The Raising of Lazarus

“Lazarus, come forth.” John xi. 43.

TF in His whole ministry Our Lord wrought a great miracle wath a definitely doctrinal purpose, it is safe to say that the raising of Lazarus was that miracle. Nothing less than this can be meant by, ‘’ This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.”

A hundred questions, mostly foolish, curious, impertinent, clamor to be asked, if we assume this meaning of that otherwise enigmatic verse. Does our Lord mean that the sickness and death of His friend was ordained to the end that the resurrection of the body, a vital truth of the new teaching, might be

The evidence of
miracle.

John xi. 4.

ilo yom in tfje 3nn

Mark ix.
31, 32.

Acts xvii.
32.

established by an instance conspicuous and open to investigation? Did He tarry two days still after hearing of Lazarus’ sickness to test the faith of the sisters?

These, and questions like these, sorely trouble minds of a certain order. Better not to ask them. But if you must ask them, here is your answer: We do not know.

What we know is that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and Lazarus better than you and I have ever loved anyone, and we know that, much as He talked about resurrection — His own resurrection, and the resurrection of the just and of the unjust — it was the one truth in all His teaching which made least headway in the apprehension of His hearers. And we know that Christ’s doctrine of the resurrections to this very day has of all His doctrines fallen most upon the wayside and thorn-ground of the human heart.

The orthodox confession to-day goes no whit beyond Martha’s “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day,” the truth, of course, being that this doctrine of the resurrection lay in Martha’s mind as probably it lies in your mind, a perfectly dead and sapless article of belief.

Now, Jesus Christ has no abstract doctrines, no affirmations concerning which men may hold wrong notions, with no harm to themselves. Every one of His teachings glows and throbs with life. Not a syllable of that body of teaching, concerning which He said, ‘’ The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life; “and ‘’ the word that I have spoken the same shall judge him in the last day,” not a syllable of all those words but is meant for saints to live upon, and to be transformed by.

John xi.
24.

Truth and
life.

John vi.
63.

John xii.
48.

Mo iom in tJie Im

The resurrections.

Johnv. 25.

John V. 28.

John V. 29.

See, then, as to this matter of resurrections, how the case of Lazarus interprets and illustrates the teaching:

I. Who had told Martha anything about ‘’ the resurrection at the last day”? Not Christ. There is no such doctrine as the doctrine of ‘^ the resurrection,” meaning one resurrection only, at one time. It is of a piece with that other unwarrantable generalization, ‘’ the general judgment.” There are resurrections, many; judgments, many. Christ taught of ‘’ an hour “when dead souls should hear the word of God and live. That ‘’ hour” is already more than nineteen hundred years long. And Christ taught of another ^’ hour “during which ‘^ all that are in the graves shall come forth.” But not all simultaneously, for immediately He taught of two resurrections, one *’ unto life “— one “of damnation.” Years afterward, by the pen of the apostle anb 0tf)tx ^nterpretationsf John, the Church was taught that one thousand years of time will divide these two resurrections; and by the pen of Paul that the first of these, the ‘* resurrection unto life,’’ is ever impending.

2. And Martha, truly a believer in “the resurrection,” but having no comfort of her belief because she thinks of it as an event of the distant future, ‘* at the last day,” when, in very fact, the sun had not westered another hour before her brother came forth from the tomb in resurrection life. And this may be true of our dead, “for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in his own order: Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.” ‘* For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.... For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,

Rev. XX.
i-16.

I Thess. iv.
1S-18.

I Cor. XV.
22, 23.

I Thess. iv.
14-16.

yo lorn in tfje 3Knn

Kingdom
power.

Matt. viii.
Matt. ix.

Mark ii-vi.

... and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

3. And resurrection is verily a resurrection, the bringing to life again of a dead body, not a thing to be ‘’ spiritualized “into some ‘* mode of immortality.” And the resurrection, not of all the dead, but of all who sleep in Christ Jesus, the ‘* resurrection unto life” may be as near to our beloved dead as it was to Lazarus.