I am the resurrection and the life: the raising of Lazarus

The Gospel according to John does not name its author. The last chapter says that the disciple whom Jesus loved bore witness to these things and wrote them (21:24), and from the second century the church identified him as John the son of Zebedee. D. A. Carson and others still defend this. Richard Bauckham argues that the author was John the Elder, a different eyewitness known to Papias, and other scholars see a Johannine school that shaped the book. The usual date is about AD 85 to 95, though a minority prefer an earlier date. John says he wrote so that readers might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and have life in his name (20:31), and the raising of Lazarus is the last and greatest of the signs that serve that aim before the Passion.

The raising of Lazarus is found only in John. The Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) record other raisings, the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-43) and the widow's son at Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and Luke knows a household at Bethany with sisters named Martha and Mary (Luke 10:38-42), without naming the village. Why the Synoptics omit Lazarus is not settled. Some suggest that the earliest accounts did not name him in order to protect him, since John says the leaders also planned to kill Lazarus (12:10). Others suggest that the Synoptic writers were concerned mainly with Galilee and the final week. Both are guesses. The question belongs to the larger synoptic problem, how Matthew, Mark and Luke relate to each other, for which the most common solution is that Mark was first and was used by Matthew and Luke with a shared sayings source; whether John knew any of them is debated. The Lazarus of Luke 16:19-31 is a character in a parable and a different person.

Bethany lies about two miles (fifteen stadia, 11:18) east of Jerusalem on the slope of the Mount of Olives. Jesus has withdrawn across the Jordan after the Feast of Dedication (10:40) and returns to Judea at this point despite the danger (11:7-8). The Passover is near (11:55), so this chapter stands at the hinge of the Gospel. Chapters 1 to 12 are sometimes called the Book of Signs, and chapters 13 to 20 the Book of Glory. The raising of Lazarus ends the first and begins the plot that leads into the second.

In Jewish belief of the period, most Pharisees held that the dead would be raised at the end, as Daniel 12:2 and Isaiah 26:19 imply, and the Sadducees denied it (Acts 23:8). Martha speaks as a Pharisaic Jew would. Some later rabbinic sources say that the soul stays near the body for three days and departs on the fourth; if that idea was current, the four days in the tomb (11:17) mean that death is certain.

John 11 is a long narrative with a controlled pace. It moves in stages that each deepen the question of who Jesus is: the message and delay, the conversation with Martha, the conversation with Mary, the tomb, and the council. Dialogue carries the point. The sisters say the same words, that if Jesus had been there their brother would not have died (11:21, 32), and the repetition invites the reader to compare the replies Jesus gives to each.

As elsewhere in John, the story runs on two levels. Lazarus is really raised, and the raising is a sign (11:4, 40) that discloses who Jesus is. The word 'sign' means that the event points to a greater reality, and Jesus gives the reality in words before he performs the sign: 'I am the resurrection and the life' (11:25). The reader should not treat the sign as merely illustrative of a lesson, since John presents it as an actual event with historical consequences, nor treat it as merely a wonder, since the point is the person.

The chapter also teaches by irony. The Sanhedrin plots Jesus' death to save the nation from Rome, and John shows that his death saves the people of God. Caiaphas says more than he knows. The reader is asked to hear the surface meaning and the deeper one together.

Verses 1–16

Lazarus of Bethany is ill. His sisters send word to Jesus that the one he loves is sick. Jesus says that this illness is not unto death but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it. John adds that Jesus loved Martha, Mary and Lazarus, and that, having heard, he stayed two days where he was. The delay is not indifference; it is placed directly after the statement of love. When he proposes to return to Judea, the disciples remind him that the Jews were seeking to stone him there. He speaks of walking by day and not stumbling because one sees the light of this world, and then says plainly that Lazarus has fallen asleep and he is going to wake him. The disciples take 'asleep' literally; Jesus tells them that Lazarus is dead, and that he is glad for their sake that he was not there, so that they may believe. Thomas, called the Twin, says to the other disciples that they should go too, and die with him.

Verses 17–27

Jesus arrives to find that Lazarus has been in the tomb four days. Many Jews had come to console the sisters. Martha goes to meet him and says that if he had been there her brother would not have died, and that even now God will give him whatever he asks. Jesus says her brother will rise. She replies that she knows he will rise in the resurrection on the last day, which is orthodox Jewish hope. Then Jesus says, 'I am the resurrection and the life.' Whoever believes in him, even though he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in him will never die. He asks her whether she believes this. Her answer is the confession of the chapter: she believes that he is the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world. That is the confession that John wishes his readers to make (20:31).

