I’ve been meditating on our latest Bible study message in John 11 about the raising of Lazarus from the dead. There have been several things that have been happening in my life that I’ve been applying to what I believe the Lord may be showing me through this picture/story of Lazarus. I am not a Bible student; I am more of a Jesus friend/student. So, if any of this doesn’t fit your theology, by all means the most important thing is for each of us to follow what the voice of God through the Holy Spirit is saying to us individually. My prayer, as Paul prayed in Galatians 4:19, I labor until Christ be formed in you.*
I was particularly interested in the illustration of the wrapping of Lazarus. It brought up thoughts of being born into a falllen world with a fallen nature to be with everyone else born with fallen natures. In sharing with my friend, Pat, about the experiences we’ve had in growing up in the families that Lord gave us, we became aware of the layer of grave clothes that we were born with (our fallen natures), and how our first “god” was our very imperfect parents with fallen natures, and how we then gravitated toward being wrapped with more layers upon layers all through our lives by following the many other false/strange voices in a fallen world through everybody else’s fallen natures.
However, we also shared of how blessed we are now, since having received God’s revelation of Jesus as the abundant life in our hearts, as the Holy Spirit makes and continues to make His Life active and living in reality in and through us. We are overflowing with gratitude to have found that the answer was and still is simple—simply the Life of Jesus, a Person,
“Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed, and over- flowing with gratitude. See to it that there is no one who takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception in accordance with human tradition, in accordance with the elementary principles of the world, rather than in accordance with Christ. For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority; and in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision performed without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.” (Colossians 2:6-12)
I was born again in 1981, forty-three years ago. I knew about the resurrection and that Jesus died for my sins and that I was raised again with Him into a new life indwelt with Him in my heart, and that I would live eternally with Him in heaven. What I struggled with for most of those forty-three years was with an obsession about the grave clothes that I still had on me that I believed was keeping me from being the Christian I wanted to be; a good wife and a good mother, a good relative and a good friend: basically a “good” Christian. I felt like a failure in so many ways and that I just was never quite good enough. Like Paul in Romans, I cried,
“Oh, wretched man that I am!” (Romans 7:24)
Lazarus was already a friend of Jesus and a believer before he got sick and died in this illustration. His sister, Mary, thought, incorrectly, even though it’s also the truth, that when Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life,” that He meant that Lazarus, as a believer, would be resurrected to life on the last day,
“Martha then said to Jesus, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise from the dead.’ Martha said to Him, ‘I know that he will rise in the resurrection on the last day.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live, even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?’ She said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; I have come to believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, and He who comes into the world.’” (John 11:21-27)
Jesus had already said to the messengers who had been sent by Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, that this sickness was for His glory, and not unto death,
“So, the sisters sent word to Him, saying, ‘Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.’ But when Jesus heard this, He said, ‘This sickness is not meant for death, but is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.’” (John 11:3-4)
What did Jesus mean, then, this time when He told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; the one who believes in Me will live…”? It appears to me that Jesus’ first call to His “resurrection” at our salvation is a call from, from a life of sin, and his first call to His life at our salvation is a call to a life unto, unto Him to indwell His Life in us. I believe that this time, illustrated by Martha about Lazarus, “I am the resurrection and the life,” is Jesus revealing a greater revelation of who He was, further down the road of salvation through sanctification, and it’s now salvation unto Jesus as Lazarus’ Life working actively through him in reality, to the same life received at salvation, but more abundantly – the exchanged life,
“I came that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10)
I believe when the Lord commanded Lazarus to come forth out of the grave, when he came forth he had been made dead to self and alive in Christ, as the abundant life, AND He was not yet delivered from grave clothes.
““…He cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrapping. His face was wrapped around with a cloth, and Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind Him and let him go.’” (John 11:43&44)
As I thought about Lazarus coming out of the tomb still wrapped in his grave clothes, it occurred to me that there was no way that a dead man who had just been made alive, who was still wrapped in grave clothes head to toe could, in the natural, move, walk, see where he was going and hear the voice of the Lord without a mighty miracle of God’s grace working through him. To me, Lazarus at that point was a testimony of what the abundant life, the exchanged life is: I love God, I love His commandments, I can’t perform, but praise be to God, by His Life in me, by His grace, He can and will. By a mighty miracle of God, Lazarus was able to perform and obey the Lord’s seemingly impossible command for him to come forth!
