied, when we are conscious of yet another; the need of a strength within as well as without; something that will make us less like sheep and more like men. This we find in the Bread of Life; Christ within us as our strength and hope. Then the union between Him and us becomes closer still; we begin to work for Him as well as He for us; we become branches of the True Vine, abiding in it and bringing forth fruit. And finally, He, who has done all else for us, destroys that last enemy which is death; gives Himself to us as the Resurrection and the Life; confers upon us, maintains in us, an eternal fellowship with God. Thus, leading us on from strength to strength, does Christ fulfil for us the great I am of the Apocalypse, inclusive of all the rest — "I am Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last"