Bible Text: Luke 7:11-17 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Jesus’ raising this boy from the dead is more than what it appears. It sounds strange to say, because how can there be something greater than giving life to a dead man? In the history of the world this had never happened. Not like this. Elijah and Elisha both raised a young man from the dead, we just heard the account of Elijah, but it wasn’t Elijah and Elisha who did it. Elijah prays, begs God to have mercy, lies down on the child three times, and says, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And God does it. When Jesus raises the widow of Nain’s son, there is no prayer to God. He looks at the woman, He has mercy – he doesn’t ask God to have mercy – He has mercy, because He is God, and He doesn’t ask God for anything, instead, He says, “Young man, I say to you, arise.”
But it is more than it seems. The people don’t say, “A prophet has arisen for this boy and his mother.” They don’t say, “God has visited His maidservant and her son.” They say God has come to everyone. God has visited His people. Because the significance here is universal. This is obvious to them, and it should be to us. The Holy Spirit puts this in front of you, so you can see what they saw. It is not simply that Jesus pities one woman, touches the death of one man, gives life from the dead to one. No, Jesus has been preaching the most amazing things. He has said that He is the Life of the world. He says that whoever believes in Him will never perish but have eternal life. He says He takes away the sin of the world. Tells those who believe in Him that they are blessed forever and they will see God. And now He goes to this weeping woman, whom death has ravaged, stolen her husband and stolen her boy, and with a word commands life and death ends.
That’s your Lord Jesus. The significance is more still. Jesus conquered bodily death here. That’s what meets the eye. The heart started beating again in that boy. The blood started flowing. He spoke, his brain worked again. But there are three kinds of death. Bodily, spiritual, and eternal.
When the Bible talks about death, when death is first mentioned, when God pronounces the curse on Adam and Eve and all sinners, “The day you eat of it, you will surely die,” it is more than bodily death. The devil says to Eve, when he tempts her, “You will not surely die, but God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be open and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” And it looks like the devil is proved right. Eve doesn’t die that day, Adam doesn’t die that day, not bodily. But they do die that day. God said they would and they did. They die in their soul, it is a spiritual death, their eyes are opened, and they do know evil and they are ashamed and afraid of God and they are selfish, and they blame and accuse one another. Their spirit has died. Their connection to God, their love of Him, their trust in Him, this beautiful communion of their minds and hearts with their God, it died.
The spirit can die the same as the body. The body lives by water and food and exercise. The spirit lives by the Word of God and the exercise of faith and love. So the Lord teaches Moses, “Man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
We are born spiritually dead. We are born without knowledge of God, without fear or love or trust in Him. We naturally make our own gods and reject the true God. We trust in ourselves, serve ourselves. It’s interesting talking to people who deny original sin. Deny that we are born spiritually dead. Because they imagine that we can exist in some state of neutrality between good and evil, between God and the devil. Like a spiritual Switzerland, always neutral, not taking sides. But we humans need a god. It is definitional to our very being, our existence, that we have a god. Luther’s definition of a god is simply true – whatever you fear, love, and trust in the most is your God. We need to trust and love and fear something.
This is why there are no atheists. It’s not simply because all the arguments for God’s existence are true. They can’t get around the first cause, how did everything get here, how did it all start, without God? Richard Dawkins was recently asked what came before the Big Bang, and you know what he answered? He said, You can’t ask me that. We’re not allowed to ask because they can’t answer. But even if you prove God’s existence with all these rational arguments, the teleological, the ontological, the cosmological, at the end of the day, you still don’t know the true God. Not all your reason and strength and wisdom will get you there. But you still require a god. You will by nature, every single person ever born on this earth, will need something to trust in, to love, and to fear above all things. And whatever you fear, love, and trust in the most is your god. There is no neutrality.
But only the true God is Life. Only Jesus. Life comes from Him, to be spiritually alive is to live by the Life that He is, to be joined to Him, to know Him and trust in Him for everything good, because He is the source of everything good. Everything else we trust in by nature, money, power, pride, can’t give life, they’re dead themselves, and so spiritual death is to trust in things that pass away, that perish. They say you are what you eat. That applies to the body. You consume healthy food, your body is healthy. You consume junk, you’ll feel like junk and look like it. It applies to the soul too. You trust in things that perish your soul perishes. You trust in Life, in the God who is Life and Love and Peace and Mercy and Truth, and your soul lives, and it rests in peace and stands on the truth and relies on mercy and works in love.
