How did Jesus know he was going to rise from the dead? I mean, he was so certain that he would not only suffer, but would also rise... how did he know?
After all, the scriptures are supposed to testify to this, and when it comes to the suffering, that's easy enough to find. There are plenty of references in Isaiah, not to mention the experience of every servant of God to come before him, so whether in direct prophecy or typologically, there is plenty of evidence for the fact that Jesus as God's servant was going to suffer and die... but how did he know he was going to rise?
Sure there are some rather oblique references in Isaiah to resurrection generally: 25.8, 26.19, but where did the certainty come from that he himself, the servant of the Lord would rise?? One day I'll write a fuller article about this, but here's my suspicion:
Jesus had a way of seeing things implied in Scripture when they are not clearly stated. Think for example of the way he reasoned for the resurrection from the fact that God IS the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Matt 22.32. A present tense in God's statement about himself is enough to tip Jesus off to the fact that the death of the body is not the final end of the person.
I suspect his expectation of his own resurrection is reasoned in a similar manner.
Take for example Psalm 22. It's a Psalm that at so many points Jesus applied to himself. Through the first 20 and a 1/2 verses the suffering of God's servant is plain, what is not plain is the presence of Resurrection. But wouldn't you almost expect Resurrection to be there if it was as integral to Christ's mission as he thought it was? If this Psalm is such a clear statement of the experience of God's servant, wouldn't you expect Resurrection to be there? I think it is. It's implied.
Verse 21 begins with the subject calling for God's deliverance, he has been poured out, his bones are showing, they have pierced him, and he cries out to be saved from the mouth of the lion... Then what happens? There's a miraculous turnaround. The second half of verse 21 is a clear statement of his having been delivered. But how? How is it possible to go from the suffering and abandonment of the first 20 & 1/2 verses to the confident assertion of deliverance in the second half of verse 21? I think the answer is resurrection. In the same way Jesus sees resurrection implied in the relationship of God with Abraham, Jesus sees his own resurrection implied in the reversal of fortune seen in Psalm 22.
And if you are willing to accept implied resurrection then you begin to see it everywhere. Take Isaiah 49 as an example. The early verses of Isaiah 49 are a constant confusion of positive statements about the servant and heartbreaking reflections on his powerlessness and pain. In verses 1-2 the servant is called, named, and made to be a polished arrow, but then he's hidden, concealed. In verse 3 he is the servant in whom God will be glorified, but then in verse 4 he seems to have laboured in vain. All this potential seems to have emptied itself into vanity and the spending of strength for nothing. But then, once again, we see this impossible turn around. The second half of verse 4 has the servant's recompense being with God and his right is with the Lord. How is it possible? How is it possible to be both poured out and still successful? I suspect the reason is resurrection.
If we're looking for resurrection throughout the whole of the Old Testament, and not just a few isolated texts, then I think the place to see it is both typologically in the deliverance of God's servants and prophetically in the paradoxical reversals of fortune God's servants seem to experience.
Would Jesus have seen it there? It's only conjecture, but somehow it seems to be the way he read his bible.
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