John 11:1–44 — The Resurrection and the Life

Pray to Begin

Ask — that the Holy Spirit would meet you in this passage not only as a reader studying a miracle, but as a soul who needs the One who calls the dead to life; ask Him to make the words “I am the resurrection and the life” real to you today.

Give thanks — for a Lord who does not hold Himself aloof from your grief, but who wept at a friend’s grave, and who has authority over the very thing you most fear.

Yield — every loss you carry and every fear of loss still ahead, and ask Him to teach you to trust the One in whose hands both life and death are held.

Today’s Passage: John 11:1–44

This is the last and greatest of the seven signs John records before the cross — the raising of Lazarus. It stands at the hinge of the Gospel: the sign that most fully reveals Jesus’ power over death also sets in motion the events that lead to His own. A family Jesus loves — Martha, Mary, and their brother Lazarus of Bethany — sends word that Lazarus is sick. Jesus delays, and by the time He arrives Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. There, in the space between two grieving sisters and a sealed grave, Jesus speaks the fifth of the great I am sayings: “I am the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). He weeps. And then He calls a dead man out by name. The passage falls into four movements — the news and the delay (vv. 1–16), Martha’s meeting and the great I am (vv. 17–27), Mary’s meeting and Jesus’ tears (vv. 28–37), and the tomb and the word that empties it (vv. 38–44). The full text is quoted block by block in the commentary below.

As you read, hold this: The Lord who weeps at the tomb of His friend, and then calls him out by name — for He is Himself the resurrection and the life.

Context The world of John 11:1–44

Bethany. Lazarus and his sisters lived in Bethany, a small village on the eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, “a little less than two miles” from Jerusalem (v. 18) — close enough that “many of the Jews” had come from the city to mourn with the family (v. 19). This nearness matters: the raising happens almost at the gates of Jerusalem, in full view of people connected to the capital, just before Passover. The greatest of the signs is performed where its witnesses will carry the news straight into the city — which is exactly what they do (vv. 45–46).

First-century mourning. Jewish mourning was communal, vocal, and prolonged. Family, neighbors, and even hired mourners would gather to weep aloud, and the most intense grieving traditionally lasted seven days. The crowd “weeping” around Mary (v. 33) was the normal, expected shape of grief — loud lament, shared sorrow, the village folding in around the bereaved. Into that customary scene Jesus enters not as one who stands above the mourning but as one who joins it: He weeps too (v. 35), and the onlookers read His tears rightly — “See how He loved him!” (v. 36).

The “fourth day.” John is careful to tell us Lazarus had “already spent four days in the tomb” (v. 17). In the burial customs of the day, the body was laid in a tomb the same day death occurred; the four days places Lazarus’s death well beyond any hope of mere resuscitation or mistaken diagnosis. By the fourth day there could be no question that Lazarus was truly and fully dead. John records this detail not to dwell on it but to remove every doubt: what Jesus is about to do is no recovery from a swoon. It is life called out of real death — which is precisely why it points so clearly forward.

Martha and Mary’s faith. Both sisters meet Jesus with the same words — “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv. 21, 32) — a sentence that holds grief and faith together in one breath. They believed He could have healed; their sorrow is that He came “too late.” Martha goes further, confessing she still trusts that “God will give You whatever You ask” (v. 22) and affirming the resurrection “at the last day” (v. 24). Hers is real but partial faith — orthodox, future-tense, and not yet daring to imagine that the resurrection could be standing before her. Jesus meets her there and lifts her higher.

The Lord who grieves with us and holds authority over death. What this scene reveals is the rare combination at the center of the Christian hope: a God who is both moved by death and master of it. He does not stand apart from human grief — He enters it, weeps in it, is shaken by it. And He does not stand helpless before death — He commands it, and it obeys. The comfort is not that we are told to grieve less, but that the One who weeps with us is also the One who will, in the end, wipe every tear away.

This sign pointing toward the empty tomb. Lazarus came out still “bound” in graveclothes (v. 44); he would die again one day. His raising is a sign, not the substance. It points forward to the One who would soon leave His own graveclothes folded behind Him (John 20:6–7) and rise never to die again — the firstfruits of a resurrection that does not need to be repeated. Lazarus’s tomb is a preview; the empty tomb of Easter is the promise fulfilled.

