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"The Word was God THE SAME (houtos) was in the beginning with God" (John 1: 2).
"There was a man . . . . . THE SAME (houtos) came for a witness" (John 1: 7).
"Upon Whom . . . . . the Spirit . . . . . THE SAME (houtos) is He" (John 1: 33).
"His Son Jesus Christ THE SAME (houtos) is the true God" (I John 5: 20).
We return to the Gospel of John for the crown and climax of its teaching concerning
resurrection. He had declared in chapter 5: that "the dead shall hear the voice of the Son
of God", that all that were in the graves should hear His voice, and that they should come
forth. This stupendous claim and its most blessed fulfillment constitute the seventh of the
eight signs of John's Gospel. Lazarus, was not only dead, but dead and buried. Not only
so but dead four days, and the tomb had to be sealed. When the Saviour said to Martha
"Thy brother shall rise again", she replied, "I know that he shall rise again in the
resurrection at the last day".
"Jesus saith unto her, I AM the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever is living and believing in Me shall
never die" (John 11: 25).
The "I AM" claims of Christ which come in the Gospel, have associations of life
throughout:
I
AM
the Bread of Life (6: 35, 48, 50, 51).
I
AM
the Light of the world . . . . . the light of life (8: 12).
I
AM
the Door . . . . . I am come that they might have life (10: 9, 10).
I
AM
the Good Shepherd . . . . . I lay down My life (10: 14, 15).
I
AM
the Resurrection . . . . . the life (11: 25).
I
AM
the Way, the Truth and the Life (14: 6).
I
AM
the Vine . . . . . fruit (15: 5).
In each of these titles claimed by the Lord, we find life in association with Him and it
is at the central one, that of the good Shepherd, that we read of the commandment He had
received of the Father, to lay that life down, and to take it again. This life, laid down as
the ransom for sin, taken again as the pledge of victory over the grave, that life, not the
inherent life of Deity, but the life given to Him as "the Son of Man", is the eternal life,
the gift of God, the life that cannot be disassociated from Him as "the Son".
We must leave the reader the blessed opportunity of assembling and studying all that
is written in the four Gospels concerning the Resurrection and the Life, while we turn our
attention to the testimony contained in the Acts of the Apostles.