I suppose sooner or later in everyone’s life, they wrestle with the question,
“Is there life beyond death?” It is an age-old question. Most biblical scholars
seem to agree that the Book of Job is the oldest writing in our Bibles. Though
the events of the first half of Genesis pre-date the events of Job, they were
not recorded in writing until the time of Moses, whereas Job seems to have been
written long before Moses’ day. And, in Job, we find the suffering patriarch wrestling
with the question, “If a man dies, will he live again?” (Job 14:14). I remember
the first time I wrestled with that question. Somehow, I had avoided it for the
first 18 years of my life. But, in the summer following my high school
graduation, my grandmother died, and my cousins and I were pallbearers at her
funeral. It was the first funeral I had ever attended, and it was the closest
that death had ever struck me. I distinctly remember the sound of the mausoleum
vault closing, and as it echoed I was perplexed with mixture of despair, fear,
and curiosity. The questions that kept bouncing around in my head were, “Now
what? Is that the end, or is there something more?” God used those questions
and emotions that I wrestled with to draw me to Himself. And it was there I
found the answers in His Word. I found that not only is there life after death,
but there is also a death before death. I was afraid of what would happen when
I died, all the while not knowing that I was already dead and in need of being brought
to life by Jesus. So, these are the kinds of things that Jesus is talking about
here in this brief text today. He is talking about His power to give life to
the dead.
I. Jesus has the power to give life to the spiritually dead.
(vv25-26)
Many of you have undoubtedly noticed that there is a craze
going around about zombies. What is a zombie? Well, in popular folklore, a
zombie is a dead body that has been enlivened by a mystical or paranormal
power. In short, zombies are the semi-living, walking dead, or the “undead” as
they are commonly called. Walk into any bookstore, and you will find titles
like The Zombie Survival Guide or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. In the
toy aisle of your local big box store, you will find a whole line of “Monster
High” dolls. Movies, TV shows, and video games commonly feature human beings
pitted against hordes of the undead, and on a somewhat regular basis, otherwise
mainstream news outlets report stories dealing with the fears of a zombie
apocalypse. In fact, in September of this year, the Centers for Disease Control
launched a campaign to prepare citizens for a zombie apocalypse, and just a
couple of weeks ago in San Diego, United States Navy and Marine personnel
engaged in zombie apocalypse training exercises.[1]
Now, admittedly, those training exercises and the CDC campaign were promoted
with tongue-in-cheek, suggesting that if you are prepared for a zombie
apocalypse, you will be well prepared for any sort of emergency that may arise.[2]
But they are capitalizing on the popularity of the zombie meme in contemporary
popular culture. It’s all kind of foolish, don’t you think? This idea that we
can be invaded by multitudes of walking, undead corpses? Well, what if I told
you that I believe you are already surrounded by walking corpses? You might
want to call in some professionals to evaluate my mental well-being. But in a
very real and spiritual sense, we are surrounded by the living dead: spiritual
zombies.
Notice in verse 25 that Jesus says, “An hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the
Son of God and those who hear will live.” Now, notice the phrase “and now
is.” Jesus is talking about something that is taking place, not in the future
(though it will happen then as well, for He says “an hour is coming”), but it
is happening in the present, at the time of His earthly ministry. The dead are
able to hear His voice and those who hear will live. Now, we know that Jesus
did in fact raise the dead to life on a few occasions: Lazarus (John 11:1-44),
the son of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:11-17); and Jairus’s daughter (Matthew
9:18-26). Aside from these three, we do not know how many others experienced
this unusual and temporary deliverance from death. That doesn’t seem to be what
He is speaking of here. Notice that here, in the present tense, Jesus speaks of
giving life to the dead, but it is not universal in effect. Though He says that
the time now is when “the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God,” He seems
to indicate that not all will hear, and thus not all will receive life. Contrast
this with verse 28. There, we do not find any mention of a present work, only
future; and those who are described as “dead” in verse 25 are contrasted with
those who are described as “in the tombs” in verse 28. In the present state, in
verse 25, not all receive life; whereas in verse 28, in the future, all who are in the tombs will hear His
voice and come forth. So it seems that Jesus is saying that not all who are
dead are in the tombs. There are some others who are dead outside of the tomb,
and if they will hear His voice, they will receive life. So, what is going on
here?
