John 11:11 These things said he: and after that he said to them, Our friend Lazarus sleeps; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep.… Here we have another instance of what is so frequent in John's Gospel, Jesus using common words in special and unexpected meanings. The disciples did not understand Jesus - how were they likely to do so? Their rejoinder was a very natural one. Why, then, should Jesus speak of the reality of death under the form of sleep? I. ALL DEATH WOULD BE PECULIARLY REPUGNANT TO JESUS. JESUS, we may take it, had in him a fullness and healthiness of natural life which would lie at the very antipodes of death. Many live on the verge of death, as it were, for a long time. They have just enough of the vital principle in them to keep the organism going. But Jesus, in his own natural life, was far away from death. He had no occasion to look upon it in the despairing, bewildered way which the common run of men must adopt. To have spoken of Lazarus as dead, without being forced so to speak, would have suggested thoughts to the disciples which he wished to be swallowed up in the inspiring discoveries of a new revelation. II. DEATH WAS TO GET X NEW AND SPECIAL MEANING. Contrast the way in which Jesus speaks of Lazarus here with the language he uses in Luke 9:60. Here he speaks of the dead Lazarus as only sleeping; there he speaks of living unbelievers in himself as being dead. This is the true death, to be (lead to the reception of the heavenly Bread. Lazarus was dead, according to the manner in which men use that word; no one would have thought of putting food into that mouth. But so far as concerned the Bread that cometh down from heaven, Lazarus was not dead. The life that needs nourishing from heaven is more than the flesh and blood, which is only converted food. The flesh and blood may go, but the life remains. With regard to the unbelievers, however, Jesus reckoned them as dead, for the true Bread found them as indifferent to its nearness as a corpse would he to a loaf laid beside it. "Death" is a word that very reasonably has the most dreadful associations, and Jesus wished to make the most of it as reserved for the most dreadful state of things he knows. That a believer in Jesus should pass from the world of sense is dreadful, just as a paroxysm of physical pain is dreadful; but once the experience is over, all may be right. But that any one should remain out of living union with Jesus is far worse than any pain or deprivation belonging to physical death. III. SLEEP WAS TO GET A NEW AND SPECIAL MEANING. Human beings get separated from each other in sleep. No communication is possible between them that sleep and them that wake. But that very lapse of communication will make the communication fresher and-more active when the lapse is over. It is probable that Lazarus, returning to life, returned to a healthier and more vigorous life. Natural sleep comes after a period of labor, and as the result of exhaustion, and it is followed by fresh power and zest for work. But it is work of the same sort, and with the same faculties. When the Christian believer falls asleep, he falls to wake in an altogether new sort of morning, amid new scenes, and to engage in a new service, free from the toil and struggle and thwarting which belong to the service here. In the higher state of existence there will still be work, in a sense - the work of faith; but the toil of love and the endurance of hope will Mike have vanished. - Y. Parallel Verses KJV: These things said he: and after that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. |
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