1 A man named Lazarus was sick. He was from Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha.
2 This Mary, whose brother Lazarus was sick, was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.
3 So the sisters sent word to him: "Lord, look, the one you love is sick."
4 On hearing this, Jesus said, "This sickness will not end in death; it is for God's glory, so that through it the Son of God may be glorified."
5 Jesus loved Martha, her sister, and Lazarus.
6 So when he heard that he was sick, he stayed on two more days in the place where he was.
7 Then, after this, he told the disciples, "Let us go back to Judea."
8 The disciples said to him, "Rabbi, only recently the Jews were trying to stone you, and you are going back there?"
9 Jesus answered, "Does the day not have twelve hours? Whoever walks during the day does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world.
10 But whoever walks during the night stumbles, because the light is not in him."
11 He said this, and then he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep; but I am going there to wake him."
12 His disciples said, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will get better."
13 But Jesus had been speaking of his death, while they supposed he meant the rest of ordinary sleep.
14 So then Jesus told them openly, "Lazarus has died.
15 And for your sakes I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him."
16 Then Thomas, called Didymus, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us go too, so that we may die with him."
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
18 Bethany was close to Jerusalem, about fifteen stadia off,
19 and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
20 When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, while Mary stayed sitting in the house.
21 Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.
22 And even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him."
23 Jesus told her, "Your brother will rise again."
24 Martha said to him, "I know he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day."
25 Jesus told her, "I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even if he dies,
26 and everyone who is alive and believes in me will never die, ever. Do you believe this?"
27 She said to him, "Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, the one coming into the world."
28 After saying this, she went off and called her sister Mary aside, telling her privately, "The Teacher is here and is asking for you."
29 When she heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
30 Jesus had not yet entered the village; he was still at the spot where Martha had met him.
31 The Jews who were with Mary in the house comforting her saw her get up quickly and go out, so they followed her, saying, "She is going to the tomb to weep there."
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died."
33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her weeping too, he was deeply indignant in spirit and stirred up,
34 and he asked, "Where have you put him?" They told him, "Lord, come and see."
35 Jesus burst into tears.
36 So the Jews said, "See how much he loved him!"
37 But some of them said, "This man opened the blind man's eyes; could he not also have prevented this man from dying?"
38 Once more deeply indignant within himself, Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, with a stone lying against the entrance.
39 Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Martha, the dead man's sister, told him, "Lord, there will be a stench by now; he has been dead four days."
40 Jesus said to her, "Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?"
41 So they removed the stone from where the dead man lay. Jesus raised his eyes upward and said, "Father, I thank you for hearing me.
42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me."
43 Having said this, he shouted with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out here!"
44 The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus told them, "Untie him and let him go."
45 So many of the Jews who had come to Mary and had seen what Jesus did believed in him.
46 But some of them went off to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
47 So the chief priests and Pharisees called a meeting of the council and said, "What are we to do? This man is performing many signs.
48 If we leave him alone like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation."
49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, told them, "You know nothing at all.
50 You do not realize that it is to our advantage that one man die for the people, rather than the whole nation be destroyed."
51 He did not say this on his own; as 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 gather into one the scattered children of God.
53 So from that day on they made plans to put him to death.
54 For that reason Jesus no longer went about openly among the Jews. He left there for the countryside near the wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, and stayed there with his disciples.
55 The Jewish Passover was near, and many went up to Jerusalem from the countryside before the Passover to purify themselves.
56 They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple they said to one another, "What do you think? Will he not come to the feast at all?"
57 The chief priests and the Pharisees had given orders that anyone who knew where he was should let them know, so that they could arrest him.