The “Forsaking” of Lazarus

John 11 gives us a preview of the cross/resurrection of Jesus through the lens of the Lazarus event.  There, as we all know, Jesus actually lets Lazarus, his “friend” (v. 11), die, and presumably “descend into hell [Hades, the Unseen, not Gehenna!].”  But was this out of wrath?  Jesus had declared earlier (v. 7), “This infirmity “is not to [pros] death, but for [huper] the glory of God, that the Son of God should be glorified through it.”  AND IF THAT WAS SO FOR HIS FORSAKING OF HIS “FRIEND,” HOW MUCH MORE SO MUST IT BE FOR THE FATHER’S “FORSAKING” OF HIS OWN SON?  Any questions?  [5/16/10]

Provoking Satan’s FURY prefaced God’s FAVOR!

In what sense(s) did the Resurrection vindicate Jesus?  Supremely, it vindicated him, including by implication all he had claimed about himself. Thus his vindication by the Father would have to embrace his claims to be without sin, to be subject to the Law of Moses, to be the prophesied Messiah, to be the very Son of God, to be the Master/Lord of all nations (even Jehovah in the flesh!) and hence to be the Savior of the world, the promised Chosen One of God. Nothing less than this full-orbed identity of Jesus is implied by his getting raised from among the dead.

Jesus fully and completely kept the Law of Moses in the only way in which it was ever meant to be kept:  from the heart, in spirit, and by the Spirit’s power. His conflicts with the scribes, Pharisees, and other leaders of the Jews were never over any real violation of Mosaic Law, at least anent the manner that God Himself actually intended it to be observed. That this must be the case is exhibited by the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This endorsement from God Himself decisively vindicated Jesus’ own take on the Law of Moses! In other words, it certified Jesus’ method of interpretation or ‘hermeneutic’ in the face of his self-endorsed enemies and murderers.  It showed them up as nigglers and hypocrites, petty and tricky, haughty and envious, vicious and treacherous—in a word: Law-less.  This was an elite crowd of habitual Law-breakers with entrenched impunity.

The Judaizing, the Phariseeical, ways of ‘honoring’ Moses’ Law were shallow, superficial, burdensome, overwrought, unbalanced, a colossal charade—in a word, profoundly unjust! The confrontations of Jesus with these petty tyrants gave scope for him to expose their obsession with the letter of the Law while missing the core justness of God altogether and tragically misleading God’s people down the path toward the national ruin of 70 A.D.  Jesus’ yoke was, by contrast, easy and his legal load, light. His directives were what he had heard from his Father, and they were life agelong. His own resurrection unmistakably confirmed that end result with a great weight of glory (evident proof).

In order to save the earth, this extraordinary work of His hands, from utter destruction as a result of sin, its attendant evils. and consequent death—sin being inextricably necessary within a scheme of things where the ultimate goal is to bring up mature offspring who would need to learn, in the face of seductive temptations to do otherwise, how to voluntarily choose what is right and pleasing to their Creator so they could qualify eventually to inherit and justly manage all the works of God’s hands, bringing them to fullest fruitfulness, life, and glory—God would have to conceive and execute a cosmic plan that somehow would justify Him in returning agelong life, our seemingly lost legacy, to the human race for free, in spite of sin and its just due, death. Such a plan would also have to make a shelter, shielding, or protective covering (–hilas–) around sins so that, since their accumulation evokes God’s just/rightful indignation, they do not destroy the inheritors whose very advance toward full human maturity is predicated on their often learning from trial and error (transgression/offense) against God’s just directives.

The exquisite solution entailed allowing, and in a sense even provoking, Satan. A key tactical element of this plan was the choice of Judas to be a disciple, who would betray the Savior into the hands of leaders whose envy was aggravated by his righteousness, wisdom, and miraculous restorative powers from on high. They, in turn, could be expected to falsely accuse, mock, insult, dishonor, variously abuse, and at length crucify God’s Chosen One. It was this dastardly process, irresistible to Satan out of long mendacious and murderous habit, that God leveraged to justify Himself in reversing it for the sake of the world’s salvation.  Satan took the Bait and vented himself with terrifying rage upon God’s Son.  He found Judas, all too amenable to his infernal enticements by then, and filled him with depraved determination to sell out his own Master for a paltry 30 pieces of silver. After all, he was a well-practiced thief. Was he trying to cover a debt so as not to be discovered, in hopes that Jesus would make a miraculous getaway somehow?  Some have conjectured as much.

