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The UK Bible Students Website Christian Biblical Studies |
‘IF YOU HAD BEEN HERE’
A Study In John 11:
1-44
By L.N.
All Scripture references are to the New International Version, UK edition of 1984.
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1 Now a man named Lazarus was sick.
He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, ‘Lord, the one you love is sick.’ 4
When he heard this, Jesus said, ‘This sickness will not end in death.
No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.’ 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6 Yet when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days. 7 Then he said to his disciples, ‘Let us go back to Judea.’ 8 ‘But Rabbi,’ they said, ‘a short while ago the Jews tried to stone you, and yet you are going back there?’ 9 Jesus answered, ‘Are there not twelve hours of daylight? Anyone who walks by day will not stumble, for he sees by this world’s light. 10 It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light.’ 11 After he had said this, he went on to tell them, ‘Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him up.’ 12 His disciples replied, ‘Lord, if he sleeps, he will get better.’ 13 Jesus had been speaking of his death, but his disciples thought he meant natural sleep. 14 So then he 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 the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him.’
From the verses which precede these (John 10: 40-42), we learn that Jesus was in a town called Bethabara, ‘where John [the Baptist] had been baptising in the early days’ (v. 40). It was known also as ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’ (John 1: 28), and was a few days’ walk from the other Bethany in Judea, in the south, where Lazarus and his sisters dwelt. Now receiving word by messenger that His friend Lazarus was mortally ill, Jesus tells His disciples that ‘this sickness will not end in death’ that the affliction was permitted by God to demonstrate the power (glory) of the Heavenly Father working through His Son, though He did not tell them how. Jesus deliberately tarried in Bethabara two additional days, after which, knowing in some way that Lazarus had now died, He tells the disciples that he ‘sleeps’, a meaning which foreshadows the miracle He would soon perform, the import of which they did not grasp nor foresee.
Having told them that ‘this sickness will not end in death’, perhaps they now wondered if Jesus had been mistaken.
But, no, He would demonstrate to them that death need not be permanent, so He likens it to a sleep. In John 5: 28, 29 He had already revealed the doctrine of the general resurrection, in which ‘all who are in their graves will hear [my] voice and come out’. The disciples naively conclude that Lazarus was slumbering, a sign that he would recover, and thus there would be no need to go to him. Besides, they reason, it is too dangerous to return to Judea, where some wait to kill Jesus (and perhaps them also?). Nonetheless, He announces that He will go, for His path is clear, His mission certain (‘by day . . . will not stumble’). Thomas later the ‘doubter’ spoke for all the disciples when he bravely proclaimed they should all go, too, and risk the consequences.
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17 On his arrival, Jesus found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.
18 Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19 and many Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them in the loss of their brother. 20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. 21 ‘Lord,’ Martha said to Jesus, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died. 22 But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.’
By the time Jesus and the disciples reached the outskirts of Bethany, Lazarus had been entombed for four days. (The Jews traditionally buried their deceased the same day.) The exact location of Bethabara from whence Jesus and the disciples had set out is not known. But assuming that Lazarus had died on the second day of Jesus’ tarrying there, and depending on what hour of the day the party had decamped for Bethany, and their mode of travel (probably on foot), we may guess at a two- or three-day journey. In any event, it was here that Martha, the older sister, came out to greet the Master. Possibly she was perplexed as she ran to meet Him: Why hadn’t He come sooner? Even as she hailed Him she could not resist venting her bewildered emotions: ‘Lord’, she says respectfully, ‘if you had been here, my brother would not have died’. Hanging unspoken in the air is ‘if you had only been here’ and ‘my brother would not have died in the first place’.
If you had been here. This lament has sounded across countless centuries of countless sufferings. Couched in various forms, a similar bafflement underlies each cry, from If God loved me, such and such could not have happened, to There is no God, or there would be no suffering, to Why doesn’t He answer my prayers? Most people will eventually settle into indifference on theological matters and abandon regular prayer. Some will become agnostics or atheists. It takes courage to believe in God when He is so often silent. Even Jesus Himself, personified in Psa. 22: 2, roars the lament from the cross, ‘O my God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer’. He, too, might have added, ‘If you had been here . . . with me . . . I should not have to suffer this agony.’ But Jesus’ temporary alienation from the face of the Father was a necessary factor in His dying a sinner’s death, though He was perfect, and without sin. In suffering this way, He ‘became a merciful and faithful high priest . . . that he might make atonement for the sins of the people’ (Heb. 2: 17). But for those who believe in Christ, God assures them that ‘before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear’ (Isa. 65: 24).
And so back to Martha: ‘But’, she adds, as if in cloaked apology, ‘I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask’. Did she believe what she says here? That ‘even now’ even though my brother has been dead for four days ‘you can still do something about it.’ What, exactly, did she expect the Lord to do?
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23 Jesus said to her, ‘Your brother will rise again.’ 24 Martha answered, ‘I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ 25 Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’ 27 ‘Yes, Lord,’ she told him, ‘I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.’
What a profound contradiction: ‘He who believes in me will live, even though he dies’! Full of truth and clear of meaning to those who truly believe. As for Martha, it appears that she did not anticipate the miracle which was to come. In her response, she spoke merely of the general understanding of the Jews that the dead would rise at ‘the last day’, always a far-off dream. And so Jesus gently assures her that none of those who put their trust in Him ever truly die. Yes, they will, like all of humanity, go into the death state, but they are never out of God’s memory, and they will be raised out of the death condition to eternal life. ‘Do you believe this?’ To which Martha answers that she believes in Him. This is enough. For Jesus says ‘I am the resurrection and the life’.
