Though many people this week are writing about how Jesus died, what His wounds were like and more, I’d like to try something different.

Even in my last column I thought about doing something similar. “What might His death have been like?” was how it ended. Then I planned to move onto this idea, in a third column.

But most people already know how He died. Asphyxiation from the crucifixion added to the already tortuous loss of blood from the thorns piercing His head, and the scourging of His back. “Five bleeding wounds He bears,” says the hymn: two in His hands, two in His feet, and the one in His side where the soldier stabbed His dead body with a spear, to see if He was dead.

Christians recall these truths easily when they want to remember the physical nature of what He suffered. The brighter among us keep the documentation mentally stored for when the myth comes up that Jesus didn’t really die. And perhaps it’s the brightest among us who recall that despite the physical suffering Jesus endured, it was nothing compared to what He suffered when the Father turned His face away from His Son out of disgust for the sin Christ took on Himself.¹

Details of His death are well-known.

What we don’t consider as often is how He might have risen.

Last night my wife and I finished viewing The Gospel of John. This superbly done film did not show the actual resurrection of Christ. And over my decades of exposure to the Christian subculture, I don’t remember any adaptation of the account, life-action, animated or whatever, that dared to show Jesus walking out of the tomb. (Tomorrow we’re helping with a children’s Sunday school class; it’s even hard to find coloring-book pages showing His resurrection.)

Scripture itself doesn’t tell us exactly what happened. Evidently the Holy Spirit didn’t think it necessary to reveal such details to the Gospel writers. Does that mean we shouldn’t speculate?

I hope not, because — based on what we learn later about Jesus’ new body — I’m about to try.

Inside the tomb

A damp blackness is stifling; nothing can be seen. It’s much worse than a cave, partly because one could almost sense the walls so close, and the rough-hewn ceiling hanging low. A stench fills the chamber, the odor of death. For about two days² the mutilated body has lain here, as still as the rock.

Barely anything can be heard from outside the heavy stone rolled before the cavity’s tiny entrance. But if one could go outside, one might see the gardenlike area beyond. At least two Roman soldiers are stationed at the entrance, with an official government seal upon the stone.

Was dawn already approaching? I’d like to think it wasn’t. All is dark outside, still and normal —

Then comes the tremor. It starts low in the earth, making the guards snap to attention.

Inside, the stone walls shake. Maybe a pebble or two falls from the ceiling. Quaking fiercely, the ground rumbles even louder. Will the cave fall in? No — but then maybe — I like to think there was a glow. What sort of supernatural light might have accompanied this transformation?

Under the layers of thick, perhaps dirty and bloodstained fabric, it begins.

Resurrection.

Energy from God — Christ Himself — courses through His dead body. Instantly cellular activity begins. Life returns. The revitalized heart starts to pump, slowly at first, then faster, faster!

Sparkling power flows through every artery and vein, repairing breaks, drawing together the torn flesh in His back. Wounds there disappear almost instantly, as if they had never existed. The same is true for the horribly deep scratches in His head. They vanish as if time itself is reversed. What about the metal bits from the whip that may have lodged in His back, or any shrapnel from the cruel thorns that may have broken off into his scalp? Did they simply fall out into the grave cloths? Or did they crumble into nothingness, vanishing as if vaporized?

And as for the five other, formerly bleeding wounds of His …

They will remain. He will keep them as evidence of His sacrifice and also to prove that His body, though new and with supernatural powers, is the exact same body they had seen before.

Tissue mends itself, just beneath His wrists and on His feet. Blood vessels and muscles, already woven back into better-than-perfect health — they could be moved away from the wounds so they will never bleed again. On His hands, the flesh around the holes hardens into new, tougher, impenetrable skin, yet they still show the scars.

On His feet, the nerves, same as all through His new body, are impervious to pain. Yet they still show the scars, on either side where the nails had been.

In His side — perhaps between His underarm and ribcage — the wound from the spear piercing remains. But it will never again bleed or cause pain. Did He know, even as He felt the skin around the wound adjusting itself, that in days He would be showing it to His disciples?

Was His awareness — the spirit He gave up after He breathed His last³ — already reunited with His human body? Or did His awareness return⁴ seconds later? No one can know yet, but perhaps all along He was aware that He had returned, that His body was being rejuvenated, that He had won!

