Did Jesus Raise Himself from the Dead? John 2:18-22 and John 10:17-18

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There are two places in Scripture, both in the book of John, to which people go to claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead. The claim is that if Jesus could raise himself from the dead, he must be God. Or, because Jesus is God, he could raise himself from the dead.

There are big problems with the interpretation that Jesus raised himself from the dead. I’ll break the problems into two categories:

1. Biblical interpretation methodology (hermeneutics). The biggest problem from the perspective of biblical interpretation methodology is that the claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead contradicts a multitude of other Scriptures. The claim breaks one of the main rules of good biblical interpretation: “Interpret a less clear passage from the clear passage(s)”.

2. Theological problems – besides directly contradicting a multitude of other Scriptures, the claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead does not theologically align with the Bible. God doesn’t die and the dead don’t raise themselves to life.

“Interpret a less clear passage from the clear passage(s)”.

Let’s start with the “biblical interpretation” problem. As mentioned, one of the main rules of biblical interpretation is: “Interpret a less clear passage from the clear passage(s)”.

In all other places that Jesus himself predicted or talked about his resurrection in the Gospels, Jesus referred to his resurrection in a passive sense, that is, that he would be raised by someone else, not that he would raise himself. For example:

In Matthew 17:22-23, Jesus told his apostles while he was still in Galilee that, “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and he will be raised on the third day "

On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus told the apostles, as recorded in Mark 14:28, “But after I am raised up I will go before you to Galilee”. “I am raised up” is a passive verb.

Likewise, whenever others refer to the resurrection of Jesus in the Gospels, they did so in a passive sense, that is, someone else raised Jesus from the dead.

Even the famous Resurrection day refrain, “He is risen”, and “He is risen indeed” are passive verbs in Greek and would be better translated: “The Lord was raised indeed”. The angels’ declared in the tomb: “He is not here, but was raised” (Luke 24:6).

Acts and Epistles

There are over 30 places in the New Testament that explicitly state that God - a singular person who is differentiated from Jesus Christ - that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Here are a few examples:

Acts 2:22-24   "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know-  ²³ this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.  ²⁴ God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it.

Acts 2:32 This Jesus, God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses.

Acts 3:15 you… put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead,

Acts 4:10 Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead-

Acts 5:30-31 The God of our fathers raised Jesus, whom you killed by hanging him on a tree.  ³¹ God exalted him at his right hand.

Acts 10:39-40 They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear

Acts 13:30 But God raised him from the dead,

Romans 8:11   If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

Romans 10:9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

1 Corinthians 6:14 And God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by his power.

Galations 1:1. Paul said he was an apostle “not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead-

Colossians 2:12  …through faith in  the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

Note that in all the passages quoted above, and in many more like it, God, the singular person, the Father, God entire, all of God, is distinguished from “Jesus”, “Christ”, or “him”, the one whom God raised up. The one whom God raised up was not God, but is distinguished from God.

Like the Easter greeting mentioned above, there are many more Scriptures that describe Jesus as being acted upon in a passive sense in his resurrection, meaning, that Jesus was acted upon by God, like this:

Romans 6:9  We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.

1 Corinthians 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

There are lots more examples. These are only a few examples. I could go on, and on. To claim or believe that Jesus raised himself from the dead contradicts all of these scriptures that directly state that God raised him from the dead, or that Jesus was raised (passive) from the dead.

So let’s come back to our basic principal of biblical interpretation. We must interpret the less clear passages by the clear ones.

We should not take two less clear passages and ignore or re-interpret all the tens of crystal-clear passages which state that someone other than Jesus Christ, namely, God, the Father, raised Jesus Christ from the dead. If we ignore the clear passages, and instead base our theology on a less clear or obscure text, we inevitably fall into error.

Instead of formulating our theology from the less clear passage, we should consider other possibilities for what the less clear passage means. Or, even if the less clear passage remains puzzling, we should not abandon the clear passages with a contradictory interpretation.

In short, the claim that the two less clear passages in John’s Gospel say that Jesus raised himself from the dead uses a faulty method of interpretation to form an incorrect understanding. This is evidence that the “deity of Christ” interpretation is wrong - using two less clear passages while ignoring a multitude of clear passages.

John 2

Now let’s take a closer look at the two passages that supposedly say that Jesus raised himself from the dead.

The first passage is John 2:13-22, with the focus on John 2:19. We will see in this passage also that the author of the Gospel did not interpret Jesus’s words as Jesus saying that Jesus would raise himself from the dead, rather that someone else, God, raised Jesus from the dead.

