When Jesus heard
this, He said, “This sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, so
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” – John 11:4 (NET)
Prior to making this
statement, Jesus had received a message about a good friend. In that
message, He had been told that “the one You love is sick” (11:3b). As an
aside, it should be noted that Lazarus is the only man in the New Testament of
whom it is said that Jesus loved him, while here it can also be learned that
“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (11:5). It is fascinating
to consider that it is these people alone that are of spoken of in this way (Jesus
loved him/them), and spoken of this way here in this Gospel alone, which makes
an internal claim to be authored by the disciple whom Jesus loved (21:20,24).
Upon hearing this, Jesus---the
one that had demonstrated power to turn water into wine, who is said to have pronounced
from afar the healing of the son of a royal official in Capernaum, reported to
have healed a long-crippled man at the pool of Bethesda, multiplied a few
loaves and fishes to feed a multitude of people, walked on water, and gave
sight to a man that had been blind from birth---did not run to Lazarus’ bedside
and He did not pronounce healing from afar, though presumably, based on His
track record and what is reported about Him, He could have done so. The
author reports that He simply replied to the message by saying that “This
sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, so that the Son of God may
be glorified through it.” Additionally, having heard this report about the
one (the only individual in Scripture) that Jesus is specifically said to have
loved, somewhat oddly, “He remained in the place where He was for two more
days” (11:6b).
So what did Jesus
mean by this statement concerning sickness, death, the Son of God, and glory?
Many conclusions can be drawn. As possible answers are considered, it
must be remembered that these Gospel narratives were not compositions of random
occurrences. Rather, the Gospels, John
included, are continuous narratives. As
continues narratives that leave out some details of Jesus’ life, while
including and highlighting others, are designed to tell a story that is
subsequently designed to prompt the reader of the story to draw a conclusion
about the person upon Whom they are focused.
When Jesus said that
this sickness would lead to God’s glory, was He indicating a knowledge that
Lazarus was going to die, and that He was going to go and call him forth from
the tomb, thus bringing glory to the Creator God? This is possible and
simple, but it seems to be unlikely. In fact, it is probably as unlikely
as the idea that the man that had been born blind, about whom can be read in
the ninth chapter of John, spent an entire lifetime suffering in blindness and
darkness so that one day Jesus could come along and heal Him and the God of Israel
could be glorified through the healing. That would seem like nothing more
than a great, cosmic joke by a prankster god unworthy of praise. That does not seem like the type of God that
Jesus is said to reveal.
Considering the record
of the man that was born blind, Jesus said that this condition existed “so that
the acts of God may be revealed through what happens to him” (9:3b). Thus,
that case would seem to less about the
healing and more about Jesus’ Messianic claims, as the fall-out over the
healing, as recorded in the Gospel narrative that must be read as a continuous
and connected story, would ultimately center on questions about Jesus as
Messiah and Jesus’ presenting Himself as the Good Shepherd, which carried patently
messianic undertones. Through the healing, the acts of the Creator God
were in fact revealed, in that one of the widely held expectations about
Israel’s messiah was that he would be the physical, human embodiment of the faithful
and covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that He would be acting on
behalf of Israel to fulfill His promises to them. In addition to that,
through the healing, the reader, who has been introduced into the Johannine
story about the true divine image-bearer with the words “In the beginning,” is
given a glimpse into what the Creator God had always intended for humanity.
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