The Resurrection and the Life

Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country (Luke 7:11–17).[1]

In a little town called Nain, a burial procession headed out of town. As is the case in small-town life, everyone who wasn’t in the procession showed up to watch. At the rear of the procession were the mourners, setting the somber tone for the loss of life, preceded by the pallbearers, dutifully carrying the burial bier, and at the front, as was the custom, was the family, in this case one woman, all alone. In an age when a woman’s protection and provision came from her husband and then her son, this widow’s solitary march to the cemetery said it all. She wept, and Nain with her.

At that same time, headed into town was another procession of sorts, not carrying the dead but following the Life, Jesus of Nazareth. Why he came to Nain, we don’t know, but we do know that the two processions intersected, and Jesus saw the spectacle and saw her, and he had compassion. Inserting himself into the situation, in what at first must have seemed like an act of arrogant irreverence, Jesus halted their slow, mournful march to the grave. And he whose steadfast love never ceases, whose mercies never end, whose faithfulness is great, said to the widow, “Do not weep.”

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, John records that Jesus saw the friends and family weeping, and “he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.” John says, “Jesus wept” (John 11:33-35). He did not weep because of their lack of faith. He did not weep because they were mourning. He wept because death had taken the life of his beloved friend. Jesus wept, as do we, at the loss of a loved one, because death calls not for a celebration of life but a mourning of loss. The widow’s tears were no more in vain than Jesus’, who knows the power and sting of death, who too would suffer and die as his weeping mother looked on.

The Anguish of Loss

Death is not natural. It is an aberrant conclusion to life. It seems natural because it’s all we know, as it did to our ancestors before us. From the beginning of creation, the maker of heaven and earth made us in his own image. He who is eternal created us immortal, that we should never die and gave us one command: “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16-17). And our first parents ate and died, first spiritually and then physically, as do we as their posterity.

Death is the consequence of Adam’s sin, whose seed disseminates to every descendent after. Such is Adam’s inheritance left to his children. For, “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin,” the apostle says, “so death spread to all men because all sinned.” We who were created immortal and righteous, are now conceived in sin, born sinners, and eventually die, as consequence, every one of us. The anguish of loss we experience is because we were created to live.

There was a time in our Christian tradition when graves surrounded the church building. You could neither enter nor exit without remembering the dearly departed and the certainty of death. (I wonder if much of our modern flippancy would be remedied by a return to this practice?) Today, our cemeteries are on the outskirts of town, pleasantly removed from our purview, because who wants to think about death? But for entertainment’s digital depiction of it, we may go days, weeks, months, even years without thinking about death, but it always comes, and for those who neglect to consider it, it can be devastating.

On that day in Nain, as that weeping widow walked with the burial procession, walked before the burial bier, she knew the cold, hard anguish of loss, but that was about to change. She was about to experience a miracle and get a glimpse of the resurrection hope that every follower of Christ knows. Christians do grieve the loss of life but not “as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13), the apostle Paul explains. We grieve for the loss of the life of the one we love, and this is fitting. We grieve for their absence tomorrow, and this is right. We grieve that death took them and never gives them back, and this is reality. But we do not grieve for glory and the day when he who said, “arise” in Nain, will say the same to you and me.

The Word of Comfort

Though Jesus had just arrived in Nain, he witnessed the burial procession and immediately discerned the mourning widow’s situation. In what sounds like a command, “Do not weep,” is a word of comfort. It’s not false comfort or flattery for effect. As his Word is “truth” (John 17:17), he comforts her with it. We may say things we don’t mean or things that are incongruent with who we are, but this is never the case with the Lord. His Word is his revelation and always congruent with who he is. In telling her not to weep, he was directing her to himself, who comforts the brokenhearted.

She was not looking to Jesus in her mourning; she may not have even known who he was. She did not seek compassion but received it. She did not plead for mercy but was shown it. It was he, not she, who took the initiative. That’s how God’s grace works.

