The sign that Jesus has performed in raising Lazarus is sensational, to be sure—but the more important thing is that it is undeniable. It was done in the presence of many witnesses. And the people standing around and watching when a mummy walked out into the daylight probably haven’t stopped talking about it.

At the center of all of the public interest is a man—a healthy, living, breathing man. Lazarus is alive, and it wasn’t only the event of being raised from the dead that is a sign to the power of Jesus, it’s also his ongoing life. Every breath he takes is a miracle; every moment he lives is undeniable proof that the Messiah is among us. What happens now, in these three little verses, is the last we will hear of Lazarus.

Imagine being part of this crowd. The last three years have been full of strange and wonderful things in Israel. And this man, Jesus, is at the center of it all. Now you hear he has raised the dead. You hear that not even his enemies are disputing it. You’re on your way to Jerusalem for the Passover; tens of thousands of other Jews are on the highways leading into the capital; and all anyone can talk about is this man, Jesus, who some are already calling Christ.

Could it be?

Yet the Jews are even more curious about the man he has raised from the dead. Which should cause us to ask ourselves: Why are we here?

It makes a difference if Jesus is the one your heart longs to see. It matters because you may or may not get what you want from Jesus—but if what you want is Jesus himself, you won’t go away unsatisfied.

So do you want Jesus himself, or do you only want what he can do for you?

Everyone comes to church for different reasons, but the people who stay because they want to be near Jesus are the ones who get what they want. The heart that is broken because of sin and desperate for God’s forgiveness is a heart that draws near to Jesus, won’t be satisfied with anything else—and that heart will never be sent away empty.

Now let’s consider this scene from the perspective of the chief priests. Remember, they have already “made plans to put Jesus to death” (11:53). Now they “make plans to put Lazarus to death as well.”

Under the old priesthood, the solution to every problem was to kill something—and in one sense, this tendency goes all the way back to its commission in Exodus and Leviticus. In order to make things right, the priests were told to take animals and kill them, and their blood would atone, would cover sins. So killing was an integral part of the vocation.

But under the new priesthood, the answer to our problems is not to kill something, but to believe in the sacrificial death and resurrected life of Jesus.

These seem like dark times for our faith—but things have looked bad many times before. In 1925, G.K. Chesterton wrote The Everlasting Man, and the last chapter in that book is entitled, “The Five Deaths of the Faith.” In it, he writes this:

“Christendom has had a series of revolutions and in each one of them Christianity has died. Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a god who knew the way out of the grave. … The Faith is always converting the age, not as an old religion but as a new religion. … Three or four times at least in the history of Christendom the whole soul seemed to have gone out of Christianity; and almost every man in his heart expected its end. … At least five times, therefore, the Faith has to all appearance gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases it was the dog that died.”

To oppose a man who can raise the dead is to fight a losing battle. And to try to stop his work, his church, is equally futile. Nothing that Jesus has raised from the dead can fail to go on living.