12/22/2025
Jesus declares in John 11, “I am the resurrection and the life.” This statement cannot be separated from who He has always been. Likewise, in the beginning was the Word, and that same Word is also the end. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last. Because He is the beginning and the end, death can never be the end. For a long time, death assumed it had the final word. It believed that once it delivered its strongest blow, the story was over. But death did not account for Jesus—not just as the beginning, but as the very end as well. When death thought it had won, here came Jesus, the Resurrection Himself, triumphing over what believed it had the last word. Since He is both the beginning and the end, death can never be the end.
Jesus is not only life, before or void of death; He is The Life even after death! In Christ, death never wins. In Christ, death is never final. It is merely a precursor to resurrection life. Resurrection Life has the final word! This is the revelation Jesus was unveiling in John 11 when Mary and Martha believed that if Jesus had healed Lazarus before he died, everything would have been fine—but once he died, they assumed it was over. Their hope of resurrection was real, but distant. They believed resurrection belonged to a future day, something reserved for the "Last Day.” Martha said she knew Lazarus would rise again at the last day, but she clearly had no expectation for "today". In response, Jesus didn't affirm her timeline—He was redefined it. He was letting her know that He Himself is the Last Day--TODAY IS RESURRECTION DAY! They didn’t need to wait for another day or a future event. The Resurrection incarnate was standing right in front of them!
Because Jesus is the Resurrection, “today” is always the day of salvation! Today is always the day of healing and deliverance! For the believer, today is always the "Last Day", because The Resurrection is not an event—it's a Person. Jesus was revealing that He wasn’t going to simply participate in resurrection someday, but that He is presently the Resurrection right now! If He can raise up someone on the last day after their body has completely decomposed and returned to dust, raising up anything shy of that is a breeze. Mary and Martha had full confidence that Jesus could have healed Lazarus prior to death, no matter how severe the circumstances, but they struggled to believe He could do anything after death had already occurred—after the tomb was sealed and decomposition had begun. We often struggle to even believe that God can heal, much less, that He can raise up something appears fully dead.
Jesus made it clear that they didn’t have to wait for resurrection life. He is Resurrection Life. Why wait for what you can have now? If Jesus was ever the Resurrection, and He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, The Beginning and The End, then He is still the Resurrection—and He lives in us! He is not outside, speaking to an empty tomb. He's inside of us, presently releasing resurrection life into our mortal bodies. The same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lives in us and is actively at work. That resurrection life abiding inside of us impacts and transforms everything aspect of everything it touches, just like it did in Jesus and Lazarus.
Jesus is preeminent in all things to the church (you and I), including resurrection. He is the firstborn from the dead, both physically and spiritually. . His resurrection required infinitely greater power than anything we will ever face. When Jesus was raised, He had become sin, was forsaken, cursed, physically dead, and spiritually dead. Yet the Spirit of God overcame all of that. That reality should send our confidence through the roof. We have never been made sin or taken on the sin of the whole world. We are not forsaken, we aren't cursed, we aren't spiritually dead, or physically dead. What the Spirit accomplished in raising Jesus from the dead makes whatever we face now far less demanding. What can feel overwhelming to us is a cake walk for God.
Death itself has already been humiliated. It has been stripped of authority and publicly defeated. Sickness and disease—cancer, arthritis, MS, diabetes, organ failure, the botch, the itch, infections, pandemics—are all less than death itself, yet even death has already been conquered. The entire universe saw the butt kicking take place and knows this. That's why all of creation is waiting in earnest expectation of the manifestation of the sons of God (Romans 8:19). Creation had a front row seat at the massacre that took place when Jesus rose from the dead and sent sickness, disease, and death running with their tails between their legs.
Even more astonishing is that we were raised up together with Christ in His victory and seated with Him far above every lie, sickness, and disease. Death no longer reigns victorious. It no longer holds the title of champion. It does not have the final word. Jesus is the Word who occupies the beginning, and He is the final Word who occupies end. When death has done all that it can do, here comes THE RESURRECTION!
Jesus waited for Lazarus to die, not because He was trying to muster up power, but because He loved them. Healing Lazarus would have only proven what they already knew—that Jesus could prevent death. But raising Lazarus revealed something they had never seen: victory over death. Jesus allowed death to run its full course so He could expose its limits. He loved them enough to reveal that His love for them/us goes beyond even the power of death. In John 11:3, He made it clear that the sickness would not end in death. He never said that Lazarus wouldn't die. Lazarus did die, but death did not get the final word. Resurrection Life did. This revelation removes the fear from every diagnosis and every threat of death. Death doesn’t even change Jesus’ posture. In the face of death, nothing about Him shifts.
The life that creates all things is the same life that resurrects all things. Resurrection is not a greater work—it is the same life at work. Nothing was created without Jesus, and nothing is resurrected without Him. Death does not glorify God. Resurrection Life does. The “Last Day” has meaning only because of Jesus. Without Him, the term is empty. But because the Resurrection lives in us, every day is Resurrection Day! Every day is the Last Day. Why wait? Make today resurrection day—because Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life, lives in you right now!
