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I. THE RESURRECTION. Note —

1. The authority with which these words are spoken. "I am," not "I will be," the instrument at some future time, but the thing itself. Surely no creature could speak thus. He speaks just as a king would speak to whom it never occurred that anyone should doubt of his royalty, or that he needed to vaunt of his power. The words assume a supreme and essential power over life and death. His was the original gift of life; His the right to dissolve its organisation, and to confer it again; and, therefore, He only could be the opener of the world of graves. This is the exclusive prerogative of Godhead. Man's power is mighty, but it steps short of this. He can from a fossil bone construct a massive elephant, and, with Promethean ambition, he can shape its features faultlessly, and by clockwork or galvanism simulate life; but he cannot breathe the living fire. "Am I God," said the frightened king, "to kill and to make alive?" The resurrection is a marvel and a mystery till we bring in the thought of God. "Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God," etc.

2. But not only do the words affirm Christ's divinity, but that through Him only resurrection came to man.

(1) Resurrection implies death, and death was not among the original arrangements of the universe. It came in after the "very good" had been pronounced. There must needs be, therefore, some provision to counteract its effects, and to restore the forfeited heritage of immortality to man. This has been secured by the vicarious atonement of Jesus. He bore the penalty on the cross, and, through death, destroyed Him who had the power of death. Christ is the Resurrection, therefore its Source and Spring, Author and Finisher. When He emerged from the tomb, He brought life and immortality with Him. The pearls of the deep sea, awaiting the plunge of the diver, the treasures before lying in the dark mine, were by Him seized and brought up to the light of day.

(2) But we must not limit the import of our term, and exclude the idea of a spiritual resurrection — not only a raised body, but a soul bursting from the tomb of its corruption, and blooming into newness of life. It is remarkable that, although all men inherit immortality, the future of the wicked is never dignified with the name of life. Everlasting contempt and destruction are the terms which Scripture uses. "They shall not see life." A sinner breathes in physical, thinks in intellectual, feels in emotional, but is destitute of spiritual life. But the Christian becomes, by faith in Christ, "dead unto sin, but alive unto God" — "passes from death into life."

II. THE LIFE. Christ is "the true God and Eternal Life," and His culminating promise is "even eternal life." What is this?

1. Conscious life. In all ages men have bewildered themselves by speculations as to the mode of their future existence. Some have taken refuge in dark materialism; others have held to transmigration of souls. Their inability to conceive of the spirit existing apart from the body was at the root of it all; and modern theorizers, perplexed by the same, have endeavoured to get out of it by teaching that the soul shall sleep till the body shall rise. But I am not disposed to give grim death an advantage over the Diviner part of man. If for ages He can paralyse the soul, then Christ has gained only a partial triumph. When Paul had "a desire to depart," etc., was it "for better" that his mighty mind should cease its thinking, his heart be still, and his energies be powerless for a long cycle of years? Far better a protracted existence on earth. He knew full well that the moment he was released he would be in conscious enjoyment of Christ. The paradise of believers is like the heaven it adjoins, undeluged with a wave of woe. The dungeon of the impenitent is like the hell which it approximates, unvisited with one ray of hope. There is no human soul from the days of Adam that is not alive today.

2. Social life. Heaven is not a solitude; it is a peopled city, in which there are no strangers, no homeless, no poor. "It is not good for man to be alone" means something deeper than the family tie: it is an essential want which the Creator in His highest wisdom has impressed on the noblest of His works. The idea of sociality is comprehensive of the idea of the fulness of life. That is not life where the hermit drags out a solitary existence. All kinds of life tend to companionship, from the buzzing insect cloud up to man. Not only, therefore, did Christ pray that those who had been given Him should be with Him, but they are to come to "the general assembly of the firstborn," etc. Take comfort, then, your dear ones are only lost to present sight.

(W. M. Punshon, LL. D.)

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KJV: Then when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already.

WEB: So when Jesus came, he found that he had been in the tomb four days already.