John 11

1. Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. (It was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.) Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. When Jesus heard that, he said, This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby.

5,6. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. When he had heard therefore that he was sick, he abode two days still in the same place where he was. Then after that saith he to his disciples, Let us go into Judea again. His disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee; and goest thou thither again? Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him. These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go that I may awake him out of sleep. Then said his disciples, Lord, if he sleep, he shall do well. Howbeit Jesus spake of his death: but they thought that he had spoken of taking of rest in sleep. Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe; nevertheless, let us go unto him. Then said Thomas, which is called Didymus, unto his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him.

If it is not given to every man to be a Lazarus or a John, nor to every woman to be a Mary, it is given to every Christian to have a friend in Jesus. He called the disciples his friends, and he is the friend that sticketh closer than a brother. On the way to our redemption he took up our humanity and allied us, as men, to himself; and such ties as men recognize among themselves, they find established between them and him. We not only come to him with thanksgiving, loyalty, and obedience, but for fellowship. The friend whom we consult in emergency, with whom we take counsel, on whom we fall back for succor, for sympathy, with whom we share our thoughts, on whose love we count—it is Jesus. No one else can come so near, can give us such confidence in his wisdom and judgment, can so penetrate through our perplexities; no one else will estimate us with the same righteous tolerance; with no one else can there be the same unreserved expression of thought, the same opening of a troubled and hesitating heart. Nothing that affects us is indifferent to him.

The friendship of Christ is in every way perfect. Prayer will bring the Friend at any moment to our side. Nay, he seems to be marching with us through our life, so exact is his knowledge of our circumstances, and so often has he helped us before we had sought him. And to have Jesus, means that dream of a perfect friend, that haunts us in the days of our youth, come true; that ideal, that with cooler thought and more wisdom we learn to think impossible, more than fulfilled: it means this, and over and above, all that is deep and divine in the Son of God, all that is peculiar in the sacrifice of the cross to those for whom it was offered. And so when Christians shrink from the heavier blows of life, and think if Jesus had been there it had not come: the presence of sorrow does not argue the absence of Christ, or that his love has cooled, or that he would needs interfere to spare a life, no matter how dear, or how dependent we are on it. It argues that we are in this world, and bound up with its misery, and that unless we pass out of this world we cannot escape its mutability and pain. And this chapter argues that lives may be stricken down, and loves severed, and the happiest homes darkened, while the sufferers are dear to Jesus, and he watches them and knows that they suffer. W. F. S.

Both in word and in work, in which he is one with the Father, the glory of Christ comes mightily forth as a true witness, testifying to the word which he had spoken, that no man taketh his life from him, but that he layeth it down of himself. Death flees before him; without his will no man dies: He is the Resurrection and the Life. It is in this light that we should contemplate the narrative which John has related with all that graphic distinctness which the careful observation of love could alone have imparted. R. B.

The raising of Lazarus was manifestly intended to supply the Jews with one more incontrovertible proof that Jesus was the Christ of God, the promised Messiah. It was also meant to prepare the minds of the Jews for our Lord’s own resurrection. No one could say, when the grave of Jesus was found empty, and his body gone, that his resurrection was an impossibility. The mere fact that in that very year a man dead four days had been restored to life within two miles of Jerusalem would silence such remark. Of all our Lord’s miracles this one is most thoroughly credible and supported by most incontrovertible evidence. J. C. R.

1-3. In the circle of this family, with Mary, who “sat at his feet and heard his word,” with Martha, who was only divided between this and the desire to pay as much outward honor as she could to her divine guest, with Lazarus his friend, we may think of him as often wont to find rest and refreshment, after a day spent amid the contradiction of sinners, and among the men who daily mistook and wrested his words. But now there has fallen a cloud upon this happy household of love; for not they even whom Christ loves are exempt from their share of earthly trouble and anguish. Very beautiful is it to observe their confidence in him; they take it for granted that this announcement will be sufficient, and say no more; they do not urge him to come; they only tell their need, as being sure that this will be enough; he does not love, and forsake them whom he loves. T.

3. They do not say “our brother,” or “thy disciple,” or even “one who loves thee,” but simply “he whom thou lovest.” Christ’s love to us, and not our love to Christ, is the blessed truth which we ought continually to keep before our minds. J. C. R. —How beautiful and touching this petition! If the Lord loves him who lieth sick, then there is indeed no distress. Love makes the beloved one’s sickness its own sickness, and here is the love of him who is Lord over all sickness. “Lord, behold!"—therein they embody all their entreaty for help and likewise all their assurance that the Lord is both willing and able to “behold” and to help the beloved sick one. R. B.