How long did the physical Resurrection take? Several power-charged seconds? Or in an instant?

Did His eyes open, still wrapped in the grave cloths? Or did He keep them closed while He lifted Himself off the stone slab? Did He pass through the cloths as if He were pure spirit — which He definitely was not — or did He, with a mighty shudder like the earthquake, burst out of them?

Death could not hold Him.

Either way, His body is not simply His restored human body. He has triumphed over death and sin, and His new body — a prototype of our future resurrected bodies⁵ (though surely far more powerful) — has amazing, superhuman powers we can only guess about from later descriptions in the Gospels.

So He is out of His grave clothes, and surely wearing some other clothing supernaturally given to Him. Dried blood has disappeared from His glorified skin. His wounds are healed perfectly, His scars visible. Blazing with glory, He stands to His feet and walks through the tomb.

Supernaturally the stone has rolled away. Perhaps by now the earthquake has ceased. The guards have fainted at the sight of the angels.

Into the new dawn of the first Resurrection Sunday, the Son of Man walks, victorious over death and the grave.

(Next: what could He do?)

(Continued from last week …)

“Jesus wept,” from John 11:35, is often quoted because of its well-known shortness, and out of motivations to highlight Christ’s humanity. As the onlookers in the passage themselves say in verse 36, “See how he loved [Lazarus]!” Thus, some Christians also say: He loves you too, just as much — then stop without going further.

I hope no one would argue Jesus was weeping for only any reason besides genuine grief. Still, it seems readers should instead be asking, along with the crowds: if He loved Lazarus so much, why did He not come to heal Him sooner?

This same question is repeated three times. Great preachers point out that repetition like that, especially with writing space limited to the ancient authors, should make us pay close attention.

The Apostle John does show Christ’s humanity in this account. But His deity, and the fact that He is the resurrection and the life, are meant to be the main theme.

Further in

In any teaching about this passage, I’d love to hear more about all aspects of His reaction.

Jesus was not only sad. He was sovereign. He was not only human. He was divine. He was not only “deeply moved in his spirit,” but “greatly troubled” (verse 33).

So why was Jesus troubled, if His reason was simply sharing His friends’ grief?

The answer lies in the chapter’s main theme. In His weeping, He not only empathized with Lazarus’s grieving sisters; He was also reacting to the crowd of Jews (also in verse 33). Why was that? Because they were not believing in Him.

This is made even easier to see from Jesus’ own given reasons for why He delayed in coming, first to His disciples, and later to Lazarus’ sisters.

What were the reasons He gave His disciples?

1. He wanted to glorify His Father and Himself — that’s the first reason He gives (verse 4).
2. He wished to show them His light (verses 8 to 10). When they stumbled over why He would walk into what could be a very dangerous situation, He illustrated their problem by suggesting it was like they were walking by night, outside of His light.
3. He wanted to encourage them to believe, for their own sake (verses 14 to 15). He even said He was glad He had delayed, so as to build up His disciples’ faith in Him.

What were His reasons for Mary and Martha?

1. It was because He loved them. Note what could seem a strange line of reasoning in verses 5 through 6! “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.”

   One might say: well, some kind of love that was. But who could accuse Jesus of being cruel? He loved Mary, Martha and Lazarus, and so He stayed away and did not heal Lazarus immediately. From our perspective, especially if we were there and did not know the ending, it could make little sense. But He knew better.

2. He would prove He was the resurrection and the life (verse 25).
3. He wanted Martha and Mary to show they believed in Him (25 to 26).
4. He wanted them never to die in an eternal sense — a more important issue than dying temporarily, as Lazarus had done (verse 26).
5. He would show them the glory of God — by implication in a way they would not have seen if He had merely healed a sick Lazarus (verse 40).
6. For the benefit of those around Him, He prayed to His Father and said He wanted observers to believe God had sent Him (verse 42).
7. And the greatest reason of all is implicit in verses 45 through 57. Jesus’ resurrection of Lazarus, and the resulting faith of Mary and Martha and surely Lazarus himself, is merely a subplot in John’s main story. After Lazarus was brought to life, Jesus’ religious enemies upped the ante. That brought the Lord’s death even closer — the tension is increasing.

