John 5: 21
“For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so, the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.”
This verse makes my head spin! “For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life…” is quite a statement to make. In Jesus’ day, there were an important group of Jewish leaders called the Sadducees. They did not believe in the resurrection of the dead either because they believed that God could not or would not do such a thing. They had access to all of the same scriptures that the Pharisees and others had, but they chose to believe differently. In this one simple statement, Jesus puts aside any doubt on the matter. The Father raises the dead and gives them life. (Jesus will go on to demonstrate this truth more than once!) Then Jesus equates himself to God again by saying he, too, gives life to whom he is pleased to give it.
This second statement is even more powerful. Jesus offers to give life to the living. Here it helps to look back to Genesis 3 and re-examine the difference between being physically dead and spiritually dead. Adam brought us to a state of spiritual death by eating from the forbidden tree. Jesus offers to give us life again, the life that Adam gave up when he was in the Garden of Eden. Continue reading “Game Changer”