4. As with so many other of the divine promises, which seem to us for the moment utterly to fail, and this because we so little dream of the resources of the divine love, so was it with this word—a perplexing riddle, till the event had made it plain. T.—Our Lord afterward fully explained what he meant by this ambiguous speech; but it is a remarkable instance of the candor and fidelity of the Evangelists so exactly to record the very words of Jesus, though malice might so easily cavil at them. D. 5. It is an exquisite picture that John leaves on our minds: the calm days of intimate communion in the little hamlet; converse on the law and the prophets till the heart burned within; a revelation of all the graciousness of Jesus, where he was free from restraint; his sympathy with the young Jew, who yields himself up in simple and entire trust and leans upon his divine friend, is the companion of his walks, sits with him under the shade of the fig-tree in the court or on the house-top while the sun goes down and glows upon Jerusalem, hears from his own lips of his wonderful plan, insensibly comforts and cheers him, follows him with wistful sympathy, or enters into his thoughts with a ready spirit, even when they baffle his comprehension. W. F. S.—Christ has objects of special affection; they are such as love him and serve him with no ordinary love, and whose characters are such as he, the perfect judge of character, can approve. Blessed be his name, they are none of them perfect. But he loves to help them in their endeavors to be so. He loves certain families; families of prayer; families whose members love one another; families where he is exalted, and his cause and his friends are cherished, and his name is most precious, and where the whole life of the household is one hymn of praise to Christ, a fragrant sacrifice of devoted service to his honor and glory. N. A. 6. When he abode in the same place and lingered on his way to Bethany, Christ tried the character, not only of the sisters, but of all who knew the case. Superficiality fell away—secret unbelief broke out into scorn—and those alone stood the test whose souls had sought and found in him what the soul needs. Christ’s delays are the touchstones of spiritual life. Ker. 8. At present they are in a place of retirement and comparative safety—Perea, beyond the Jordan. A journey to Bethany will take him close to Jerusalem, where bitter enemies are watching for him. Naturally enough, his disciples remonstrate: “Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?” F. D. H. 9. Twelve hours. The Jews and Romans divided the day, that is, the spaces between the rising and setting of the sun, into four parts, consisting each of three hours. But with them the hour was a twelfth part of the time which the sun continued above the horizon. The first hour began at sunrising, noon was the sixth, and the twelfth ended at sunset. The third hour divided the space between sunrising and noon: the ninth divided that which was between noon and sunset. Burder.—As well in reference to himself as to them the Lord bids the disciples be of good heart concerning his journey to Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem in order to fulfil his day’s work, the eleventh hour of which had now begun; the twelfth hour of his day he had yet to complete, for while it is day he must work. R. B.

Are there not twelve hours in the day? As his manner often is, the Divine Teacher here makes a commonplace fact, lying under our constant observation—the mere duration of the daylight—represent a great doctrine of practical religion. God fixes the length of the day—twelve hours. While you are walking with him, his plans protect you, his ordinances befriend you, his hands hold you up and clear the way, his sunshine flows down upon you, his invisible angels watch over you. It may not always seem so; it certainly will not so long as we look only through the eyes of sense. Clouds and darkness may appear to overhang the path of the just, and night to be shutting in before its time; but it is appearance only. No outward hinderances can shorten God’s time, or take back his promise. Your “day,” for his service, has just twelve hours. If God’s will and word command you to go, your strength will be equal to your day, and your day will be as long as it ought to be. If it seems to be cut short here, it will be filled out in a glorious immortality—not an hour lost. It is not so much the period that is of consequence, as the living of it all out, clearly and faithfully, in the service of the Master—as a Heaven-appointed time. The twelve hours are to be filled up. Not one of them can we afford to throw away or lose. Christian waiting is not idleness, but a kind of busy waiting. There is an end of these hours, and it is near at hand. They are only twelve, and they are all short. They darken over in early youth, very often. They end always at the bar of a most solemn judgment, where those that die young and those that die old stand together before God, and the book of remembrance is opened, and all are judged out of the book. F. D. H.

11. How humanly, how tenderly does the phrase “our friend Lazarus” recall him to their thoughts! It would seem as if the ties that knit our Lord to the members of that family at Bethany had been formed for this as for other reasons, to show how open the heart of Jesus was, not merely to a universal love to all mankind, but to the more peculiar and specific affections of friendship. Among the twelve there was one whom he particularly loved; among the families he visited there was one to which he was particularly attached. Outside the circle of his immediate followers there was one whom he called his friend. H.

Sleepeth. He was dead in the eye of man, but asleep in the sight of Christ, who can raise us from the grave with the same ease as from our bed. Beng.—Awake him. Thus simply does he speak of the mighty work which he is about to accomplish; it is but a sleep and an awakening. T.—Never was bolder declaration made. He proclaims his deliberate purpose to raise Lazarus from the dead. J. C. R.—He had already in remote Galilee raised two from the dead—one soon after death, the other before burial. But now, in the immediate neighborhood of Jerusalem, in presence of a mixed company of friends and enemies, he has resolved, in raising Lazarus, to perform the great closing, crowning miracle of his ministry; and he will do it so that not the most captious or the most incredulous can question the reality either of the death or of the resurrection. It was to be the last public miracle he was to work. H.

14,15. Because the disciples do not understand heavenly speech concerning death, the Lord descends to the earthly form of expression, and translates the heavenly word—fall asleep—into the earthly one—die. R. B.—If we suppose that death could not have assailed Lazarus when Jesus was near, the words of the two sisters gain a much more sublime signification, and the Lord’s joy on account of his absence appears in a clearer light. Beng.—There is a fitness in Christ being absent from the world while death reigns. Christ could not be present and see death strike down his friends without interposing. We never read that this enemy of man was permitted to exercise his power before the open face of the Son of God. It would be inconsistent with the honor of him who is the Lord of life. And therefore Christ must be absent from the world while death and the grave maintain their sway. Meantime he gathers the fold of the cloud over his countenance that we may not think he looks with cold indifference on our anguish, until he shall withdraw the veil fully and forever. Happy those to whose eye of faith the cloud is already pierced, and who feel in the heart that sunshine of his face which shall give life and light at last to all the dead in Christ. What a miserable earth would it be without this hope, without this possession!—the desolate home of Bethany without the great Friend—men dying, mourners weeping, graves filling up, and death reigning forever! How should our hearts leap up with exulting joy to think that there is a Christ, and how should we thank him, as we alone can, by accepting him as God’s unspeakable gift! Ker.

