“I am the resurrection and the life.” John 11:25
The I Am statements that Jesus made were to reveal who He really is. Jesus didn’t just provide bread; He is the Bread of Life. He doesn’t just give light; He is the light. He is the Door to life, and the one and only Good Shepherd. In today’s statement Jesus is saying that He doesn’t just resurrect people, but He is Life itself.
Back in Genesis chapter 2:15-17, we read that God had placed the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. He told Adam that he was not to eat from that tree, because in the day that he ate the fruit from it he would die. This was a twofold death. The first death was spiritual. Adam was immediately cut off from free and unashamed fellowship with God. He hid from God because he knew he had sinned and that something had now changed in their relationship. But sin also brought death and decay. The perfect body that had been designed to live forever had been poisoned and gradually that poison brought degeneration, sickness, old age and death.
In today’s passage, Jesus has arrived at a place of deep grief and sorrow. He was close friends with a family of two sisters and a brother. The brother had died and been buried, and the two sisters are still in a period of intense grief. They were true followers of Jesus and believed that he was the Messiah. Jesus performed one of His greatest miracles when he raised their brother Lazarus from the grave after being dead for 4 days.
But the point of this miracle was not to show what He could do, but to show that Jesus is the way back to life; the spiritual life that was destroyed when Adam ate from the forbidden tree. Adam’s sin brought spiritual death, but Jesus’ death brought back spiritual life.
Jesus says in v25, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” He was talking about spiritual life, and He demonstrated this spiritual truth through raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus went on to die again. But he had spiritual life that goes on living beyond death.
The spiritual life of union with God that Adam lost, was regained through Christ’s death. Once we have received this new spiritual life, even though our natural bodies will die, we will continue to live in fellowship with God, and one day we will be given new bodies that will never decay, degenerate or die. Jesus is true life, both natural and spiritual for all that will believe that He is who He said He is. Jesus asks the eternal question to us today, “Do you believe this?”