John 11:1–6 (BSB)

¹ At this time a man named Lazarus was sick. He lived in Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. ² (Mary, whose brother Lazarus was sick, was to anoint the Lord with perfume and wipe His feet with her hair.) ³ So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one You love is sick.” ⁴ When Jesus heard this, He said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is 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 on hearing that Lazarus was sick, He stayed where He was for two days,

John introduces a family Jesus knows and loves. The sisters’ message is striking for what it does not do — it makes no request, issues no instruction. It simply names the need and rests on the relationship: “Lord, the one You love is sick.” They leave the rest to Him. Jesus’ reply sets the whole chapter’s frame: “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for the glory of God.” He does not mean Lazarus will not die — he will — but that death will not be the final word here; the end of the story is glory, not the grave. Then comes one of the most tender and most puzzling sentences in the Gospel: “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So… He stayed where He was for two days.” The word that joins them is so — He delayed because He loved them. His love is not measured by speed. He is working toward a deeper gift than the healing they asked for, and the delay is part of the love, not a lapse in it.

John 11:7–16 (BSB)

⁷ and then He said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” ⁸ “Rabbi,” they replied, “the Jews just tried to stone You, and You are going back there?” ⁹ Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If anyone walks in the daytime, he will not stumble, because he sees by the light of this world. ¹⁰ But if anyone walks at night, he will stumble, because he has no light.” ¹¹ After He had said this, He told them, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.” ¹² His disciples replied, “Lord, if he is sleeping, he will get better.” ¹³ They thought that Jesus was talking about actual sleep, but He was speaking about the death of Lazarus. ¹⁴ So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, ¹⁵ and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him. ¹⁶ Then Thomas called Didymus said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with Him.”

Jesus turns toward Judea, and the disciples are alarmed — the last time they were there, the crowd had reached for stones (10:31). His answer about the “twelve hours of daylight” means: there is an appointed work to do and an appointed time to do it; while that “day” lasts, He walks safely in His Father’s will. Then He speaks of Lazarus with a word that breathes hope over death itself: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I am going there to wake him up.” To the Lord of life, this death is no more permanent than sleep — and waking from it is as simple as a word. The disciples misunderstand, and Jesus tells them plainly: “Lazarus is dead.” Astonishingly, He says He is glad He was not there — not glad for the grief, but glad for what their faith is about to receive: “so that you may believe.” Thomas, often remembered only for his later doubt, here speaks with brave, loyal love — “Let us also go, so that we may die with Him” — ready to follow Jesus even into danger, even if it costs his life.

John 11:17–22 (BSB)

¹⁷ When Jesus arrived, He found that Lazarus had already spent four days in the tomb. ¹⁸ Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, a little less than two miles away, ¹⁹ and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them in the loss of their brother. ²⁰ So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet Him, but Mary stayed at home. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.”

Jesus arrives to a house full of mourners and a tomb four days sealed — death beyond all doubt. Martha, ever the one who acts, “went out to meet Him.” Her first words pour out the ache the sisters had surely said to each other a hundred times in those four days: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” It is not an accusation so much as a lament shaped by faith — she has no doubt of His power to heal; her grief is that He seemed to come too late. And then, in the same breath, faith reaches past the grief toward something she cannot yet name: “But even now I know that God will give You whatever You ask of Him.” She does not know what to hope for, but she will not stop hoping in Him. This is faith in its honest middle place — grief and trust held together, reaching toward a Lord who has not yet finished.

John 11:23–27 (BSB)

²³ “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her. ²⁴ Martha replied, “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. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies. ²⁶ And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?” ²⁷ “Yes, Lord,” she answered, “I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”

Word study "Life" — zōē (John 11:25)

Greek: ζωή (zōē), pronounced dzo-AY. Strong’s G2222.

Zōē is life — but not life in the bare sense of biological existence. Greek had another word for that, bios (the span and manner of a life). Zōē is life itself, the vital force that comes from God and is sustained by Him — and in John’s Gospel it almost always carries the fuller weight of the eternal, God-given life that Christ brings. This is the word that opened the Gospel: “In Him was life, and that life was the light of men” (John 1:4). It is the zōē Jesus came to give “in all its fullness” (10:10). So when He says “I am the resurrection and the life,” He is not only promising a future rising; He is claiming to be the very source and possession of life itself — the life that death cannot finally touch, because its source stands outside of death. “Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies” (v. 25): the believer’s life is anchored not in their own pulse but in His.

