[A ‘Tuesday Challenge‘ originally prepared for the congregation of Horley Baptist Church during March 2026]
Jesus said to her, “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. Do you believe this?”
John 11 v25-26 [ESVUK]
Jesus was speaking to Martha whose brother, Lazarus, had died. His death provided the context for Jesus to make that declaration of the way of salvation. The statement is, at the same time time, both simple and extremely profound. The simplicity can be recognised in the words that Jesus had spoken to Nicodemus on an earlier occasion:
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
John 3 v16 [ESVUK]
Many preachers have described spiritual decision-making as like being at a cross-roads but this metaphor is not fully appropriate. A cross-roads implies that there is the option of continuing straight on, without changing direction, whereas a better image would be that of a t-junction where a decision must be made. On that basis we need to remember that the discourse with Nicodemus continued:
Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.
John 3 v18 [ESVUK]
The apostle Paul recognised that the promise of eternal life also had a profound dimension. Equating sleep with death, he wrote:
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed.
1 Corinthians 15 v51 [ESVUK]
Job, who lived many years before Martha, Lazarus and Paul, also recognised that there is a mystery in life and death yet he was certain of a positive outcome.
For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God,
Job 19 v25-26 [ESVUK]
At this season of Easter particularly we focus on the death and resurrection of Jesus, the means by which we have access to the eternal life that Jesus spoke about.
For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all
1 Timothy 2 v5-6 [ESVUK]
In the northern hemisphere, Easter heralds a season of new growth but a crop that is neglected does not produce good fruit. There is a spiritual parallel. The writer of the letter to the Hebrews posed a question to his readers that is equally relevant to us:
How shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?
Hebrews 2 v3 [ESVUK]
Are you being negligent?
References:
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Contributed by Steve Humphreys; © Steve Humphreys