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Lazarus meant "to fall asleep involuntarily", whereas the word used of the little maid
meant "to sleep", not as the dead, but as those who were in a coma or heavy sleep.
Untrammelled by these subsidiary considerations we can now face the scriptural fact
that the dead are said to be asleep. Even the heathen poets, of necessity well acquainted
with their mother tongue, realized that the figure of "sleep", as used of death, implied a
subsequent awakening, and so we find them continually adding the epithets "perpetual",
"eternal", "unawakened", "brazen", to the word "sleep", in order to exclude the idea of
awakening natural to it. Estius says "sleeping is thus applied to men that are dead, and
this because of the hope of resurrection; for we read no such thing of brutes". The early
Christians rightly called their burying places koimeterion, "sleeping places", from which
comes the English cemetery.
To the believer who is prepared to accept whatever may be the teaching of the inspired
Word, these passages are of themselves sufficient proof that in the Scriptures death is
likened to sleep, and because the Scriptures are true, and no figure employed by them can
be misleading, the two words "sleep and awaken", used to indicate "death and
resurrection", leave no room for a conscious interval, where, it is taught, the disembodied
dead are more alive than they were in this life.
In order that no unexplained difficulty shall be permitted to becloud the issue, we can
now return to John 11:
"He whom Thou lovest is sick" (John 11: 3).
"This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might
be glorified" (John 11: 4).
We have already seen the Lazarus died, and the record of his burial follows. The
words "not unto death" cannot therefore means that our Saviour was mistaken. We may
learn the intent behind these words by comparing them with another comment found in
John:
"Master, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered,
Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made
manifest in him" (John 9: 2, 3).
In this passage the Lord is not teaching that the man or his parents were the exceptions
to the universal rule, and were sinless. He was teaching that this special calamity of
blindness was allowed, or even planned, in order that, by the miracle of his healing, the
works of God, that set Him forth to be the Messiah, should be made manifest. So, also,
the sickness of Lazarus, though it ended in actual death, had a greater purpose in it,
namely the glorifying of God and of His Son. In verse 14 of John 11: we read, "Then
said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead".
"Plainly (parrhesia)."--Four times this word occurs in John's Gospel as the
translation of the Greek parrhesia, and in each case it is used in the explanation of a
parable or proverb.