The dead that Jesus is describing in verse 25 are what I
would call “the living dead,” these spiritual zombies who are walking around in
human bodies, but who are dead spiritually. Who are they? Well, in fact, every
member of the human race is born in this condition, and a good plenty remain
that way. Turn over to Ephesians 2:1, and let’s look at this for a moment. Here
Paul says, “And you were dead in your
trespasses and sins.” He does not say, “You were sick,” or “you were disabled,”
or “you were a little unwell.” He says, “You were dead.” You remember that God
told Adam that in the day that he ate of the forbidden fruit, he would surely
die. Now physically, Adam did not die that day. Sin brought about a condition
in him that would ultimately lead to an eventual physical death. But
immediately, at the very moment of his sin, he died spiritually. And the
terminal disease of sin has been spread to all of humanity; thus, we are all
born dead in the spiritual sense, and we are all susceptible to physical death
– we live in dying bodies with dead spirits – because of the effect of sin on
the human race. So, Romans 5:12 says, “Therefore, just as through one man sin
entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men,
because all sinned.” So, what is the natural condition of a human being? Dead
and dying; spiritually dead and physically dying because of sin.
Now, you might say, “But I feel pretty good. I don’t feel
dead.” A couple of weeks ago I was engaged in the first battle of annual war on
leaves in my yard. And in the course of the battle, I was attacked by a
multitude of yellowjackets. So, I went to the store to find something to deal
with the yellowjacket problem, and I found this can of Raid that was supposed
to do the trick. It said, “Raid Kills Bugs Dead.” That’s good. I wanted to kill
them. And I wanted to kill them dead. So I sprayed the whole can into their
nest. The next day I went out, and those yellowjackets were still swarming all
over the place. It occurred to me that if that Raid had indeed killed the
yellowjackets, it had not killed them dead. There must have been some kind of
live kind of killing that the Raid had accomplished. When I think about that, I
am reminded of how sin works in us. It kills us. But we are still buzzing
around, aren’t we? Sin kills us, but it has not yet killed us dead. There’s
some kind of live kind of killing that sin is accomplishing in us. But it will
kill us dead eventually. Before that physical death occurs, however, we are
spiritually dead in sin.
What does spiritual death look like? Notice how Paul
describes it in Ephesians 2:2. He says that these spiritual zombies “walk
according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of
the air (that’s Satan), of the spirit that is now working in the sons of
disobedience.” So, their lives are characterized by an enslavement to worldly
values that are disobedient to will and Word of God, and which are dictated by
Satan himself. Then in verse 3, he says that spiritual zombies live in the
lusts of their flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and of the mind,
and by nature they are children of wrath. They live under the condemnation of
God because they serve their own warped desires as a god. To be spiritually
dead is “to be insensible to the things of God and totally unable to respond to
Him.”[3]
That part of our being that communicates and interacts with God is dead within
us from birth.
But notice the most amazing thing about this passage. Paul
says in verse 1, “you were dead.”
That’s past tense. In verse 3 he says that we formerly lived this way. So how did we go from being spiritual
zombies to being spiritually alive? Paul says it this way in verses 4 and 5 of
Ephesians 2: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with
which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive
together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” What is he saying? He’s
saying exactly what Jesus is saying back in our text in John 5. The hour is
coming, and Jesus says that hour is already here, when those who are dead –
these spiritual zombies – will hear the voice of the Son of God. And when they
hear His voice, He brings them to life. We are transformed from spiritual death
to spiritual life by the effectual call of Christ through the Gospel. The voice
of Christ comes breaking into the life of spiritually dead person like “a kind
of summons from the King of the universe, and it has such power that it brings
about the response that it asks for in people’s hearts. … This calling has the
capacity to draw us out of the kingdom of darkness and bring us into God’s
kingdom.”[4] It
raises us up from spiritual death and makes us finally spiritually alive. And
that happened to you the moment you heard and believed the promise of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. You were made alive in Him. We call it being born
again.
