107.John 11:1-6-News About Lazarus’ Illness
News About Lazarus’ Illness
John 11:1–6
1 Now a certain man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped His feet with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.
3 Therefore the sisters sent to Him, saying, “Lord, behold, he whom You love is sick.”
4 When Jesus heard that, He said, “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.
6 So, when He heard that he was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.
A story about Jesus’ close friends. This chapter describes one of the most detailed and profound miracles in the entire Gospel.
From the very beginning, the story is filled with love. Already in the introduction the word “love” appears twice. In John 11:3 the verb phileo is used — friendship, personal affection. In John 11:5 the verb agapē is used — sacrificial, conscious, deep love.
Old friends: Martha, Mary, Lazarus. This is exactly the order in which the evangelist John lists them in 11:5, even though in 11:1 Mary is mentioned first. This is not accidental: we see a kind of role reversal, and now Martha moves to the main spiritual foreground of the narrative.
We often like to attach labels and keep an inner “spiritual meter” ready to evaluate people. The most common example is Martha, who because of one episode received the label of a quarrelsome housekeeper for centuries. But in reality it is more accurate to see the sisters as complementary and mutually supportive. In this chapter John shows that Martha behaves more spiritually mature during her grief for her brother: she seeks answers from God instead of simply expressing pain.
At the moment Jesus receives the news about Lazarus’ illness, He is in Perea, beyond the Jordan — about 30–35 km from Bethany, which equals roughly two days of travel for a group. This means that by the time the message reached Him, Lazarus was already dead or dying that same day.
Even if Jesus had left at that very hour, He would still have arrived after Lazarus’ death. But He waits two more days in order to come four days after the death — when the body has already begun to decay and “there is a stench.”
This is not indifference. Right before the decision to stay, John emphasizes Jesus’ agapē love for every member of the family. Often God allows time for tears in our lives not only for comfort, but for resurrection. He does not want to patch up the old nature, but to create a new one. Not a repaired and stitched-together person, but a new creation. And sometimes He waits until things become so bad that it becomes obvious: our own strength is completely powerless, and all that remains of it is the “smell of death” of the old self.
Christ never comes too late, even when it feels to us that He appears too late in our lives.