For a better proof

I learned from the funeral parlor that they have to wait 24 hours after a person dies before they can cremate him or her. One can easily imagine the reason for this rule, and yet I felt quite certain even a half hour after death that there was no spirit in that temple that used to be my mother’s. Still, let the medical profession and the law profession and any interested party have full assurance that the entity placed into the flames or coffin is, as the Munchkins of Oz said, “not only merely dead” but “really most sincerely dead.” In this way, no one will be able to gainsay that a true death had occurred.

Jesus seemed to be cognizant of this principle of certainty (perhaps codified in the legal regulations of His own culture) when He deliberately stayed away from his friend Lazarus until the man had been dead for four days. That it was a deliberate detaining on Jesus’ part is beyond dispute:

“So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was” (John 11:6, ESV).

The words after the comma are not the expected ending to a sentence beginning with the subordinate clause, “So, when He heard that Lazarus was ill.” We would have expected the main clause to read something like: “He hastened to his side to heal him.”

Jesus did fully intend to heal Lazarus. But He refused to do it within 24 hours of the man’s death—or even 72 hours!—so that no one would deny that Lazarus was certifiably dead, and no one would accuse Him of pulling some cheap magician’s trick. Jesus left no possible wiggle room for disbelief in the timing element of the miracle. That way, if someone chose to reject the evidence of God’s power in the raising of Lazarus, he would have to do it in spite of patent proof.

Nevertheless, even with this four-day proof, many did not put their faith in Jesus. The incident polarized people further:

“Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what he did, believed in him, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. So the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said, ‘What are we to do? For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him …” (John 11:45–48, ESV).

Signs and miracles are good, but only effective on the “good soil” (Matthew 13:23) of a heart that will receive it. Otherwise, the proofs themselves will testify against men on the day that we are judged. It will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah than for those who have seen the proofs of God and been unmoved.

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