Death and sleep.
If Jesus is God, as He claims to be, then His references from the eternal perspective are truthful. “Let God be true and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4). Jesus’ statements from the eternal perspective must be distinguished from His words spoken from the human temporal perspective in order to dispel confusion and expose the Gospel to a fuller understanding. Both Jesus and Paul clearly express the contrast between the temporal and the eternal perspectives.
(John 5:24) “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life.
(2 Corinthians 4:17-18) For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, {18} while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
In the passage above from John’s gospel, the words “passed out” are the Greek perfect tense, which refers to a past decision or action which accounts for a present condition. Those who have trusted Christ have eternal life now, in time, and forever out of time. For a time we who hear and believe see only the temporal, but when we leave this earthly vale, we will have a much broader view and understanding from the eternal perspective. But for now we trust the words and experience of Jesus, Who has come from eternity into historic earth-time to rescue us from death in time and deliver us to life in eternity. Without Jesus’ personal witness and resurrection we have no hope for eternal life, because He is the only living human witness to Paradise and eternal life.
In order to appreciate Jesus’ view of life and death, we may look at a couple of New Testament scenes. These scenes seem to differ with Old Testament statements examined in the previous post #13. These scenes present two views of death—the temporal, which is dissolution and extinction of the person, and the eternal, which is sleep.
In these scenes the concept of “sleep” has two strikingly different meanings, depending on the perspective of the speaker. A few representative examples follow.
1st example: (Matthew 9:23-24) When Jesus came into the official’s house, and saw the flute-players and the crowd in noisy disorder, He said, “Leave; for the girl has not died, but is asleep.” And they were laughing (imperfect tense “kept on laughing”) at Him.
The occasion above is a funeral for the daughter of a Jewish ruler. She had just died. Her father worships Jesus and believes that Jesus can restore her life and asks him to come and raise her from the dead. The father is anxious for Jesus to arrive as soon as possible to resuscitate his daughter, but Jesus is in no hurry. He is pressed in by the crowds, and by another person in severe and protracted need of physical assistance. This other person is the woman with a debilitating hemorrhage for twelve years, and she is healed when she reaches out to Christ in faith.
When Jesus arrives at the Jewish ruler’s house, a typical eastern funereal lament is in process. Jesus’ statement that the girl “has not died, but is asleep” comes from his eternal perspective in which death is not a permanent dissolution of being, but a state of existence which is substantially different from the temporal estate familiar to His critics. Jesus’ critics view her death from the dusty temporal perspective. Knowing with certainty that she is dead, they ridicule Jesus (literally, in the Greek manuscripts, “they were laughing against him”) with their ghastly grins of death.
These scoffers’ view is temporal and Sadduceean. They are no different than today’s postmodern philosophers who view death as a purely “natural” phenomenon of the physical person and who view the soul of a person as no more than an absurd reduction to the sum of physical parts.
But Jesus’ view is that she is sleeping, because she is not held in the thrall of death as far as He, the Giver of Life from His eternal perspective, is concerned. But before Jesus employs his power to waken her from the “sleep” of death, he sends the skeptics out of the house. God’s power is exercised in consideration of the faith of people, not in contradiction or combat with unbelief and scoffing.
On another occasion, Jesus is quite clear about the difference between his eternal view of “sleep” and the opposing common temporal view. On this occasion Jesus is notified of Lazarus’ severe illness when he speaks these words:
2nd example: (John 11:11-14) [Jesus] said to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I go, so that I may awaken him out of sleep.” The disciples then said to Him, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He was speaking of literal sleep. So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead,
There is no uncertainty in Jesus’ mind that the finality of death in the temporal realm is merely “sleep” from his eternal viewpoint. Once again, Jesus refuses to be hurried and thereby shows His lack of confinement by temporal notions. When he is notified that his friend Lazarus is sick unto death, he tarries two days before going to Bethany. When Jesus finally arrives at Lazarus’ home in Bethany, Lazarus has been dead and buried four days.
Jesus is not hurried in time because he is fully aware and confident of the eternal reality. In his earthly life in the flesh Jesus is able to transcend time by continually entrusting his life and walk to his eternal Father. Many are familiar with John’s account of how Jesus calls Lazarus out of the sleep of death and back into this world of temporal dimension.
There are no muttering incantations used to revive decaying flesh. Rather, Jesus speaks a simple prayer to his Father, and utters a command for Lazarus to come forth, as though Lazarus were not an insentient corpse of decaying matter but perfectly capable of hearing the call to be restored to his former fleshly estate in historic time.
(John 11:38-43) So Jesus, again being deeply moved within, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. Jesus said, “Remove the stone.” Martha, the sister of the deceased, said to Him, “Lord, by this time there will be a stench, for he has been dead four days.” Jesus said to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?” So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes, and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. I knew that You always hear Me; but because of the people standing around I said it, so that they may believe that You sent Me.” When He had said these things, He cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”
This incident clearly illustrates the preeminence of the eternal perspective in Jesus’ mind. His prayer is uttered for the benefit of the people standing around him, so that they may see and trust his Father in the eternal realm, just as He does. Jesus previously told His disciples that this whole affair was so that God might be glorified and they might believe the reality and power of the eternal operating in the temporal realm.
(John 11:4) But when Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”
(John 11:14-15) So Jesus then said to them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.”
God is glorified when men “believe” him and adopt his eternal perspective. The Greek word “believe” means “trust and obey.” Trust, in God the Father who sent Jesus, is what spans the gap between the temporal and eternal. Trust in God for relief of the penalty of sin enables human exodus from the cursed world of historic time and death into God’s eternal paradise.
Nowhere is the difference between the temporal and eternal viewpoints better illustrated than in Jesus’ dialogue with Lazarus’ sister, Martha, who greets Jesus with a challenge.
(John 11:21-26) Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. “Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to Him, “Yes, Lord; I have believed that You are the Christ, the Son of God, even He who comes into the world.”
The statements of Jesus in verses 25-26 (underlined above) contrast the temporal and eternal viewpoints, but at the expense of creating a conundrum. Jesus says that the person who trusts Him will live even though he dies. Thus Jesus clearly recognizes the fact of death, a fact which he had already stated with regard to Lazarus (John 11:14). This is the temporal view. But in the same sentence Jesus proclaims that everyone who lives and believes (trusts and obeys) him will never die! This is the eternal view!
How can a person die, and yet never die? Such apparent contradiction in a single sentence challenges temporal understanding and, as in the previous example of the ruler’s daughter, baffles those who are constrained by the temporal perspective. Jesus then asks Martha, “Do you believe this?” Martha’s response is to restate her faith in a fashion similar to the radio commentators’ statement of their faith in the word of God, though it is seems that while she is willing to trust her friend Jesus, she does not really understand what he is telling her.
The purpose in this series of posts is to seek a deeper understanding of Jesus’ enigmatic statements by showing that they are beautiful paradoxes, which illustrate the extreme complexity and sovereignty and glory of God who transcends his creation, but is supremely caring and rational in the light of his eternal perspective. Before specifically addressing the proposed resolution of this beautiful paradox, we should further examine similar paradoxes in order to achieve a more comprehensive and satisfying resolution of the paradox of death and sleep.
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