As usual during His ministry, Christ didn't explain to Martha how He would give eternal life to His people. He simply called upon them to put their trust in Him, and He would take care of their bodies and their souls. Most of them seemed not to grasp the intractable problem of granting eternal life to sinners. How can a just God forgive sins, when He promised never to clear the guilty? How can God put our sins behind Him, never to remember them against us anymore, as He promised in the New Covenant? Not understanding this, how Martha must have been crushed when Jesus was taken and put to death! She probably had not heard Christ's own promise that He would give His life to save His sheep. How can Jesus be the Resurrection and the Life if He is dead? How can a dead man save anybody? They didn't know, that it was His dying that would save us. Did Martha's faith waver when Jesus hung on the cross in agony and woe? It reminds us of the old Negro spiritual song we know well: Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Were you there when they nailed Him to the tree? Were you there when they pierced Him in the side? Oh, sometimes, it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble! There was one man there who believed in spite of Christ's dying, and that was the penitent thief on the cross. Others were crying out, taunting Jesus to save Himself and the thieves who were crucified with Him. But the penitent thief, by an astounding work of the power of the Holy Ghost, was convinced that the Lord would reign in His kingdom one day, and he cried out to Jesus to remember him when that kingdom came.