16. Thomas and Didymus, one in the Syriac and the other in the Greek, do both signify a twin. He no doubt was a Jew, and, in all probability, a Galilean, as well as the other apostles. This character is that of a man slow to believe, seeing all the difficulties of a case, subject to despondency, viewing things on the darker side, and yet full of ardent love for his Master. He entertained no hope of his escape—he looked on the journey as leading to total ruin; but he determined to share the peril. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” S.—These words are doubtless a proof of his love; and in this respect we may well humble ourselves before him, for his love to the Lord is so great that to him the thought of dying is more tolerable than the thought of parting from his Master. But for his faith, these words do not say much. A. T.—The expression of a gloomy and somewhat obstinate despondency, sinking into despair, yet at the same time of heroic and chivalrous attachment. Jesus says nothing to the utterer of this speech. He waits for other and after occasions to take Thomas into his hands, and turn his incredulity into warm and living faith. H.—Very beautifully Chrysostom says of this disciple, that he who now would hardly venture to go with Jesus as far as to the neighboring Bethany, afterward without him travelled to the ends of the world, to the farthest India, daring all the perils of remote and hostile nations. T.

1-15. Nowhere do we gain a profounder sense of the new relation between God and man, of the intimate union that is possible between Christians and Christ—of its tenderness, sympathy, and breadth. Nowhere can we better feel that we ought to throw ourselves on Christ with less reserve. We see just what they saw of trial; like them, we feel how it presses us at the time, and do not look beyond. We have asked for help; we have sent our embassy of prayer, and the trial crushes on—crushes the heart and crushes the health. What we are apt to think is, that misfortune has been added to sorrow, that we are simply plunging down from depth to depth of trial. Looking at life, it is not possible to discover more. But in Christ’s words we have glimpses into the divine procedure. What at Bethany bred only woe and wonder was really the necessary step to a great work and favor of God. It was by the delay that that work was rendered possible. Behind that mystery of silence, beyond the woe and wonder of men, Jesus was disposing events to a most gracious end. Even to the disciples that were about him he let fall only a slow hint or two. But those words, as we interpret them by the events that followed, recall enough to us. They light up for us the field of the work of God. The delay may be only of wisdom or of love, or it may be to indicate God’s wisdom and glory. Though it should be only for God, let us be content. But it may be for our sakes. While we look at the things that are seen, let us not forget the things that are not seen. W. F. S.

It is in this interval of delay that our life is cast. The world is represented by this home of Bethany before Christ reached the grave. But at whatever step of his journey man’s faith may discern him, he is surely on his way. The tide of eternal life is setting in toward the world of graves, and its swell and its murmur can be already perceived by all who have a soul to feel the heaving of Christ’s heart.

Amid the tears and sobs of the bereaved friends whose sorrows still touch him, he is moving to the sepulchre. His presence, though unseen, can be heard and felt in whispered consolations—in the faith and hope which his spirit infuses into the soul. Those who know him for what he is, recognize a Friend who weeps in sympathy with them, and who walks by their side to the tomb which his voice shall yet open. The delay seems long, but he counts the hours as we do; and not for a single one shall he linger beyond what infinite wisdom sees fit. One result of this delay shall be a grander final issue. He permits his friends to descend with broken ranks into the swellings of Jordan, but he shall lead them forth on the other side in one fully marshalled and bannered host. Patient waiting shall have its full compensation on that day, and divine delay justify itself before the universe in glorious and everlasting results. Ker.

Section 97.—“I am the Resurrection and the Life.”

17. THEN when Jesus came, he found that he had lain in the grave four days already. 18, 19 (Now Bethany was nigh unto Jerusalem, about fifteen furlongs off:) And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother.

20. Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but 21 Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been 22 here, my brother had not died. But I know that even now, whatsoever thou wilt 23 ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise 24 again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection 25 at the last day. Jesus saith unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that 26 believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth, and 27 believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

28. And when she had so said, she went her way, and called Mary her sister secretly, 29 saying, The Master is come, and calleth for thee. As soon as she heard that, she arose 30 quickly, and came unto him. Now Jesus was not yet come into the town, but was in 31 that place where Martha met him. The Jews then which were with her in the house, and comforted her, when they saw Mary that she arose up hastily, and went out, followed her, saying, She goeth unto the grave to weep there.

DEATH has yet to come; and we do not know in what shape it will come; it may be quite near, or it may still be far away. But we will not dwell too much on it; instead of looking down into the open grave we will look up for the glorious appearing; we know of a happy country across the dark river; we have heard of the shining ones who will lead us up the hill. He who has helped others through it will help us through it. Those gone before us, found him near them. He who was faithful to them will be faithful to us, and to those whom we leave behind. And he who goes with them stays with us. For he is in paradise with those that sleep in him. He is on earth with those that wait for him. He can think of the living as well as of the dying; of those who have still to grapple with the last struggle, as well as of those who sing the conqueror’s song.

