Various Notes on John 11

These are all the various (and non-linear) notes that I could remember from reading John 11, namely Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, as I sat in Mrs. Breeze's class during my off-period, sans Bible.

"This sickness is not unto death"- Jesus knows that Lazarus' illness will not result in death, that is, the ultimate daeth- eternal separation from God, i.e. the only death that truly matters. For, as Kierkegaard would attest, what good would it have done for Lazarus to have been brought back to life if Christ were not He who is the Resurrection and the Life. Humanly speaking, death is the end, but for the Christian, it is merely the turn of the page, a minor event in the scale of eternity. Following suiy, just as the ordinary man is afraid of death and shrinks back from it, like a child is fearful of the things that should not frighten him, the Christian, like the adult, understands that which is truly terrifying.

The disciples urge Jesus not to go back to Judea, because the Jews there want to stone him. Knowing this, Jesus goes any way, fully aware that raising Lazarus from the dead would ultimately seal his own death. Christ goes to Judea knowing that He has already begun his march to the cross. Lazarus (also viewed allergorically as us, the Christians) is brought to life by Jesus's self-motivated decision to give himself up to death, his willingness to bear the punishment of the sins of man. As Caiaphas so prophectically speaks, after he and other leaders begin the plot to kill Jesus immediately following Lazarus' resurrection and once many Jews (including, no doubt, some of those who had previously wanted to stone Him) began to believe and place their trust in Him, "It is better for one man to die than for the whole nation to perish." He speaks prophetically with only a false understanding the words he has proclaimed. Surely Caiaphas meant that, since He likely assumed that Jesus was like the other "Messiahs" that had come and gone, those who had led revolts against the Roman authorities, that it would be better to "strike the shepherd" so that the "sheep will scatter" than to have the full force of the Roman army to come and, once and for all, blot out the name of "Israel" from the face of the earth. But what Caiaphas did not grasp, and what the Apostle Paul so obviously understood, is that, by Jesus's death, all those who are Israel (meaning all those who are truly a part of Israel, including those who have been grafted in and not necessarily all those who have been descended from Abraham, those who have been "cut off," for, as it is written, "not all those who are of Israel are Israel). By his wounds, we are healed.

Notice also how Jesus meets us where we're at in how He deals with Mary and Martha. He meets Martha, who tells him that if He had been there Lazarus would not have died. She adds, "But even if You will it now, you can bring him to life." Jesus responds, "Your brother will rise again." I feel like Martha's next response is similar to how we respond when someone attempts to comfort us after the death of a loved one by saying, "He/she is in a better place now"- words meant to elicit peace, but words that merely sound cliched. Many Jews believed in the resurrection of the dead, so (my interpretation, which I feel is validated by Martha's response and Jesus's response back to her) is to blithely (I think) reply, "I know that he will rise again on the last day..." Jesus rebukes her, calls her faith to awaken once more, screams into her soul, "I AM THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. Anyone who believes in me..." essentially, any one who believes in Him will not die even though he dies. Jesus calls her faith into action- for her heart to mean what her words say. She responds back to Jesus by declaring that He is the Son of God. Her faith comes alive.

As for Mary, He meets her in an entirely different way. He weeps. It is incredibly important to remember that Jesus, as evidenced earlier in the passage, is fully aware that Lazarus is dead well before the news has even reached him, that He is convinced that Lazarus's death is not the final story, but that Lazarus died so that the glory of God would be displayed, and that He did not weep when he met Martha, though she too was Lazarus's sister. He weeps with Mary, because ours is a God of compassion, who mourns with those who mourn, who comes alongside us in our pain, agreeing that ours is a fallen world, that this is not the way that things should be, and comforting us with his promises and messages of hope.

Lazarus as us: Lazarus is dead- has been for four days and the stench of his rotting flesh is now noticable. There is no dount that he is dead. We, as Ephesians 2 declares, were "dead" in our sins. As Paul declares elsewhere, we have the "aroma of death" about us. There is no dount that we are dead. There is no hope for a dead man. A dead man cannot raise himself to life. A dead man can't choose to get up and walk. He's dead. He can do nothing but rot. He's going to stay dead and be returned back to dust. Then... though there is no hope for us, Jesus says to Lazarus, just as He says to our dead souls, "Arise! Come forth!" Now, where there was death, there is now LIFE! He speaks and we rise! His words give us rebirth! We rise and come to Him, as if we could do anything else. Anyone who has been dead and understands what life is does not wish to return to death, but follows the source of life.

Clayton helped to start this chain of thoughts- Jesus also commands the people standing outside the tomb to take the "robes of death" off of Lazarus. He is alive, but still covered in the linen wrappings that were the mark of his death. Two things:

(1) Lazarus as us again- though we have been given new life, we still have within us our sin nature, the cords of death that so easily entangle us. Slowly but surely, as we come to truly understand what it means to be ALIVE, to not have to be dead, to arise and follow Christ, we go to work taking off these clothes of death, removing sin from out lives so that we make have more of the appearances of being alive and less of the appearances of death, that we are more able to move and to run after Christ, that we are no longer dragged down by these things which marked our former selves.

(2) Lazarus is aided in removing the "robes of death" by the living people around him. Look at this in relation to the body of Christ. One of the primary duties of the body, of those that follow Christ, is to help those newly alive to help them see the "robes of death" that are still clinging to their living bodie, the sin that is preventing them from truly walking as Jesus walks, and to help them remove them. They can see the sins of their brothers and sisters, and, in love, so that they will not be hindered in their walks with God, help expose the evidences of death still attached to the living body and help them remove them from their lives forever.

This is my favorite story in the Bible, because there is SO MUCH here. It tells so much about jesus, how we came to know Him, and our lives now...