John 11:25,26

“ Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believes on me, even though he were dead, yet shall he live; 26 and whosoever lives and believes on me shall never die; believest thou this? ”

Martha has just spoken of the resurrection as of a future event; Jesus sets in opposition to this event His person (ἐγώ, I; εἰμί, I am), as being in reality the resurrection. Victory over death is not a physical fact; it is a moral work, a personal act; it is the doing of Jesus Himself (John 11:28-29: John 6:39-40; John 6:44); and consequently He can accomplish it when he pleases, to-day even, if He wishes, as well as after the passing of ages. Jesus thus brings back the thought of Martha to Himself and gives to her faith its true object. He substitutes for adherence to dogmatic truth confidence in His person. This is what He had also done in chaps. 4 and 6, where, after some moments of conversation, He had substituted Himself for the abstract notions of living water and bread from heaven.

After having declared Himself to be the resurrection, Jesus proclaims Himself as the life. It might be supposed that He means to speak of the glorious and perfect life which follows the resurrection. But according to the explanation which follows (John 11:25-26), it is better to hold, with Luthardt, that Jesus passes from the outward resurrection to the more profound fact which is its spiritual condition. If He is the principle of the physical resurrection, it is because He is that of life in the most exalted sense of that word (John 11:26, John 6:51). The spiritual life which He communicates to His own is for them, if they are dead, the pledge of a return to corporeal life; and, on the other hand, while still living, they are raised by it above the passing accident of physical death. The first declaration applies to Lazarus and to the other believers who were already dead. In virtue of the new life which they have received by faith, they continue living, and consequently they may, at the moment when Jesus wills, be recalled to corporeal existence. The second declaration (John 11:26) applies to the two sisters and to all the believers who were still living; they remain sheltered from death; for to die in full light, in the serene brightness of the life which is in Jesus, and to continue to live in Him (John 11:25) is no more the fact which human language has designated by the name of death (see on John 6:50, John 8:51). Jesus means therefore: In me the dead lives, and the living does not die. The terms to die, in the first clause, and to live, in the second, are to be taken in the strict sense.

This saying, by carrying the thought of Martha from the momentary and corporeal fact of the resurrection to its spiritual and permanent principle, gives to the person of Christ its true place in the miracle, and to the miracle its true religious significance. The resurrection of her brother becomes for her as if an emanation of the life of Jesus Himself, a ray of His glory, and thus the means of uniting the soul of Martha to Him, the source of life. Reuss sees in this answer of Jesus a means of setting aside the popular idea of the corporeal resurrection, or at least of divesting it of all theological value. One must be singularly preoccupied by his own theory to draw from this reply a conclusion which is so foreign to the context and so contrary to the perfectly free and clear affirmation of John 5:28-29. Jesus thus returned to the subject from which Martha had turned aside, the resurrection of Lazarus. Before acting, He asks her further: “ Believest thou this? ”