So we pass out of the sight of our dead, wondering at our own calmness. Thankfulness for the glorious change passed on them absorbs all selfish thought of the grief come on us. We too feel, that if we have lost much, we have gained much; earth is beneath us; we have stood on the very threshold of heaven, and the love of Christ is more real than ever. On the morrow, when we go out of our chamber to do our work, to meet our friends, to feel our loss, He who was with us in the quiet night meets us in the glare of the morning; we remember the promise, Thy brother shall rise again. A. W. T.

17. Four days.** Of these four days the messenger sent may have occupied one, the distance being about twenty miles; two were passed in the delay before setting off; and a fourth in the journey of the Saviour with his disciples. This would show that Lazarus died soon after the messenger started; also that, as usual in the climate of Palestine, interment in the sepulchre followed very soon after death. H. C.—19. Many Jews. Thus casually were provided witnesses of the glorious miracle that followed, not prejudiced, certainly, in favor of him who wrought it. B.

21-27. It is a subject for study how Christ leads on these sisters from a dead brother to the resurrection and the life, and teaches them through their loss to gain what they never could lose any more. Ker.

21. If thou hadst been here.** When he knows that Lazarus is dead, while he is touched with tenderness toward the weeping kindred, he says plainly to his disciples, “I am glad, for your sakes, I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.” It was their deeper faith he sought, and through theirs the faith of all his Church. And then, just as the sublime marvel was to appear at his bidding, and the still chamber to give up its guest, he repeated to the doubting Martha, “Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God?” And when he prayed to the Father, and said, “I know that thou hearest me always,” he added, “Because of the people which stand by, I said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me.” How manifestly the whole mercy was granted only to confirm that incomparable and eternal truth, “I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live!” And now, after eighteen centuries, Jesus does not stay to revoke for us the decrees of nature—to be a physician to our sickness, or a warder at the door to keep out death. He stays, but for a higher ministry; not to exempt us from suffering, but to conduct us through it into heavenly strength and peace; not for a physical or temporary cure, but a spiritual and final one! And so our confession ought not to be the halfhalf-faithless one, “Lord, if thou hadst been here, our friends, our children, would not have sickened and died;” but, “Lord, because thou art here, all our sicknesses, and our dying even, shall be for the raising up of our souls, and the glory of God.” Willingness to suffer for that end—for spiritual redemption and the glory of God—this is what we have to aspire to, and attain, under the teaching of Christ, and by that cross whereby he symbolized his whole religion and suffered for us, thereby mafic perfect in his mediatorship. F. D. H.

25,26. These words are the central point of the history: the great testimony to himself, of which the subsequent miracle is the proof. The intention of the saying seems to have been to awaken in Martha the faith that he could raise her brother from the dead, in its highest and proper form. A.

—The resurrection and the life. “The true life, the true resurrection, the everlasting triumphs over death, they are in me—no distant things, as thou speakest of now, to find place at the end of the world. In me is victory over the grave, in me is life eternal: by faith in me that becomes yours which makes death not to be death, but only the transition to a higher life.” The temporal death is taken no account of, but quite overlooked, and the believer in him is contemplated as already lifted above death, and made partaker of everlasting life. T.

Though dead . . . shall live. The temporary separation of soul and body is here regarded as not even interrupting, much less impairing, the new and everlasting life imparted by Jesus to his believing people. B.—The general assertion, “I am the resurrection and the life,” gets its true significance from the two explanatory statements which follow. “I am the life,” said Jesus, not as being the originator and sustainer of the soul’s existence, but in this specific sense, that “whosoever liveth and believeth on me”—or rather, liveth by believing on me—“shall never die.” And “I am the resurrection” in this sense, that “whosoever believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Such language connects, in some peculiar way, the life and resurrection that Jesus is now speaking of with believing on him. Jesus is here proclaiming to Martha, and through her to the world of sinners he came to save, what the great end of his mission is, and how it is that that end is accomplished. From first to last, running through all these discourses of our Saviour (John, chaps. 3–10), in every one of them this is held out by our Lord himself as the great end and object of his life and death—that we, who were all dead in trespasses and sins, alienated from the life of God, should find for these dead souls of ours a higher and everlasting life in him. II.

Christ is the resurrection because he is the life. “The Living,” the angel-youth calls him in his Easter announcement. Not because he has risen is he the Living, but because he is the Living, therefore has he risen. It was impossible that he should be holden of death, for the very reason that he is the Living. And what Christ is, this he imparts to his believers. Believers shall rise because they live. Lazarus had died, but he only slept; his friendship with Jesus—his faith—made him live: “He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Through faith in him who is the life, the Christian possesses an indefeasible life—a life which, even in the midst of dying, is not to be killed by death; and by virtue of faith in him who is the resurrection, even the mortal body of a Christian shall become glorified into the incorruptible life which pertains to the body of the resurrection. For all his believers is this precious word of Christ intended. Just as his sleeping friend there, although—in the language of earth—he was dead, had nevertheless not fallen away from eternal life: so, in like manner, all who live the life which they now live in the flesh by the faith of the Son of God, shall never die, although they may be called dead. Through faith in him who is the life, our life in this mortal body is glorified into that life which shall never see death eternally. R. B.—If the scene had ended here, Jesus would even then have ministered sure consolation to the bereaved family of Bethany—such consonation as comes now to Christian houses into which death has entered, and which avails not only to stay the stream of tears, but to fill the darkened chamber with a cloud of glory. Faith grasps the great miracle; the interval is longer between the promise and its ultimate fulfilment, but it is only a question of time. Wherever he has trod, who is the resurrection and the life, death has been vanquished. De P.

