Length: 5 Minutes
The resurrection of the dead is not something that is unusual or uncommon to born-again believers, who have the same power that raised Jesus from the dead living inside of them. If it seems unusual, it is because we are just out of the loop! We simply don’t realize the very power living inside of us. Power to raise the dead is a normal, everyday thing for us.
In fact, the same Jesus that commanded His disciples to “love one another” is the same Jesus that commanded His disciples to “raise the dead.”
Matthew 10:8 (KJV) Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
This is a real thing that Jesus commanded His disciples, because Jesus wants people to be raised from the dead. He wants people to live! And you say, “Well Jesus was just speaking to His disciples at the time.” I find it funny that we sort of “pick and choose” the things that are applicable to us, when referring to the words Jesus spoke to His disciples. When He tells them to, “Love one another” we are OK with that, but when He says, “Raise the dead” we try our best to look for a way out of it.
Contrary to many people’s opinion, Jesus did not provide one thing for His disciples and another thing for us. Jesus did not bleed out of one arm to provide one thing to His disciples and out of His other arm to provide a different thing for us. There is one atonement and one provision, through one cross. And every time one of His disciples raised the dead, they were doing so by power that Jesus provided at the cross. Otherwise, how did His disciples receive it? The only way to receive anything from the Father is through Jesus’ atonement, through faith in it (Romans 5:2).
This commandment to raise the dead, from Jesus to His disciples, is just as applicable to us, as His commandment to love one another. Raising the dead is not unique to the disciples or localized. The same atonement, by which the disciples received power to raise the dead, is the same atonement that is available to you. It’s not as if, we have to receive things through Jesus, but His disciples got some special backstage pass, to receive from God a different way than us. Everybody receives the same grace, through the same faith, in the same Way. After all, there’s only One.
The “raising from the dead” power that the disciples used, is the same that is available to us, and more so. All of this is not even mentioning the fact that men of God have been raising the dead since the Old Testament. Even the dead bones of Elisha, after he was buried, raised a man from the dead when they came in contact (2 Kings 13:21). Are we to believe that the dead bones of an Old Testament saint had more power available to them than we do, as born-again believers, who live after the Savior has come? Woe to us, if that’s really the case. It would have been better for us to have lived under the Old Testament, if that were true.
But no, raising the dead power was not something that only His disciples received, and could freely give. Ephesians 1 makes it clear that we not only have power to raise people’s bodies from the dead, but we have the same power that raised Jesus’ mortal body into a perfect glorified body! We have freely received this, and we can freely give.
Ephesians 1:19-20 (NKJV) and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead…
As much as most Christians have no problem quoting that verse from Ephesians, which says that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead is toward us (or at our disposal), those same Christians just might look at you sideways if you talk about raising up dead family or friends like it’s normal. To them I would say, “What’s the use in having the same power that raised Jesus’ physical body from the dead, living inside of you, if we’re going to think it’s strange when someone talks about raising the dead? It seems like a terrible waste of resurrection power, if it’s living in you, and yet you think it foreign for someone to actually use it.”
Jesus and His disciples routinely raised the dead, yet we can do greater works than these. But how will we ever receive “greater works” than Jesus did in His earthly ministry, if we can’t even accept that the works He did, are applicable to us today?
John 14:12 (NKJV) “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father.
Raising the dead is not a strange thing. It is God’s will — no, even further — it is your right and inheritance through Christ Jesus, to raise those who have died back to life.
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