My wife and I are teaching children's Sunday School today, and in the course of planning, I got to thinking. Elijah was one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and miracle workers. At his word, the heavens withheld their rain for 3 1/2 years. He provided a miraculous supply of bread and oil for a widow and raised her son to life, called down fire from heaven, and became one of only two people in history to never die when he was taken away by chariots of fire.
And yet this great prophet and miracle worker does not even hold a candle to Jesus Christ. John the Baptist, whom Jesus said fulfilled the promise of the second coming of Elijah's spirit and power, said of Jesus, "He who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie." Clearly someone greater than Elijah was here.
Here are five reasons why Jesus is greater than Elijah:
1) Elijah's faith wavered. Jesus remained faithful.
Despite all that he had seen God do, when Elijah's life was threatened by Jezebel, "he was afraid and he arose and ran for his life." (1 Kings 19:3) Jesus, on the other hand, never wavered in His commitment to Calvary and His Father's will, and thus the author of Hebrews writes, "Christ is faithful over God's house as a son." (Hebrews 3:6)
2) Elijah had to pray to God to affect the weather. Jesus simply said, "Be still," and the storm stopped.
Most of Elijah's miracles actually involve him praying and asking God to act. James says that "Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain." (James 5:17) But Jesus didn't ask for anybody's permission; He simply said, "Be still," and the storm ceased. Thus He proved that He is the God of Psalm 89:9-- "Who is mighty as You are, O Lord? You rule the raging of the sea; when its waves rise, You still them."
3) Elijah raised a widow's son from the dead. Jesus is the resurrection and the life.
Elijah is one of the few people in the Bible through whom God raised the dead. But even though the miracle was spectacular, it is obvious from the account in 1 Kings that it was God who raised the dead, not Elijah. Elijah pleaded with God, and God answered his prayer. Jesus, on the other hand, declared about Himself saying, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live," (John 11:25), and then backed up this claim by commanding life into the decaying corpse of Lazarus with a simple, "Come forth."
4) Elijah was taken to heaven with fire. Jesus will come from heaven with fire.
Elijah was taken up into heaven by "chariots of fire and horses of fire." (2 Kings 2:11) Lest we be too enamored by this spectacle, though, 2 Thessalonians tells us of a greater heavenly fire: a coming day "when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God... when He comes on that day to be glorified in His saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed." The glory of Jesus' heavenly fire will brilliantly outshine Elijah's, as much as the sun outshines a flickering match.
5) Elijah never died. Jesus conquered death.
Elijah is one of only two people in the Bible, along with Enoch, to never taste death. Yet the honor that Jesus has and will receive is infinitely greater, for Jesus is now "crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone." (Hebrews 2:9) And Jesus did not just taste death for everyone; "He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death." Elijah the sinner never died, thanks to Jesus tasting death for Him, and now Jesus has definitively conquered Satan and eliminated the power of death for all time for all who trust in Him.
Elijah is surely worthy of much honor among the great saints of the faith. But Jesus is surely worthy of much more. He is a greater miracle worker, greater life-giver, greater sin-conquerer, greater grave-overcomer, greater Savior.