Verses 28–37

Martha calls Mary quietly, and Mary comes to Jesus and falls at his feet, repeating her sister's words. She and the Jews with her are weeping. Jesus 'was deeply moved in spirit and troubled'. The Greek verb translated 'deeply moved' (embrimaomai) normally expresses anger or sharp displeasure, and interpreters differ. Some think Jesus is indignant at death and its power or at the unbelief of the mourners. Others think the verb describes strong emotion in general. The verse that follows is the shortest in English translations: 'Jesus wept' (11:35). Some of the Jews say that this shows how he loved him, while others ask why the man who opened the eyes of the blind could not have kept him from dying.

Verses 38–44

At the tomb, a cave with a stone against it, Jesus says to remove the stone. Martha objects that there will be a stench, since he has been dead four days. Jesus reminds her that he said that if she believed she would see the glory of God. They take away the stone. Jesus lifts his eyes and thanks the Father for hearing him, saying that he speaks aloud for the sake of the crowd, so that they may believe the Father sent him. Then he cries with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come out!' The dead man comes out, bound hand and foot with strips of linen and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus says to unbind him and let him go. There is no stretching of the body over the dead and no prolonged prayer, as in the stories of Elijah and Elisha (1 Kings 17:21; 2 Kings 4:34-35). The Son speaks, and the dead man hears.

Verses 45–57

Many of the Jews who had seen what he did believed in him, but some told the Pharisees. The chief priests and Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and asked what they were to do about all these signs. They feared that if he were left alone, everyone would believe in him, and the Romans would come and take away 'our place and our nation'. The words 'our place' likely refer to the temple. Caiaphas, the high priest that year (he held the office from about AD 18 to 36), said that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish. John says that he did not say this on his own, but as high priest he prophesied that Jesus would die for the nation, and not for the nation only but to gather into one the scattered children of God. From that day they plotted to put him to death. Jesus withdrew to a town called Ephraim, near the wilderness. The Passover was near, and people in Jerusalem were asking whether he would come to the feast.

The chapter stands at the center of the Bible's teaching on resurrection. The Old Testament hope, voiced in Isaiah 26:19, Daniel 12:2 and Job 19:25-27, is a bodily rising of the dead at the end of the age. John 11 does not replace that hope but gives it a person. The Son of God has life in himself (5:26), and he gives it. Paul says the last enemy to be destroyed is death (1 Corinthians 15:26), and John 11 is a foretaste.

The chapter also shows the humanity and the divinity of Christ in one scene. He weeps, and he commands the dead. The author of Hebrews says that he is able to sympathize with our weakness (Hebrews 4:15), and John 11 has the weeping as well as the cry. The church's confession of one person in two natures finds support here.

The verb 'believe' and the phrase 'never die' raise the question of the life Jesus gives. Lazarus was raised to live a mortal life and would die again, but the one who believes in Jesus has eternal life that death does not end (11:25-26; compare 5:24). The raising of Lazarus is a sign of that life, and not itself the final resurrection of the kind described in 1 Corinthians 15:42-49.

Christ is here by direct claim and fulfillment. Jesus does not only promise resurrection at the last day, as Martha already believed (11:24); he says he is that resurrection in person (11:25). The Old Testament promised that God would swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:8) and open the graves of his people (Ezekiel 37:12-14), and the Gospel presents Jesus as the one who does this. The sign points to the day when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice (5:28-29). Compare the raisings by Elijah and Elisha: they pray and stretch themselves on the child, but Jesus speaks and the dead man comes out.

Caiaphas' cynical political advice becomes, in John's reading, a true prophecy that Jesus will die in place of the nation and gather God's scattered children into one (11:50-52). Ezekiel 34:12-13 and 37:21-22 promise that God will gather his scattered people, and John 10:16 has already spoken of other sheep to be brought in. This is fulfillment as John interprets it.

As a type, the four-day tomb, the stone and the grave clothes anticipate Jesus' own burial and resurrection. John notes that Lazarus came out wrapped in grave clothes with a cloth over his face (11:44), whereas at Jesus' tomb the linen wrappings and the face cloth are found lying separately (20:5-7). Lazarus comes out of the tomb to die again; Jesus comes out never to die. This is an echo, offered tentatively, but John's placement of the two scenes invites the comparison.