Now, how is it that the Son, the Lord Jesus can give life? He
says in verse 26 that it is because He has life in Himself. You see, our lives
are “derived.” Most immediately, our lives our derived from the lives of our
parents, who “gave life” (for lack of a better word) to us through procreation.
But more ultimately, all human life is derived from God, who created humanity,
who gave life to man, and with it the ability to procreate, and who upholds and
sustains human life through His providential care. Thus, when Job was presented
with the news that his children had died, he responded, “the Lord gave, and the
Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And concerning that
response, the Bible says, “Through all this, Job did not sin nor did he blame
God” (Job 1:21-22). Job understood that human life is a derived life. But when
it comes to the life that is in Jesus, it is not derived in any way. He has
life in Himself. His is self-existent, and the life that He has, He is able to
impart to others.
But what are we to make of the idea here in verse 26 that
the life that Jesus has in Himself was given to Him by the Father? Admittedly,
this is a complicated and mysterious truth, bound up in the infinite mystery of
the Trinity. But the idea here seems to have something to do with the
condescension of the Son in the incarnation as He took upon Himself human flesh
and a human nature. Philippians 2:6-8 describes it this way: “although He
existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be
grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of
men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself….” Theologians
refer to this as the kenosis, a Greek
word that means “emptying.” Christ emptied Himself of His divine glory and
power to become a man. But it was pleasing to the Father that Christ should
retain some of His divine attributes even as He condescended to human nature.
And one of these attributes was the power to have life in Himself and the power
to grant that life to others. Thus, we read in John 1:4 that in Him (in Christ,
the Living Word of God) was life, and the life was the Light of men.” The
Father was pleased to grant the Son to retain His self-existent nature – this
life-in-Himself, which He has the power to give to the spiritually dead who
hear and respond in faith to the call of His voice in the proclamation of the
Gospel. Jesus says in John 10:27-28, “My sheep hear My voice, and I
know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will
never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand.” When we were dead in
our trespasses and sins, the voice of Christ came flooding in and brought life
to those spiritually dead who heard His voice in the Gospel and turned in faith
to receive Him as Lord and Savior. The hour is coming, Jesus says, and now is.
If you are spiritually dead, having never turned in faith to the Lord Jesus,
then He is calling out to you even today to announce that through His sinless
life, His sacrificial death for your sins, and His glorious resurrection, your
sins can be washed away and you can have life – eternal and abundant –
beginning even in this very moment. The spiritual life that Jesus gives to the
spiritually dead here and now foreshadows a coming day, yet future, which is
described in the following verses.
II. Jesus has the authority to raise and judge the entire
human race
Donia and I have been married for 15 years. For the first
six years of our marriage, we lived beside of a cemetery; and for the last 7
years of our marriage we’ve lived beside of another cemetery. People often ask
us, “What’s it like living beside of a graveyard?” Well, we don’t have to worry
about noisy or nosey neighbors, so it really has some significant advantages.
There’s not a lot of activity in most graveyards. But that won’t always be
true. There is a day coming, the Lord Jesus says, in which there will be a
great upheaval in every cemetery in the world. That day remains in the future.
Unlike verse 25, there is no present tense component of this promise. How far
in the future will this event occur? We don’t know. But we do know that every
day that elapses brings us one day closer. In the previous section we were
talking about the spiritual dead – those spiritual zombies who are walking
around among us every day. But now we are talking about the physical dead –
they are in the tombs. And one day, “all who are in the tombs will hear His
voice, and will come forth.” The same voice that brings life to the spiritually
dead here and now will call the dead to rise from their tombs and stand face to
face before Him. Thus Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the
last He will take His stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet
from my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26).
