The New Testament with Commentary John 11

Lazarus of Bethany*

1 Now a certain man, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha, was sick. 2 (It was the Mary who [later]† anointed the Lord with myrrh and wiped His feet with her hair whose brother Lazarus was sick.) 3 So the sisters sent to Him saying, “Lord, please, the one you love is sick!”

Jesus lets Lazarus die on purpose

4 Upon hearing it Jesus said, “This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” 5 (Now Jesus loved‡ Martha and her sister and Lazarus.) 6 So, when He heard that he was sick He stayed where He was two more days!§ 7 Then after this He says to the disciples, “Let us go into Judea again.”*

8 The disciples say to Him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just now trying to stone you, and you are going back there?” 9 Jesus answered: “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks during the day he doesn't stumble, because he sees the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night he does stumble, because the light is not in him.”†

11 Having said these things He says to them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going in order to awaken him.” 12 His disciples said to Him, “Lord, if he is sleeping he will get well.” 13 But Jesus had spoken of his death, while they thought He was talking about natural sleep. 14 So then Jesus said to them plainly: “Lazarus died. 15 And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.”‡ 16 Then Thomas (called Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let's us go too, so that we may die with Him.”§

17 So when Jesus had come, He found that he had already been in the tomb four days.* 18 (Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away, 19 and many of the Jews had joined the women around† Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.) 20 Then Martha, when she heard that Jesus was coming,‡ went to meet Him; but Mary remained sitting at home.§

Martha

21 Then Martha said to Jesus: “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died. 22 But even now I know that whatever You ask of God, God will give You.” 23 Jesus says to her, “Your brother will rise again.” 24 Martha says to Him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” 25 Jesus said to her: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes into me, though he may die, will live; 26 and everyone who both lives and believes into me will never ever die.* Do you believe this?” 27 She says to Him, “Yes, Lord, I have come to believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the One coming into the world.”†

Mary

28 Having said these things she went and called her sister Mary, saying privately, “The Teacher is here and is calling you!” 29 Upon hearing it she gets up quickly and goes to Him. 30 (Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was in the place where Martha met Him. 31 Then the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, when they saw Mary get up quickly and go out, they followed her saying, “She is going to the tomb to weep there.”) 32 Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, upon seeing Him she fell at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here my brother would not have died!”‡

Jesus is troubled

33 So when Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled.§ 34 And He said, “Where have you put him?” They say to Him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept.* 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Couldn't this man, who opened the eyes of the blind, have also kept this one from dying?” 38 Then, groaning within Himself again, Jesus arrived at the tomb.

Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead

It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. 39 Jesus says, “Remove the stone!” Martha, the sister of the deceased, says to Him, “Lord, he already stinks; it's been four days!”† 40 Jesus says to her, “Did I not say to you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”‡ 41 Then they took away the stone from where the deceased was lying. Jesus raised His eyes and said: “Father, I thank You that You heard me.§ 42 I know that You always hear me, but I spoke for the sake of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe that You sent me.”* 43 Upon saying these things He shouted with a loud voice,† “Lazarus, come out!”‡ 44 And out the deceased came! Bound hand and foot with bandages,§ and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus says to them, “Loose him and let him go.”*

The reaction

45 So many of the Jews who had come to Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed into Him. 46 But some of them went off to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. 47 Then the chief priests and the Pharisees convened a council† and said: “What can we do? Because this man performs many miraculous signs; 48 if we let him go on like this everybody will believe into him; and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation!”‡

49 But one of them, Caiaphas, being high priest that year, said to them: “You know nothing at all!§ 50 Nor do you consider that it is advantageous for us* that one man should die on behalf of the people, rather than the whole nation perish!” 51 (Now he did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die on behalf of the nation;† 52 and not only on behalf of the nation, but also to gather into one all the scattered children of God.)‡ 53 So from that day on they really plotted to kill Him.§

A tactical withdrawal

54 Therefore Jesus no longer moved about openly among the Jews, but went away from there into the country near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim; and He stayed there with His disciples.*

The Passover is near

55 Now the Jewish Passover was near, and many from the country went up to Jerusalem before the Passover in order to purify themselves. 56 So they were looking for Jesus,† and as they stood in the temple they were saying to each other, “What do you think—that he won't come to the feast at all?” 57 Now the chief priests and the Pharisees had together issued an edict that if anyone knew where He was he should report it, so they could arrest Him.

