John 2:18-22
18 The Jews then said to Him, “What sign do You show us as your authority for doing these things?”
19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up.”
20 The Jews then said, “It took forty-six years to build this temple, and will You raise it up in three days?”
21 But He was speaking of the temple of His body. 22 So when He was raised from the dead, His disciples remembered that He said this; and they believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.
Ro 10:9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that
God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.
In English we use “rise” and “raise” with two distinctly different meanings. “Rise” is what a person or thing does by itself
to itself: “I rise every morning at dawn;” “the sun will rise soon.”
“Raise,” on the other hand, is what a person does to some other object or person: “He raised
the flag.” “The
flag was raised.” The object does not “rise” by itself in this case, but is actually “raised”
by someone else! If “raise” is to be used with one’s own self as the object, it must be so stated or plainly understood: “I raised
myself so I could see better”!
(“Rise” and “risen” is used for persons who are alive (even those who have been resurrected) who stand up:
1 Thess. 4:16 (
RSV) “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise [
ἀναστήσονται<450> lit. '
will stand up'] first”;
Luke 9:19 (
RSV) “And they answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others say, Elijah; and others, that one of the old prophets has
risen [
ἀνέστη<450> ‘stood up’].’”
)
An examination of all the passages dealing with Christ’s resurrection shows that this is also the intent of nearly all of them. Therefore, when we see “God, having
raised up his
servant” (Acts 3:26,
RSV), we understand God as being one person who raised up
someone else (His servant, Jesus). And at Gal. 1:1 we see - “God the Father, who raised [Jesus Christ] from the dead.”
The noted trinitarian NT Greek expert Dr. Alfred Marshall writes:
“our Lord ‘was raised’ as are the dead generally (they do not ‘rise’). See 1 Corinthians ch. 15, etc.” - p. xxxvi,
The Zondervan Parallel New Testament in Greek and English, 1980.
We also see at Eph. 1:17, 19, 20 -
“that
the God of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of Glory ..., according to the working of his great might which he accomplished in Christ when
he raised him from the dead and made him
sit at his right hand [cf. Ps. 110:1, 2; Acts 2:34-36; and Ro. 8:34] in the heavenly places” -
RSV.
And 1 Thess. 1:9, 10 -
“how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God [John 17:3] and to wait for His
Son from heaven, whom
he raised from the dead, Jesus” -
RSV. Also see Acts 10:40; 13:30, 33, 34, 37; Ro. 4:24; 6:4; 8:11; 10:9; 1 Cor. 6:14; 2 Cor. 4:14; Col. 2:12; 1 Peter 1:21; etc.
Probably the only place you could find where there appears to be a statement that the Son raised
himself (in contrast to the many scriptures to the contrary) would be John 2:19-22.
John 2:19, 21, 22 -
“Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days
I will raise it up.’ .... But he spoke of the temple of his
body. When therefore he
was raised [
not ‘he raised
himself’] from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this.” -
RSV.
Rather than ignoring this scripture, since at first glance it seems to contradict all the many others about Jesus being raised up by the Father alone, we should make every attempt to understand it in agreement with the other scriptures on the subject.
Obviously Jesus was speaking
figuratively here, whereas the other scriptures concerning his being raised are to be understood
literally. Figurative Bible language often leads to difficulties in interpretation.
However, Jesus was speaking figuratively of his actual
body which his enemies really did destroy (“
destroy this temple and ...”). Therefore, one understanding might be that Jesus was merely stating that
after the Father had already returned Jesus’ life to a body (“raised” him to
life) Jesus was then physically able to raise up that life-filled
body: He literally was able to raise himself to his feet again; he
raised his own body up from a prone position!
Another possibility could be that because of his perfect faithfulness and obedience to God, Jesus himself provided the moral basis for the Father to raise him from the dead. It might be said that, in a sense, because of his faithful course in life, Jesus himself was
responsible for God’s resurrection of him.
A similar style of expression may be seen at Luke 8:48 when Jesus had healed a woman he said to her: “
Your faith has made you well.” Did she actually heal herself, then? No; it was power
from God the Father
through Christ that healed her
because of her faith!
Even noted trinitarian NT Greek scholar A. T. Robertson tells us,
“Recall [John] 2:19 where Jesus said: ‘And in three days I will raise it up.’ He did
not mean that he will raise himself independently of the Father as the active agent (Rom. 8:11).”
- Word Pictures in the New Testament, Vol. v, p. 183.
It should be noted that at least one Bible student has suggested that the figurative "body" Jesus was to raise up was probably a parallel to the one that had been destroyed. The temple stood for the "body" of God's followers. After it had been removed, Jesus built up a new "body" of God's Christian followers which, in effect, replaced the old "body."
But whatever the answer to any possible confusion generated from this single figurative usage at John 2:19, we must not ignore the
many clear, indisputable,literal statements which clearly state that
the Father alone actually raised Jesus to
life.
