Another passage in which this word occurs is in Luke 2:34, where Simon says, “This child is set for the fall and rising again (ἀνάστασιν) of many in Israel.” A moral fall and rising are here evident; and only if the reduplication be dropped, and we read “for the fall and the rising up,” do we get the true idea. It is not meant that Jesus comes to degrade us morally, and then lift us up again morally. Rather it means that he comes to test the state of the hearts of men: some cannot bear the test, and fall before it; others, better prepared, rise higher. Here, also, ἀνάστασις means rising up, and not rising again.
The most remarkable use of this word, however, is in that famous passage where the common meaning is wholly unintelligible, in the story of Lazarus. (John 11:24, 25.) Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” If resurrection means coming back to life after death, in what sense can Jesus be “the resurrection and the life”? Then Jesus said that he was “the coming back to life,” which is unintelligible. But if the resurrection means the ascent to a higher state, then Jesus declares that he is the way of ascent to a higher state, just as he says elsewhere, “I am the way;” “I am the door.” It is the power of Christ within the soul, the power of his spirit of faith, hope, and love, which enables us to go forward and upward. Christ is not the principle of resuscitation to an earthly existence, or a merely human immortality. He does not bring us to life again, but he lifts us up. So he adds, “He who believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Not, shall come to life again; no, but, shall rise out of death into life, ascend into a higher condition of being. Then he adds that to one who has faith in him, who has adopted his ideas, there is no longer any such thing as death. Death has disappeared—is abolished. “He who liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
But, it may be objected, if spiritual death and life are here spoken of,—if the passage means that he who believeth in Christ shall have inward religious spiritual life, a heavenly and celestial life,—then how could that comfort Martha, or apply to her case, who was mourning, not the spiritual, but the natural, death of her brother?
Christ is essentially a manifestation of the truth and love of God. To believe in him is therefore to believe in God's truth and love. But belief in this fills the soul with life. And the soul full of life cannot die. What seems death is only change, and a change from a lower to a higher state, therefore rising up, or resurrection. Christ, then, the love and truth of God in the soul, is the life and the resurrection. He fills the soul with that life which causes it to rise with every change, to go up and on evermore to a higher state. That which seems death is nothing; the only real death is the immersion of the soul in sense and evil, the turning away from truth and God.
Now, Martha believed, as most of us believe, in a future resurrection. She believed that, after lying a long time in the grave, one would come out of it at last, on a great day of judgment, and somehow the soul and body be reunited. She believed this, for it was the general belief of the Jews in her day. It is the general belief of Christians now. The majority of Christians have not got very far beyond that. They talk of the resurrection, as though it were merely the return of the soul into the old body; and when you comfort them over their dead by saying, “Your dead will rise,” reply, “I know it—at the resurrection, at the last day.” But Jesus tells Martha, and all the Martha Christians of the present time, that he is the resurrection and the life. Your brother is not to sleep in the dust till the last day, and then rise. He does not die at all. He rises with Christ here, and in whatever other world. His nature is to go up, not down, when he is Christianized. Now or then, to-day or at [pg 309] the last day, if he has the living faith of a son of God, he will be raised by that Christ within him, who is his life.
This, it seems to us, is the only adequate explanation of this passage, and shows conclusively that resurrection must mean, in this place, a rising up to a higher existence, and not a mere return to this life.
It appears, from 1 Cor. ch. 15, that there were some in the Christian church who said there was no resurrection of the dead (ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν,) or that it was past already. (2 Tim. 2:18.) These Christians did not deny the doctrine of immortality, or a future life. It is difficult to imagine the motive which could induce any one, in those days, to join the Christian church, if he denied a future life. Probably, therefore, they assumed that the only real resurrection takes place in the soul when we rise with Christ. They said, “If we are to rise into a higher life after this, how shall we rise, and with what bodies?” (1 Cor. 15:35.) They professed to believe in a simple immortality of the soul, but not an ascent of the personal being, soul and body together, to the presence of God. They did not question a future life, but a higher life to which soul and body should go up together.
To these doubting Christians, who could not gather strength to believe in such a great progress as this, Paul says that if man does not rise, if it is contrary to his nature to rise, then Jesus, being a man, has not risen, but gone down to Hades with other souls. Then he is not above us, with God, sending down strength and inspiration from our work. This faith of ours, which has been our great support, is an illusion. We have all been deceived—deceived in preaching forgiveness of sins through Christ from God; deceived in preaching a higher life above us, into which Christ has gone, and where he is waiting to receive us. But we have not been deceived—Christ has risen, and risen as the first fruits of humanity. He leads the way up, and in proportion as we share his life, we also have in ourselves the principle of ascent, and shall [pg 310] go up too. He goes first; then all who are like him follow and finally, in due order, all mankind. Death and Hades have been conquered by this new influx of life in Christ. Instead of remaining pale ghosts, naked souls, we shall rise into a fuller, richer, larger life, of soul and body.
There is one passage, however, where there seems a difficulty in considering ἀνάστασις, or resurrection, as implying an ascent of condition. It is in John 5:28, 29. Our common translation reads thus: “The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice (that is, the voice of the Son of man), and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” At first sight it certainly seems that the “resurrection of damnation” (ἀνάστασιν χρίσεως) could hardly be considered a higher state. All depends, however, on the meaning of the word, here translated “damnation.” The word, in the Greek, is the genitive of χρίσις. Now, by turning to the Concordance, we find that this word χρίσις occurs some forty-eight times in the New Testament. In these places,—
It is translated 3 times by “damnation.”
It is translated 2 times by “condemnation.”
It is translated 2 times by “accusation.”
It is translated 41 times by “judgment.”