“Do you believe this?” is one of the more direct and piercing questions from our Lord. It was posed to Martha when her brother Lazarus died and Jesus arrived just days later (Jn. 11:20-27). When Jesus expressed that He is the resurrection and the life, that resurrection and life are within His being, He pointedly asked her, “Do you believe this?”
There are two things that stand out to me in this question. First, it deals with a subject we’d love to avoid: death. Second, it is dealing with a subject that is the crux of the Christian faith: belief. The irony is that the latter concept, when truly realized through Christ, allows one to overcome the former concept.
Death
I’ve always been astounded by how we (at least in American life) avoid the concept of death. We avoid discussions. We avoid thoughts. We even avoid the word itself, opting instead for euphemisms like “pass away.” We avoid it until we are forced to confront it. Yet, all of us—every single person alive—has completely resigned himself to death being the great foe, even if done passively. Consider that we seek cures for cancer, heart disease, AIDS, and all manner of sickness. Where is the group or organization seeking to eliminate death? I’m not advocating that we become obsessed with death or become particularly morbid, but the way that our culture tends to run from it doesn’t help us with the spiritual nature of it nor cause us to make sober changes accordingly.
Belief
This belief is not a generalized belief or faith; it’s a reference to faith or belief in Christ. More particularly, the belief being addressed is within the context of John 11:20-27. In this passage, Jesus makes a clear declaration about His being in two ways. First, there’s the “I AM” aspect of the statement. John is quick to highlight the “I AM” element of Jesus’s statements throughout his gospel. The Greek, ego eimi (εγο ειμι), calls our attention back to Moses’s encounter with God at the burning bush where God expressed His divine, self-sufficient being (Hebrew ehyeh). Make no mistake, John wanted his readers to see this divine parallel, and few Jewish listeners would have missed this implication of deity, as evident from another occasion when the Pharisees saw Jesus’s “I AM” statement as blasphemy (Jn. 8:58-59). As such, Jesus’s challenging question calls for belief in Him, not as a mere prophet or rabbinical teacher but as God incarnate!
The second aspect of His “do you believe this?” question is the object of His being. Namely, that He is the resurrection and the life. We should note that Jesus is making a bold claim, one that we should not take lightly. Within Himself, within His being is resurrection and life. Jesus is not merely saying that He is able to resurrect or that He is able to provide life, He is saying that these are two elements of His being! In other words, to strip Jesus of “resurrection” or “life” is to limit the essence of His existence. What a great comfort to wayward, fallen beings who are subject to weakness, infirmity, and death! Our great God in the person of Jesus has the cure to our greatest rival: death.
Here’s a final thought. Our increasingly secular world makes it seem fanatical and unreasonable to believe in life after physical death, resurrection from the dead, and all things supernatural. Yet, as Jesus’s question implies, belief in the “this,” fullness of His being, is reasonable, warranted, and grants us access to our only hope. It is the very cure to what ails all human beings most. He promises life in Himself, not as a mere man but as the “I AM” and divine author of life. Jesus’s beloved friend Martha believed this. Do you?