John 11:4

When Jesus heard that, he said. — These words are not simply an answer sent to the sisters, but the uttered thought which arose in our Lord’s mind as He heard that Lazarus was ill, and were spoken in the presence of the disciples who were with Him, and doubtless in that of the messengers also.

This sickness is not unto death — i.e., “will not issue in death: will not have death as its final result.” (Comp. John 11:11; John 11:14. and John 8:51.)

But for the glory of God — i.e., “the furtherance and accomplishment of the glory of God.”

That the Son of God might be glorified thereby. — This furtherance of the glory of God with the purpose of glorifying the Son carries us back, as all the expositors note, to the oneness of the work of the Father and Son which has been made prominent in our Lord’s words. (Comp. John 10:38, and references in Note there.) But the words seem to carry us forwards as well as backwards. In the next chapter (John 11:23) our Lord says. “The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified,” and the reference is to His death. Is that thought absent from the words here? The sickness of Lazarus would not indeed issue in death, though it would end in what men call death, and would be the immediate cause leading to the death of the Son of Man. The one would be as a sleep from which he would awake, the other should be the glorifying the Son of God, which would issue in the life of the world.

“Thereby” is probably to be interpreted “by means of the illness,” not “by means of the glory.”

This verse should be compared with John 9:3. Here, as there, part of the meaning is that the glory of God would be effected in the person of him upon whom the miracle would be wrought. It was a spiritual crisis in the case of the man born blind. It cannot have been otherwise in the case of Lazarus.