Jesus and Lazarus

The story of Jesus and Lazarus is commonly referred to as the Resurrection of Lazarus, for reasons that will become apparent later. The story begins when Jesus's friend Lazarus of Bethany becomes sick and dies. Jesus proclaims to his disciples that, through the love of God, Lazarus will be raised from the dead, and he travels to Bethany to prove just that. When he arrives, he finds that Lazarus had been dead and entombed for four days. Jesus meets with Lazarus's sister Martha and tells her that all people who believe in God live beyond death, which is hella important in the Christian faith. Jesus goes with Mary and Martha and many other Jews who followed him from Jerusalem to visit Lazarus's tomb. When they get there, they all cry because Lazarus is dead, and then Jesus says a prayer to God to raise Lazarus from the dead to show the people the power of faith in God, and then Lazarus walked out of the tomb and was totally fine. 

This story is obviously incredibly important in the Bible because it explicitly states that those who believe in God will never actually die, which I know is said throughout the Bible but this story lays it on particularly thick. This idea of eternal life has been one of the major cruxes of Christian faith, serving as a motivation for both conversion and upholding its principles no matter the cost. The fact that this idea can be assigned to this story makes the tale of Lazarus very important.

Another interesting aspect of this story is the fact that Lazarus is physically resurrected, as opposed to experiencing a spiritual ascension to heaven that is typical among saints. I am curious to know the significance of Lazarus's physical resurrection when all of the other saints seemed to remain ethereal. Christianity describes an eventual reckoning that will occur when all followers of Christ will be physically resurrected, but the Bible makes incredibly few references to this happening outside of this future event. This is one of them, which, I think, is pretty significant.

One final note about the term 'resurrection'. I've been using it pretty freely throughout this post, but, while perusing the internet, I found that Christians only consider someone coming back to life as a resurrection if they are then free from death forever. Lazarus was not, and this story is more formally known as the Raising of Lazarus, which correctly conforms to the terminology.

  

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