Random thoughts from a man who only knows in part until the Perfect comes

There was an episode once of one of these medical dramas where a doctor had made a mistake and the patient had unfortunately passed away. All the medical personnel in the ER room looked around at each other sadly as one of the docs began to look at the clock on the wall preparing to pronounce the time of death…but then one of the other doctors dramatically yelled out “no!” and began to franticly do CPR again in one last ditch effort to save the patient.

He grabbed the paddles and shocked the body in hopes that the heart would beat once again; he pounded the chest of the victim, he wouldn’t give up. The rest of the doctors and nurses in the room uncomfortably glanced at one another as they watched this one doctor try to do the impossible. This poor doctor pathetically pushed on against all odds. But then it happened! A little blip appears on the EKG monitor accompanied by an beeping sound. Amazement overtakes the doctors and nurses who are standing around and as if on cue they all spring to action to do what they can to stabilize the once-dead patient. It was going to be a happy ending after all.

When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead it wasn’t like the story above. Lazarus wasn’t just dead. He was dead dead. There was no hope in the people around the tomb that he might somehow still be alive, that somehow he might be able to be saved. Matter of fact, Martha and Mary both were resigned to Lazarus’ death and saw the situation as hopeless when they complained to Jesus that if he had just been there a few days sooner, something could have been done. The dude had been in the grave for four days by the time Jesus had shown up.

To punch home the extent of this guy’s deadness, John writes that Martha was concerned about the smell that would escape the grave should the stone be rolled away as Jesus had commanded. He was dead.

John seems to go out of his way to point out that the deadness of Lazarus. It’s almost as if Jesus waited before going to Mary and Martha when he had heard Lazarus was sick in order that Lazarus might be very good and dead beyond question before he got there. Jesus wanted everyone to know that this man was indeed dead!

The story is important for us because it serves as an analogical parallel to our spiritual condition and the work of re-birth that God does in our hearts. I once had a pastor at a large Southern Baptist Church where I was serving tell me that he didn’t believe in the doctrine of Total Depravity. I asked him why not and he said that if he believed in total depravity he would then have to be a Calvinist because the doctrine of total depravity totally strips man of any willful coming to Jesus. He said he thought that there was some level of goodness in every human that would allow them to respond to the gospel. He gave me no Scripture to back it up because there is none! To denounce Total Depravity because you don’t like it is silly and surprisingly common in many churches today. The reason we have stories like the story of Lazarus is to drive home how dead we are!

We are dead dead. We are way past the dramatic ER moment depicted in medical dramas. We are decaying. We stink! And when Jesus comes to us, He does a work in us of resurrection, new life, regeneration, new birth that we absolutely have no part in by our own will. Lazarus’ only task was to walk out of the tomb when Jesus said, “Lazarus, come out!”

I love the doctrine of Total Depravity because it frees me from doing evangelism in such a way that I feel like I have to somehow convince the person to awaken themselves – like I’m the doc in the ER giving it my best shot. Only God can do the miracle. I can, like Martha’s servants, roll back the stone by presenting the gospel message clearly, articulately and convincingly…but only God can do the resurrecting work of taking that totally depraved, dead, decaying, stinky individual with whom I converse and make them alive! Sometimes we share the gospel and an awaken soul emerges from the grave…but sometimes we just get the smell of continuing decay. We simply submit to, and trust the God who gives new life.

He get’s all the glory. Lazarus didn’t walk around town and say…”hey man, did you see me raise myself from the grave?!” No, he simply praised Jesus and said “I once was dead….dead dead…but now I am alive because Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life.”