The resurrection and the life! He has announced it. He is himself the pledge of it. It is to his death we owe it. It is his power that achieves it. Mark how these thoughts are illustrated in different parts of Scripture. “Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming when they that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth.” “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he hath loved us, even when we were dead in sins, quickened us together with Christ.” “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.” “The first man is of the earth earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven; and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” “This is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.” “I am the resurrection and the life!” J. A.

27. Christ separates our friends from us for a while that we may learn to find our all in himself. He makes their grave the seed-bed of immortal hopes, which shall give us back everything that is good in the past, and a joy with it like the joy of harvest. The expression of our resignation in bereavement is as much a triumph of his grace as the calmness he gives to our dying friends. When Martha and Mary can still call him “Lord,” and when their “hope can smile on all other hopes gone from them”—when they can clasp Christ as their portion amid desolation around and within—Christ himself is justified in the permission of death. Ker.

Section 98.—Raises Lazarus from the Grave.

Bethany.

32. THEN when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, 33 saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned 34 in the spirit, and was troubled, and said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him,

35,36. Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!37 And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have 38 caused that even this man should not have died? Jesus therefore again groaning in 39 himself, cometh to the grave. It was a cave, and a stone lay upon it. Jesus said, Take ye away the stone. Martha, the sister of him that was dead, saith unto him, Lord, by 40 this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days. Jesus saith unto her, Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldst believe, thou shouldst see the glory of God? 41 Then they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid. And Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me: 42 and I knew that thou hearest me always: but because of the people which stand by, I 43 said it, that they may believe that thou hast sent me. And when he thus had spoken, 44 he cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with grave-clothes: and his face was bound about with a napkin. Jesus saith unto them, Loose him, and let him go. 45 Then many of the Jews which came to Mary, and had seen the things which Jesus 46 did, believed on him. But some of them went their ways to the Pharisees, and told them what things Jesus had done.

THE crowning lesson of the great miracle is the mingled exhibition that it makes of the humanity and divinity of our Lord. At no time in all his life did he appear more perfectly human, show himself more fully to be one with us, our true and tender elder brother, than when he burst into tears before the grave of Lazarus. At no time did he appear more divine than when with the loud voice he cried, “Lazarus, come forth,” and at the voice the dead arose and came forth. And it is because there meet in him the tenderness of an altogether human pity and the fulness of a divine power, that he so completely satisfies the deepest inward cravings of the human heart. True, tender, constant, and abiding is his sympathy, the sympathy of one who knows our frame, of one who knows all about, all within us, and who is touched with a fellow-feeling of our infirmities, “having himself been tempted in all things like as we are.” It is not simply the pity of God, with all its fulness and tenderness: that had not come so close to us, taken such a hold of us; it is the sympathy of a brother-man that Jesus extends to us, free from all the restrictions to which such sympathy is ordinarily subjected.

But we need more than that sympathy; we need succor. Besides the heart tender enough to pity, we need the hand strong enough to help, to save us. We not only want one to be with us and feel with us in our hours of simple sorrow, we want one to be with us and aid us in our hours of temptation and conflict, weakness and defeat—one not only to be at our side at all times and seasons of this our earthly pilgrimage, but to be near us, to uphold us, when flesh and heart shall faint and fail; to be the strength of our hearts then, and afterward our portion forever. In all the universe there is but one such. Therefore to him, our own loving, compassionate, Almighty Saviour, let us cling, that softly in the bosom of his gentle pity we may repose, and safely, by his everlasting arms, may forever be sustained. H.

32. The words of Mary are very touching and natural. All her grief for her dead brother bursts out afresh, at the sight of one who had been so dear a friend to him, and to her. Veneration and affection for the great Master, never so drawn out as in the hour of sorrow, fill her soul. “Mary fell down at his feet.” The soul is never so attracted to Christ as amid such desolation—constrained to cling to “a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.” There is continued confidence in him, seen in her address, Lord—still Lord, notwithstanding all that had happened—seen in the conviction that an earlier arrival would have brought deliverance. Ker.

If thou hadst been here. How often during that four’s days interval the sisters had said one to the other, how different the issues might have been if the Divine Friend had been with them! This had been the one thought in the hearts, the one word on the lips of either, and therefore it was so naturally the first spoken by each, altogether independently of the other. T.

33-36. The sobs pierced to the heart of Jesus. Here is the fruit of that sin that marred his world.

Thus it wastes and destroys, poisons human life, and drains it of enjoyment. It is not a group, but a world of mourners that he sees. It is not the sobbing of a few women that he hears, but the wail that rises from every land. Sin confronts him armed with death and the grave, rich with the spoil of souls. There is the enemy that he has come to destroy, and he rises up against it with a fixed and holy indignation, groaning in spirit, troubled. He, too, thrills with sympathy. If Mary weeps for a brother, he weeps for a friend. W. F. S.

