The Raising of Lazarus: Meaning of John 11

If you came looking for this story tonight, there is a fair chance someone you love has died, or is dying, and you are trying to find out what Jesus does in front of a grave. This page will not rush you past that. The raising of Lazarus is the one place in the Gospels where we watch Jesus stand at the tomb of a friend and weep before he does anything else. He is not numb to death. He is also not finished with it.

The whole account is in John 11:1-44, and it is the only Gospel that tells it. A man named Lazarus lives in Bethany, a short walk from Jerusalem, with his sisters Mary and Martha (John 11:1). He falls sick. By the time Jesus reaches the town, Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. What happens next is the last and largest of the signs in John's Gospel, and it is the one that sets in motion the plot to kill Jesus himself.

What the miracle teaches

The first place to look is the sentence Jesus says to a grieving sister before he says anything to the dead man. Martha meets him on the road and tells him, in effect, that he is too late. He answers her with one of the most weight-bearing lines in all of Scripture.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"

— John 11:25-26

Notice what he does not say. He does not say, "I can perform a resurrection." He says, "I am the resurrection." The power is not a tool he carries. It is who he is. That is the teaching underneath the miracle, and it is why John records it. Lazarus walking out of the tomb is the proof handed to the eyes. The claim handed to the heart is that the man making it holds death in his own hands.

This matters for the way you read the rest. The raising of Lazarus is not mainly a story about a man who got a few more years. Lazarus, after all, would die again. It is a story about the One who can say "come out" to a sealed grave and be obeyed.

The story, scene by scene

Word reaches Jesus that the friend he loves is sick. Then comes the line that confuses every first reader. Jesus stays where he is for two more days (John 11:6). He has just heard that Lazarus is dying, and he waits. To the sisters back in Bethany, this looks like the worst kind of silence, the silence of a friend who could help and does not come.

But Jesus tells the disciples why. He says the sickness will end in God's glory (John 11:4), and then, plainly, that Lazarus has died and that he is glad he was not there, so that they will believe (John 11:14-16). The delay is not neglect. It is timing. By the fourth day in the tomb, no one in Bethany could pretend Lazarus had merely fainted.

When Jesus finally arrives, Martha comes out to meet him on the road while Mary stays in the house. Her first words are grief and faith tangled together in the same breath.

"Lord," Martha said to Jesus, "if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask."

— John 11:21-22

Then Mary comes, and she says the same thing, and she is weeping, and the people with her are weeping. And here John gives us the detail that has held mourners for two thousand years. Jesus, standing in the middle of it, is "deeply moved" and troubled (John 11:33). He asks where they have laid him. And then comes the shortest verse in the Bible.

Jesus wept.

— John 11:35

He is about to undo this death in a matter of minutes. He weeps anyway. The God who is in full command of the situation is not standing above the grief of the people he loves. He is inside it with them.

Then he goes to the tomb, a cave with a stone across the mouth, and tells them to take the stone away. Martha protests that after four days there will be a smell. He reminds her that she will see the glory of God if she believes (John 11:40). They move the stone. He prays out loud, for the crowd's sake, and then he calls.

When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!" The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, "Take off the grave clothes and let him go."

— John 11:43-44

The man who had been dead four days walks out into the light, still bound in his burial cloth, and Jesus tells the living to unwrap him. The scene ends there. What it sets off does not.

Timeline of key events

• The message (John 11:1-3). Mary and Martha send word from Bethany that Lazarus, the one Jesus loves, is sick.
• The delay (John 11:4-6). Jesus says the sickness is for God's glory, then stays where he is two more days.
• The decision to go (John 11:7-16). Jesus tells the disciples Lazarus has died and that he is glad, so they will believe. Thomas resolves to go with him even if it means dying.
• Martha on the road (John 11:17-27). Four days in the tomb. Martha meets Jesus, and he tells her, "I am the resurrection and the life."
• Mary and the weeping (John 11:28-37). Mary falls at his feet. Jesus is deeply moved, and Jesus weeps.
• The tomb (John 11:38-40). A cave, a stone, Martha's protest about the smell, the promise that she will see God's glory.
• The call (John 11:41-44). Jesus prays aloud, calls Lazarus by name, and the dead man comes out.
• The aftermath (John 11:45-53). Many believe. The chief priests and Pharisees meet, and from that day they plan to kill Jesus.

