John 11:23–26 is typically translated as:
“Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’
Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’
Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’”
We usually hear “I am the resurrection and the life” as a theological statement about who Jesus is. But in the conversation, Jesus is correcting Martha. He tells her Lazarus will rise. Martha agrees, but moves the possibility into the distant future: “at the last day.” Jesus brings it back to himself, standing in front of her now: ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἡ ζωή, “I am the resurrection and the life.”
Something Jesus said earlier may explain why. Before leaving for Bethany, he tells his disciples, Λάζαρος ὁ φίλος ἡμῶν κεκοίμηται, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep,” and then, πορεύομαι ἵνα ἐξυπνίσω αὐτόν, “I am going to wake him.” The disciples assume he means ordinary sleep, so Jesus tells them plainly: Λάζαρος ἀπέθανεν, “Lazarus died.” We normally hear this as a correction: I did not really mean sleeping; Lazarus is dead. But perhaps Jesus means both.
In Jesus’s world, there was no medical test for irreversible death. At some point a motionless person simply had to be judged dead, wrapped, carried into a rock-cut tomb, and laid on stone. Jewish tradition even preserves the practice of returning to tombs for three days to see whether someone might still be alive. Mistakes were made. Lazarus can therefore have “died” in the practical sense—judged dead and placed in the tomb—while Jesus still believes there is life in him. That would explain his language perfectly: Lazarus has fallen asleep, and Jesus is going to wake him.
Now return to Martha. She believes Jesus could have saved Lazarus before. She believes Lazarus can rise again someday. What she cannot imagine is the possibility between those two: that Lazarus can still be brought back now. Jesus can. Perhaps that is the immediate meaning of “I am the resurrection and the life.” Martha is waiting for resurrection; Jesus is the person standing in front of her who still recognizes life. When everyone else has decided Lazarus is finished, Jesus has not.
Then he asks Martha, πιστεύεις τοῦτο; “Do you believe this?” At the tomb, we discover what that means. Martha warns that Lazarus will smell. Jesus tells her to take away the stone. She must decide whether her judgment that Lazarus is finished is more certain than Jesus’s belief that he is not.
They move the stone. Lazarus comes out.
And perhaps that is why Jesus makes the teaching larger than Lazarus, speaking of “whoever” and “everyone.” Lazarus is the most extreme example of a mistake we make all the time. We decide that someone is finished, and then begin treating our judgment as reality.
But Jesus Is teaching us that people who seem finished sometimes still have life in them. They fail. They fall apart. They give up on themselves. Eventually, everyone around them gives up too. What they may need most is one person who can still see the life that everyone else has stopped looking for. They need someone to believe in them.
Belief does not create that life. The life is already there. Belief is refusing to bury it too soon.
For Lazarus, Jesus was that person.
Insightful!