Christ & True Reality — Warrior+Priest

John 11 records the raising of Lazarus from the dead. A story many Christians are very familiar with, to be sure, but a remarkable account, nonetheless.

During a reading of it recently with a group of friends, I couldn’t help but notice Jesus’ startling quote in verse 4. When informed that His friend Lazarus was ill and at the point of death, He responded with, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

Interesting.

Because two days later, Lazarus died. But when Jesus informed the disciples who were with Him that Lazarus was dead, He said, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”

Interesting.

The disciples, being the normal, down-to-earth types that they seem to have been, replied with, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover.” (Verse 13 offers abundant clarity in case we miss it: “Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought that He meant taking rest in sleep.”) Jesus then clarifies to them directly, “Lazarus has died…”

So, according to Jesus, the illness that killed Lazarus “[did] not lead to death,” and once Lazarus had died, he “[had] fallen asleep”.

What is this? Was Christ being obtuse? What’s with the weirdly poetical redefinition of common terms? What’s happening here?

I think it’s important to point out how much emphasis Jesus places in this account on two things: first, that this happened the way it did in order to bring both glory to God as well as a truer knowledge of who exactly Jesus was, and secondly, how Christ’s deliberate alteration of language points to the existence of a deeper reality about which most people are completely unaware.

First, take note of how many times the text explicitly makes the point that the death and resurrection of Lazarus took place to make a big deal out of God.

“It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (vs. 4)

“Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe.” (vs. 14-15)

“Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (vs. 40)

“…I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” (vs. 42)

Get the picture? In the midst of all the question asking and accusations, all the mourning and pain, all of the misunderstanding, Christ does what He does to showcase Himself and God as the absolutely most important pieces of the puzzle. Lazarus’s death, the confusion of his family and the disciples, the indignation of those who claimed that Lazarus would not have died had Jesus come sooner – all of it got answered with the kind of power and authority only God could wield.

And that’s the point.

The point is that God is the point.

Don’t miss it.

Next, consider the way in which Christ flips our understanding of common words on their heads. Lazarus dies from an illness that, “does not lead to death,” “falling asleep” actually means physically dying, and, after claiming to actually be life itself (in vs. 25), Christ says that, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

Well, which one is it? How can someone die and yet live, but still never die?

I think it’s clear that Jesus’ phraseology is meant to be deliberately provocative and deeply revealing. Death, it seems, is not what we all seem to think that it is. Not fully, anyway.

Paul would write later in one of his epistles that death means “[alienation] from the life of God” (Ephesians 4:18) and that unrepentant people, though physically alive, are “dead in trespasses and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). Death, in its truest sense, in its realest sense, is something much more than physical expiration. Death that really, truly matters is separation from life itself – namely, God Himself.

God said as much to Adam and Eve way back in Genesis 2:17 when He commanded them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because, “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” And since we know that the parents of humanity were not physically destroyed once they disobeyed, I think it’s safe to conclude from all of this that there is a much realer death than the type we typically think of when we hear the word.

All of this leads us to a very, very important conclusion: that the true essence of reality is something far beyond our ability to comprehend. Reality, in its deepest sense, is something bigger than our powers of detection or observation will allow us to grasp. There is a higher realm of existence than we are currently equipped to understand.

To Christ, bringing someone back from the dead was as simple as waking him up from sleep. And because the illness that killed his physical body did not separate him from Christ (I hope Romans 8:38-39 is ringing loudly in your memory), it was not, in Christ’s mind, an illness that led to real, true death. Amidst the reality of Christ, even physical death itself is but a shadow and a picture of something far, far more important and vital. Don’t miss this: we die physically because we died spiritually, and if we are raised spiritually, than even physical death can never really, truly harm us in any long-lasting way.

That is what it means to know life itself, personified in Jesus Christ. That is what it means to live even though you die. That is the real nature of the reality we can know about but not truly sense yet: that the reality of Christ is more real than anything we are able to currently perceive, that the universe of physical existence is but a tiny fraction of complete reality, and that Christ is the master of all of it.

It is easy and natural to conclude that because we can sense real things, then what we sense comprises all of what is real. But, as our Lord demonstrated in the account of John 11, few things could be further from the truth.

Again, to know Christ is to know life Himself, and that life is deeper, truer, and realer than you or I have any ability to comprehend. To know Christ is to acknowledge that our notions and understandings of life, existence, truth, and reality are woefully, decidedly, and necessarily incomplete and we need Him to bridge the gaps.

Reality is far more than we can sense or understand. So when it comes to what is true, what is real, and what is important, do not rely on yourself to reach accurate conclusions. Instead, come to the One from whom all reality emanates and trust Him.

After all, there is nothing that is that does not owe its very existence to Christ. He might just know a thing or two about it.

“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

For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. – Colossians 1:16-17