Read the Gospels in 40 Days
The death of Lazarus
11 There was a man in Bethany named Lazarus, and he became ill. Bethany was the village of Mary and her sister Martha. 2 (This was the Mary who anointed the Lord with myrrh, and wiped his feet with her hair. Lazarus, who was ill, was her brother.)
3 So the sisters sent messengers to Jesus.
“Master,” they said, “the man you love is ill.”
4 When Jesus got the message, he said, “This illness won’t lead to death. It’s all about the glory of God! The son of God will be glorified through it.”
5 Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus. 6 So when he heard that he was ill, he stayed where he was for two days.
7 Then, after that, he said to the disciples, “Let’s go back to Judaea.”
8 “Teacher,” replied the disciples, “the Judaeans were trying to stone you just now! Surely you don’t want to go back there!”
9 “There are twelve hours in the day, aren’t there?” replied Jesus. “If you walk in the day, you won’t trip up, because you’ll see the light of this world. 10 But if anyone walks in the night, they will trip up, because there is no light in them.”
11 When he had said this, Jesus added: “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I’m going to wake him up.”
12 “Master,” replied the disciples, “if he’s asleep, he’ll be all right.”
13 (They thought he was referring to ordinary sleep; but Jesus had in fact been speaking of his death.)
14 Then Jesus spoke to them plainly.
“Lazarus,” he said, “is dead. 15 Actually, I’m glad I wasn’t there, for your sakes; it will help your faith. But let’s go to him.”
16 Thomas, whose name was the Twin, addressed the other disciples.
“Let’s go too,” he said. “We may as well die with him.”
The resurrection and the life
17 So when Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days. 18 Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles away. 19 Many of the Judaeans had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother.
20 When Martha heard that Jesus had arrived, she went to meet him. Mary, meanwhile, stayed sitting at home.
21 “Master!” said Martha to Jesus. “If only you’d been here! Then my brother wouldn’t have died! 22 But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask him.”
23 “Your brother will rise again,” replied Jesus.
24 “I know he’ll rise again,” said Martha, “in the resurrection on the last day.”
25 “I am the resurrection and the life,” replied Jesus. “Anyone who believes in me will live, even if they die. 26 And anyone who lives and believes in me will never, ever die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Master,” she said. “This is what I’ve come to believe: that you are the Messiah, the son of God, the one who was to come into the world.”
Jesus goes to the tomb
28 With these words, Martha went back and called her sister Mary.
“The teacher has come,” she said to her privately, “and he’s asking for you.”
29 When she heard that, she got up quickly and went to him. 30 Jesus hadn’t yet arrived in the village. He was still in the place where Martha had met him.
31 The Judaeans who were in the house with Mary, consoling her, saw her get up quickly and go out. They guessed that she was going to the tomb to weep there, and they followed her.
32 When Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw him and fell down at his feet.
“Master!” she said. “If only you’d been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”
33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Judaeans who had come with her crying, he was deeply stirred in his spirit, and very troubled.
34 “Where have you laid him?” he asked.
“Master,” they said, “come and see.”
35 Jesus burst into tears.
36 “Look,” said the Judaeans, “see how much he loved him!”
37 “Well, yes,” some of them said, “but he opened the eyes of a blind man, didn’t he? Couldn’t he have done something to stop this fellow from dying?”
The raising of Lazarus
38 Jesus was once again deeply troubled within himself. He came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was placed in front of it.
39 “Take away the stone,” said Jesus.
“But, Master,” said Martha, the dead man’s sister, “there’ll be a smell! It’s the fourth day already!”
40 “Didn’t I tell you,” said Jesus, “that if you believed you would see God’s glory?”
41 So they took the stone away. Jesus lifted up his eyes.
“Thank you, Father,” he said, “for hearing me! 42 I know you always hear me, but I’ve said this because of the crowd standing around, so that they may believe that you sent me.”
43 With these words, he gave a loud shout: “Lazarus—come out!”
44 And the dead man came out. He was tied up, hand and foot, with strips of linen, and his face was wrapped in a cloth.
“Untie him,” said Jesus, “and let him go.”
45 The result of all this was that several of the Judaeans who had come to Mary, and who had seen what he had done, believed in him. 46 But some of them went off to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
The plan of Caiaphas
47 So the chief priests and the Pharisees called an assembly.
“What are we going to do?” they asked. “This man is performing lots of signs. 48 If we let him go on like this, everyone is going to believe in him! Then the Romans will come and take away our holy place, and our nation!”
49 But one of them, Caiaphas, the high priest that year, addressed them.
“You know nothing at all!” he said. 50 “You haven’t worked it out! This is what’s best for you: let one man die for the people, rather than the whole nation being wiped out.”
51 He didn’t say this of his own accord. Since he was high priest that year, it was a prophecy. It meant that Jesus would die for the nation; 52 and not only for the nation, but to gather into one the scattered children of God. 53 So from that day on they plotted how to kill him.
54 So Jesus didn’t go around openly any longer among the Judaeans. He went away from there to the region by the desert, to a town called Ephraim. He stayed there with the disciples.