The Lord Jesus spoke a word of comfort to the widow in Nain that day, and he speaks a word for comfort to you today. He is not a distant or distracted Lord but a Savior who “has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows” (Isa. 53:4). Like that widow, he looks upon your sorrow and precisely knows. Your situation is not a mystery to the Lord. He not only hears you weeping; he knows the reason for your tears. And to you he says, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matt. 5:4), not because mourning is blessing but because he is, the one who comforts you.                         

And as he “comforts us in all our affliction,” in his love for us, he then uses us, the apostle Paul explains, “so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Cor. 1:4). In reading through the Gospels, Joni Eareckson Tada said that she consistently noticed Jesus “hanging out with someone else with a handicap—hob-knobbing with people with disabilities, reserving His most gentle touch for the blind and counseling the fathers of little boys with seizures. He seemed to go out of His way to strike up conversations with guys who were paralyzed.” She then summed what she noticed with this brilliant insight: “Since Jesus was not caught up with his own concerns, he was able fully and selflessly to enter into someone else’s sufferings.”[2] In the providence of God, Jesus entered Nain and had compassion upon a widow. In the providence of God, he places us where we are needed to have compassion, to speak words of comfort, to point the suffering to the Lord Jesus Christ. Where has the Lord placed you that you may share his loving mercy and compassion?

The Command to Live

Jesus’ words of comfort weren’t a callous tease, because they were accompanied by his miraculous provision. While he said to her, “Do not weep,” he said to her son’s corpse, “arise.” Comfort comes through the efficacious power of his Word: Jesus said, “arise,” to a “dead man,” who then “sat up and began to speak.” While I wonder what the man said, I’m more taken by the absurdity of Luke’s statement: “the dead man sat up and began to speak.” The dead don’t sit up; the dead don’t speak; the dead don’t do anything other than stay dead. But he didn’t, because Jesus gave the command to live.

This young man was not the first to be raised from the dead. But unlike the prophets before him, Jesus did not raise the dead by prayer but by his word. When Jesus raised Jairus’ daughter from the dead, he said, “Little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41). When he raised Lazarus from the dead, he said, “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43 KJV). And when he raised the widow’s son, he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise” (7:14). In each case, Jesus raised the dead upon his command, reuniting body and soul by the supernatural power of his word. And he who commanded life by his word so also gave his life.

He who came with power over life and death, willingly suffered and died for our sin, but he also resurrected to life that we might live. Jairus’ daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus all arose but also eventually died, reminding us of Adam’s inheritance. But when Jesus resurrected from the dead, he did so in victory over death. Having atoned for sin, once for all, in his death, he arose to eternal life that we might follow. Rather than to a resuscitated corpse, he arose in a transformed, glorious, immortal body, and so shall we, when he returns, and “we shall be like him” (1 John 3:2). Paul refers to this as the perishable putting on the imperishable and the mortal putting on the immortal, and when this happens, Adam’s inheritance shall be nullified, and it shall be declared, “‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’” (1 Cor. 15:53-55).

When the widow’s son sat up and spoke, when everyone witnessed him to come back to life, Luke records that “fear seized them all,” not a fear of terror but a reverence and awe of God leading to worship. There was no other explanation for such a mighty work. All they could think was what their history taught them, a great prophet had come, witnessing his work and declaring, “God has visited his people!” And so he had, not as a prophet of old but the Son of God, who had come not only to heal the sick and raise the dead but die and resurrect from the dead himself to the glory of God.

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, Jesus told his sister Martha, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23). Since Lazarus was already dead, she interpreted Jesus’ words metaphorically, saying, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). Of course, she was right, but Jesus actually meant more, to raise Lazarus from the dead before and then again in glory on the last day. But rather than explain this, Jesus used the opportunity to tell her something far more important, not about her brother but about himself. He said these glorious words, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26). It is a statement recognizing reality, “though he die,” while pointing to what awaits all who believe: “everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”

On that day in Nain, when Jesus told the widow not to weep and said to her son, “arise,” we get a glimpse of today and the last day. For, today we weep at the loss of those we love. But on the Last Day, our Lord Jesus “will wipe away every tear … and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). And we will be with him forever.

[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

[2] Quoted in Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 319.