Word study "Resurrection" — anastasis (John 11:25)

Four Greek words carry the heart of this chapter — two of them the very title Jesus claims for Himself, and two of them the window into His heart as He stands among the grieving.

Greek: ἀνάστασις (anastasis), pronounced ah-NAH-stah-sis. Strong’s G386.

Anastasis is built from ana (“up, again”) and histēmi (“to stand”) — literally a standing up again. It is the ordinary Greek word for resurrection, the bodily rising of the dead. But notice what Jesus does with it. Martha has just confessed her hope in “the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24) — a doctrine, a future event, a comfort held at arm’s length. Jesus answers by collapsing the distance: “I am the resurrection” (v. 25). The future hope is not first a date on the calendar; it is a Person standing in front of her. Resurrection is not merely something Jesus will do at the last day — it is something He is. The same word names the great hope of the church: “the resurrection of the dead” through which death itself is finally undone (1 Corinthians 15:42), and the “resurrection of life” Jesus promised earlier in this Gospel (John 5:29). The song below even takes this word for its subtitle — Anástasis — because the whole of Christian hope gathers into it.

Here the chapter reaches its summit. “Your brother will rise again,” Jesus says — and Martha hears it as the familiar doctrine: “I know that he will rise again… at the last day.” It is true, and it is real comfort, but it holds the resurrection at the far end of time, a future event to be endured toward. Jesus gently takes that future hope and brings it near, into the present, into Himself: “I am the resurrection and the life” — anastasis (ah-NAH-stah-sis) and zōē (dzo-AY). The resurrection Martha awaits is not first a when; it is a Who, and He is standing in front of her. Then He unfolds it in two directions: “Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies” — physical death is not the end for the believer — “and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die” — the life He gives is of a kind death cannot finally destroy. And then the question He puts to her, and through her to every reader: “Do you believe this?” Martha’s answer does not yet grasp all that is coming, but it lays hold of the Person: “Yes, Lord… You are the Christ, the Son of God.” She anchors her hope not in an explanation but in Him.

This is the verse to carry from today — the heart of the chapter, and of the Christian hope:

John 11:28–32 (BSB)

²⁸ After Martha had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside to tell her, “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” ²⁹ And when Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to Him. ³⁰ Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met Him. ³¹ When the Jews who were in the house consoling Mary saw how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. ³² When Mary came to Jesus and saw Him, she fell at His feet and said, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Martha goes for her sister with a quiet, beautiful message: “The Teacher is here and is asking for you.” He is asking for Mary by name — the One who calls His sheep by name (10:3) calls this grieving sister to Himself. Mary “got up quickly,” her haste the measure of her longing for Him. The mourners follow, thinking she is going to the grave, and so the whole crowd of sorrow gathers around Jesus. Mary comes and falls at His feet — the posture in which this Gospel always shows her, at His feet (Luke 10:39; John 12:3) — and speaks the very words her sister spoke: “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.” Two sisters, two temperaments, one shared grief and one shared faith. Whatever else divided how Martha and Mary met their sorrow, they met it at the same place: in front of Jesus, with the same trust that He could have changed everything, and the same ache that He had not yet.

John 11:33–37 (BSB)

³³ When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, He was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴ “Where have you put him?” He asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they answered. ³⁵ Jesus wept. ³⁶ Then the Jews said, “See how He loved him!” ³⁷ But some of them asked, “Could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept Lazarus from dying?”

Word study "Wept" — dakryō (John 11:35)

Greek: δακρύω (dakryō), pronounced dak-ROO-oh. Strong’s G1145.

The shortest verse in the Bible holds a word that appears nowhere else in the New Testament. Dakryō — from dakryon, “a tear” — means to shed tears, to weep quietly. It is gentler than the loud, wailing lament (klaiō) that the mourners around Him were doing; this is the quiet flow of tears down the face. “Jesus wept” (v. 35). The eternal Son, through whom all things were made (John 1:3), the One who in moments would call Lazarus out of the grave — stands and lets the tears come. He knows He is about to raise the man, and still He weeps. This single word is one of the clearest windows in all of Scripture into the heart of God toward our grief: not impatience, not lecture, but tears. “He was moved with compassion” is the family resemblance of this verb; here the compassion overflows the eyes.

