John 11
11:1-16. The raising of Lazarus from the dead is John’s seventh and most important sign, the last he records before Jesus’ own death. Jesus clearly has foreknowledge of events (cf. 4,6; 14-15). He carefully plans how they play out. This miracle pre-figures the resurrection at the Last Great Day, but it also by analogy demonstrates what Jesus does in the believer at conversion. The sinner is helpless, dead in his sins (Eph.2:1,5,8). The work of salvation is wholly the initiative and work of God through Christ and the Holy Spirit. “Lazarus is dead, …but let us go to him.”
One may speculate as to why John is the only gospel writer to record this great miracle. It may be that John, writing later than the others, no longer needed to be concerned for Lazarus’s security and privacy. We know that became a serious issue (12:9-10).
11:9-10. Being in the light is being in God’s will. Being out of God’s will because of fear causes one to stumble in the darkness.
11:11. One of Jesus’ main purposes in this passage is to teach his people how to view the death of the body. His people are asleep in the Lord. Does the body decay (39)? Never mind. Jesus is the resurrection and the life (25).
11:16. Like Thomas, we often fail to see the wisdom in what God does, but Thomas’s love was stronger than his fear, and he followed him. Later, perhaps even his hope and courage failed, like Peter’s, but not his love. Why? Because just as he loved Lazarus, Jesus loved Thomas, and the Father loved him, and “no one shall snatch them out of My hand.” (10:28-30).
11:17-44.
11:17. Why did Jesus delay two days in coming (6)? Lazarus would have been dead two days when he arrived in any case. But after four days, the body would be undeniably rotten (39). This was an undeniable raising of the truly dead (see 15).
11:33. Phillip Yancey (and others I have read) says that the Greek word for “deeply moved” actually “…implies anger, even rage.” Jesus is not only moved by compassion and sorrow for his friends (35). He is a warrior full of wrath at our enemies, Satan, sin, and death, who have spoiled his creation and brought such suffering, misery, and corruption. He is girding himself for battle.
11:39. “…I must never, like the Stoics, say that death does not matter. Nothing is less Christian than that. Death made Life Himself shed tears at the grave of Lazarus, and shed tears of blood in Gethsemane. This is an appalling horror; a stinking indignity.” C.S.Lewis, God in the Dock, p.86f.
11:43-44. (See 5:25-26). In Song of Songs 8:6, the Bride says to her Husband, “Put me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm. For love is as strong as death, jealousy is as severe as Sheol; Its flashes are flashes of fire, the very flame of the Lord.”
Lazarus is a metaphor for the elect Bride, the church. “When death and Sheol separate us from Christ, he shall see the seal of his love for his Bride upon his heart, and shall reach forth his sealed arm with the fire of God. The very wrath once taken upon himself for us shall cast death and the grave into the fire and hell of his jealousy, and our Beloved shall say, ‘No! You shall not have her. She belongs to ME!’ ” (Dight House, His Banner Over Me Is Love).
Jesus called, and the dead Lazarus was regenerated, heard the command, and came forth. Logically, the dead in sin are regenerated by the Holy Spirit before justification. That is, Lazarus had to be brought to life before he could hear, believe, and obey. That is how we must think of it, but it is experienced as one act of God’s free grace.
But Christ is not done with us. The power of death still clings to us and binds us. “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Ro.7:24. Sanctification is the ongoing work of God’s free grace wherein Christ says, “Unbind him, and let him go.”
11:45-57. The enmity of the enemy is only brought to a boil by this miracle they could not deny. Yet God moves even his enemies to conspire to bring about his perfect and sovereign will (cf. Acts 2:22-23; 4:27-28).