Jesus was in Jerusalem for a Passover festival. He saw the animal sellers and money changers in the temple, fashioned a whip, “cleansed” the temple, and declared “Do not make my Father’s house a house of merchandise (a market place)!” Jesus’s deed and words are a distinct Messianic claim, that is, a claim to be Messiah, not a claim to be God. The Messiah would call God “my Father” and be zealous for the temple (2 Sam. 7:13-14; Psa. 89:26).

In association with Jesus’s act of cleansing the temple, John records in 2:17 that, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” This is a quote from Psalm 69:9. Psalm 69 is a Psalm of David about a Davidic-like figure who because he is on God’s side and is zealous for God’s affairs (e.g., the temple) others hate him without a cause and seek to put him to death. The Messianic figure who displays zeal for God’s house appeals to Yahweh his God for ultimate vindication.

Then the Judeans said to Jesus, "What sign do you show us for doing these things?" (John 2:18).

Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John 2:19, cf. Matt. 12:39-40). This is the statement in which Jesus supposedly said he will raise himself from the dead.

We must acknowledge that Jesus’ statement is somewhat cryptic, and all the more so it should not be used to contradict all the other Scriptures that state explicitly that God (the Father, the only God) raised Jesus from the dead. The Judean listeners misunderstood Jesus’s statement, and even his disciples did not understand what Jesus meant until after Jesus was raised from the dead.

As John records in John 2:22 “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” This interpretation of the author of the Gospel of John is very important. The author of the Gospel of John, two verses after recording Jesus’s cryptic declaration, said that Jesus was raised (that is a passive verb, someone else raised him) from the dead. Unlike “deity of Christ” apologists, John interpreted Jesus’s words and understood that someone else, God, raised Jesus from the dead.

The author of the Gospel of John said again at the end of his book that someone else raised Jesus from the dead: John 21:14, “This was now the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”

So what did Jesus mean?

I will suggest one possibility for interpreting Jesus’ words in John 2:20 “destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”. My suggestion will align with the way the author of the Gospel of John interpreted Jesus words and with all the other references in the New Testament that say that God raised Jesus from the dead.

I suggest that Jesus spoke the words of the Father. As Jesus said in John 14:24, “the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.”  So, Jesus, as a prophet, could speak the words of God the Father directly (cf. Isaiah 7:10). That is, these words, “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up” are the words of God the Father spoken by Jesus. God the Father declared that he would raise the temple, the body of Jesus, from the dead.

There is good evidence that Jesus was speaking the Father’s words, or even specifically that Jesus was quoting Scripture when he said “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”. Note again John 2:22 “When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” The author of the Gospel ties together the Scripture and the word that Jesus spoke. The passage is punctuated with allusions and quotes from the Old Testament (Psa. 69:9, 2 Sam 7:13-14). It makes perfect sense that when the Judeans asked for a sign to show by what authority Jesus did what he did in the temple, he quoted Scripture. The ultimate sign for Jesus’s authority was that God raised him from the dead (cf. Matt. 12:29-30).

Note how on a second occasion when Jesus cleansed the temple, he quoted directly from the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah.  And like the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah, Jesus spoke the words of Yahweh as Yahweh’s spokesman:

Mark 11:15-17:  And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons;  16 and he would not allow any one to carry anything through the temple.  17 And he taught, and said to them, "Is it not written, `My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations'? But you have made it a den of robbers."

We see in this passage of Mark, in connection to the cleansing of the temple, that Jesus quoted Scripture which Yahweh, God, spoke through the prophets (Isaiah 56:7, Jer. 7:11).

Although it is difficult to trace down exactly which Scripture Jesus was quoting or alluding to when he said “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”, it is evident from Jesus’s and other apostles testimony that they saw in the Scriptures a prophetical three day death and resurrection of the Messiah. Note these examples:

Luke 24:45-46  45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures,  46 and said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and would rise from the dead on the third day,

1 Corinthians 15:3-4   3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,  4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (cf. Acts 17:2-3).

This is evidence that Jesus was alluding to or quoting Scripture, that he spoke the words of the Father when he said “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up”.

There is undoubtedly more involved in Jesus’s statement about the destruction and raising again of a “temple”, but for our study, our suggestion agrees with the author of the Gospel of John, that someone else, not Jesus himself, raised Jesus from the dead.

John 10:18 – A translation issue

The other passage in the Gospel of John that “deity of Christ” apologists point to in an effort to claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead is John 10:18. This “problem” is really only a translation issue. It involves how to translate the Greek word λαμβάνω lambano which can be translated in more or less an active sense as “take”, but also can be translated in a more or less passive sense as “receive”. I think we can see that the word in the verses under question is in the more passive sense, “receive”.