For at least 350 years, and probably much longer than that,
as Christians gather to bury their dead, words similar to this are spoken: “we
commit this body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from the dead unto eternal
life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.” This wording originates in the Anglican
Book of Common Prayer from 1662, but certainly the ideas that these words
express are rooted in the Word of God itself. No matter the circumstances or the
degree of sorrow in my heart over the death of a loved one, when I officiate at
the graveside of a believer, I find tremendous joy as I utter the words, “sure
and certain hope of the Resurrection.” Folks, I really believe that, and I hope
you do too! For the believer in Jesus Christ, death is not the end. We are
confident by faith that the day is coming when the soul of our departed loved
one, who is already with the Lord, will be reunited with a risen and glorified
body! Through our Lord Jesus Christ, we have a sure and certain hope of
resurrection from the dead unto eternal life! There is no greater comfort a
grieving Christian can know that this!
However, what we do not often express verbally at the
graveside is that there is also a sure and certain promise of resurrection for
those who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no hope and comfort in
that promise. Though the unbeliever has the promise of resurrection and
conscious existence beyond death, it is not a joyous existence in the glorious presence
of Christ in heaven. It is a perpetual, eternal existence of judgment and
condemnation. It seems odd to even call it life. It is at best a mere existence
in the most agonizing of conditions. But it is a real, conscious, and unending
existence, and that is a sure and certain promise made by none other than the
Lord Jesus Himself. Therefore, we can believe it, and as He says in verse 28,
we must not marvel at the truthfulness of these words.
When all who are in the tombs come forth in response to the
voice of Christ, there will be a great separating of humanity. Now, this text
really says nothing about chronology or time. There are other texts in
Scripture that seem to indicate that the resurrection of the righteous dead
will occur long before the resurrection of the unrighteous dead. This text does
not contradict that. It merely asserts that all humanity – saved and unsaved;
righteous and unrighteous – will be raised will be separated into two
populations. Jesus says here that those who “did the good deeds” will be raised
“to a resurrection of life.” It would be easy to mistakenly infer that Jesus is
saying here that people will earn eternal life on the basis of their works, but
that is most definitely NOT what He is saying. The Bible makes abundantly clear
from cover to cover that works do not and cannot save human beings, for as
spiritually dead people we are unable to do anything in our own power to bring
pleasure to God, and our so-called righteousness is nothing but filthy rags in
His sight. So, how then will those who did the good deeds be raised to a
resurrection of life? We must rely on the whole context of Scripture to
understand this. In John 6:28, the people asked Jesus, “What shall we do, so
that we may work the works of God?” He responded (6:29) by saying, “This is the
work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” What is the “good deed”
that leads to the resurrection of life? It is believing on the Lord Jesus
Christ! It is not a doing of something, but the receiving of something that has
been done for you! It is the receiving of Christ as Lord and Savior on the
basis of His sinless life, the death He died in your place for your sins, and
the power of His resurrection. And when a person has received Him, they are
transformed from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now, and will
eventually be raised to eternal life with Him in the glory of heaven. The
validity of this person’s faith in Christ is demonstrated by perseverance in a
God-glorifying of righteous living, not done in an effort to earn salvation;
but done as an overflowing of His life within us. These deeds are not the
working of our own power to appease God; they are the outworking of the
indwelling Christ within us. As Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified
with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the
life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved
me and gave Himself up for me.” So the good deeds that lead to a resurrection
of life are not even our own. We merely receive and appropriate for ourselves
what Christ has done for us, and He lives and works through us those deeds that
demonstrate that our relationship with Him is real and viable. Works do not
make a person a Christian, but they can and should reveal whether or not a
person is a genuine Christian, and not merely one who calls himself or herself
Christian.
Apart from life in Him, the best that we can do is sin. Sin
so totally corrupts the spiritually dead person that our self-instigated acts
of righteousness amount only to unrighteousness. Thus, Jesus says that those who
committed the evil deeds – that is, they did not believe upon Christ; they did
not receive spiritual life in their state of spiritual death; they do not have
Christ in them as the hope of glory – these will be raised, but not to eternal
life with Him. These will be raised to a resurrection of judgment. The word
also means condemnation. It describes
the eternal, conscious existence which is separated from Him in hell, where for
all eternity the condemnation of our sins is experienced moment by moment.
