The Resurrection and the Life

What is this prayer’s central petition, and what does it lead you to expect from today’s readings? Notice that the Collect asks God to preserve us “in body and soul.” If the prayer confesses that both our physical and spiritual existence depend entirely on God’s merciful governance, what might the readings that follow reveal about God’s power over both physical death and spiritual condemnation?

God sets Ezekiel down in a valley full of bones that are “very many” and “very dry” (v. 2), then asks, “Son of man, can these bones live?” The Hebrew verb is chayah (“to live, to come back to life”), which appears six times in these fourteen verses. Ezekiel responds, “O Lord GOD, you know” (attah yada’ta, v. 3). Why does Ezekiel refuse to answer yes or no? How does his response confess both human impotence and divine omnipotence in the face of death?

God commands Ezekiel to “prophesy over these bones” (v. 4). The Hebrew verb hinnabe (a Niphal imperative) transforms Ezekiel from a witness of death into an agent of divine power. As Ezekiel preaches, there is a “rattling” (qol ra’ash), and the bones come together with sinews, flesh, and skin (vv. 7–8). Yet the vision pauses on a haunting note: “there was no breath in them” (v. 8). The Hebrew word ruach (used ten times in these fourteen verses) means “breath,” “wind,” and “Spirit.” What does the distinction between reassembled bodies and the absence of the ruach teach about the relationship between the preached Word and the life-giving Spirit?

God then commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the ruach itself: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live” (v. 9). When the ruach enters, they stand on their feet as “an exceedingly great army” (v. 10). The fact that they are described as “slain” (harugim) left unburied on a battlefield invokes the ancient covenant curse of Deuteronomy 28:25–26. How does God’s raising of this army of the slain overturn the ultimate covenant curse and foreshadow the Gospel’s promise that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1)?

God identifies the bones as “the whole house of Israel” and quotes their lament: “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are clean cut off” (v. 11). In response, God shifts from the imagery of an open battlefield to the imagery of a cemetery: “Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people” (v. 12). The verb “raise up” (veha’aleithi, a Hiphil form) is heavily associated in the Old Testament with the Exodus. In John 11:43, Jesus cries, “Lazarus, come out!” How does Ezekiel’s promise of a “new exodus” from the grave find its fulfillment in Jesus’ command at the tomb?

Paul opens with the emphatic declaration, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (v. 1). The Greek word for “condemnation” (katakrima) is a legal term: the sentence of guilty pronounced upon the convicted. In John 11, Lazarus lies under the sentence of death, bound in grave clothes, sealed in a tomb. In Ezekiel 37, the bones lie under the covenant curse, unburied on a battlefield. How does Paul’s courtroom declaration, “no condemnation,” summarize what Christ’s voice accomplished at the tomb and what God’s ruach accomplished in the valley?

Paul explains that God accomplished what the Law could not do “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering” (v. 3). The phrase “as a sin offering” (peri hamartias) is the standard Septuagint translation of the Hebrew sacrificial term. Paul writes that God “condemned sin in the flesh” (katekrinev tēn hamartian en tē sarki): sin itself was put on trial, sentenced, and executed when Jesus died on the cross. In John 11, Jesus’ act of raising Lazarus is the direct cause of the Sanhedrin’s decision to crucify Him (see John 11:45–53). How does this connection reveal that Jesus’ gift of life to Lazarus costs Him His own life?

In verses 5–8, Paul describes the “mindset of the flesh” (phronēma tēs sarkos) as “hostility toward God” (echthra) and highlights three impossibilities: the Law is “unable” (adunaton) to save (v. 3), the fleshly mind is “not able” to submit to God’s Law (v. 7), and those in the flesh are “not able” to please God (v. 8). How do these three “unables” correspond to the utter helplessness of the dry bones in Ezekiel 37 and the four-day decomposition of Lazarus in John 11? What do all three texts together teach about the necessity of God’s unilateral action in salvation?

Paul writes, “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you” (v. 11). The future-tense verb “will give life” (zōopoiēsei) is a concrete, eschatological promise of bodily resurrection. This verse contains a beautiful Trinitarian formula: the Spirit, the Father who raised Jesus, and Jesus Himself. In Ezekiel 37:14, God promises, “I will put my Spirit in you, and you shall live.” In John 11:25, Jesus declares, “I am the resurrection and the life.” How do all three texts together present the Holy Spirit as the agent who delivers the Father’s life-giving power through the Son’s work?

In Romans 8:10, Paul writes, “If Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” He uses a correlative construction (men… de, “on the one hand… on the other hand”) to describe the paradox of the Christian life: the body still dies, yet the Spirit is already life. This verse is one of the great scriptural foundations for the Confessional Lutheran teaching of simul justus et peccator (“simultaneously righteous and sinner”). Consider the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ… who… on the third day rose again from the dead.” How do these three readings together illuminate the confession that Christ’s bodily resurrection is not merely a past event, yet the guarantee of our own future bodily resurrection?

Our congregation never hears John 11:1–45, Ezekiel 37:1–14, or Romans 8:1–11 together on a Sunday morning in the One-Year lectionary. The One-Year assigns Ezekiel 37 on the Second Sunday of Easter, yet there it is paired with John 20:19–31, not with the raising of Lazarus. Having studied all three texts together, what has been missing from your understanding of how God raises the dead? Consider the progression: Ezekiel sees a vision of resurrection through Word and Spirit; Jesus performs the actual, historical raising of a dead man by His spoken command; Paul declares that the same Spirit now dwells in every baptized believer as the guarantee of bodily resurrection on the Last Day. How does the loss of this progression leave a gap in the congregation’s grasp of the Triune God’s power over death?

In the Divine Service, the congregation hears the Word of God read and preached, confesses the Creed (including “I believe in the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting”), and receives the body and blood of the risen Christ in the Lord’s Supper. In Ezekiel 37, the Word is preached and the ruach enters the slain. In John 11, the incarnate Word speaks and the dead man walks out of the tomb. In Romans 8, the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus dwells in us. How does the weekly pattern of the Divine Service function as the ongoing delivery of the resurrection life that all three texts promise? How does the Lord’s Supper, in which Christ gives His true body and blood to the communicant, embody the “I AM the resurrection and the life” declaration in a tangible, sacramental way?