However that may be, it was this monumental sin of the Jews, in combination with Roman Imperial injustice, foreknown by an all-wise God, that triggered Him to bare His righteous arm from heaven and rescue His just servant on earth, whose innocent blood, viciously shed, cried out from the ground for avenging better than the blood of just Abel. And so God did avenge almost instantly by manifesting celestial justice (dikaiosune) in tandem with its just recompense (dikaioma) before the stunned astonishment of angels in heaven, mortals on earth, and, before long, even to those “under the earth” to whom the soul of Jesus heralded his mighty triumph-to-be and who were invited to faith in him—a faith he then dramatically certified by getting exalted out of the Unseen by the Spirit of his Father on the third day. Such a spectacle had no historic precedent, even among the deeds of Jesus himself, in terms of glory, power, and permanence, even Lazarus notwithstanding. [4/8/06]

Jesus’ Resurrection Unmasked Official Corruption While Glorifying His Lordship

We might have expected the chief priests of Israel to fall on their faces repentantly in sackcloth and ashes after learning the News from the Roman detail appointed to secure the tomb where Jesus was laid, to the effect that superhuman beings had appeared and raided the tomb in open defiance of Roman law and might, while the crucified corpse walked out alive in shattering light!  Why in Heaven’s name didn’t those chief priests instantly collapse, reduced to remorse and anguish, mourning the staggering revelation that, after all, they had indeed murdered their own Messiah!  (Lk. 27:62-66, 28:11-15)  For now they knew without question that God Himself and not mere human power had sprung their death trap!  Or did they not recognize the truth because their concept of Israel’s God was so mangled that they fully expected if Jesus were actually the Messiah, then God’s vengeance upon them would surely have been wreaked in some more obviously destructive way than “merely” by resurrecting their victim?  In other words, did such mercy seem so inconceivable an attribute of the God they thought they were worshipping that they completely mistook his real identity and character when he actually did “bare his mighty arm” and, lo!, superabundant, overwhelming favor materialized before their eyes?  Something on this order, it seems to me, must be invoked to explain their incorrigible blindness and recalcitrant viciousness.  They got calloused by degrees until they were, at length, casehardened against the most stupendous sign God ever gave Israel!  [11/30/97]

Christ Jesus, the risen Lord, gives time a new lease on life.  Rather than eclipsing time by the advent of a mythical “eternity” (aidiotes), a word appearing in neither the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint–much less in the Hebrew!) or the New Testament, God’s Messiah liberates His creation from the signs of decay by which we commonly mark time’s effects on created things.  It is time cleansed of corruption that will characterize the impending ages of the cosmos.  [12/21/97]

Tongues of fire at Pentecost are symbolic of God’s witness to faith as an “acceptable sacrifice,” as in many O.T. instances of fire falling from heaven to consume a sacrifice offered in faith.  That coming–“falling“!–of the Holy Spirit was God’s own testimony to the acceptability of trust in Jesus as Jehovah’s Salvation.  [01/15/98]

The difference between the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead and the resurrection of others mentioned in Scripture (the son of the widow of Nain in Elisha’s day, the servant of the centurion, the widow’s son, Lazarus, the resurrections of some saints after Jesus’ Resurrection, et al) is that Jesus’ own was followed by glorification at his ascension, while that of the others was not.  So we should distinguish these events carefully.  At the “general” resurrection to come, before Messiah’s judgment of all nations, Scripture seems to indicate that none are glorified.  But after the Judgment the lost will be thrown into the Lake of Fire and the saved will be glorified for agelong life.  [01/31/98]