—Surely the expressions of bitter lamentation, the tears and agony of all around, were enough to stir the compassionate heart of him who sympathized so deeply with all human feelings, even though he knew that he should soon remove the cause of grief itself. A physician (though the analogy is utterly inadequate), standing by the bedside of a patient surrounded by weeping friends, may well be affected by their grief, though he may be sure, so far as human skill can give surety, that he will heal the disease. N.—35. Jesus wept. The Evangelist, some sixty years after it occurred, holds up to all ages with touching brevity the sublime spectacle of the Son of God in tears. What a seal of his perfect oneness with us in the most redeeming feature of our stricken humanity! B.—Christianity knows of no dead stoicism; it knows of a regulating, but of no repressing of the natural affections; on the contrary, it bids us to weep with them that weep; and, in the beautiful words of Leighton, that we “seek not altogether to dry the stream of sorrow, but to bound it, and keep it within its banks.” T.

37. He allowed Lazarus to die, he allowed his sisters to suffer all this woe, not that he loved them less, but because he knew that for him, for them, for us all, higher ends were in this way gained than could have been accomplished by his cutting the illness short, and going from Bethabara to cure. Little did the weeping sisters know what a place in the annals of redemption the death and resurrection of their brother was to occupy. H.—Jesus had given many convincing proofs of his love to the household of Bethany while Lazarus lived, but none with that touching tenderness in it which came forth at his grave. The fellowship of suffering brings hearts and lives together more than all the fellowship of joy. And when his grief broke out into that trouble of spirit at the grave, when his heart was overpowered by it and Jesus wept—the mourners knew that he was one with them. Gethsemane shows us the agony of Christ’s soul for man’s sin—the grave of Bethany his agony of heart at man’s suffering. All that sad, sorrowful walk to the sepulchre where he mingled his tears with theirs, was as necessary to make them feel the sympathy of his soul, as was the great deliverance when he said, “Lazarus, come forth.” Ker.

38. They reach the place where the tomb was, though not without another of those mighty shudderings that shook the frame of the Lord of life—so dreadful did death seem to him who, looking through all its natural causes, saw it purely as the seal and token of sin, so unnatural its usurpation over a race made for immortality. T.—39. A great stone closes the mouth of the sepulchre; standing, with the Saviour in front and the corpse behind it, between the living and the dead. It must be removed; and Christ has only to say the word, and, moved by hands invisible, it rolls away to disclose the secrets of the tomb. But he who takes away stony hearts, because none other can, does not take away this stone; nor address it, but those who have put it there, and can take it thence. He requires them to do what they can—each doing their part; theirs to roll away the stone and his to raise the dead. Guthrie.—If we do what we can, he does what we cannot. His kindness does not permit us to be idle spectators of his works, but earnest helpers of them. Even in the work of raising sinners from spiritual death, he makes use of human hands which “take away the stone,” and afterward “loose” the grave-clothes. R. B.—No human voice has power to pierce the closed ear, to reach the dull cold heart. The voice of Jesus can alone do that. But there are stones of obstruction which keep that voice from being heard. These we can remove. The ignorant can be taught, the name of Jesus be made known, the glad tidings of salvation published abroad. And when at the divine call the new life has entered into the soul, by how many bonds and ligaments, prejudices of the understanding, old holds of the affections, old habits of the life, is it hampered and hindered! These, as cramping our own or others’ higher life, we may help to untie and fling away. H.

Dead four days. The words of Martha make it almost certain that up to this moment she has not been thinking of her brother’s resurrection as near. Would it not be offensive to open that sepulchre—for decomposition must have commenced? She shows at least that she supposed him to be really dead. H. C.—But Martha here speaks more as the sister of the deceased than as the disciple of the Living. She would fain spare both herself and her Master the sight of the corruption which has already fastened upon the beloved corpse, and so she opposes the removal of the stone. 40. Said I not unto thee? Thus it is that the Lord recalls his precious promises to our recollection whenever we forget them. Martha is called away from that which she perceives with her earthly senses—from death and corruption, to that which the Lord has said to her—to life and resurrection. The word which he had spoken concerning “living” and “rising again” ought to have greater weight with her than the sight of death and the smell of corruption; by faith in the word of life she ought to look through the revolting image of death, and see beyond the glory of God. R. B.

41,42. They should thus understand that he claimed his power from above, and not from beneath; that there was no magic, no necromancy here. The thanks to God were an acknowledgment that the power was from God. T.—His utterance of thanks did not imply that he only then became conscious of power to raise up Lazarus. Prayer and thanksgiving were not isolated fragments of Christ’s life; his whole life was one prayer and one thanksgiving; for he knew that the heavenly Father heard him in all things, and always granted the powers needful to his calling. He made this public, individual thanksgiving, to testify to those around that he did this, like all his other acts, as the messenger of the Father. N.—That, as the Messiah, God’s Son, incarnated in human flesh—he was sent from God to men; was teaching men as one from God; was fulfilling all the functions of his great mission from heaven as one sent of God and indorsed by miracles wrought by the power of God—these were the very points which Jesus sought to make clear and prominent before the Jewish mind. Hence the fitness of this audible prayer. H. C.

43. This cry, “with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth,” is itself the quickening word at which life returns to the dead. For it is ever to the voice of the Son of God that the power of quickening the dead and calling them from their graves is attributed. Thus (J. 5 : 28, 29), “The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” So (1 Thes. 4 : 16) it is the Lord’s descending “with a shout,” which is followed by the resurrection of the dead in Christ. Nor, probably, is “the last trump” of 1 Cor. 15 : 52 anything else but this voice of God which shall sound through all the kingdom of death. T.

