The Man Who Had Died

The man who had died came forth, bound hand and foot with wrappings, and his face was wrapped around with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unbind him, and let him go." Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done, believed in Him. (John 11:44-45)

The man who had unwittingly become the stumbling block for the faith of those who were watching, came out of his tomb removing their excuses for doubting Jesus. Of course it was no fault of his that he was a cause of doubt for others, but his death resulting from Jesus' delay to answer his sister's prayers had created opportunity for offense. Jesus had chosen to allow this state of affairs to test their faith, to press them beyond their comfort zone and to challenge them to grow in faith.

Indeed, they struggled between trusting in the One who had already done so much to prove His love for them and the strong temptation to feel He didn't care. Lazarus' death put them under tremendous pressure to question Jesus' care for them but they chose to cling to the evidence they already had in spite of current circumstances and insinuations by those seeking to discredit their faith. But that did not prevent their own emotions from causing depression as their faith began to waver and slip.

Jesus knew all of this and much more. He could see the true condition of the hearts of every person present that day which was part of the reason He was so deeply moved in His own spirit by a sense of heaviness and sadness. It was not for Lazarus that He wept as most thought, but it was for all those who were unwilling to trust the heart of God, who were clinging to lies of Satan about the Father and were spreading those lies to others. It was resistant unbelief despite evidence all around them in the form of blessings unnoticed and favors spurned that caused Jesus to groan so deeply in His spirit.

But in spite of all this darkness Jesus wanted to bring a glorious exhibition of light publicly before all so they would have even greater incentive to trust His heart. The whole purpose of raising Lazarus from the dead was not just for the sake of his sisters but intended as a stark revelation of how the Father feels about all of us. Jesus longs to bring life into all the places of death for God hates sin and all the death that it produces. Sinners are still God's children and He longs to reverse the curse brought into the human race by sin. He chose to resurrect Lazarus as a symbol of the life that He promises to bring into the experience of every person who is willing to turn away from their doubts and be transformed by trusting and believing in the real truth about God that Jesus came to demonstrate.

The man who was dead came forth – but he was no longer dead. I see a parallel here with a similar phrase in a previous story of healing. The man who had been born blind met amazing resistance from those who did not want to believe in the love of Jesus. Even his neighbors and friends found it difficult to change their perceptions of his identity and continued to view and label him by his past.

Therefore the neighbors, and those who previously saw him as a beggar, were saying, "Is not this the one who used to sit and beg?"

They brought to the Pharisees the man who was formerly blind.

The Jews then did not believe it of him, that he had been blind and had received sight, until they called the parents of the very one who had received his sight, and questioned them, saying, "Is this your son, who you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?" (John 9:8, 13, 18-19)

The spirit of unbelief is incredibly tenacious and will never give up looking for excuses to avoid admitting the truth. The spirit of doubt and unbelief is un-convertable and it is a total waste of time thinking it can be changed. The only way to escape the devastating, blinding damage of unbelief is to renounce it, repent of it and have it displaced by the Spirit of God that will fill our hearts with appreciation for the truth about God's heart of love for us. Unbelief cannot be transformed into belief; it must be replaced altogether with a new spirit full of love and appreciation inspired by revelations of the grace and truth that fills the heart of God.

This is itself a fresh revelation for my own heart. I am beginning to sense that I have spent far too much time trying to convince my spirit of unbelief to change its 'mind' when that is an impossibility. I will never get a spirit of unbelief to morph into saving faith; I must resolutely turn away from it, reject it, renounce it and expose it for what it really is and accept a new spirit from God to replace it. I have to be honest about the presence of unbelief in my own heart every time it rises up inside of me doubting God's love for me and bring it to the light of truth to be exposed and expelled. Like Martha I need to make public expressions of faith to strengthen my resistance to doubt and deepen my trust in Jesus.

The man who was dead came forth to confirm the obscured truth about how Jesus really felt about them. Lazarus came out of the tomb as overwhelming evidence of the compassion of Jesus that had been in doubt and to give incontrovertible evidence of the power of God to bring life into places of hopelessness and death. But this was not enough to convince those determined to believe the lies of Satan to change their hearts. Instead, the resurrection of Lazarus served only to polarize people's beliefs and cause them to move more quickly in the direction they were already headed.

Those who wanted to believe in Jesus' love for them found in this miracle powerful evidence to deepen and settle them in faith. But those who had been resisting repeatedly the evidences and teachings and demonstrations of the truth about the Father's heart in the life of Jesus found themselves moving further into unbelief and even becoming enraged that this evidence was impossible to deny. They became so angry that their opinions and lies and hypocrisy were being exposed that they not only wanted to kill Jesus but felt compelled to kill Lazarus as well.

Just as they had been determined to discount and discredit the miracle that blessed the life of the man born blind a few days earlier, they clung to their own blindness in the face of a living former dead man. They became even more irrational in their logic as they hardened their hearts to the point where they would kill the very God who had come to save them from their sins. This is the very essence of judgment. Judgment occurs naturally by polarizing people's opinions and beliefs when light exposes the secret things of the heart. The beliefs that we choose to cling to shape our characters for eternity.

As a result of Lazarus coming out of the grave alive John says that many of the Jews believed in Jesus. Those who had not chosen to harden their hearts in resistance to the truth about God found themselves drawn by this overwhelming evidence of love and compassion and grace. And even by allowing Lazarus to come out still bound about with restrictive leftovers from the grave and inviting others to help set him fully free, Jesus was demonstrating God's love by involving humanity to participate in the process of healing and liberation with each other.

While none of us can bring life into our places of death and we must depend solely on God to do that for us, God does ask us to be involved in the process of helping each other take the wrappings and baggage away from our hearts and lives that keep us from fully enjoying the new life God has gifted to us. All of us have a part to play in the plan of salvation in reaching out to cooperate with God in His work to liberate hearts from the realms of darkness. We can share in the joy of new life by coming alongside others to unbind them and let them go free. And in doing so our own faith is strengthened.