Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus' Resurrection, and the Gospel of John

Part 2: The Resurrection as the Reason Jesus Came

By Robert M. Bowman

Jehovah's Witnesses teach that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead with a "spirit body" rather than with an immortal, glorified human body. In Part One we looked at the teaching of the Gospel of John as a whole in relation to the question of the nature of Jesus' resurrection, focusing on the narrative of Jesus' miracles and of his own resurrection. In this concluding Part Two, we will consider what three specific sayings of Jesus in the Gospel of John reveal about the resurrection of Jesus.

Raising the Temple (John 2:19)

When Jesus first went to Jerusalem during his public ministry, he drove the moneychangers and salesmen out of the Temple (John 2:13-17). Some of the Jewish leaders responded to Jesus' action by asking him for a sign - that is, for a miracle proving that he had God's backing for doing such things (verse 18). In reply Jesus said, "Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up" (verse 19). His Jewish critics replied, "This temple was built in forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?" (verse 20). "But he was talking about the temple of his body" (verse 21). When Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples remembered this saying and believed (verse 22).

The key sentence here is Jesus' statement, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." The sentence is really quite simple, but I will point out certain elementary grammatical facts about this sentence in order to make sure the meaning is not missed.

"It" (Auton) Is "This Temple." First, we must make clear the function of the pronoun "it" (auton). Pronouns take the place of a noun, whether stated explicitly or implied. Writers and speakers most commonly use a pronoun to refer to an object that is already designated in the immediately preceding context by a noun. For example, instead of asking, "Please give the baby a bath and I will put the baby to bed," my wife is likely to ask, "Please give the baby a bath and I will put her to bed." We call the noun to which the pronoun refers its grammatical antecedent (because the noun is customarily, if not quite always, expressed before the pronoun is used). So, in my example sentence the antecedent of her is the baby. Obviously, the pronoun refers to the same object as designated by its antecedent: that is, in fact, what calling the noun its antecedent means.

In the sentence before us, the word "it" (auton) is a pronoun that refers back to its antecedent, "this temple" (ton naon touton). That this is the case is clear enough in English and even clearer in Greek. The pronoun auton agrees in gender, number, and case with ton naon touton (both are masculine, singular, accusative), and no other antecedent (explicit or implicit) can be supplied in the context. There simply is no credible way to construe this sentence that would avoid the conclusion that "it" refers back to the object designated by the expression "this temple."

Destroy this temple and in three days

I will raise it up.

Now, why is this important? Because it absolutely rules out the usual explanation offered by Jehovah's Witnesses for John 2:19. Typically they will argue that while the Jews destroyed Jesus' physical body, what God raised up was a new "spirit body" for Jesus. But this is an impossible interpretation of John 2:19. Whatever was raised up, it was the same thing that was destroyed. But the Jews obviously did not destroy a spirit body. What they destroyed, or killed, was Jesus' human, physical body. But once it is realized that the word "it" is a pronoun referring back to "this temple," it is impossible to maintain that one thing was killed (Jesus' physical body) and another thing was raised up (a new, spirit body).

"This Temple" Is Jesus' Physical Body. But is the temple to which Jesus referred his physical body? Yes, it is. So says verse 21 plainly: "But he was speaking of the temple of his body." In case this statement does not seem clear immediately, the expression "of his body" (tou sômatos autou) uses the genitive (a grammatical case commonly used to denote possession) to denote identity. We do this in English, for example, when we speak of "the city of Philadelphia" (which means "the city that is Philadelphia"). Grammarians sometimes call this use of the genitive an "epexegetic" genitive or a "genitive of apposition." Thus, John means that Jesus was speaking about the temple that was his body.

Again, we know that this must be referring to Jesus' own human, physical body because that body, and that body alone, was what the Jews were challenged to destroy. When Jesus said, "Destroy this temple," he must have been referring to something that men might and actually did destroy. Again, this simple fact allows us to eliminate the explanation that Jesus was talking about God raising up a spirit body for him, since a spirit body cannot be destroyed (or even touched!) by men.

Putting Two and Two Together. All that is left is to put two and two together, so to speak. If "this temple" was Jesus' physical body, and if the object referred to as "it" was the same object as "this temple," then "it" was Jesus' physical body. But then what Jesus was saying in John 2:19c was that he would raise up his physical body.

Destroy this temple and in three days

I will raise it up. . . .

