What did Jesus mean when He said "I am the Resurrection and the Life" (John 11:25)?

He answers this simply, “Your brother will rise again” (v. 23). But she can think of this as nothing but the orthodox doctrine of a future general resurrection. How little comfort even true doctrine has in it apart from the person of Christ! Marvelous indeed is His reply, “I am the resurrection and the life.” In Him personally is the answer to her every need, as of all creation. “I Am” implies His deity, and certainly resurrection and life are resident only in God. He does not merely say that He can raise the dead and give life: this whole subject is rather dependent on His person.

John 11:25-27. The Lord graciously gives her a further word to turn her faith to Himself as a present resource. He says, "I am the resurrection and the life". The One Who has the power of resurrection and Who is "the life" is before her. Not only will He raise the dead, but He communicates life to the believer — eternal life. All will be raised, but only the believer will be raised to the resurrection of life. Unbelievers will come forth from the grave to the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29). The resurrection life is a life beyond the power of death, and sin, and judgment. Here the Lord speaks only of believers. The power of resurrection was present in the Person of the Son. When He puts forth that power, the believer in Jesus, though he have died, will live; and the believer who is living at that time will not die. The Lord was about to give a present proof of this power in raising Lazarus from the dead. The Lord challenges Martha with His question, "Believest thou this?"

Yet it was to Martha, and to Martha in this state of hopeless sorrow, though in the midst of it she clung to the Lord as her only refuge, that He made the wondrous proclamation: "I am the resurrection and the life" - I, Jesus, am this, in my own Person." The Lord speaks here as already present to accomplish the great results of His power, still hidden in His Person, but of which He was going to give the proof in the resurrection of Lazarus. When He shall exercise this power, he that believeth in Him, though he were dead, shall live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in Him shall never die. Power is in His person: the present proof of it was found in the resurrection of Lazarus; the accomplishment of it will be when He shall come back to exercise this power in its fulness. In the meantime the thing is realized according to the place Christ has taken. He raised up Lazarus for life in this world where He was." Death is the end of human life and hope; resurrection is the end of death, and the introduction of the raised one (we do not now speak of Lazarus) into a world where death shall be no more. Christ died and rose again, and it is in virtue of His glorious work that He has become for all His people the resurrection and the life. (Compare 1 Cor. 15:20-23, 54.)

Verse 25. "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life." Now we get the glory of Christ culminating. This is the highest point. This is not what He does, but what He is in Himself. "I am the resurrection and the life." He had all the power of it. In chapter 8 we read, "Before Abraham was, I am;" that gives us His Person as Jehovah, the Eternal. But here it is God able (Almighty) to meet and break the power of death which Satan had brought into the world. He says, "I have the power inherent in Myself." He puts, "the resurrection" first, because there was the poor body stinking in the grave. She says, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." That was orthodox faith. "Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live, and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." If any one dies now, yet shall he live, but when the Lord puts forth His resurrection power, whoever is there alive will never die. But if a man were to die, Christ has the power of resurrection and of life. "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye." He is talking here about believing.

Continuing in the company, as it were, of our evangelist, let us listen to the Lord Jesus when He met Martha outside the village of Bethany. To His statement, "Thy brother shall rise again," Martha assented, and fixed the time of it, as she responded, "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." To this the Lord at once replied, "I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?" (John 11:23-26.) Now what does this mean? Lazarus was already a quickened soul. It was not about his soul the Lord spoke. Yet Lazarus was dead. The Lord knew it. Mary reminded Him of it. Martha, when she met Him, owned it, and again at the grave called His attention to it, "Lord, by this time he stinketh; for he hath been dead four days." The Jews who were with them believed it. Physical death was the only thing in their minds. Of spiritual death there was no manner of surmise. The sorrow which filled the sister's heart arose from this, that death held Lazarus in its grasp. Death and burial had taken place when Christ was not there. For resurrection, however, He was needed. His power, and in this instance His personal presence too, were requisite. And now, on His way to the grave, He revealed what He is, the answer to that which had filled them with sorrow; for here among His saints He was ministering to such in their distress. "I am the resurrection and the life." Resurrection he mentions first, then life. For He was speaking with reference to death the wages of sin, and with reference to the circumstances in which at that moment they all were. He is the resurrection.

Before He raised Lazarus He declared, “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Everything was there in Him for both raising and giving life, essentially and potentially. Neither death nor corruption could stay His power. The glory of His person is involved in the whole question of resurrection, and since this is so we must hold to the truth of it with great tenacity.