44. Loose him, and let him go.** Jesus will no more do this himself than roll away the stone. The one was the necessary preparation for resurrection, the other the necessary sequel to it. The life-giving act alone he reserves to himself. So in the quickening of the dead to spiritual life, human instrumentality is employed first to prepare the way, and then to turn it to account. B.—This is a blessed work which the Lord permits us to do, that of loosing the grave-clothes and napkins of his awakened ones. We see coming forth an awakened sinner out of the grave of his death, but still bound hands and feet, and his face veiled; fain would he walk with new and certain steps; fain would he see with a new and certain eye. Loose him—help to set him up right with your own experience; show him out of God’s word the right way to peace; and then let him go.

45. John only describes the impression which the miracle made on the strangers, who, by seeing aright and believing, fulfilled the longing which the Lord had expressed in his prayer (verse 42); while of Mary and Martha and Lazarus themselves he says nothing. The gladness, the rapture of Mary and Martha we may in some degree imagine; but no one can adequately represent it to us. R. B.—Lazarus alone went among the shadows of death, and passed behind the grave, and came back to take his place among men. The greatest miracle on record was wrought upon him. He was the innocent cause of Christ’s arrest. He was Christ’s friend, singled out from the rest, as much as Mary the Lord’s mother or John the beloved. And thus many interests meet in him—the mystery of the unseen world, of which, if he dared, he could speak; the mystery of that friendship by which Jesus laid hold of him, and which was firm and tender enough to bring the Saviour to tears; the mystery of that place allotted to him in the life of Christ, by which he became linked with the close of its terrible drama, and was the proximate cause of the death of him that loved him; and the mystery of a stupendous miracle, in which the kingdom of death was visibly vanquished and broken. And yet there is this singular feature of his story, that there is scarcely a man of whom we could be told less. Lazarus seems introduced simply for the miracle’s sake, and beyond what is necessary to understand that, we learn nothing of the man, nothing of his personal history, meet with him at the supreme moment when sickness passes into death, and part from him at the supreme moment when the tomb yields him back to life. A veil seems purposely flung over him. He abides and keeps his place in history, not by his own personality, but as a trophy of the power of God—one more example, if more were needed, of the height of that solitary life that was then in the world; so high above all others that beside it even the best of men recedes into a subordinate place, and becomes only an illustration of him. W. F. S.

46. If this transaction had the effect of strengthening the faith of some (verse 45), it increased the hostility of others, and quickened their plots to take away his life; so that, as his time was not yet come, Jesus once more withdrew until the approach of the Passover. C. B.—Never was there a more remarkable confirmation of our Lord’s words in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.” J. C. R.

32-44. The resurrection of Lazarus, followed so speedily by his own, was the promise to faith of the resurrection of all that should sleep in him; and the sympathy of Jesus in the present sorrow prepares the heart to receive that faith, and welcome that hope. J. P. T.—Jesus came to his friend’s grave and wept. O scene of unspeakable consolation under the shadow of the Mount of Olives! Shed the light, that broke there on a weeping household, into every kneeling and lamenting family among us! Unite our kindred, under the dispensation of grief, in the everlasting sympathy of one Lord and one faith, with that comforted house where Mary chose the good part, and felt safe at her Redeemer’s feet! Make us also dwellers at Bethany, because Christ comes again to us; and though our brother dies, yet we know henceforth that our Redeemer liveth, and that whosoever liveth and believeth in him shall never die! Be this the consolation promised to them that mourn with a disciple’s trust—the hope for the dead who died in their Lord—the inspiration of the living who have yet to die—that immortality is brought to light, and that, through suffering, souls may still be made perfect. F. D. H.

Section 99.—The Council conspire against Jesus.

Jerusalem.

47. THEN gathered the chief priests and the Pharisees a council, and said, What do we? 48 for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on 49 him: and the Romans shall come, and take away both our place and nation. And one 50 of them, named Caiaphas, being the high-priest that same year, said unto them, Ye 51 know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die 52 for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this spake he not of himself: but being high-priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation; and not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.

53,54. Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put him to death. Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews; but went thence unto a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and there continued with his disciples.

UNWITTINGLY, in what he said, Caiaphas had uttered a prophecy, had announced a great and central truth of the Christian faith. He had given to the death determined on too limited a range, as if it had been for the Jews alone that Jesus was to die. But the Evangelist takes up, expounds, and expands his words as carrying with them the broad significance that not for that nation only was he to die, but that by his death he “should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad.” Strange ordering of Providence, that here at the beginning and there at the close of our Lord’s passion—here in the Sanhedrim, there upon the cross—here from the Jewish high-priest, there from the Roman governor—words should come by which the unconscious utterers conspired in proclaiming the priestly and the kingly authority and office of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ! H.

Such was to be the fruit of the sacrifice of Jesus, that he should gather together the scattered children of God into one people under one Lord, into one flock under one shepherd, into one body under one head in one Spirit. The true temple of God will be built, reared upon Christ, the precious corner-stone, out of the living stones which are his members; a temple which will unite in itself all nations of the earth, constituting the true Israel (Rev. 21 : 12). R. B.