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28 After [Martha] had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. ‘The Teacher is here,’ she said, ‘and is asking for you.’ 29 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 had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. 32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’
When Martha ran to fetch her sister, Jesus stayed where He was. It is interesting to note how particular the Gospel writer is to point this out, a detail which might seem redundant to an understanding of the main event, and had it been omitted it would not have ruined the narrative flow. This detail, among many others, assures us of the veracity of the account. So we read that as soon as Mary learned that Jesus had arrived, she ‘got up quickly’ and raced out to meet Him. She was followed in short order by a train of mourners, who had remained to visit with the bereaved family, and who assumed she was going to the tomb.
Mary’s words are identical to those of Martha’s they had no doubt commiserated together over the previous few days, probably expressing the disappointment they felt that Jesus had delayed to come to them: ‘If you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ We see in this frank expression one might almost see it as a reproof that the Lord’s people should not be faulted for confessing to disappointment or doubt. Indeed, strong faith is not possible unless it first admits doubt. The overcoming power of faith consists in its having conquered rising incredulity. We learn to trust only after having first struggled with uncertainty. Be wary of those who tell you that doubt denotes a weak Christian. Our attitude in this regard must always be, ‘I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!’ (Mark 9: 24)
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33 When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34 ‘Where have you laid him?’ he asked. ‘Come and see, Lord,’ they replied. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him!’ 37 But some of them said, ‘Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?’
Jesus groaned inwardly and wept. In His tears we witness His heart-wrenching compassion for the bereaved sisters, the wider family, the friends of Lazarus, and His extraordinary empathy for the human family, past, present, and future. And in the weeping of the Son we hear the weeping of the Father.
Some of the mourners exchanged oblique and whispered reproofs: If He is such a wonder-worker, why did He not keep Lazarus from dying in the first place? It is an ancient conundrum. How often in our private moments we wonder why Providence allows us or those close to us to suffer and die.
When Jesus asks ‘where have you laid him?’ it is not because He seeks information. He who discerned from a distance that Lazarus had already died, would surely know where he was buried. Rather, He chooses to direct the attention of the sisters and their fellow-mourners to the event at hand the thing for which He has come, that which is to glorify the Father through the Son. In asking them to guide Him to the place, He engages with their sorrow, identifies Himself as a companion in grief.
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38 Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. 39 ‘Take away the stone,’ he said. ‘But, Lord,’ said Martha, the sister of the dead man, ‘by this time there is a bad odour, for he has been there four days.’ 40 Then Jesus said, ‘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 looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.’ 43 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ 44 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.’
Addressing His Father in heaven in that special way which only Jesus as the uniquely-begotten and dearly-loved Son could do, Jesus commands the dead to walk and come out! No need to command the heavy stone to roll away the friends of Lazarus could do that. But only Christ, working as the instrument of God’s power, could make the dead live. And greater works than this He will yet do.
And so the stupendous miracle was accomplished, and hearts and attitudes altered, in more ways than one. For while we read in v. 45 of those Jews who ‘had seen what Jesus did’ and ‘put their faith in him’, we read, too, of those who scurried away and ‘went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done’ (v. 46), the ‘but’ at the beginning of the verse revealing their wicked motive. This cackling group resembles the grumpy and resentful brother of the prodigal, who baulked at celebrating his sibling’s return to the family fold. Smug tale-bearers, their minds and hearts were bound tighter than the bandages that imprisoned Lazarus, resistant to the power of the holy spirit working through Jesus. No wonder that He lambasted such people (Matt. 12: 30-32, ‘blaspheming the holy spirit’; 23: 15, Pharisees the ‘children of hell [gehenna, the Second Death]’).
As for Martha and Mary, and all of the friends of Lazarus, what joy! The brother, the friend, returned to home and hearth, alive and well. Such was the celebrity of Lazarus and such was the fame of the miracle that not long after, on the strength of it, crowds of people cheered Jesus as King on His triumphant ride into Jerusalem (John 12: 9, 17, 18). True to form, the Pharisees did not join in the cheering. Instead, they decided that they must not only kill Jesus, but must get rid of Lazarus too! (John 12: 10) (There’s no evidence that they succeeded in the latter plan.)
What did become of Lazarus after his resuscitation? The Scriptures do not say, but we surmise that he lived on and then died in the normal way, for he had received ‘merely’ an extension of his ordinary existence, not a resurrection to eternal life. This permanent resurrection is still future, and we await Christ’s worldwide kingdom on earth to make it a physical reality. Nonetheless, it remains true that all who believe in Christ as Saviour and King are now justified by faith, and in that sense have passed from being dead in trespasses and sins, to forgiveness and life in the Beloved, in whom there is no condemnation.
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Note: The raising of Lazarus is not the only instance in Scripture of the dead being revived. There are several in the Old Testament and the in New Testament book of Acts. We will comment here only on those whom Jesus Himself resuscitated and which are found in the Gospels. There are two: the daughter of Jairus and the son of the widow whom Jesus encountered in the town of Nain. These accounts are found in the following: Jairus’ daughter — Matt. 9: 18, 19, 23-26; Mark 5: 35-43; Luke 8: 41, 42, 49-56; and the widow in Nain — Luke 7: 11-17. The impact and the circumstances surrounding the raising of Lazarus were quite different than all the others: it was the most public, the most spectacular and, from the point of view of a sceptic, the most convincing, Lazarus having been certifiably dead and buried for four days, his unembalmed body already decomposing.
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February 2015. All author rights asserted, but you are free to reproduce this article without express permission. Please acknowledge the source.