John 11:23 “Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. 24 Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. 25 Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: 26 And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? 27 She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”
When “Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life”, He was telling “Martha” and us that He, Himself has willed the “resurrection”, is the exclusive power and authority for the “resurrection”, and is the immediate and sole cause of the “resurrection”. Furthermore, He, Himself has willed “life” after the “resurrection”, holds within Himself the exclusive power and authority to give “life” after the “resurrection”, and He alone brings forth “life” after the “resurrection”. We must emphasize that our Lord is speaking of our “dead” bodies after our spirit, soul (Ecclesiastes 12:7; Genesis 35:18) has departed. For, in another sense, we never die because, at the moment of “death”, our spirits return alive to the Father (Ecclesiastes 12:7, Luke 23:43). Concerning those whose bodies have died, Jesus said, God “is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living” (Mark 12:27). To illustrate His point, the Lord reminds us that when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush that was not consumed, He identified Himself to Moses by declaring that, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Mark 12:26; Genesis 26:24); not was, but “am” (present tense), although the bodies of these men had been “dead” for hundreds of years. And, the Lord told one of the men that was crucified with him, “To day shalt thou be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). That man’s body died that day, but he (his living spirit) was taken to “paradise” by the Lord. In the “resurrection”, our Lord raises our bodies to life and “brings” and places our spirits again in our resurrected bodies (I Thessalonians 4:14). Simply declared, our Lord Jesus Christ even has the power and authority to lay down and take up again His own life (John 10:18), as He does ours. Thus, our blessed Lord Jesus Christ is indeed “the resurrection, and the life”, and He demonstrated it by raising “Lazarus” to life again!