47. The death of Lazarus gathered in believers even from the ranks of opponents; it afterward brought multitudes from Jerusalem to see the risen man, and swelled the triumph of the Lord’s entry; and, alas! it also now stirred up enemies to delay no longer. E.—The raising of Lazarus may be considered as the proximate cause of the conspiracy for Christ’s death, by throwing the popular feeling more decidedly on his side, thereby deepening the fierce animosity of the rulers, who now saw that they had no alternative but to crush him at once, or to admit his triumph. H. M.—Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians, priests, scribes, elders, Annas the astute and tyrannous, Caiaphas the abject and servile, were all now aroused; and, dreading they knew not what outburst of religious anarchy, which would shake the very foundations of their system, they met together, sinking all their own differences in a common inspiration of hatred against that long-promised Messiah in whom they only recognized a common enemy. It was an alliance for his destruction of fanaticism, unbelief, and worldliness. F.

“What do we?—this man doeth many miracles!” What a fearful antithesis is here! The many miracles of Jesus pressed upon them as a burden. They remained unblessed and unawakened by this last and most glorious miracle. R. B.—Death gives way before Christ’s word of power sooner than unbelief does. Beng.—This man doeth many miracles. A marvellous admission from his worst enemies. They would have denied the truth of his miracles, if they could. J. C. R.—All persons present agree that Lazarus is raised to life, and that a great miracle has been worked, though not all believe the person who worked it to be the Messiah. Some go away and tell the rulers at Jerusalem what Jesus has done. Even these do not doubt the truth of the fact; on the contrary, they confess that our Lord by his works is becoming every day more famous, and that he would probably be soon received as Messiah by the whole nation. Therefore the rulers at once take counsel how they may put to death both Jesus and Lazarus. C. C. T.

48. All will believe on him. What they really hated was our Lord’s doctrine, which exposed their own system, and weakened their authority. If they had let Jesus alone, and allowed his gospel to be received and believed, Jerusalem, humanly speaking, might have stood to this day, and the Jews might have been more mighty and prosperous than in the days of Solomon. By killing him, they filled up the measure of their nation’s sin, brought destruction on the temple, and scattering on the whole people. J. C. R.—Take away our place and nation. The temple, and all the far-reaching vested interests bound up with it, had long existed only on sufferance, and would at once perish in the storm of a national insurrection; and the nation stripped of its local laws, so vital to a theocracy, would be secularized into a part of Rome, with the hated imperial heathen law instead of the laws of God and the rabbis. G.—When, forty years after, Jerusalem, stained with the murder of Jesus, fell under the avenging sword which God gave into the hand of the Romans, those only escaped destruction who believed in Christ. R. B.

49. High-priest that same year. After Herod’s time there was no regard to the family of Aaron, but the Romans made what high-priests they pleased. Josephus tells us that the Jews had forty-six high-priests from Aaron to Antiochus, which was 1,486 years: but they had no less than twenty-eight from the beginning of Herod’s reign to the destruction of Jerusalem, which was less than a century. Poole.—Caiaphas was the son-in-law of Annas, connected thus with that family in which the Jewish pontificate remained for fifty years—four of the sons, as well as the son-in-law of Annas, having, with some interruptions, enjoyed this dignity. All through this period, embracing the whole of Christ’s life from early childhood, Annas, the head of this favored family, even when himself out of office, retained much of its power, being consulted on all occasions of importance, and acting as the president of the Sanhedrim. Hence it is that in the closing scenes of our Lord’s history Annas and Caiaphas appear as acting conjunctly, each spoken of as high-priest. H.

51,52. Caiaphas prophesied that Jesus should die. He meant nothing more than that the way to prevent the apprehended ruin of the nation was to make a sacrifice of the disturber of their peace. But in giving utterance to this suggestion of political expediency, he was so guided as to give forth a divine prediction of deep significance; and God so ordered it that it should come from the lips of the high-priest for that memorable year, the recognized head of God’s visible people, whose ancient office, symbolized by the Urim and Thummim, was to decide in the last resort all vital questions as the oracle of the divine will. B.—The gift of prophecy, which the predecessors of Caiaphas had formerly exercised through “the Light and Right”—the Urim and the Thummim (Ex. 28: 30)—had been long extinguished, but it was once more to light up in the high-priest of this year, in order that from Moses’s seat the one true offering for sin might be set forth before the eyes of the people. R. B.—Caiaphas and Pilate condemned Jesus, but both were constrained to testify of him in words whose meaning went far beyond what they themselves were aware of: here, Caiaphas of the high-priestly death of Christ; there, Pilate, in the superscription on the cross, of his kingly power. Beng.

53,54. It had now come to a solemn decree on the part of the Sanhedrim, that Jesus should be put to death, and from that day forth there were continual counsels how his death might be brought about: but he, whose hour was not yet come, withdrew himself awhile from their malice to the neighborhood of the desert country; there to abide till the approach of the Passover should bring him back to the city, to supply at length the true Paschal Lamb. T.—This city Ephraim is probably identical with Ephron and Ophrah of the Old Testament, situated nearly twenty Roman miles N. N. E. of Jerusalem, and five or six Roman miles N. E. of Bethel, on the borders of the desert which stretches along on the west of the Dead Sea and the Valley of Jordan. R.

47-54. It appears that the power of this miracle was very great; scarce any one ever wrought by Jesus was more so. It brought matters at once to a great crisis in the Jewish Sanhedrim. It led the chief priests to consult how they might get Lazarus out of their way, because so many Jews were brought by his resurrection to believe on Jesus (12: 10, 11). And it moved the people to honor him with that triumphal march into Jerusalem which is recorded by all the Evangelists, but only by John ascribed to the impression made by this miracle (12: 17-18). H. C.

Section 100.—An Infirm Woman healed.

Perea.