‘This sickness is not unto death’ (John 11.4). But still Lazarus died. Upon the disciples misunderstanding him when he later added: ‘Our friend Lazarus sleepeth, but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep’ (11.11), Christ told them bluntly: ‘Lazarus is dead’ (11.14). So Lazarus is dead, and yet this sickness was not unto death; he was dead, and still this sickness is not unto death. We know, of course, that Christ was thinking of the miracle which, ‘if [they] wouldest believe’, was to let contemporaries see ‘the glory of God’ (11.40), that miracle through which he awoke Lazarus from the dead; so ‘this sickness’ was not merely ‘not unto death’, but, as Christ had foretold, ‘for the glory of God, that the son of God might be glorified thereby’ (11.4). Ah!, but even had Christ not awoken Lazarus, is it not still true that this sickness, death itself, is not unto death? When Christ steps forward to the grave and in a loud voice cries out, ‘Lazarus, come forth’ (11.43), it is plain enough that this sickness is not unto death. Yet, even if Christ had not said that, doesn’t simply the fact that He who is ‘the resurrection and the life’ (11.25) steps forward to the grave mean that this sickness is not unto death? That Christ exists – doesn’t that mean that this sickness is not unto death? And what good would it have done Lazarus to be awoken from the dead if in the end he must die anyway? What good would it have done Lazarus if He did not exist, He who is the resurrection and the life for every person who believes in Him? No, it is not because Lazarus was awoken from the dead; that is not why we can say this sickness is not unto death. It is because He exists; that is why this sickness is not unto death. For in human terms death is the last thing of all, and in human terms hope exists only so long as there is life; but to Christian eyes death is by no means the last thing of all, just another minor event in that which is all, an eternal life. And to Christian eyes there is in death infinitely more hope than in, simply in human terms, no merely life itself but life at its height of health and vigour.