When Jesus spoke with His friend Martha after the death of her brother Lazarus, she inquired tentatively whether Jesus might ask His Father for Lazarus' life to be restored. Jesus quickly corrected her: I AM the resurrection and the life! Christ is not just powerful enough to raise His people from the grave. He is, rather, resurrection and life itself! His identity itself is resurrection and life. By His almighty power, as God Himself, He raises up all His people who trust in Him. This is because all of life was created by the Son of God. Jesus pushes further: whoever believes on Him, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Whoever lives and believes in Him shall never die. Even in death, His trusting loved ones merely rest in sleep, a rest from which one day, Jesus will awaken us, and we shall never die forever! Everlasting life is here again promised by Jesus. How can God be just and justify sinners? How can the promised judgment for sin be reversed, legally and morally, so that God's promise of wrath is fulfilled against us? In John 10, Jesus described the only method: He should lay down His life for His people, His sheep, whom God had given to Him for safekeeping! But there is an additional duty imposed upon Christ, not only to lay down His life to save His sheep, but also to take up His life again in resurrection. Only in that way can Christ fully and completely save His lost loved ones, by dying in their place, and rising again in vindication and glory to lose none of them, that none of them ever could be snatched away from His saving, strong arms.