Was Jesus The First To Rise From The Dead?

Biblegems #263

Question: Why do some New Testament passages say Jesus was the first to rise from the dead when the Bible contains several accounts of others who were raised from the dead?

The apostle Paul explains in Acts how Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection fulfilled Old Testament prophecies:

Acts 26:23 “…that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”

Paul was not ignorant of such miracles as Elijah and his protégé Elisha raising a child from death back to life (1 Kings 17:22; 2 Kings 4:32-35). And he would have known how Jesus raised people from death to life, such as the raising of Lazarus, who had been entombed for three days (Jn. 11:38-45).

Why then does the New Testament refer to Jesus as “the firstborn from the dead” (Rev. 1:5)?

The answer lies in the uniqueness of Jesus’ resurrection.

Those raised from the dead in the Bible eventually died again. In that respect the Bible revealed ages ago what medical science would later confirm—reviving a person who has died is indeed possible. Beyond that, these miracles also foreshadowed Jesus’ resurrection, which would open the door for humanity to pass from death to eternal life, from mortality to immortality.

This seeming impossibility is made possible by one significant fact: death was not part of God’s original design in creation, but exists as the direct result of Adam and Eve intentionally breaking away from God’s design. That rebellious act fractured a universe once free of death and decay and launched the entire created order into an inescapable whirlpool of destruction. Imagine the entire universe existing in a state of perfect peace, like water in a bathtub—and someone opens the drain! At that moment, all the known “laws” of the physical universe would seem to be dramatically altered as the universe heads inexorably down the drain.  

The Bible calls Adam and Eve’s destructive act “sin.”

         Rom. 5:12  Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned…

To rectify this, God entered His creation as a human (Jesus), to ‘plug the hole’ with the sacrifice His own life and ‘refill the tub’ back to a place of order and peace. Because Jesus was sinless, death had no lasting power over Him:

Rom. 6:9-10 For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.  

Jesus’ entrance into the world was like the plug in God’s hand, plunging down through the swirling water of sin, destruction and death to stop up the drain. Believers in Jesus latch onto Him to escape being flushed into the septic tank the Bible calls hell. By latching onto Jesus we also latch onto the eternal life He has come to restore: 

1Cor. 15:21  For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.

Raised From The Dead?

Biblegems #217

Question: The girl Jesus “raised from the dead” in Matthew 9:18-26 was just “asleep,” according to Jesus, so was Jesus being deliberately deceptive for some reason, or was this not a miracle at all?

Two questions are before us here: 1) Was this girl really dead? 2) If she was dead, why did Jesus say she was only asleep?

First, this young lady had most certainly died well before Jesus arrived on the scene. Consider the following evidence.

Matthew 9:18 and following describes how the little girl’s father (Jairus, the synagogue Ruler, Mk. 5:21) had walked a good distance to find Jesus. The trip to the man’s house was slowed considerably by further ministry among the crowd that pressed in around Jesus. In fact, friends of the family had time to catch up with him:

Mark 5:35b “Your daughter is dead,” they said. “Why bother the teacher any more?”

When Jesus arrived at the home he found that funeral proceedings had already begun. Two “flute players” at a minimum were hired by even the poorest of families when someone died, along with at least one professional wailing woman, as required by Jewish custom of the day. Their job was to help family and friends accept the finality of death with mournful music and loud crying and wailing—hence, the “noisy crowd” (Matt. 9:23). Professional mourners were not called in until death was undeniably certain.

Second, Jesus used the term “asleep” because it was a common metaphor in His day for death. The Pharisees taught the doctrine of resurrection, and that death was not the end of existence. However, when Jesus used this common term for death in this situation, He did so in a very un-common way.

Before entering the dead girl’s room Jesus said to the hired mourners and the crowd they had stirred up, “Go away. The girl is not dead but asleep” (Matt. 9:24). In telling them to “go away” Jesus was about to demonstrate that He had the authority and power to bring a person back from the “sleep” of death. He was demonstrating here what He later declared (and proved) at Lazarus’ tomb:

         Jn. 11:25 “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies…”

The majority of the Jewish people, trained under the Pharisees, had a fairly correct understanding of death—it did not mean a person ceased to exist. There would be a resurrection of the just and the unjust whose eternal existence would be determined at God’s Judgment. Until that time, existence in Sheol was not unlike being asleep.

In practical experience however, they—like most people today—saw death as final and irreversible. But for Jesus, raising someone from the dead was no more difficult than waking someone from sleep.

So Jesus defiled Himself by taking the dead girl’s hand in His own, while the professional mourners outside laughed at Him. Then, as Mark records in his Gospel, Jesus “said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means, “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”). Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished” (Mk. 5:41b-42).