Word study "Deeply moved in spirit" — embrimaomai (John 11:33, 38)

Greek: ἐμβριμάομαι (embrimaomai), pronounced em-bree-MAH-oh-my. Strong’s G1690.

This is a striking and unusual word. It originally described the snorting of a horse, and came to mean a deep, almost physical surge of strong emotion — to be powerfully stirred, to groan within. John uses it twice of Jesus at this scene: when He saw Mary and the others weeping He “was deeply moved in spirit and troubled” (v. 33), and again as He “came to the tomb” (v. 38). This is no detached miracle-worker. Standing at the edge of death, in the presence of grief, the Lord of life is shaken to His depths — stirred with sorrow, and (many scholars hear) with holy indignation against death itself, this intruder that He has come to defeat. The word lets us see that the One who has authority over the grave does not approach it coldly. He feels it. He is moved.

Here is the heart of God laid open. Seeing Mary and the others weeping, Jesus “was deeply moved in spirit and troubled” — embrimaomai (em-bree-MAH-oh-my), that deep inward surge, sorrow mingled with holy resistance to death itself. He asks where they have laid Lazarus, and then comes the shortest, and one of the deepest, verses in all of Scripture: “Jesus wept” — dakryō (dak-ROO-oh), the quiet flow of tears. He knows, even as the tears come, that He is moments from calling Lazarus out. He is not weeping because the situation is hopeless. He weeps because He loves — because the God who made us is not indifferent to what death does to those He loves. The onlookers read it rightly: “See how He loved him!” This is the answer to every fear that God is far off or unmoved when we grieve: the Lord of life stood at a grave and wept. The doubters’ question — “Could not this man… have kept Lazarus from dying?” — will be answered in a way they cannot yet imagine. He did not keep him from dying. He did something greater.

John 11:38–44 (BSB)

³⁸ Jesus, once again deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹ “Take away the stone,” Jesus said. “Lord, by now he stinks,” said Martha, the sister of the dead man. “It has already been four days.” ⁴⁰ Jesus replied, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹ So they took away the stone. Then Jesus lifted His eyes upward and said, “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. ⁴² I knew that You always hear Me, but I say this for the benefit of the people standing here, so they may believe that You sent Me.” ⁴³ After Jesus had said this, He called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The man who had been dead came out with his hands and feet bound in strips of linen, and his face wrapped in a cloth. “Unwrap him and let him go,” Jesus told them.

Jesus comes to the tomb, again deeply moved, and gives the first command: “Take away the stone.” Martha’s reply is the plain, honest voice of grief reckoning with what four days in the grave means — the body has begun to decay; there is no human hope left here. Jesus does not linger over that detail; He lifts her eyes past it: “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” The stone is rolled back. Then Jesus prays aloud — not to inform the Father, for “I knew that You always hear Me,” but for the sake of the watching crowd, that they might believe He was sent by God. And then, “in a loud voice,” the word that empties the grave: “Lazarus, come out!” He calls him by name — for if He had not, it is said, every tomb might have opened. The dead man comes out, still bound in his graveclothes, and Jesus gives the last command: “Unwrap him and let him go.” The One who is the resurrection and the life has spoken, and death has had to give back its captive. It is a sign, and a promise: the voice that called Lazarus from the tomb is the voice that will one day call all who are His. “The hour is coming when all who are in their graves will hear His voice and come out” (John 5:28–29) — and that voice has a sound, and it knows your name.

