John 11:1–44 — I Am the Resurrection and the Life

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, and it stands at the hinge of the Gospel. The sign that most fully reveals Jesus’ power over death is also the sign that sets in motion the events leading to His own. A family He loves sends word that Lazarus is sick, and He delays, so that by the time He arrives Lazarus has already been in the tomb four days. There, between two grieving sisters and a sealed grave, He speaks the fifth of the great I am sayings, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Then He weeps, and only after that does He call a dead man out by name. Notice the order, and do not let a slogan rush past it: first He weeps, and then He speaks.

As you read, hold this: I am the resurrection and the life.

John 11:1–16 (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, 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.”

John introduces a family Jesus knows and loves. The sisters’ message is striking for what it does not do. It makes no request. It issues no instruction. It simply names the need and rests on the relationship. “Lord, the one You love is sick.” 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 that Lazarus will not die, for he will, but that death will not be the final word here. 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.

He 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. 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. 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.”

John 11:17–27 (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.” 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.”

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.

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. Jesus gently takes that future hope and brings it near, into the present, into Himself. “I am the resurrection (ἀνάστασις) anastasis, pronounced ah-NAH-stah-sis. Strong's G386, resurrection, a standing up again. Anastasis is built from ana (“up, again”) and histēmi (“to stand”), and it means literally a standing up again. It is the ordinary Greek word for resurrection, the bodily rising of the dead. 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. and the life.” 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,” and so physical death is not the end for the believer. “And everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die,” for 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.

John 11:28–37 (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.” 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?”

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, and the One who calls His sheep by name (10:3) now calls this grieving sister to Himself. Mary got up quickly. 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, 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.

Here is the heart of God laid open. Seeing Mary and the others weeping, Jesus was deeply moved (ἐμβριμάομαι) embrimaomai, pronounced em-bree-MAH-oh-my. Strong's G1690, to be deeply moved, to groan within, stirred with strong emotion. The word 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 (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 with holy indignation against death itself, that intruder He has come to defeat. The One who has authority over the grave does not approach it coldly. He feels it. He is moved. in spirit and troubled. He asks where they have laid Lazarus, and then comes the shortest, and one of the deepest, verses in all of Scripture. “Jesus wept.” 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 not a slogan laid over grief. The Lord of life stood at a grave and wept. The doubters ask, “Could not this man… have kept Lazarus from dying?” Their question 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. 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). That voice has a sound, and it knows a name. He is the resurrection and the life. He also weeps. Both are true, and the second is not cancelled by the first.