* 11: I take it that the events recorded in Luke 14:25-18:17, or most of the ministry in Perea, occurred between 10:42 and 11:1, here. † 11:2 John is writing many years after the fact. Mary became identified by her famous deed, which actually took place several weeks after the raising of Lazarus, and is recorded in chapter 12. ‡ 11:5 Here the verb is αγαπαω; in verse 3 it is φιλεω. § 11:6 And how long had it taken the messengers to find Him? Perhaps no more than a day; from Bethany to Jericho was all downhill. * 11:7 They are in Perea, on the eastern side of the Jordan. † 11:10 “The light is not in him”—I take it that here in verse 10 Jesus refers to spiritual darkness and light, because no one has sunlight inside him. With God's light inside, Jesus was not going to stumble, regardless of the time of day. ‡ 11:15 “Let us go to him”—would you say that about a corpse? Jesus knows what He is going to do. § 11:16 Thomas has received negative ‘press’, off and on, but his heart was in the right place. * 11:17 Four days—that seems like quite a bit. In verses 11 and 14 Jesus makes clear that Lazarus had died before He left Perea. Someone in a hurry could make the distance in one day. I can't prove it, but I imagine that the events recorded in Luke 18:18-19:27 (and the parallel passages in Matthew and Mark) occurred between verses 16 & 17, here. Jesus probably spent a night at Zacchaeus' house (see Luke 19:5), doing the climb (of over 3,000 vertical feet) from Jericho to Jerusalem the next morning. The Lord deliberately took His time, delayed His arrival. † 11:19 Instead of “the women around Martha”, perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, read just “Martha” (as in NIV, NASB, TEV, LB, etc.). It seems obvious that the sisters would be surrounded by women. ‡ 11:20 Since Jesus stopped outside the village (verse 30), I wonder how Martha got the word. Perhaps Jesus sent one of the disciples, but there may well have been a lookout watching the road. § 11:20 Mary was quite possibly unhappy with Jesus. It was obvious that He had not come when called, or He would have arrived several days sooner. She would conclude that He just didn't care that much. Since Jesus acted deliberately, it is clear that the Plan involved making the sisters go through that emotional suffering. We need to fix firmly in our minds that belonging to Jesus does not mean a free ride—we too may suffer precisely because of the outworking of God's Plan. After all the discussion is over, we have two options: rebel or submit. * 11:26 The verb ‘die’ in verse 25 refers to physical death, in verse 26 it refers to spiritual death, while the verb ‘live’ refers to spiritual life (although one might translate the Text as ‘will not die forever’, rather than “will never ever die”, indicating that physical death is temporary). Note that ‘lives’ and ‘believes into’ are in the present tense, and then note the word ‘both’. Once you have life in Christ, you need to keep on believing. † 11:27 Martha was not a theologian; she may not have understood it all, but she knew who Jesus was! Like Martha, we don't have to understand everything, but we do need to know who Jesus is. ‡ 11:32 I see a significant contrast between the sisters. Both of them say the same thing, but in a different tone. Mary is given over to her grief, she has no hope. Martha goes on to declare her confidence in Jesus; she still has hope. § 11:33 Why? What troubled Him? He would not be inconsistent with Himself and His commitment to the Father's will, the Plan. Seeing Mary's despair, perhaps He felt distress at the suffering the Plan was causing—He did not enjoy the fact that He was responsible for that suffering. * 11:35 The verb rendered ‘wept’ is really ‘shed tears’, different from the verb in verse 33, which is often associated with mourning. Jesus was not mourning, knowing what He was about to do. So why did He weep? Perhaps He was empathizing with their grief. But I imagine that their hopeless perspective also troubled Him—their view of death was inadequate. † 11:39 That is just what she said. Hey, at that moment Martha was not thinking about how it would read 2,000 years later! She reacted instinctively and blurted it out. Being a practical person she wanted to avoid further distress. ‡ 11:40 When had He said that? The Text does not say, but I imagine it was during their earlier conversation—to me it is obvious that they said more than is recorded. In any event, we have here an important declaration. Have you seen the glory of God lately? § 11:41 He is saying in so many words that He and the Father had already talked about the plan of action. * 11:42 He was talking out loud on purpose, so that the people around would hear what He said. † 11:43 That is what the Text says. Of course to shout is to use a loud voice, so the point seems to be that He really put His lungs into it—you could have heard Him a mile away! Well, Lazarus heard Him in Hades, which is in the middle of the earth somewhere (Matthew 12:40, Ephesians 4:9). Yes, but, could He not have done it with a whisper? I suppose so. So why did He yell? I do not know; I was not there. However, there may have been some symbolism involved—the longer one is dead the harder it is to bring him back. ‡ 11:43 As someone has said, if the Lord hadn't specified ‘Lazarus’ He might have emptied the graveyard! § 11:44 He must have come jumping out like a kangaroo—with his feet tied he could not walk. It must have been an interesting sight. And with his eyes covered he could not see, so obviously he had supernatural help. * 11:44 Would you have wanted to be the first one to start untying? I bet it was Martha. Notice that Jesus did not do what they could do; removing the stone and unwrapping Lazarus was up to them. † 11:47 There is no definite article with ‘council’, so I doubt that it was the full Sanhedrin; they would not want Nicodemus, or any others who were sympathetic to Jesus, to be there. ‡ 11:48 This was their ‘hidden agenda’. Jesus had more than substantiated His claim to be the Messiah, but they did not want the political consequences of installing Him. § 11:49 Dear me, he wasn't very nice! But John says he was prophesying, so it may have been God telling them what He thought of them. * 11:50 For “us” perhaps 2% of the Greek manuscripts, of inferior quality, read “you” (as in NIV, NASB, TEV etc. [LB omits]). Since this is a prophecy, the difference is significant. † 11:51 The ‘nation’ in question would be the Jewish nation. I find it interesting that God would choose to speak through Caiaphas. He was not the real high priest (who was Annas) but reflected a Roman imposition whereby the Jews had to name a new one every year, and that year it was Caiaphas. Maybe from God's point of view Annas was worse. ‡ 11:52 The actual terms of the prophecy seem to be limited to the one nation, so I take it that verse 52 is an added application offered by John. § 11:53 They have been wanting to kill Him for some time, but at this point it becomes top priority. * 11:54 The time available was probably not more than two weeks, if that. It was a last bit of rest before the final storm, but the Lord doubtless took advantage of the opportunity to teach the disciples, without the distraction of the crowds. † 11:56 I think this refers back to verse 53—it is the leaders who are conversing among themselves.