The Bible is very clear concerning God’s promise in His economy. However, the major difficulty that needs to be overcome is that we do not live the life of a believer — we hold our own opinions over God’s words. We might read the Bible, talk about the Lord, or even preach to other people. We might think we believe. But believing is nothing about our reading, talking, or analysis. Believing is simply the receiving of God’s words, through which we are changed and transformed.
How do we receive? If we hold tightly to our own understanding and religious concepts, we have no way to truly receive, or believe, the Lord Himself. Consider Martha. Even after Jesus said that Lazarus would rise again, Martha responded stuck in her own understanding: “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Did Martha say anything that was incorrect? Actually, according to a religious and physical understanding, Martha was very right. But the Lord responded very strongly: He said, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live…” (v. 25). Martha’s understanding encompassed a correct religious understanding of the resurrection, yet all this knowledge had no power to change her situation.
Martha might not have been physically dead like Lazarus, but her religious doctrines and needless arguments brought with them the stink of death. Later on, Martha challenged the Lord again, complaining He was too late to save Lazarus — that it had already been four days and his body smelled (v. 39). What a picture! Indeed, Martha’s situation was one full of the stink of man’s bondages. We can even have the Lord right in front of us, yet we continue to insist on our own understanding, knowledge, and doctrine, standing firm for our own righteousness. Without receiving the Lord’s words, we are just like that dead body, bound hand and foot with cloths, our face blinded by a handkerchief — dead on account of our own concepts, our own religion, our own sins. How can we come out?
What we need is salvation — a true resurrection life — not in the future, but now! When the Lord responded to Martha’s reasonings, He did not speak in doctrines or morals, or about some distant prophecy of the future. The Lord stood in front of her, saying “I am now!” In Greek, it’s clear that the Lord was not talking in the future tense, but talking about a reality now: that He Himself is the resurrection and the life. Actually, this word “resurrection” that Martha uttered is something far beyond her concepts — it is the divine life itself. According to our human understanding, there is no life that can last forever; man is corrupted, and we die. But God’s language refers to a life that never decays. This life doesn’t happen tomorrow. His life works immediately, now. While Martha remained in her disbelief, her brother still in his tomb, the Lord simply said, “Come out!” (v. 43), and Lazarus emerged from his tomb.
Whatever we experience in the church or read in the Bible is not a theory. When we receive the Lord Himself we are changed and transformed — we are resurrected in that instant. But are we a believer? Have we truly received Him — His very Person — as our salvation? Or are we, like Martha, too bound by our own concepts to recognize this powerful resurrection life standing right in front of us? When we believe, we don’t just know salvation by our theory, but we are able to rise up and break the bonds of death and sin; we are really saved. This experience of a real believer who has received eternal life is immediate and sure; it is now. Our life is changed forever, all our doubts, opinions, and hopeless trying removed. In their place, all of the power of the Lord’s resurrection and overcoming life enters into us. In the moment when we believe the Lord’s words, immediately, all of His riches, His reality, His resurrection and life become ours, securing and anchoring us. He is in our presence, this unlimited life made available. All we need to do is to simply believe and receive all that He is to us — now!
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from a gathering on 10/6/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)