Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. (John 11:5)
He loves me. He loves me not. The ups and downs of life in this world can make the love of our God seem difficult to measure.
A prayer is answered, a need provided for, a relationship suddenly restored. Our hearts swell and we pick the petal. He loves me.
But then comes a change of circumstances, an unexpected diagnosis, a sudden loss. We fall into the depths and pluck the next petal. He loves me not.
Measuring our Lord’s love for us by our circumstances leads to a pile of wilted petals on the floor, an empty stem in hand, and a discontented heart within. So, how might we measure his love?
One of the more jarring episodes in our Lord’s ministry occurs a short time before the events of the Passion week. Jesus receives word from dear friends that Lazarus, “he whom you love,” has fallen sick (John 11:3). The illness is serious enough that Mary and Martha, Lazarus’s sisters, are worried for him and want Jesus to know.
Jesus loved this family (John 11:5). And because he loved them, the first word of verse 6 seems strange, even shocking: “So . . . he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” John uses a conjunction often translated as “therefore.” In other words, because Jesus loved Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, he remained where he was for two more days and allowed the illness to run its course in his friend’s body.
What strange and wondrous love is this? How do we hold Jesus’s love for this family together with his decision to let Lazarus die?
Strange and Wondrous Love
Reading the account, you cannot escape Jesus’s intent. This isn’t a matter of inability. Jesus is near enough to reach Lazarus quickly, but he delays his journey (John 11:6). And distance did not matter to our incarnate Lord. He could heal by a word without even setting his eyes on the sick (John 4:46–53). No, Jesus knows what will happen. He allows cursed Death to do its work. And when Jesus decides finally to go to Bethany, he tells the disciples that he is glad he was not there sooner (John 11:15). How can this be the love of God?
Jesus does not leave us wondering. “This illness,” because of which Lazarus will have to pass through death, “is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (verse 4). And a few days later, “I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe” (verse 15). Here, in the last of the seven signs recorded in the Gospel of John, Jesus declares the purpose of his wonderful works: that those who behold them might believe and ascribe him glory. “Did I not tell you,” he asks Martha, “that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” (verse 40).
Here then is love. Do you hear its aim? Jesus stayed away from his friends, letting the grief of intimate loss wash over them in waves — four days of mourning! — so that they would behold the glory of God and believe in the Son. He let Lazarus die because he came to give life, which is nothing less than knowing the only true God and his Son, Jesus Christ (John 10:10; 17:3).
Disoriented by Disorder
Why does such love jar us? We read that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus (John 11:5), and so we are confused why he does not come. As we sit in the pain of our own sorrows, we nod with both sisters when they say, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (verses 21, 32). Perhaps, inwardly, we want to add an accusatory tone to the words of the bystanders: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (verse 37) — or kept my body whole, or kept my relationships from crumbling? Did you have to let Lazarus die to reveal the glory of God? Did you have to let my life fall apart?
These tensions, questions, and perhaps frustrations reveal something about us. We think we know what is best for us. Isn’t health better than illness? Isn’t life better than death? Isn’t security and stability better than a fragile present and future?
The way Jesus loved his friends in Bethany exposes our assumed hierarchy of goods as fundamentally disordered. When we think life, health, job security, a decent home, or a smooth retirement is best for us, we follow the pattern of the world around us. Convinced that a happy life consists in attaining and then maintaining the goods we are taught to treasure, we grow frustrated, discouraged, and discontent in their loss or absence. The sneaking tendrils of doubt begin to wrap themselves around us as we wonder if God really has our good in mind.
We need a story like this to jar us awake.
How Does He Love Me?
“Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus” (John 11:5). And so, Lazarus died.
Jesus loves you. And so, he may take away your job. Your house may burn. You might contract a rare disease or be faced with the stark horror of cancer. Your dream for the future may be whisked away by some unforeseen circumstance.
Our Lord’s love for us is perfect. He sympathizes with our sorrows and comforts us in pain. But he does not always give us what we think good because he has a better end in mind. He wants us to see his glory. He sheers away our attachment to lesser goods that we might know and love him as our greatest good and the source of every other good.
In the escape from Egypt, our Lord led his people to the brink of death, trapping them between the Red Sea and the mighty army of Pharaoh so that they would see his glorious salvation (Exodus 14:13). He let Mary, Martha, and Lazarus experience the dark vale of death so that they would see his glory (John 11:40).
“There is something better for you,” Jesus says, “than avoiding the valley of the shadow of death. You will see great hardship because I want you to see the glory of God. I will take you through difficulties you did not expect, that you might behold glory you could not have imagined.”
This is how he loves us.
Desiring God