And when He went in, He said to them, “Why are you in an uproar and weeping? The child is not dead, but asleep.”
This word of Christ does not mean that the girl had not truly died in the human sense. The whole course of the Gospel shows that she was dead. But the Lord calls death sleep, because before His authority death ceases to be a final and unbreakable reality. Just as a person can easily awaken someone who is asleep, so also Christ can raise the dead with a single word. Commentators note that Scripture itself often speaks of the death of believers with the image of sleep, because through Christ’s resurrection death has lost its final dominion. This verse teaches us to look at death not as an autonomous power, but in the light of Christ’s authority.