Now, Martha believed, as most of us believe, in a _future_ resurrection. She believed that, after lying a long time in the grave, one would come out of it at last, on a great day of judgment, and somehow the soul and body be reunited. She believed this, for it was the general belief of the Jews in her day. It is the general belief of Christians now. The majority of Christians have not got very far beyond that. They talk of the resurrection, as though it were merely the return of the soul into the old body; and when you comfort them over their dead by saying, “Your dead will rise,” reply, “I know it—at the resurrection, at the last day.” But Jesus tells Martha, and all the Martha Christians of the present time, that he _is_ the resurrection and the life. Your brother is not to sleep in the dust till the last day, and then rise. He does not die at all. He rises with Christ here, and in whatever other world. His nature is to go _up_, not down, when he is Christianized. Now or then, to-day or at the last day, if he has the living faith of a son of God, he will be raised by that Christ within him, who is his life. This, it seems to us, is the only adequate explanation of this passage, and shows conclusively that resurrection must mean, in this place, a rising up to a higher existence, and not a mere return to this life. It appears, from 1 Cor. ch. 15, that there were some in the Christian church who said there was no resurrection of the dead (ἀνάστασις νεκρῶν,) or that it was past already. (2 Tim. 2:18.) These Christians did not deny the doctrine of immortality, or a future life. It is difficult to imagine the motive which could induce any one, in those days, to join the Christian church, if he denied a future life. Probably, therefore, they assumed that the only real resurrection takes place in the soul when we rise with Christ. They said, “If we are to rise into a higher life after this, _how_ shall we rise, and with what bodies?” (1 Cor. 15:35.) They professed to believe in a simple immortality of the soul, but not an ascent of the personal being, soul and body together, to the presence of God. They did not question a future life, but a higher life to which soul and body should go up together.