John 11:38–57
Read the passage.
While much is often made about the actual raising of Lazarus, I think the words Jesus speaks before He does are more interesting. When Jesus tells them to move the stone away from the entrance of the tomb, Martha warns that the decay would have progressed enough that the smell will be unpleasant. Jesus gently rebukes her for her lack of faith, or her continued misunderstanding of when He said, “Your brother will rise again.” (v. 23) Then Jesus lifts up a prayer thanking the Father for hearing Him. The interesting part is that He then explains to the Father why He is thanking Him aloud, which is for the benefit of the people near Him, who hear the explanation, addressed to the Father. The original Greek did not have quotation marks like modern languages, but it is usually easy to infer where they should be placed. Some might therefore argue that verse 42 wasn’t what Jesus said at that time, but considering it is in the first-person (using “I”) and is followed by “When He had said these things” in the next verse, I believe the quotation marks are accurate. The other option would be that John is inserting Jesus’s explanation for why He said this after the fact, without indicating that’s what he wrote.
As an aside, I find the way Lazarus actually comes out of his tomb kind of comedic. Most depictions we’ve seen have him walking out, but that seems unlikely. Because “his hands and feet [were] bound with linen strips” (v. 44), he wouldn’t have been able to move very well. Presumably he woke up on the ledge they laid him on with his face covered and all tied up. Maybe the cloth was thin enough for him to see, but at best he had to hop out of the cave. At worst he inch-wormed out. Granted, no one but Jesus was really expecting to see Lazarus come out like this, but it’s still funny to me that Jesus has to tell them to help him out.
The scene shifts to Jerusalem, where the Pharisees get the report that Lazarus has been raised and that caused many more people to believe in Jesus. Despite all of the signs and wonders that Jesus had done to show that He was the promised Messiah, they were not happy to see God’s promises fulfilled. In particular, they were afraid that the Romans would see Jesus as a new Davidic king over Israel, which was a threat to their authority over a conquered nation. If that happened, they would “come and take away both our place and our nation.” (v. 48) It is telling that they list their “place”, as in their position of authority, before the state of the nation as a whole. That said, it was also a legitimate concern, because the Romans had already meddled in Jewish religious affairs by deposing and appointing high priests of their choosing.
Indeed, Caiaphas was one of those appointees. John makes the point of calling him the “high priest that year”, twice, even though that office was not designed to have such a high turnover rate. Despite being a political creature, more acceptable to Rome than his father-in-law, and pragmatic enough to plot to kill Jesus in order to save his people (and career, don’t forget that), John tells us that Caiaphas uttered a true prophecy. It was, in fact, better “that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish.” (v. 50) When it was that one Man, in the right way, and as it turns out, for the sake of all nations, it was better.
Your sacrifice is the greatest gift we could ever receive.