Ezekiel 37:12-13, “Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am YHWH, when I open your graves…”
The people of God will be raised from the grave of their spiritual exile only as God Himself descends to the deepest recesses of that grave on the cross. In His death, Jesus Christ endures and so exhausts the True Death, the True Grave, the True Exile—the fullness of God’s wrath—for all who will ever be found in Him.
Therefore when HE is raised, ALL are raised in Him. The resurrection of God’s exiled people anticipated in this passage is ultimately the resurrection of God’s single faithful servant—Jesus Christ—in whom alone God’s people pass through exile into the True Promised Land: universe-illumining fellowship with the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit (Hab.2:14, Rev.21:22-26).
But, as always, redemption is for the sake of revelation. The raising of God’s people in the raising of the Son is ultimately so that YHWH might be known and loved for who He is. It is only here—in the Son, crucified in love and risen from the grave, with all God’s people risen in Him—that we truly know who our God is.
