According to dictionary.com:
res·ur·rec·tion n.
The act of rising from the dead or returning to life.
The state of one who has returned to life.
The act of bringing back to practice, notice, or use; revival.
Resurrection Christianity.
The rising again of Jesus on the third day after the Crucifixion.
The rising again of the dead at the Last Judgment.
According to Matthew:
The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not
here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.
My own thoughts:
There are stories of resurrections in the Old Testament. For example, 1 Kings 13:21 says, "Once while some Israelites were
burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man's body into Elisha's tomb. When the body touched
Elisha's bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet." 2 Kings 4 tells the story of a Shunammite woman's son, restored
to life because of his mother's kindness to the prophet.
There is no shortage of resurrection stories in the New Testament. Matthew 27 records that when Jesus died, the temple
curtain was torn in two and "The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life." However,
the most well-known would definitely be the story of Lazarus. People like to point out John 11:35, "Jesus wept." as an illustration
of His humanity. Lazarus had been in the grave for days when Jesus called him back to life. Lazarus came out, grave clothes
and all, alive and well. Yet, Jesus is called the firstborn from among the dead. (Col. 1:18) It made me wonder why.
An idea came to me the other day, right out of nowhere. While in the Bible resurrections are rather common, Jesus' resurrection
is the only one in which death was removed. Anyone could receive more life, after all, God is kind of in the business
of bringing life to death, look at the creation story. But Lazarus and all the others who received an extra infusion of life
also have something else in common: they all died again. I smile when I think of what might be on Lazarus tombstone. (4
- 28 - 87?) I admit I don't know enough to really guess what those years might have been, but thats not my point. Could it
be that what Lazarus and the others experienced was merely the addition of life? Did it take Someone without the deadly sin
nature (would He have lived forever if we hadn't killed Him?) to experience death and the removal of
death and even so that through Him others could experience it also?
It's like the color orange. (stay with me, now) If it's fundamentally red, you need to mix it with yellow to make it brighter,
but it can never be purely yellow. If it's purely yellow already, you just need to take the red away to restore it. A weird
analogy, I know, but it works in my head. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings.
