i 22 even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.”Ģ3Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise.”Ģ4Martha said to him, “I know he will rise, in the resurrection on the last day.” j 25Jesus told her, “I am the resurrection and the life whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live, k 26and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. h 20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him but Mary sat at home.Ģ1Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Let us go to him.”ġ6So Thomas, called Didymus, * said to his fellow disciples, “Let us also go to die with him.” gġ7When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.ġ8Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, only about two miles * away.ġ9And many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother. f 14So then Jesus said to them clearly, “Lazarus has died.ġ5And I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. e 10But if one walks at night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” * 11He said this, and then told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him.”ġ2So the disciples said to him, “Master, if he is asleep, he will be saved.”ġ3But Jesus was talking about his death, while they thought that he meant ordinary sleep. * 1Now a man was ill, Lazarus from Bethany, a the village of Mary and her sister Martha.ĢMary was the one who had anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and dried his feet with her hair it was her brother Lazarus who was ill.ģSo the sisters sent word to him, saying, “Master, the one you love is ill.”ĤWhen Jesus heard this he said, “This illness is not to end in death, * but is for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” b 5Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.ĦSo when he heard that he was ill, he remained for two days in the place where he was.ħThen after this he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”ĨThe disciples said to him, “Rabbi, the Jews were just trying to stone you, and you want to go back there?” c 9Jesus answered, “Are there not twelve hours in a day? If one walks during the day, d he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. John clearly saw the Lazarus event as the last great deed Jesus performed as proof of his divinity before his arrest and crucifixion.The Raising of Lazarus. However, Luke’s account of this event is much briefer than John’s Lazarus story, and it happens much earlier in Jesus’ life.

In Luke 7:14-15, Jesus raises the dead son of a widow, with the wording of Luke (‘And he that was dead sat up’) being echoed by John’s ‘And he that was dead came forth’.

Whatever the truth of it, there are examples elsewhere in the Gospels of Jesus raising the dead. It’s possible (as the authors of the Dictionary of the Bible suggest) that John is expanding the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke’s gospel (in which Lazarus, the humble beggar, goes to heaven but the rich man does not). But only John mentions the story of Jesus raising Lazarus (the other one) from the dead. Luke (chapter 16) tells of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus, but this Lazarus (a beggar) isn’t the one whom Jesus raised from the dead. They appear to have been different people.

The raising of lazarus