That You May Have LifeSample

Jesus: The Resurrection & the Life

“Why did God have to make this so difficult?” I asked my husband. It had been a long morning of unsuccessfully trying to get our newborn to sleep after a long night of also trying to get our newborn to sleep. I was frustrated, exhausted, and feeling emotionally empty two weeks after giving birth to our second child. My husband empathized with me and then responded with the simple but profound truth that I needed to hear: “It’s the hard things that keep us close to God, and isn’t that what’s ultimately best for us?”

We can tend to view suffering as proof of God’s apathy or even unkindness. But maybe it’s just the opposite. Maybe hardships are proof of God’s love, the very thing that will draw us nearer to him. In John 11, we see two women whose own experience with suffering leads them to encounter God’s love.

In the passage, a friend of Jesus named Lazarus is sick, and his sisters, Mary and Martha, send word to Jesus, letting him know. John 11:5-6 says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” In the time Jesus delays to come, Lazarus dies.

Once Jesus gets to the sisters, they voice their dismay that Jesus, performer of miracles and healer of the sick, had not shown up in time to save his friend. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died,” they both express. Jesus’s delay appears to reveal a lack of care. But remember, John tells us that Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, and so he delayed. Jesus allows Lazarus to die - he allows Mary and Martha to suffer grief - because he loves them. How can this be?

Earlier, in John 11:4, Jesus states that Lazarus’s illness is “for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Jesus will display God’s glory through Lazarus’s illness and death; an encounter with God’s glory is ultimately the most loving thing one can be given.

In conversation with Martha, Jesus then makes his great claim: “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (John 11:25-26).” Jesus is saying - I will raise your brother from the dead today, a picture of the reality I have come to extend to the world! Whoever loves and believes in me will receive eternal life.

To have eternal life is to have eternal fellowship with Jesus. This is stated clearly in John 17:3, which says, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Anything, therefore, that brings us to know more of God and his glory is a gift of eternal life!

After talking to the sisters and weeping with them in their grief, Jesus goes to Lazarus’s tomb. “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” Jesus questions (John 11:40). And then he commands, “Lazarus, come out!” (John 11:43). Lazarus emerges, risen from the grave.

Jesus loved Mary and Martha by revealing God’s resurrection power through Lazarus’s death. In the same way, Jesus loves us by revealing more of himself and his glory to us in our suffering!

Lazarus is a preview of our resurrection. Because Jesus is the resurrection and the life, we believe that Jesus will return and restore all things: our broken world, our broken bodies, and our broken hearts. In our suffering, we see the glory of God through the hope he gives us! But this is not all - we also see the glory of God through the fellowship he gives us within our trials. As we see more of Jesus and grow closer to Jesus, we move deeper into his gift of eternal life.

Sitting in the nursery rocking chair that morning, my eyes wet with tears in defeat, I thought about the sustaining strength promised to me by God. Psalm 46 came to mind: “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” In my moment of frustration, I came to know in a fuller way that God was with me. He walks with me and gives me his strength. In this fresh revelation of God’s glory, I found a deeper intimacy with him, an intimacy that nourished my soul and gave me life.