Before we could be raised to eternal blessedness, He Himself must first die for us and be raised again, so as to take away death’s sting and victory. The resurrection of Lazarus, nevertheless, declared His glory. Indeed, his sickness was, as we are told, “for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified by it” (John 11:4). He might have healed him; but He waited; and His glory shone out at a grave-side of death and corruption. It is not ascension and glory which mark out the Son of God; but resurrection. So when He told Martha that He was the Resurrection and the Life, He also told her that the believer on Him who died, should live; also that everyone who lived and. believed on Him should never die. He then asked her a very important and pointed question: “Believest thou this?”

It was so with Martha. She believed in the resurrection in a general way, and quite realised that the power of God would resuscitate the body of her dead brother at the last day. But the Lord's revelation of Himself as the Resurrection and the Life completely overthrew her theory. There was the One immediately before her Who could raise Lazarus there and then by a word. It was no question of waiting for the last day. The question was whether Jesus was the Son of God Who "quickeneth whom he will" (John 5:21). For every difficulty of the human mind vanishes in the august presence of the Son from heaven.

179 We have, further, what our Lord was, as intrinsically in Himself, and yet how He did all things in dependence on His Father, which was His perfection as a Man. Martha's faith went further than simply so far seeing the prevention of evil by Jesus' presence. She believed or knew that, what Jesus asked, God would give Him. "He shall ask for thee, for he is a prophet." Hence the force in that day, "Ye shall ask me nothing"; and, "I say not that I will pray the Father for you." Being sons, we have the privilege of asking the Father directly. We ask in His name. Her apprehensions were confused, not practical; for she owned the fact of His Sonship, nothing of the office of Sonship. The Lord answers her case at once, her anxieties, in the power of what He was; the best way of meeting unbelief; and, while it draws out the point where there is want of intelligence in our faith, gives occasion to the meeting of it by that which is in Jesus. "I know that he shall rise in the resurrection in the last day." She recognised God as ordering this as a common point of faith for all; but there was no identification with Jesus in her mind. She knew that God would hear Jesus. She knew there was a resurrection in the last day. Such is the common faith. But Jesus' quickening power to His saints is another thing. "I am," said Jesus to her, "the resurrection and the life." The assertion is all-sufficient, and comprehends every point of positive faith; and as meeting the aspects of unbelief. There was a resurrection, and God would hear Jesus. Now, "I am the resurrection, and the life." Nor was it a mere general thing at the last day, but the intrinsic power of life in Jesus. "I am the resurrection, and the life." It was, in a word, what He was.

But let us follow out the depths of this doctrine. Death has come in; it must take effect. Man is really in death before God; but God in grace comes in. Two things are presented in our history. He might have healed. The faith and hope of neither Martha, Mary, nor the Jews, went any farther. Only Martha acknowledges that, as the Messiah, favoured of God, He would obtain from Him whatsoever He asked. But He had not prevented the death of Lazarus. He had done so many times, even for strangers, for whosoever desired it. In the second place, Martha knew that her brother would rise again at the last day; but true as it was, this truth availed nothing. Who would answer for man, dead through judgment on sin? To rise again and appear before God was not an answer to death come in by sin. The two things were true. Christ had often delivered mortal man from his sufferings in flesh, and there shall be a resurrection at the last day. But these things were of no value in the presence of death. Christ was, however, there; and He is, thanks be to God! the resurrection and the life. Man being dead, resurrection comes first. But Jesus is the resurrection and the life in the present power of a divine life. And observe that life, coming by resurrection, delivers from all that death implies, and leaves it behind — sin, death, all that belongs to the life that man has lost. Christ, having died for our sins, has borne their punishment — has borne them. He has died. All the power of the enemy, all its effect on mortal man, all the judgment of God, He has borne it all, and has come up from it, in the power of a new life in resurrection, which is imparted to us; so that we are in spirit alive from among the dead, as He is alive from among the dead. Sin (as made sin, and bearing our sins in His own body on the tree), death, Satan's power, God's judgment, are all past through and left behind, and man is in a wholly new state, in incorruption. It will be true of us, if we die (for we shall not all die), as to the body, or, being changed, if we do not die. But in the communication of His life who is risen from the dead, God has quickened us with Him, having forgiven us all our trespasses.

There is another life too which is the comfort for us. Resurrection is put first — "I am the resurrection and the life" — because men are under death; but what matter if a man is dead, if I can raise him? "I am the resurrection … He that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live." There was the power of life in Him. For those who are alive when He comes again, there will be no death at all, even of the body (He being the antidote, as it were). So that the power of death is gone when He appears. It will be literally true of some when He comes.