In John 10 Jesus described himself as being the good shepherd who was loved by, and appointed by the Father. In this Gospel, Jesus described the Father as the only true God (John 17:3). As God’s appointed faithful shepherd, Jesus was willing even to die for his sheep.  We will get to “theological problems” below, but note that the Bible is clear: while God’s appointed Good Shepherd may die, God does not die.

After describing himself as the Good Shepherd who gives his life for the sheep, Jesus said, as recorded in John 10:17-18 (I will read the verb in question as “take or receive)”:

“For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take (or receive) it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own free will. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take (or receive) it again. This commandment I have taken (or received) from my Father."

Many translations translate the same Greek verb (λαμβάνω) in the first two occurrences in 10:17 and 18 as “take”, but just a few words later, the last occurrence in verse 18, as “received”. The meaning “received” is clear at the end of verse 18. Jesus didn’t take the commandment from the Father, he received the commandment from the Father. And this clear occurrence should govern the meaning of the occurrence of the same verb in this verse and in the verse immediately preceding. “I lay down my life that I may receive it again…I have authority to receive it again. This commandment I have received from my Father”.

Here also there is a passive sense when Jesus speaks of his resurrection. Yes, the Father has granted Jesus the authority to receive life again, and even to pass that life on to others (John 5:26-28, 1:12-13). But Jesus’s authority, indeed Jesus’s resurrection life, is given by God, and received by Jesus.

Ironically, a Greek word for “take” (αἴρω) is in this very same verse, but it is a different verb than the action that Jesus does (“receive” λαμβάνω). The “take” verb is the authority that Jesus’s opponents do not have “to take” his life.

Again, we have suggested a quite viable understanding of a less clear passage in light of the clearer passages. Our interpretation aligns with the many other scriptures in the New Testament, including the Gospel of John, which state clearly that God raised Jesus from the dead.

To summarize so far,

It bears repeating: we must interpret less clear passages by the multitude of clear passages that say that “God raised Jesus from the dead”. Not to do so makes a mockery of the Scriptures which state clearly that God raised Jesus from the dead.

Secondly, in both the questionable passages, it is stated that Jesus has a passive role in his resurrection. John 2: says that Jesus “was raised from the dead”, and John 10:18 says that Jesus “received” a commandment, indeed his very life, from the Father.

Theological Problems and Contradictions

Now to the theological problems with claiming that these two verses in John show that Jesus raised himself from the dead:

1. The reaction of the apostles and believers to the resurrection of Jesus was never, “Jesus raised himself from the dead, which shows he is God!”. Let’s be reasonable. An AD first century pious Jew would never think that a dead man raised from the dead was God. Rather the reaction of the apostles is, “Jesus was dead and now he is alive! He has been raised! God raised Jesus from the dead! This is evidence that Jesus really is the Messiah, and he is now exalted to God’s right hand!”.

2. Related to the above, to claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead ignores God, who Scriptures call the Father, because, among other reasons, He is the giver of life. The Scriptures say God gives life. God, through Christ, raises the dead (note the Scriptures quoted above). To claim that Jesus raised himself ignores, and takes glory away from the One True God, the Father, who gives life to the dead (Romans 4:17, 8:11). In the end, all “deity of Christ” claims both snub the work of God the Father and decrease the greatness of the human Messiah Jesus.

3. If Jesus had to be God to rise from the dead, you and I have no hope, since we are not God, neither are we god/men. The testimony of the Bible is not that god/men raise themselves from the dead, but that God promises to raise human beings from the dead.

4. Biblically, theologically and philosophically, it is absurd to suggest that someone dead can give themselves life. Thinking so changes the biblical meaning of what death is. It really follows the lie that the deceiver proposed when he told Eve, “You will not die”. In the Scriptures, the “dead know nothing” (Ecc. 9:5). “When you (God) take away their spirit, they die and return to their dust (Psalm 104:29). The dead are not conscious, but await resurrection to life. In Christ we do not desire bodily escape to some ethereal “heaven”, but we long for bodily resurrection to the kingdom of God on this earth, with Jesus as king.

Like King David, who according to the apostle Peter, was in the grave and had not ascended to the heavens, but awaited resurrection from among the dead (Acts 2:29, 34), dead believers in Messiah Jesus are metaphorically “sleeping”, and they don’t wake up on their own accord. They must hear the voice of the Son of Man (John 5:28-29). If only a god, or a god-man can raise himself from the dead, humanity is lost.

The “Deity of Christ” claim is ultimately a claim that God died. Such a claim is an attack on who God is, and is unbiblical (Psa. 102:27; 1 Tim. 17; 6:15-16; Rev. 1:8). Theologically the claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead is parallel to Canaanite Baalism, which claimed Baal was dead but then defeated death (the Canaanite god called Mot) and made himself alive.