There
are several passages to which I wish to refer that clarify the teaching of a
future physical resurrection. The purpose for including such is not to suggest
that the church would disagree with these interpretations (in most cases) but
to contrast this lucidity with what the Bible has to say about going to Heaven.
Therefore
the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the
Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.
Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son
can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He
does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the
Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him
greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the
dead and gives life to them,
even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but
has committed all judgment to the Son, that all should honour the Son just as
they honour the Father. He who does not honour the Son does not honour the
Father who sent Him. Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and
believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into
judgment, but has passed from death into life. Most assuredly, I say to you,
the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of
God; and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He
has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to
execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for
the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and
come forth—those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who
have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation.”
It is important to
establish from the outset the meaning of ‘life’
in this passage, as it will help when dealing with the difficulty of verse twenty
four. ‘For as the Father raises the dead
and gives life to them,
even so the Son gives life to whom He will’ (v21). What would the audience have understood from
this word? It seems to me that ‘spiritual life’, as we often call it, is not in
mind. Jesus is talking about the ‘works’
that the Jews were aware God to be capable of performing (v20). It should
therefore be straightforward to see bodily resurrection as the reference. The
Jews knew that the Father could raise the dead and give life to them (e.g. 1st
Kings 17:17-24; 2nd Kings 4:8-37), and since Jesus is saying that
the Father is permitting the Son to perform the same works, one can only
conclude that Jesus ‘gives life’ the
same way that the Father ‘gives life’.
The key expression is ‘even so’ (or ‘in this way’, from οὕτως / outōs); it affirms the symmetry between the actions of the Father and the
Son. If the Father physically raised the dead from their graves, ‘even so’ the Son would do
likewise. ‘Life’ therefore is to be
understood in the expected bodily context when reading this part of John
chapter five.
The overall context of the
passage is the Jewish response to Jesus healing someone on the Sabbath and
calling God His Father: they began seeking to kill Him (vv16-18). Jesus’
response to this was to point out that they would witness even greater signs of
who He was (v20). It is after saying this that He spoke about raising the dead
(v21), which would seem a very strong indication that this is what He had in
mind when referring to ‘greater works’
at which the Jews would ‘marvel’ (v20).
Was this not demonstrated
when He raised Lazarus (chapter eleven)? Interestingly, within the above text,
Jesus spoke about life coming to those who ‘hear
the voice of the Son of God’. The sign of Lazarus’ resurrection is
significant because Jesus spoke
before Lazarus rose (11:43-44). This sign would demonstrate the reality of what
Jesus could do for all who believe in Him.
The difficulty of verse twenty
four is that Jesus seems all of a sudden to speak of ‘life’ in a figurative or spiritual sense: ‘he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has
everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from
death into life.’ The reason
for regarding ‘life’ as a spiritual
entity here is its seemingly immediate receipt as a result of faith: ‘he who hears...and believes...has...
life’. Presumably then this could not refer to a future physical resurrection
because the moment one hears Jesus’ words and believes in the God who sent Him,
the life is received.
First of all, however, the
common translation of the text is doubtful in one small, but key area. The following
translation spotted the correct use of the present tense, which other
translations do not apply:
Verily,
verily, I say to you -- He who is hearing my word, and is believing
Him who sent me, hath life age-during, and to judgment he doth not come, but
hath passed out of the death to the life. (John
5:24. Young’s Literal Translation)
In most other English
translations ‘believes’ and ‘hears’ could be understood as momentary actions
from which one receives a permanent gift. However, the YLT and, more
importantly, the Greek verbs (present active participles) suggest something
more than instantaneous hearing and believing. The expressions ‘is hearing’ and ‘is believing’ suggest ongoing
hearing and believing. In other words, the hearing and believing must, at the
very least, last more than a moment.
Is it a ‘life’ then that can be won and lost,
depending upon one’s state of faith? No, because the context has already
established that the life in question is a physically resurrected life to be
realised in the future. As such, to have it presently (‘has everlasting life’) is simply to be walking under the
guarantee that one will receive it. Those who are hearing and believing the
words of Jesus are those who are being guaranteed this ‘life’. It is theirs. They are attaining to it.
I think a strong clue to
validating this interpretation of verse twenty four, aside from its preceding
verses, is found in what Jesus says next:
Most assuredly, I say to
you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the
voice of the Son of God; and those who hear [‘heard’ YLT] will live. (John 5:25)
The majority of this quote
is fixed to a future date when the hearing
and living would be experienced. It
is a prophetic statement. The exception to this rule is the one part of the
quote that says ‘and now is’. I do
not think those three words play as major a role within the statement as to
infer that ‘the hour’ had come to stay, otherwise there
would have been no point in reverting back to the future tense for the
remainder of the statement. If the experience of ‘hearing’ and ‘living’ were
here to stay, why was the future tense used at all by Jesus? Rather, it seems
that Jesus is hinting that, for a brief moment, the future ‘life’ of the resurrection would be a
reality for His Jewish audience. One could call it a taste a things to come,
but biblically it is better to call it a ‘sign’.
The only interpretation
that makes sense to me is that Jesus was referring to ‘life’ in the sense of physical resurrection. ‘The hour is coming’ referred to His second coming, a time when He
will resurrect His people. ‘And now is’
referred to that time while He remained on earth, and was demonstrated in the
physical resurrection of Lazarus. ‘And
now is’ was the time of giving the
signs.
This understanding can then
help provide a clearer context for what Jesus meant in the preceding verse
where He spoke about having
everlasting life and passing from
death into life (present tense words). It all seems to be predicated upon a
future physical event, so to spiritualise His words into present-day fulfilment is something we should avoid.
Because the Lord Jesus is
now in Heaven we obviously don’t have the opportunity today to witness Him
physically resurrect the dead. We must wait until His return before He does
such a thing again. But even while we remain alive we are allowed to possess
that ‘life’, to have passed ‘from death into life’. I would view this
in the sense of possessing it as our hope,
or guarantee. While I live faithfully I am attaining to that life. But, as I
don’t fully have it yet, I cannot truly ‘lose’ it.
If Jesus were not speaking
about physical life and death in verses twenty four and twenty five there is no
mistaking it in verses twenty eight and twenty nine.
Do
not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves
will hear His voice and come forth—those who have done good, to the
resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of
condemnation.
After this, Jesus proceeded
to speak about the reliability of His witness, which suggests a slight change
of theme (v30ff). This, to me, warrants considering the above passage as one
unit of thought, with ‘life and death’ (and the inherent judgment involved) the
central focus. For Jesus to be speaking about spiritual life and death in verse twenty four, but to open and
conclude the teaching with comments on physical
life and death seems strange to me.
It is only a thought, but
if Jesus is prophesying about ‘life and death’, if He is revealing an important
truth in few words, would it not make more sense for that ‘life and death’ to
be of the same nature throughout the statement? Should it not either all be about spiritual ‘life and death’,
or all about physical ‘life and
death’?
Though I find it perfectly
understandable to interpret verses like verse twenty four in a non-physical
context, I don’t see justification within the above text for doing so. Jesus
spoke of passing ‘from death into life’
and then, at the end of the statement, said that some of those ‘who are in the graves’ will come
forth to ‘the resurrection of life’.
It seems to be that the latter statement, explicitly physical in nature, defined
what He meant by passing ‘from death into
life’. Furthermore, both are dependent upon hearing His voice (vv.24, 28).
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