John 11:28-57

Jesus Shares the Sorrow of Death

28 Having said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, saying in private, "The Teacher is here and is calling for you."

29 As soon as she heard this, she got up quickly and went to Him.

30 Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met Him.

31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out. So they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there.

32 When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet and told Him, "Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died!"

33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, He was angry^[a] in His spirit and deeply moved.

34 "Where have you put him?" He asked. "Lord," they told Him, "come and see."

35 Jesus wept.

36 So the Jews said, "See how He loved him!"

37 But some of them said, "Couldn't He who opened the blind man's eyes also have kept this man from dying?"

The Seventh Sign: Raising Lazarus from the Dead

38 Then Jesus, angry in Himself again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.

39 "Remove the stone," Jesus said. Martha, the dead man's sister, told Him, "Lord, he already stinks. It's been four days."

40 Jesus said to her, "Didn't I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised His eyes and said, "Father, I thank You that You heard Me.

42 I know that You always hear Me, but because of the crowd standing here I said this, so they may believe You sent Me."

43 After He said this, He shouted with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

44 The dead man came out bound hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Loose him and let him go."

The Plot to Kill Jesus

45 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what He did believed in Him.

46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, "What are we going to do since this man does many signs?

48 If we let Him continue in this way, everybody will believe in Him! Then the Romans will come and remove both our place^[b] and our nation."

49 One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all!

50 You're not considering that it is to your^[c] advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish."

51 He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was going to die for the nation,

52 and not for the nation only, but also to unite the scattered children of God.

53 So from that day on they plotted to kill Him.

54 Therefore Jesus no longer walked openly among the Jews but departed from there to the countryside near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim. And He stayed there with the disciples.

55 The Jewish Passover was near, and many went up to Jerusalem from the country to purify^[d] themselves before the Passover.

56 They were looking for Jesus and asking one another as they stood in the temple complex: "What do you think? He won't come to the festival, will He?"

57 The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that if anyone knew where He was, he should report it so they could arrest Him.

Footnotes

• [a]. The Gk word is very strong and probably indicates Jesus' anger against sin's tyranny and death.
• [b]. The temple or possibly all of Jerusalem
• [c]. Other mss read to our
• [d]. The law of Moses required God's people to purify or cleanse themselves so they could celebrate the Passover. Jews often came to Jerusalem a week early to do this; Nm 9:4-11.