Enjoying Resurrection Life Today
John 11 is one of the incredible high points of the Gospel: Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, and he declares those great words of hope, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
The resurrection is crucial to our faith, but I find that I’m much like Martha in John 11. She believes in the resurrection but does not see how that helps now. “I know,” She tells Jesus about her brother Lazarus, “that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (11:24). I believe in the resurrection; I just have trouble seeing how it’s relevant to the problem at hand.
The resurrection is a past reality and a future promise. Christ was raised from the dead. He will raise us in the new creation. Yet, the New Testament also speaks of the resurrection as a present power. Paul expresses his desire to know and experience Jesus as longing to “know him and the power of his resurrection” (Phil 3:10). Similarly, for the church in Ephesus he prays that they would know “what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph 1:19-20). Thus, the resurrection is not just something we look forward to in the future, but it is something to be enjoyed today.
The resurrection is not just something we look forward to in the future, but it is something to be enjoyed today.
The resurrection of Christ means that the new creation has dawned. Like the sun rising, the light begins to spread across the face of the earth. The world is fundamentally different because Christ has been raised. To lean into the light and dark imagery of this Gospel, the darkness of the world has not yet been fully displayed. Christ our sun has risen but is not yet shining as the noonday sun. Sin, death, and the devil have been defeated.
The resurrection has universal implications: “Behold,” God declares in Revelation, “I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5). The whole world will be remade in the new creation. The resurrection also has incredibly personal implications. Paul explains, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Through Jesus’s resurrection, the new creation has come into the life of all who trust in him.
The power of the resurrection is now at work in all who believe. The same Holy Spirit who was at work in raising Christ from the dead (Rom 8:11) is now at work in all who believe (Eph 1:19-20). This truth means that through Christ transformation is possible. By God’s grace and through the Spirit’s work, you can actually change. It’s a truism that people can’t change, but people also don’t rise from the dead. Yet, Lazarus came out of the tomb, and by the power of the resurrection, we can actually be transformed, becoming more and more like the one who has rescued us from death to life.
To be raised from the dead, we first have to die. Paul continues in Philippians 3, “That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (3:10-11). We will only find resurrection life when we die to self. Jesus tells us, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34).
Want to go deeper with the gospel of John? Check out our daily devotional that focuses on chapters 11-12 from the Gospel of John.
We can’t experience the power of the resurrection if we don’t die. We have to die to ourselves in order to have life in Christ. Perhaps most fundamentally, we need to die to the lie of self-sufficiency. We need to die to the idea that we could ever find life in ourselves.
Instead, we need to find resurrection life in the one who declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.” The good news of the gospel is that Christ Jesus died so that we too could enjoy his resurrection life today.
