April 12, 2020 · John 11:24–26

Christus Victor

"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

“You can just be sitting down and then you rise up. That's what it really just means. … But it just comes from the simple word of just rising up. And I love it, because you think of this idea of, like, Jesus is sitting in the grave and then he stands up. He stands up. This is resurrection. Now the idea of resurrection was a very interesting idea. It was a huge argument in the day of Jesus. We know this because the Pharisees were very focused on the idea of resurrection. They believed in a literal resurrection. They took it from the book of Daniel, and also there's hints of it in Job. There's all kinds of hints of it throughout the prophets. But on the other hand, the Sadducees argued that there wasn't a resurrection — that this was not part of the story, and that when you died, you died. And this was a debate going on in the Jewish culture at the time. Nowadays, you'll find a lot of the Jewish community would argue that there is no resurrection. But this is something that you see is a live theological debate in the time of Jesus, and you can see where Martha is. She's on the resurrection camp. You know where Jesus is? He doesn't only believe in resurrection. He claims he himself is the resurrection. Notice that he doesn't say, I do resurrections. I am resurrection.”