Life and Death… and Life: Reflections on the Raising of Lazarus
Everyone mourns the death of a loved one. Grief is a strong human emotion. Death brings about grief. Almost everyone is also afraid to die. The thought of dying makes us fearful. Death, in addition to grief, carries fear with it.
But it might delight us, or perhaps puzzle us, to know that death was not in the original plan of God for man. God created Adam and Eve to live forever. Then what led to death? Did God change his plan? Or the better question is, “What did man do to change his destiny?”
The answer is obvious – sin. Because of sin, death entered the human race; corruption and decay entered this once-perfect world. Because of our first parents’disobedience, God pronounced the verdict, “From dust you came, to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed for men to die once, and after this comes the judgment.”
A little after the dawn of history, sin robbed man of his ideal state. Today, thousands of years later, sin still robs man of the beautiful life that God intended for him. Sin turns joy into sorrow, comfort into suffering, health into sickness, prosperity into poverty, satisfaction into emptiness, peace into strife, and love into hate. The poisonous venom of sin still strikes people hard and it kills them. Truly, the thief, the devil, comes only to steal, kill and destroy (John 10:10).
Without God, man is incapable of saving himself from the pangs of sin and death. His best will never be good enough. Thanks be to God, he came to our rescue. What we cannot do, he has done.
In this Sunday’s gospel reading (John 11), Jesus shows us his power over death. By his command, his friend Lazarus, who has been dead for four days already, has been raised back to life.
If the wage of sin is death (Romans 6:23), Jesus paid for it, that we may be restored to life. He who was sinless became sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Lazarus, whose body was raised back to life, later died again. Like him, all peoples except those who will be alive at the second coming of the Lord, will experience physical death. The good news, however, is that those who put their faith in the Lord Jesus, in words and in deeds, although they may die, will live again. Jesus declares, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26). Our earthly bodies may die but our souls will never die.
This constant thought of eternity should help us shape our view of life. We were created as immortal souls in mortal bodies. Our flesh, with all its worldly needs and cravings, will soon die but our soul will live forever.
The question now is where our soul will spend eternity. Will it be in the inexplicable joys of heaven or in the horrible sufferings of hell? God so loved us that he wants us to someday experience the fullness of life in his kingdom, but he gave us free will to make a choice.
Reflecting on this Sunday’s gospel, may we learn to develop a perspective that values the things that last over the things that fade away. For a Christian, death in this world is just a passing over from the temporal to the eternal, from the earthly abode to the Father’s heavenly home.