Five lessons from the raising of Lazarus

1. Jesus's delay is not his absence. The two days he waited felt to Mary and Martha like abandonment, and it was actually the setup for the largest thing he would do for them. When God seems slow, he is not always saying no. Sometimes he is making room for a glory you could not have seen any other way.
2. He weeps before he works. Jesus does not scold the sisters for crying, and he does not skip past the grief to get to the miracle. He cries with them first. Your tears at a graveside are not a failure of faith. The Lord of life shed his own.
3. Four days dead is not too far gone. The detail is deliberate. Jesus waited until death was undeniable, total, decaying. There is no situation so finished that it is past his voice. The grave that has been sealed the longest is the one he most likes to open.
4. He calls the dead by name. Jesus did not raise the dead in general. He said, "Lazarus, come out." The same Shepherd who knows his sheep by name knows yours. When he calls you out of whatever has buried you, it will be personal.
5. Resurrection is a person before it is an event. Martha believed in a resurrection on the last day, somewhere far off. Jesus stood in front of her and said the resurrection was standing there. The hope is not a doctrine you hold at arm's length. It has a face.

Key verses from John 11

The four passages above carry the heart of the chapter: Martha's tangled grief and faith (John 11:21-22), the great claim (John 11:25-26), the two words that hold every mourner (John 11:35), and the command that emptied a tomb (John 11:43-44). Read them together and the shape of the miracle is clear. Jesus enters the grief fully, speaks who he is plainly, and then proves it with a word.

One more line belongs here, the one most readers miss. The raising of Lazarus does not end in applause. It ends in a verdict. Many who saw it believed, but others reported it to the authorities, and from that meeting the leaders "plotted to take his life" (John 11:45-53). The sign that gave Lazarus his life back is the sign that cost Jesus his. He raised a dead man knowing it would get him killed.

How the raising of Lazarus points to Jesus

Everything in this chapter is pointing forward to a second tomb. Lazarus comes out bound in grave clothes and has to be unwrapped. Weeks later, Jesus would leave his own grave clothes folded behind him and walk out free. Lazarus was called out by another's voice. Jesus would rise by his own power. Lazarus would die again one day. Jesus would not.

That is why the chapter sits where it does in John's Gospel. The raising of Lazarus is the dress rehearsal, and the resurrection of Jesus is the thing itself. When Jesus told Martha "I am the resurrection and the life," he was not describing a category he belonged to. He was telling her what was about to happen to him, and what would therefore be possible for her. The empty tomb of Lazarus is a promise. The empty tomb of Jesus is the down payment on it.

If you are standing at a graveside this week, that is the hope on offer here. Not that death is small, because Jesus wept and would not call it small. But that death is not the last word, because the One who wept also called, and the dead man came out.

Further study

Read the chapter straight through in John 11 on Bible Gateway in one sitting before reaching for commentary. It is a single, unhurried scene, and reading it whole catches the rhythm of delay, grief, and glory that reading a verse at a time tends to flatten.

For deeper treatment, D.A. Carson's volume The Gospel According to John in the Pillar New Testament Commentary series walks through chapter 11 carefully and is widely used by pastors and teachers. R.C. Sproul and John MacArthur have both preached well-circulated sermons on "I am the resurrection and the life" if you prefer to listen.

On this site you can keep reading with Mary Magdalene, one of the women who first met the risen Jesus at his own empty tomb, or with the parable of the prodigal son, another picture of a father running toward someone who was, in Jesus's own words, "dead and is alive again." If the larger question of what happens after death is what brought you here, what the Bible says about the end times and Is God Real? pick up the thread.

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