For my first intersection of eternity and time I will select an event in the New Testament of the Bible that deals with the mystery of death (John 11:1-45). This is a mystery that touches everyone, because everyone dies. The big question is, “What happens after death?” We catch a glimpse of the answer to that question in this account.
Religious people in times of distress often ask, “Where is God?” There are many reasons that people utter this question, but usually it is voiced from the temporal notion that if God were present and cared about their difficulty, He would “fix things,” and they would be able to see Him working according to their perceptions. Whatever the reason for the question, the simple answer given in the Bible is that God is there with them wherever and whenever they happen to be in space and time (see A Brief Bible Portrait of Jehovah under the Home tab in this blog). There are many examples of this answer in the biblical histories, but one of my favorites is the account of the death of Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, and the response of his sister Martha to Jesus. Take time to read the full story in John 11:1-45.
We know from the context of this story that Jesus delayed coming to Lazarus’s bedside until after he had died. Martha did not know this, and when Jesus finally arrived in town she complained to Him,
John 11:21 Martha then said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”
She did not realize that Jesus had been there from afar (a few miles away in her instance) and had a purpose in allowing Lazarus to die, rather than immediately healing him from his physical illness. That purpose, which Martha could not appreciate in her temporal moment of distress, was to raise Lazarus from the dead to glorify God before witnesses, so that they might believe God in spite of limiting temporal vision and circumstances.
John 11:14-15 So Jesus then said to them [His disciples] plainly, “Lazarus is dead, (15) and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe; but let us go to him.”
John 11:45 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him.
Two seemingly contradictory statements by Jesus to Martha (John 11:25-26) illustrate that Jesus is fully aware of the interplay between time and eternity here. Martha’s responses show a ready faith in her Lord, but incomplete comprehension of the temporal and eternal realms (John 11:24, 27).
John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, (26) and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”
Regarding her dead brother Lazarus’s current and future estate, Martha had these things to say:
John 11:24 Martha said to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”
John 11:27 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.”
Let us look first at Jesus’s statements and then at Martha’s splendid but time-shackled faith. Jesus first says, “who believes in Me will live even if he dies,” but immediately counters with “who lives and believes in me will never die.” I am tempted to reverently respond to our Lord’s seeming contradiction, “Lord which is it? Do we die and then live, or do we never die?” Some comment that Jesus is talking about two types of death and life–the physical and the spiritual–and interpret His statements thus, “who believes in me will die physically but never die spiritually.” Certainly such an assertion is true for Christian believers, but it is not what Jesus said, precisely. He had access to common Greek vocabulary to make such a statement, but He does not use it. He simply makes an awkward dual promise to His believers that:
#1 – First, they will live, even if (or after) they die.
#2 – Second, they will never die.
I call this dual promise awkward for humanity because of our time constrained point of view. The Bible teaches that Jesus was fully human and fully God. Jesus was not shackled in time, but could see clearly the intersect of eternity with time, as evidenced by this seeming contradiction. From the temporal perspective, which was that of Martha and those gathered with her, Lazarus was dead. They had seen his dead body and interred it in a tomb four days previously. They knew that decay had created a stench in that tomb, and resisted opening it when Jesus instructed (John 11:39). Clearly, from the temporal perspective, Lazarus died! Case closed!. You might refer his resurrection to some future mass event–the last day (John 11:24)–but Lazarus was clearly dead in the view of those who were around Jesus at this point in time!
But equally clearly, if we believe Christ, Lazarus never died. That is, Lazarus never saw death but proceeded from life to life, and was living at that very moment in the eternal realm. From His eternal consciousness Christ could see this, and speak personally to Lazarus and command him to come back from the eternal body into the temporal body. Thus from the eternal perspective Lazarus never died; he simply changed tents (bodies) as Paul explains in 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, and was “swallowed up by life” (verse 4) and “at home with the Lord” (verse 8) in an eternal body designed and built by God (verse 1). This description of earthly and heavenly bodies of believers immediately follows Paul’s declaration of the temporal and eternal perspectives,
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. (17) 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.
Jesus saw clearly both the temporal and eternal, and knew that what seemed contradictory in the temporal sense, made perfect and comforting sense in the eternal sense. Jesus, Himself the One and Only Grand Intersector of time and eternity, has invaded our time and speaks comfort to all mortals confined in their respective present moments. His calling forth of Lazarus from the tomb “with a great voice” (mega phone) clearly supports this interpretation of the temporal and eternal realms.
As a bemused (and hopefully not irreverent) afterthought, I have wondered why Jesus had to “use a megaphone” to call Lazarus. Was the reason that those mourners gathered around Him could hear His words and believe? Certainly this would be a good reason if the crowd were large. We do know this was a small village (a relatively small community or collection of houses), but not how many people were gathered at this particular moment. Could Jesus’s loud instruction, “come here!” have been necessary to convince Lazarus, who was experiencing the joy of an eternal heavenly body and environment, that he must return to a decaying carcass and resume a dying temporal life? Of course this is mere speculation on my part, but it derives from my own experience as a young boy enjoying playing outside with my neighborhood friends in the evening, when my mother would have to call me many times with increasing voice volume to get me to leave my enjoyment and come home for dinner.
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