   Thus the same Lord Who resurrected Lazarus would later resurrect Himself, from a death He also planned, for the glory of God. This shows Who Jesus was, and why He came, so that you, gentle reader, may also believe in Him and have life in His name (John 20:31).

I wish I could hear an awesome sermon about all this. This feels like an outline for one.

And I can’t get over that first point in the above list: that Jesus delayed coming to Lazarus because He loved him, and his family. A greater goal was in His mind: His own glory, and the far more profound need for people to believe in Him as the resurrection and the life.

How often has the Lord delayed coming, delayed a healing, or not healed at all, for reasons that only He can know, because He loves us more than we would if we could decide what He did?

How often is He grieved, but still worked differently than we would, for greater reasons?

How often has He wept, not only because He empathizes with our losses (any non-Son-of-God person could do that), but instead because He wants us to understand that He is the resurrection and the life, sent from God the Father, Who will be glorified!

Some Christians have a kind of teaching method that is cute or helpful in small doses. But too often it is quite annoying: what I would call the Fun Fact About the Bible(!) style.

For example, who among us has learned, from just about any church or Sunday-school circular, this Fun Fact about the Bible? “Jesus wept,” in John 11:35, is the shortest verse in the Bible! ¹

Great. Wow, the shortest verse. Does that make it less important? Or maybe more important? Does it matter at all? Who divided those verses anyway? (Hint: not the original writers.)

But who among us knows why Jesus wept in the first place?

I hadn’t thought about it either, at all — that is, until a friend reminded me of the passage’s context. This illustrates well one of those little myths that gets about Christendom and needs to be set straight. Maybe, thanks to God’s grace, it doesn’t wreck a whole lot, and by itself it certainly won’t prevent someone from being truly redeemed. But what might we miss anyway?

Ye have heard that it was said …

“Jesus wept” (John 11:35) because He was very sad that his friend Lazarus had died.

Figure A:

In a Christian small group, someone shares her struggles with personal sickness, or conflict in her family. Perhaps a relative has died, or is about to die. In a sincere attempt at comfort, a friend pats her hand and reminds her, “Remember, ‘Jesus wept.’ He knows your pain.”

Figure B:

A devotional book, by a popular Christian author, is all about the humanity of Jesus. He was just as human as you and me, the writer says earnestly — Jesus felt all the emotions we do. Jesus got angry. He was tired. He was hungry, thirsty, loving, and He wept when a friend of His had died (John 11:35). Remember, Jesus may weep for your troubles, too.²

What’s the truth in this?

Jesus was certainly a Man, 100 percent — as well as being 100 percent God. I can’t fully get that, and sometimes (especially if we’re not wary of overcorrecting one excess with another) the comparisons can sound odd. He ate, slept, got sick, went to the bathroom, and best of all, suffered and died the cruel, physical death of a man — but with wonderful spiritual results.

What’s the lie in this?

Will anyone argue that Jesus was not really weeping because He was grieved? I doubt it — and I won’t! But to focus on His human nature in this, without also including the reasons He gives for His divine, sovereign actions and choices, downplays the main theme of the story.

The tension is breathtaking in the account of the death and resurrection of Lazarus in John 11. Jesus reacted in many ways like any person would in this situation. Yes, He felt their pain. But He had also held back from healing Lazarus for an even more important reason than to assuage someone’s grief. Rather than work a quick healing for His friend, He was planning to manifest Himself in a way that could have been His most publicly divine act so far in His earthly life.

What’s the Word?

The scene: After suffering through a long sickness, Jesus’ friend Lazarus has died. And oddly enough, though He was told in advance, He had already spent at least two days delaying in not coming to heal Lazarus. John 11 must be read in full to see this truth, but here’s an excerpt:

The reason for Jesus weeping? Based on the different reactions from the crowd, it is twofold.

Notice that John doesn’t leave the onlookers’ reaction at “See how he loved him!” There’s more.

Rather, the author’s paragraph ends with a question, which strongly implies the reader could be asking the same thing: “could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” Their confusion reflects that of the disciples earlier (verses 5 through 16).

(Next, we’ll go further in — if Jesus wasn’t only sharing their grief, why else did He weep?)