We inherited dead souls from Adam. St. Paul says, Through one man, Adam, sin entered the world, and death through sin, so that death spread to all men, because all sinned. He is not talking first of all about bodily death. He is talking about this spiritual death. It is the greater problem, the source of the death of the body. When God Himself first mentions this dreadful word, when He first says “die,” on the day you eat of it you will surely die, He is talking about spiritual death. You see the dead body, you see the corruption of your own body, but that is only the outward sign of an inner death.
The third kind of death is eternal death. “The wages of sin is death.” That isn’t just bodily death, it isn’t just temporal spiritual death, it is eternal separation from God who is the source of all life. That’s what sin earns. Even spiritually dead unbelievers enjoy the streams of God’s Life and Love in this world, the joys of family, of hard work and satisfaction, of food, of beauty. But “it is ordained for man to die once, and after that comes the judgment.” “Do not marvel at this,” Jesus says, “for the hour is coming when all who are in the grave will hear the voice of the Son of Man and come forth – those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment.”
We will live forever. All of us. There will never be a time when you will not exist. Your body will die and rot in the ground, but it will be raised on the last day, and your soul will never stop existing. Eternal life is when body and soul live with the One who is life forever, loving Him, and trusting in Him, as He gives everything good time without end. Eternal death is spiritual death that doesn’t stop, where all the streams of Goodness that flow from God are cut off and man is left to worship himself in vanity forever.
Those are the three deaths, bodily, spiritual, eternal.
When Jesus confronts death with that young man, He confronts it all. It’s greater than any eye could see. He gives bodily life back to that boy. But in so doing He is declaring God’s war against death in all its fullness. He is revealing the Father’s heart to all men, that before we even asked, He came, moved by His love alone. He who is the eternal God, who is the source of all good things, now stands in human flesh. And our sin has not prevented Him. It separates us from Him, but He will not allow it, because His love is stronger than the evil that is killing us.
So Jesus reaches out and touches death. He touches the bier, that’s the cot on which they carry the dead man. And this is to tell everyone, and they know it – you don’t touch a dead man’s bier, that makes you unclean, it contaminates you with that death – this is to tell everyone that He is taking that death on Himself. A price must be paid. The wages of sin is death, bodily death, spiritual death, eternal death. If He gives life to that young man, if He gives life to you, the wages still have to be paid. So He reaches out and touches death and says I’ll pay them. The cross of our Lord Jesus Christ is the wisdom and love of God and it costs Him dearly. He bears not simply the death of the body, but the death of the spirit and the eternal death. The dead corpse of the Son of God on that cross is dead because it bore the sin of the world, because the wrath of God was poured out on Him, and He took it. Because the same pity you see Him show to that woman, He has for you.
And this means that the words He speaks to you in His Church are greater than the words He spoke to that boy, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” That boy grew into a man and then he died bodily death again. The Lord Jesus died all death on that cross, and He rose with all life, body, soul, eternal. The word Jesus speaks to you is the word that gives it all, it removes the greater death, takes all sin away, forgives you, declares you blessed and holy, and this is the same judgment He will give when He raises your body immortal and incorruptible on the last day.
Fear seized them all. That was the reaction of the crowd to Jesus giving life to that dead body. Fear seized them. Whatever you fear, love, and trust in the most is your god. Fear of Jesus seized them. Let it seize you. When you are fearing death, you are making it your god. It doesn’t own you. Jesus does. Fear him. See His power. See death cringe and obey Him. This is what we sing in the Easter hymn:
It was a strange and dreadful strife/ when Life and Death contended.
The victory remained with Life/ the reign of death is ended.
So fear Him, but not with a cringing fear. He loves you. He has bought you back to real life, life lived with God. He teaches you to know Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and seek every good of body and soul from Him, to obey His commandments, and look forward to that glorious day when you will see death put under your feet and join in the eternal chant of the Gospel, “O death where is you victory, O hell where is you sting. The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Amen.