But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

Did Jesus Give Up His Flesh Forever? (John 6:51)

We turn next to a statement of Jesus in the Gospel of John that the Jehovah's Witnesses think precludes his having been raised with a physical body. In John 6:51 Jesus said, "and the bread also which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh." Jehovah's Witnesses reason that if Jesus "gave" his flesh for our life, he could not receive back his life in the flesh without depriving us of salvation. This is the "ransom" doctrine of the atonement that is a central, though little discussed, element in the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses.

While we cannot offer a full-scale refutation of the ransom doctrine here, we can show that it is not warranted by Jesus' statement in John 6:51. The metaphor that Jesus is using in John 6 is not that of a ransom, redemption, or exchange. He is not talking about giving up his life in the flesh so that others may live. The metaphor that Jesus is using throughout the chapter is that of life-giving bread from heaven. Jesus contrasts himself with the manna that fell from the skies in the wilderness to sustain the Israelites during the Exodus. Whereas the manna only appeared to come from heaven and was good only to sustain the Israelites' physical life temporarily, Jesus really came from heaven and is able to give eternal life to those who believe in him (John 6:31-58).

When Jesus says that he will "give" his flesh for the life of the world, this does not mean he will "give up" his flesh forever. This is clear when one considers another, related statement in the Gospel of John. In the most famous verse of the Bible, Jesus said that God "gave his only-begotten Son" so that those who believe in him may not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16). This "giving" is clearly not a giving up forever, since the Son returned to God in heaven.

Jesus' point in John 6:51, then, is that he gives eternal life to believers through his death in the flesh, not that he can never be raised back to life in the flesh. In fact, a little later in the Gospel, Jesus flatly contradicts that idea.

Laying Down His Life to Receive It Again (John 10:17-18)

When Jesus spoke of himself as the good Shepherd (John 10:7-18), he pointed out that unlike other, faithless shepherds, he is the good Shepherd who would lay down (tithêsin) his life (psuchê) for his sheep (John 10:11). Jesus concluded this discourse by explaining that he will not be giving up his life forever, but laying down his life in order to receive it again. "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down [tithêmi] my life (psuchê) in order to receive it again [hina palin labô autên]" (John 10:17).

The last clause, "in order to receive it again," is often translated "in order that I may receive it again." While this translation is accurate, some readers are misled by the word "may" into thinking that Jesus is saying that because he laid down his life voluntarily he had permission to receive it again. But this reading is mistaken. The word labô is commonly translated "I may receive" because it is in the subjunctive mood, a verb form sometimes used to express possibility or permission. However, here labô follows the conjunction hina, "in order that," and hina followed by a verb in the subjunctive mood regularly expresses intent or purpose, not possibility or permission. Thus, hina . . . labô means "in order to receive" or "for the purpose of receiving."

This point refutes the Jehovah's Witness interpretation of Jesus' statement. Their view is that Jesus gained the right to receive back his human life because of his faithfulness to the point of death, but chose to forego that right in order to provide his physical death as the ransom sacrifice. But as we have seen, this is not what Jesus is saying here. Rather, Jesus is saying that he died for the express purpose of receiving back his life in his resurrection.

The whole sentence, then, expresses the idea that Jesus will voluntarily die in order to be raised from the dead. In making that point, Jesus says explicitly that he will lay down his life (psuchê) in order to receive it (autên) again. The statement is clearly parallel to John 2:19. Here that which is said to suffer death is Jesus' life or "soul," in context meaning simply Jesus' physical life as a human being. This life or soul is precisely what will be restored in Jesus' resurrection, as once again the pronoun "it" (autên, here feminine in gender to agree with the word psuchê) indicates.

I lay down my life

in order to receive it again.

What Jesus laid down, then - his physical, human life - he received again in his resurrection. That, as Jesus says here, was the whole point of his dying in the first place.

Conclusion

According to the other three Gospels, Jesus prophesied that he would be killed and on the third day raised from the dead (Matt. 16:21; 17:23; 20:19; Mark 9:31; 10:34; Luke 18:33). These predictions are naturally understood to mean that Jesus would be raised with a physical body. Jesus makes statements to the same effect in the Gospel of John. Jesus' purpose in coming into the world and dying was to rise from the dead (John 10:17-18) and so become the source of eternal life to those who believe in him (John 1:12-13; 20:30-31). Jesus came in order to be for us "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25). These statements fit perfectly with the narrative of the Gospel, which clearly presents as fact that Jesus was raised from the dead in the same physical body in which he had died, though wonderfully transformed, glorious and immortal.