💫WEB · John 11:40
What does John 11:40 mean?
"Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see God’s glory?”"
— John 11:40 (World English Bible)
Surrounding context
Some of them said, “Couldn’t this man, who opened the eyes of him who was blind, have also kept this man from dying?”
Jesus therefore, again groaning in himself, came to the tomb. Now it was a cave, and a stone lay against it.
Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of him who was dead, said to him, “Lord, by this time there is a stench, for he has been dead four days.”
Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed, you would see God’s glory?”
So they took away the stone from the place where the dead man was lying. Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, “Father, I thank you that you listened to me.
I know that you always listen to me, but because of the multitude standing around I said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
Explanation
John 11:40 records Jesus speaking to Martha just before he raises her brother Lazarus from the dead. In plain terms, Jesus is reminding Martha of something he had already told her: that her belief would lead to witnessing God's glory displayed in a remarkable way. This is a rhetorical question meant to reorient her focus away from the natural obstacles in front of her (namely, the four-day-old corpse and Martha's own concern about the smell) and back toward faith in what Jesus was about to do.
The context is the raising of Lazarus, found in John 11. Lazarus, a close friend of Jesus from Bethany, had died, and by the time Jesus arrived, he had been in the tomb four days. Martha had already made a striking confession of faith earlier in the chapter (John 11:27), declaring Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God. Yet when Jesus commanded that the stone covering the tomb be removed, Martha hesitated, worried about the physical decay of the body. Jesus's response in verse 40 calls her back to the promise he had made just moments earlier in verse 25-26, where he declared himself "the resurrection and the life." John, writing his Gospel to demonstrate that Jesus is the Son of God so that readers might believe and have life in his name (John 20:31), includes this account as one of seven major "signs" pointing to Jesus's divine identity and power over death.
Theologically, this verse highlights the connection between faith and the revelation of God's glory. Jesus does not say that seeing leads to believing,
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