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” (Ezekiel 36:26-27)
Just as the Israelites travelled around in the wilderness for thirty-eight years before entering the Promised Land, so it was for me after being saved in 1981 travelling around in my grave clothes and unable to perform for forty-three years. One day in His perfect time and way, He turned a principle that I knew about and a question I kept asking Him, “Who will deliver me?” into a reality, by having me die to self, and when He commanded me to come forth, He gave me His power and ability to do so, in spite of still being wrapped in grave clothes. By a miracle, I stopped obsessing about my self, the grave clothes, and He brought me to His Sabbath rest, and I was able to say, “Thank You!”
“ Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:24-25)
Between verses 24 and verse 25, in His perfect time and plan, when I was so sick in my self, He had me die to self and alive in Him, and thanks be to God He set me free from the bondage to my flesh, and struggling obsessively about my grave clothes.
“…consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11)
My testimony is now good news: even though my grave clothes may be stinky and unapproachable to other people who are still wrapping themselves and others up in grave cloths glued together with perfume to cover up the stink. To those who have tasted of the abundant life/exchanged life, we know that it’s all good news; the Lord Jesus has been resurrected in reality in spite of our stinky grave clothes. Jesus didn’t come to change the world; He came to overcome the world, in spite of the world,
“These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
“But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us reveals the fragrance of the knowledge of Him in every place.” (2 Corinthians 2:14)
That’s good news!
This seems to me to be the same thing as the Apostle Paul’s testimony about his “thorn in the flesh”….
“Because of the extraordinary greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.’ Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
So, I rejoice in my grave clothes; it’s good news, because they keep me from exalting myself, they allow the power of God to come through me, and they also give a testimony of how Jesus overcomes the world; it testifies of how His abundant life can operate in a person in spite of their grave clothes, that when I am weak, I can be strong in Him who is my strength, which seems to me to be the perfect testimony of the exchanged life, the abundant life. I can be a stinky, stupid sheep, and yet glorying in being one who can now hear and follow His voice to His abundant life of green pastures, and do so without shame or condemnation,
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” (Romans 8:1&2)
“Unbind him and let him go.” How? It’s a command that Jesus made, but like all of His commands, they are impossible for us to do in our own power. What did unbinding him mean to me? Well, for many years I thought it meant I could pull off my grave clothes by counseling/pschotherapy, by removing all those layers of coverings to expose the stench of decay in order to heal those wounds out in the fresh air of truth (with a little “t”). It never worked, because at the bottom of it all I was still left with a fallen nature, which will never go away until arriving in heaven. We can’t fix ourselves or others; it’s impossible; we just end up dealing with more grave clothes, and that becomes an endless pit.
The only answer is Jesus; we need to keep sharing the good news of Him being the “Way, the Truth and the Life”. If there is any unbinding that comes, and falling away of the ways in which we are bound, it will only come through Him doing it in His time and His way, and its always a mighty miracle of God, who is the Truth (big “T”).
I believe it’s the Lord’s desire that, as His church, we all finally be led to Him bringing us to this death of self, and making His life alive in and living through us in reality, in spite of the grave clothes we still carry, resting in Him as our Life, until that day that He calls us forth again further down the road of salvation into heaven, where we lose the grave clothes forever, which is called glorification,
“For we know that if our earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made by hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed, in this tent we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, since in fact after putting it on, we will not be found naked. For indeed, we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave us the Spirit as a pledge.” (2 Corinthians 5:1-5)
How do we obey the command, “Unbind him?” God is calling us to be the church operating with His Spirit as a pledge, the down payment, a foretaste of the abundant life, to be the people of God living the exchanged life, the abundant life, operating by the power of God who has overcome our grave clothes, to be a testimony of the good news among others still struggling in their “so-called” bad news of their grave cloths, exhorting by our lives in union with Him that He is the only answer, that He is the only Life, as the exchanged life. That’s the abundant life! It’s the gospel; it’s the good news!
“I came that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.”. (John 10:10 )
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