For a multitude of people, this message is now and always
has been a highly offensive message. Christians who proclaim this truth are
called judgmental and narrow-minded. It is often said that Christians do not
reflect the nature of Christ in making statements like this, but I remind you
that these are the words of Jesus Himself. He has been granted the authority by
His Father to execute judgment, and the judgment is based on human response to
Him as Lord and as Savior of the world. Verse 27 says that the Father has given
Him this prerogative “because He is the Son of Man.” We’ve discussed this title
before many times, and noted that it is the favorite title that Jesus uses to
refer to Himself. In fact, no one else ever calls Him this; He alone uses the
title, and more often than any other title, to refer to Himself. It is rooted
in the messianic announcement of Daniel 7:13-14, in which we read that the Son
of Man will receive from the Ancient of Days an everlasting dominion and
kingdom which will never pass away. This is a vivid picture of the authority
that is granted to God the Son by God the Father. Because the Son is the
eternal God, and has been invested by the Father with this authority, and
because He has become man and lived in perfect obedience to His Father’s will,
He has demonstrated His authority to judge all humanity. Though some will
object that this judgment is unfair, that all humanity should be saved or perish
on the basis of Christ, and Him alone, Jesus says in verse 30 that His judgment
is just. It is based on the will of His Father, who sent Him for this mission
and purpose. Peter announced in Acts 10:42-43 that Christ has “ordered us to
preach to the people, and solemnly to testify that this is the One who has been
appointed by God as Judge of the living and the dead,” for “through His name
everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.”
Thus, by the Lord Jesus’ very own words, we have the sure
and certain promise that there is a life that exists beyond death. All who are
in the tombs will come forth. Those who have received life in His name have
been cleansed of sin and covered in His righteousness. Our sins have been dealt
with fully and finally in Christ crucified. He died to bear the wrath of our
sin, that we might be brought forth from death into life – a spiritual
quickening of our dead spirit that we might know the abundant life Christ
offers to us here and now, and the physical life of resurrected glory after
death has done its best to destroy us. In Christ we overwhelmingly conquer sin
and death and hell, and are raised to a life that shall never end. But for
those who do not experience the gift of His salvation which transforms us from death
to life, eternity shall hold for them no hope or comfort – only the conscious
experience of eternal torment, separated from Him in the despair and agony of
hell. That reality can lead you to live in fear and dread, wondering against
all odds how you will fare on the day of resurrection and judgment. Or, this
promise can beckon you to call out to Him and know the glory of being raised
from spiritual death to spiritual life here and now. He calls out to you even
in the state of spiritual death. And so it is for good reason that the warning
is given to us in Hebrews 4:7, saying that God has fixed a certain day and
called it “Today,” saying, “Today if you hear His voice, do not harden your
hearts.” His voice comes to you through
message of His death and resurrection for your sin and for your salvation,
saying as it were, “Awake sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will
shine on you” (Eph 5:14).
If
today you are a spiritual zombie – a dead spirit walking around in a living
body – hear the voice of the Son of God calling and turn to Him and live. Then
you will know the sure and certain hope of the resurrection from death unto
life eternal through Jesus Christ our Lord. And if you have already experienced
that transformation from death to life in your spirit, live in the hope and
glory of it. Show those around you who are dead what it really means to live by
resting in Him and allowing His life to break forth into the world through you.
The world may not always like what they see of Him in you, but fear not. The
worst that this world can do to you is kill you. But take courage, Christ has
overcome the world, and He has overcome death, and He will call you forth from
the tomb and you will rise to life eternal with Him.
[1] http://news.yahoo.com/no-prank-halloween-us-military-forces-train-zombie-162141684.html.
Accessed November 8, 2012.
[2] http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.htm.
Accessed November 8, 2012.
[3] John
MacArthur, John 1-11 (MacArthur New
Testament Commentary; Chicago: Moody, 2006), 196-7.
[4] Wayne
Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), 692.
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