The Never-dying Confusion over the Never-die Promise of Jesus

"Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world." John 11: 23-27 [KJV]

These words of Jesus, that those who believe in him will never die, have been appropriated many times in the thousands of years since he spoke them by cult leaders who offer their followers the same promise. Never mind that every one of Jesus' disciples died, typically by violent means; it's incredibly easy to found a cult on this premise, and, contrary to what one would think, these typically continue without all that much of a hitch following the deaths of their founders. That is, Never-die movements never seem to die, so strong is the temptation to appropriate this promise as one of eternal life in this present age. 

But what did Jesus actually mean by “Everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” [ESV]? Well, commentators have taken different approaches to solving this, with various Bible translators following their leads. One of the easiest ways out has been to focus on the eschatological context of Martha's affirmation, and interpret Jesus as meaning, “When I return, everyone who is then alive, of those who have believed in me, will be immediately translated into eternity in a resurrection body.” Convenient as that is, I don't see it coming across in any of the dozens of versions I checked.

What many translators do instead is to modify 'will never die' with some emphatic modifier like “really.”

And everyone who lives and believes in me will never really die. [ERV]

That, I guess, gives some room for the expositor to further address the problem of Jesus' disciples actually dying, but doesn't really say how that works. Nor does it actually translate the Greek.

Some play around with the conjunction a little, without coming up with anything new, other than perhaps to emphasise that one actually has to be living as a beliver to appropriate this promise:

And whoever lives by believing in me will never die. [NIV]

As can be expected, the Amplified finds room for a couple of these options:

And whoever continues to live and believes in (has faith in, cleaves to, and relies on) Me shall never [actually] die at all.

The Message basically combines all of them:

And everyone who lives believing in me does not ultimately die at all.

But I'd like to direct you to that last clause, with a word not found in any of the dozens of other versions: ultimately. This actually translates the final clause of Jesus' statement in Greek, εισ τον αιωνα, literally, 'unto the age'. What readers of most English versions miss out on is that 'die' is actually negated three times in this verse, which is so difficult to express in English that only this hyper-paraphrase actually manages to translate all three of them. 'ου', 'εισ τον αιωνα' and 'μη' become 'does not', 'ultimately', and 'at all'.

I think the key to understanding this is that third negation expressed in the original, εισ τον αιωνα. That is, anyone who believes in Jesus (and I think the NNIV may even be on to something here: anyone who lives by believing in Jesus, or to expand it a bit, believes in Jesus whilst he still lives—there being no second chance once earthy life is over) will only be “mostly dead” when his body succumbs to mortality; but not “all dead,” because that body awaits a future resurrection. And to prove this, Jesus will shortly resurrect the body of Lazarus, purposely left to stew in the grave long enough for decomposition to begin.

So don't get tripped up by this passage, or trapped by the claims of a cult founder: Jesus promised, not a never-ending life stuck in a sinful human body, but something far better: an eternity in a resurrection body. All that is required is that your physical death, when it does come, finds you believing in him.

Air Safety Advisory

 

I've been watching a lot of air crash videos lately, so I thought I'd make one more post on the topic, as air travel begins to heat back up again after the relaxation of travel restrictions. These are likely to be re-imposed, and re-eased, multiple times, so this post should remain relevant.

I've come to the conclusion is that by far the most dangerous commercial aircraft to fly in is one that is of a new design the pilots are not familiar with. This is because today's aircraft are so computerized that as often as not, now it's the computer that crashes the plane when it disregards what it regards as nonsense input from the pilot. A pilot not familiar with how to deal with this is likely to die along with his passengers, despite his best efforts to regain control. Although the recent 737 Max debacle showed, Boeing is not immune to this problem--but it affects Airbus planes more often, and with more deadly results, because Airbus planes are totally fly-by-wire, meaning that all control signals initiated by the pilot have to be approved by the computer before being passed on to the control surfaces.

If there's any comforting thought in all of this, it's that the airline safety business is extremely heuristic: whenever people die in a plane accident, the response is always two pronged: first to determine exactly what happened, and then to take whatever steps are necessary to keep it from happening again. If only the criminal justice business worked that way: it's real good at the former, but horrible at the latter.