Study notes Going deeper

Four themes run through this passage, each one a thread that ties it to the whole sweep of Scripture’s hope:

Jesus IS the resurrection and the life. The fifth I am saying is the center of the chapter. Resurrection is not first a doctrine or a future date but a Person. To have Him is to have life that death cannot finally end (vv. 25–26).
Faith meeting grief. Both sisters come to Jesus with sorrow and trust in the same sentence (vv. 21, 32). Jesus does not rebuke their tears; He meets them in the place where grief and faith stand side by side, and He draws their faith higher.
The God who weeps with us. Before He acts in power, He weeps in love (v. 35). The Lord of life is deeply moved (vv. 33, 38). Our God is not distant from our grief — He enters it.
Glory revealed. From the first word (“it is for the glory of God,” v. 4) to the last (“you would see the glory of God,” v. 40), the whole sign is about the glory of God shining out through the gift of life — a glory that will shine fullest at an empty tomb.

Three passages stand behind this chapter and are worth holding open beside it:

"But I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end He will stand upon the earth. Even after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I will see Him for myself; my eyes will behold Him, and not as a stranger. How my heart yearns within me!" Job 19:25–27 (BSB)

Long before Bethany, Job reached through his anguish to lay hold of the very hope Jesus embodies. His Redeemer lives and will stand (the same standing-up that anastasis names), and Job himself will see God in his own flesh. What Job held by faith in the dark, Jesus declares in the light: “I am the resurrection and the life.”

"Brothers, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who are without hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him." 1 Thessalonians 4:13–14 (BSB)

Paul gives the Christian permission to grieve — but not as those without hope. The hope is grounded exactly where John 11 grounds it: in the One who is the resurrection and the life. Jesus’ own word for Lazarus — “fallen asleep” (v. 11) — becomes Paul’s word for every believer who has died in Him.

"When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come to pass: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" 1 Corinthians 15:54–57 (BSB)

This is the end of the road John 11 sets us on. The One who called Lazarus out is the One who will swallow up death itself in victory. At Bethany death still held its graveclothes; here Paul announces the day when it holds nothing at all.

Personal Application

Faith in the middle place. Both sisters came to Jesus carrying grief and trust in the same breath — “if You had been here…” and “even now I know…” Where are you living in that honest middle place, hurting over something God seems to have come “too late” for, while still daring to trust Him? What would it look like to bring both your grief and your faith to Him, without pretending the grief away?
The God who weeps with you. Before Jesus acted in power, He wept in love. When you imagine God’s face turned toward your sorrow, do you picture impatience, distance, or a lecture — or do you picture the One who wept at a friend’s grave? How might it change the way you carry your losses to know that He is moved by them, not above them?
Do you believe this? Jesus put the question to Martha directly: “I am the resurrection and the life… Do you believe this?” Not “do you believe in resurrection as a doctrine,” but “do you believe in Me?” If He asked you that today, standing where you stand, with what you are facing — how would you answer, and what would change if you answered it with your whole life?

Pray to Close

The central truth of John 11:1–44: Jesus does not merely promise resurrection at the last day — He IS the resurrection and the life, the Lord who weeps with us in our grief and holds authority over the grave itself, so that everyone who believes in Him will live, even though he dies. The voice that called Lazarus out by name is the voice that will one day call every one of His own.

Give thanks — for a Savior who weeps with you and reigns over death; thank Him that your hope is not a doctrine held at arm’s length but a Person who knows your name.

Yield — the losses and fears you have been carrying alone, and place them in the hands of the One who is the resurrection and the life.

Ask — that when He puts the question to you — “Do you believe this?” — the Holy Spirit would draw from you, with Martha, a wholehearted “Yes, Lord.”

Worship for Today

O Praise the Name (Anástasis) · Hillsong Worship (Official Lyric Video)

There could hardly be a fitter song for this passage: its very subtitle, Anástasis, is the Greek word Jesus claims for Himself in verse 25 — “I am the resurrection.” The song walks from the cross to the tomb to the empty grave, and lands on the hope that John 11 sets in motion:

“Then on the third at break of dawn, The Son of heaven rose again. O trampled death, where is your sting? The angels roar for Christ the King.”

What Lazarus’s raising foreshadowed, this song proclaims fulfilled. At Bethany the dead man came out still bound in graveclothes; on Easter morning the Son of heaven left His own folded behind and rose never to die again. The “trampled death” of the chorus is the same death Jesus stood against — deeply moved — at the tomb, and the same death Paul says is finally “swallowed up in victory.” Let the song carry the chapter’s hope into worship: the One who wept at the grave is risen, and because He lives, all who believe in Him will live, even though they die.

Listen: