Lazarus' Rising From the Dead

I recently finished listening to Dostoevsky’s famous novel, Crime and Punishment. While the story begins with a gruesome murder by the protagonist, Raskolnikov, ultimately in the end the story is about his resurrection. Throughout the story reference is made to the raising of Lazarus from the dead. At one point the main detective who accuses Raskolnikov of the crime asks him, “And... do you believe in Lazarus’ rising from the dead?” Raskolnikov responded, “I... I do,” and then affirmed that he believed the story literally. Then later when he was with the young woman Sonia, who was much more of a believer than himself, Raskolnikov demanded her to read to him the story of Lazarus. This she did, including these words: “And when He thus had spoken, He cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth. Bound hand and foot with graveclothes; and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him and let him go.” Ultimately that story became Raskolnikov’s story, with the help of Sonia. She urged him to eventually confess of his crime, and at the end of the novel as he was sent to Siberia as a prisoner for his punishment, she left her home and followed him there. As he struggled mentally with his own failure and his botched theory about his elite status in society, he finally realized that he loved Sonia. One day he was sent to work with others and a guard at a riverbank, and as he sat there not well guarded, she found him and sat beside him. The book recounts, “How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come.... They wanted to speak, but could not; tears stood in their eyes. They were both pale and thin; but those sick pale faces were bright with the dawn of a new future, of a full resurrection into a new life. They were renewed by love; the heart of each held infinite sources of life for the heart of the other.”

                This love transformed his future and his past. As Raskolnikov basked in this new feeling, he thought of what he had done, especially to hurt Sonia to whom he had been terribly mean at times. The novel relates, “But these recollections scarcely troubled him now; he knew with what infinite love he would now repay all her sufferings. And what were all, all the agonies of the past! Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment, seemed to him now in the first rush of feeling an external, strange fact with which he had no concern. But he could not think for long together of anything that evening, and he could not have analysed anything consciously; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind.” His change was complete, and he turned to his New Testament and pondered again the story of Lazarus. The novel finishes with these words, “He did not know that the new life would not be given him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering. But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.” The message to me of the book is that through love and Jesus Christ, we can be totally changed. The resurrection is not just for the physical body in the next life, but we can experience a complete transformation of our very nature in this life through Jesus Christ.

                This story by Dostoevsky reminds us of the account of the Anti-Nephi-Lehies. They too were murderers, and they were redeemed through the Savior to also have a complete regeneration from their old world into a new one. And it also was started by love—the love of the sons of Mosiah who gave up everything for fourteen years to come and help the Lamanites change. Their king said, “I thank my God, my beloved people, that our great God has in goodness sent these our brethren, the Nephites, unto us to preach unto us, and to convince us of the traditions of our wicked fathers…. And I also thank my God, yea, my great God, that he hath granted unto us that we might repent of these things, and also that he hath forgiven us of those our many sins and murders which we have committed, and taken away the guilt from our hearts, through the merits of his Son” (Alma 24:7, 10). And so, we are left to ponder whether we believe in the same transformative power of Jesus Christ to change even the most wicked. This novel leaves us to ask ourselves the same question that was asked of Raskolnikov: “Do you believe in Lazarus’ rising from the dead?” If we do, then we must believe that it can happen again today in our life and in the lives of those we love who struggle. Through love, we can all be figurately raised up and receive this promise of the Lord: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).