John 11:3,4

“ The sisters therefore sent to Jesus to say to him, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. 4. Jesus, having heard this, said: This sickness is not unto death; but it is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby. ”

The message of the sisters is full of delicacy; this is the reason why the evangelist reproduces it as it came from their lips (λέγουσαι, saying). The address, Lord, alludes to the miraculous power of Jesus; the term ἴδε, behold, to the impression which this unexpected announcement will not fail to produce upon Him; finally, the expression ὃν φιλεῖς, he whom thou lovest, to the tender affection which binds Jesus to Lazarus and makes it their duty not to leave Him in ignorance of the danger to which His friend is exposed. On the other hand, they do not insist; how could they press Him to come, knowing as they did the perils which await Him in Judea? They lay the case before Him: “Judge for thyself as to what must be done.”

The words of Jesus (John 11:4) are not given as a reply to this message; the statement is: he said, not: he answered. They are a declaration which was directed as much to the disciples who were present, as to the absent sisters. The ever original and very often paradoxical character of the sayings of the Lord must be very imperfectly understood, if one imagines that He meant seriously to say that Lazarus would not die of this sickness, and that only afterwards, in consequence of a second message, which is assumed by the narrative, He recognized His mistake (John 11:14).

No doubt, as Lucke observes, the glory of Jesus here on earth did not imply omniscience; but His moral purity excluded the affirmation of that of which He was ignorant. Reuss very fitly says: “Here is no medical statement.” The expression which Jesus makes use of is amphibological; whether it contained an announcement of recovery, or a promise of resurrection, it signified to the disciples that the final result of the sickness would not be death (οὐ πρὸς θάνατον). The glory of God is the resplendence which is shed abroad in the hearts of men by the manifestation of His perfections, especially of His power acting in the service of His holiness or of His love. And what act could be more fitted to produce such an effect than the triumph of life over death? Comp. Romans 6:4. In John 11:40, Jesus reminds Martha of the saying which He here utters, in the words: “ Did I not say unto thee, that, if thou believedst, thou shouldst see the glory of God? ”

We may and should infer from this expression, that, at the moment when Jesus was speaking in this way, the death of Lazarus and his resurrection were already present events to His view. For the very grave terms: for the glory of God, to the end that..., indicate more than a mere miracle of healing (see Keil). We must therefore go back to this very moment in order to locate rightly the hearing of the prayer for which He gives thanks in John 11:42. This manifestation of divine power must also have shed its brightness over Him who was its agent. How can God be glorified in the person of His Son, without a participation on the part of the latter in His glory? ῞Ινα, in order that, does not therefore indicate a second purpose in juxtaposition with the one which had been previously indicated (ὑπέρ); it is the explanation of the means by which the latter will be attained. We see in this passage how far the meaning of the name Son of God passes, in the mouth of Jesus, beyond that of the title Messiah: it designates here, as in John 11:30, the one who is so united with the Father that the glory of the one is the glory of the other. The pronoun δἰ αὐτῆς, by means of it, may be referred to the glory; but it is more natural to refer it to the sickness. This saying recalls that of John 9:3; but it passes beyond it in greatness, in the same degree in which the resurrection of Lazarus surpasses in glory the healing of the one who was born blind.