55 The time came for the Judaeans’ Passover. Lots of people went up to Jerusalem from the countryside, before the Passover, to purify themselves. 56 They were looking for Jesus. As they stood there in the Temple, they were discussing him with one another.
“What d’you think?” they were saying. “Do you suppose he won’t come to the festival?”
57 The chief priests and the Pharisees had given the order that if anyone knew where he was, they should tell them, so that they could arrest him.
Mary and her ointment
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany. Lazarus was there, the man he had raised from the dead. 2 So they made a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was among the company at table with him.
3 Then Mary took a pound of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She anointed Jesus’ feet with it, and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the smell of the perfume.
4 At this, Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was going to betray him), spoke up.
5 “Why wasn’t this ointment sold?” he asked. “It would have fetched a year’s wages! You could have given it to the poor!”
6 (He didn’t say this because he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief. He kept the common purse, and used to help himself to what was in it.)
7 “Let her alone,” replied Jesus. “She’s been keeping it for the day of my burial! 8 You always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.”
Jesus enters Jerusalem
9 When the great crowd of Judaeans discovered that Jesus was there, they came to Bethany not just because of Jesus, but to see Lazarus, the one he had raised from the dead. 10 So the chief priests planned to kill Lazarus as well, 11 because many of the Judaeans were distancing themselves on account of him, and were believing in Jesus.
12 On the next day, the large crowd that had come up for the festival heard that Jesus had come to Jerusalem. 13 They took palm branches and went out to meet him.
“Hosanna!” they shouted. “Welcome in the name of the Lord! Welcome to Israel’s king!”
14 Jesus found a little donkey and sat on it. As the Bible says,
15 Do not fear, daughter of Zion!
Look! Your king is coming now;
sitting on a donkey’s colt.
16 His disciples didn’t understand this to begin with. But when Jesus was glorified, they remembered that these things had been written about him, and that these things had been done to him. 17 The crowd that was with him when he called Lazarus out of the tomb, and raised him from the dead, told their story. 18 That’s why the crowd went out to meet him, because they heard that he had done this sign.
19 The Pharisees conferred.
“You see?” they said to each other. “It’s impossible. There’s nothing you can do. Look—the world has gone off after him!”
The seed must die
20 Some Greeks had come up with all the others to worship at the festival. 21 They went to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee.
“Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.”
22 Philip went and told Andrew, and Andrew and Philip went together to tell Jesus.
23 “The time has come,” said Jesus in reply. “This is the moment for the son of man to be glorified. 24 I’m telling you the solemn truth: unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains all by itself. If it dies, though, it will produce lots of fruit. 25 If you love your life, you’ll lose it. If you hate your life in this world, you’ll keep it for the life of the coming age.
26 “If anyone serves me, they must follow me. Where I am, my servant will be too. If anyone serves me, the father will honor them.”
The hour has come
27 “Now my heart is troubled,” Jesus went on. “What am I going to say: ‘Father, save me from this moment’? No! It was because of this that I came to this moment. 28 Father, glorify your name!”
“I have glorified it,” came a voice from heaven, “and I will glorify it again.”
29 “That was thunder!” said the crowd, standing there listening.
“No,” said others. “It was an angel, talking to him.”
30 “That voice came for your sake, not mine,” replied Jesus. 31 “Now comes the judgment of this world! Now this world’s ruler is going to be thrown out! 32 And when I’ve been lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.”
33 He said this in order to point to the kind of death he was going to die.
34 So the crowd spoke to him again.
“We heard in the law,” they said, “that the Messiah will last forever. How can you say that the son of man must be lifted up? Who is this ‘son of man’?”
35 “The light is among you a little while longer,” replied Jesus. “Keep walking while you have the light, in case the darkness overcomes you. People who walk in the dark don’t know where they’re going. 36 While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may be children of light.”
With these words, Jesus went away and was hidden from them.
Glory and blindness
37 They didn’t believe in him, even though he had done so many signs in front of their eyes. 38 This was so that the word of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled:
Lord, who believed the story we told?
Your powerful arm—who saw it unveiled?
39 That’s why they couldn’t believe. As Isaiah again put it,
40 He has caused their eyes to be blind,
and caused their hearts to be hard;
so they wouldn’t see with their eyes,
or understand with their hearts,
or turn, so that I could heal them.
41 Isaiah said this because he saw his glory, and spoke about him.
42 Even so, however, quite a few of the rulers did believe in him. But, because of the Pharisees, they didn’t declare their faith, for fear of being put out of the synagogue. 43 This was because they loved the praise of humans more than the praise of God.
The final challenge
44 “Anyone who believes in me,” shouted Jesus in a loud voice, “doesn’t believe in me, but in the one who sent me! 45 Anyone who sees me sees the one who sent me! 46 I’ve come into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me won’t need to stay in the dark.
47 “If anyone hears my words and doesn’t keep them, I’m not going to judge them. That wasn’t why I came. I came to save the world, not to judge it. 48 Anyone who rejects me and doesn’t hold on to my words has a judge. The word which I have spoken will judge them on the last day.
49 “I haven’t spoken on my own authority. The father who sent me gave me his own command about what I should say and speak. 50 And I know that his command is the life of the coming age. What I speak, then, is what the father has told me to speak.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.