What John 11:1-6 Reveals About How Jesus Loves Us

Jesus loved Lazarus. So He let him die.

That is the plain reading of John 11:1-6. Verse five says Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus. Verse six says so — that devastating little conjunction — He stayed two days longer where He was. Not in spite of His love. Because of it. If that doesn't unsettle you, you haven't read it carefully enough.

We instinctively measure love by speed. Love rushes to the hospital. Love drops everything. Love answers the phone at 2 a.m. And Jesus — who had the power to heal with a word from any distance — heard that His dear friend was dying and did nothing. For two full days.

This is not a story about a God who is slow. It's a story about a God whose love operates on a plane so far above ours that it can look, for a terrifying season, like abandonment. Pastor Daniel Batarseh walked through these six verses with the kind of care that made the whole room go quiet, and what emerged was a portrait of Christ's love that is far more profound — and far more uncomfortable — than the version most of us carry around.

The Woman Who Loved Jesus More Than Her Own Brother

Before John lets us into the crisis, he does something unusual. He identifies Mary — not by her family, not by her town, but by a single act of worship that hasn't even happened yet in his Gospel. Verse two: "It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair." That scene doesn't occur until chapter 12. John reaches forward in time and pulls it back, as if to say: You need to understand who this woman is before you can understand what's about to happen to her.

And who is she? She's the woman who had a pound of perfume worth a year's wages — and poured every drop of it on the feet of Jesus in preparation for His burial. Not on her brother Lazarus, who had just died in chapter 11. On Jesus. She had access to that ointment when Lazarus died. Anointing the dead was customary. She could have used it on her own flesh and blood, and no one would have faulted her.

She didn't. She saved it for Christ.

As Pastor Daniel Batarseh put it: "As much as she loved her brother Lazarus, she loved Jesus more. That's why. That's the kind of love that Christ deserves from us" (watch at 17:27).

And then she didn't grab a towel to dry His feet. She threw her hair over her head and used her own glory — 1 Corinthians 11:15 calls a woman's hair her glory — to wipe the feet of her Lord. She wasn't just saying You matter more than anyone else I love. She was saying You matter more than me.

But here's what makes this relevant to John 11 and not just a beautiful aside: this woman, with this caliber of devotion, this white-hot love for Christ — her brother got sick. Her brother died. Her worship did not give her a pass from grief. You would think that someone so surrendered to Christ would be spared from that kind of sorrow. She wasn't.

And how did she get to that depth of love in the first place? Luke 10:38-39 tells us. The first time we ever meet Mary, she's sitting at Jesus' feet, listening to His teaching. Locked in. Undisturbed. Absorbing every word. She heard Jesus predict His death — and she believed Him. The twelve disciples who traveled with Him day and night for three and a half years missed it. Mary, who saw Him when He visited Bethany from time to time, understood it. The difference wasn't access. It was attention.

"You want John chapter 12? You need Luke chapter 10" (hear this moment). You cannot arrive at holy abandonment without first learning to sit at His feet and receive from Him. Don't expect to fall deeper in love with Christ if you don't know how to be still in His presence.

And when Mary broke that flask, John records a detail that the Holy Spirit clearly wanted preserved: "The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume" (John 12:3). That's not just historical reporting. That's theology. Extravagant worship carries a fragrance that fills the room. Find a person who is genuinely, recklessly devoted to Jesus — they don't have to announce it. You can smell it on their life. And some people, like Judas, will call it a waste. Mary never defended herself against the criticism. She didn't have to. Jesus defended her.

"He Whom You Love" — The Boldest Prayer in the Bible

Now we come to the crisis. Lazarus is dying. And the sisters do what anyone with faith would do: they send word to Jesus. But look at how they pray. Verse three: "Lord, he whom you love is ill." Full stop. No name. No specific request. No instructions.

They don't even say "Lazarus." They say "he whom you love." What does that tell you? It tells you that in the minds of these sisters, their brother's identity was so wrapped up in the love of Christ that a name was unnecessary. Jesus would know. "Lazarus is so covered in the love of Jesus Christ that he doesn't even need to be named for him to be aware of Lazarus. That's how personal, that's how intimate, that's how rich the love of Christ is" (watch at 27:35).

But there's something even more striking buried in their word choice. They didn't say, "Lord, he who loves you is ill." They could have appealed on the basis of Lazarus's devotion. They didn't. They appealed on the basis of Christ's love for Lazarus. They grounded their entire prayer not in the shaky, inconsistent love of even the best disciple, but in the unchanging, immovable love of Jesus.

This is where most of us get prayer wrong. We approach God as if our recent spiritual performance earns us a hearing. I've been faithful this month. I haven't missed a quiet time. Surely that buys me something. That kind of thinking, however subtly it operates in us, proves we don't understand the nature of His love. These sisters understood. They came with nothing but His own love as their confidence.

And notice — they make no demands. Lazarus is on the brink of death. Time is critical. You'd expect them to say, "Come now. Heal him. Speak the word." They don't. "Lord, he whom you love is ill." That's all. This isn't a model for vague prayer — Scripture elsewhere encourages specificity. But it is a stunning picture of what happens when you're so overwhelmed by a situation that you can't even formulate a request.

A story from the sermon made this concrete. A phone call, years ago, from an older woman of deep faith going through a nightmarish family situation. She said, "Brother, I don't even know how to pray about this. If I ask it this way, these are the ramifications. If I ask it that way, these are the consequences." And in that moment, Romans 8:26 came alive: "The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words" (hear this moment).

You can come crawling into His presence. Mumbling. Weeping. Repeating yourself because you're too exhausted to say anything new. And Christ will hear you. He does not require eloquence. He does not require a checklist. He requires you.

Jesus Loved Them — So He Stayed

Verse five reads like a warm embrace: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." Each one named. Each one loved. The order is reversed from verse one — Martha first now, then Mary, then Lazarus — as if to say His love plays no favorites. Martha, the doer. Mary, the worshiper. Lazarus, the silent witness who never speaks a recorded word in Scripture yet whose very existence after the resurrection drew people to Jesus (John 12:9-11). Three radically different people. One equal, personal, undivided love.

"He doesn't love in bulk," the sermon pressed. "He so deals with us and leads us and guides us as though you were the only person in the world. As though the world population was one, and that's you. That's how he treats you today with the billions on this planet" (watch at 47:51).

And then comes verse six. The verse that should make every reader stop cold. If you have an ESV, underline the first word: So. "So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was."

So. Not but. Not however. Not nevertheless. The word that means therefore. Because of this. Because He loved them, He stayed. Because He loved them, He let Lazarus die. Because He loved them, He let those sisters grieve and wonder and ache.

Every instinct in us rebels against this. Love goes. Love rushes. Love intervenes. And Jesus sits still for forty-eight hours while a man He loves takes his last breath.

"Don't measure Christ's love for you based on how he intervenes in your need. Do not determine his affection for you on the speed of his intervention, on the swiftness of his provision. Don't do that. That would be a great mistake" (watch at 50:09).

Christ's delays are not evidence of weakening love. His silence is not indifference. He told His disciples plainly in verse 14: "Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe." He delayed because He was building a greater blessing. He had raised the dead before — a widow's son, a synagogue ruler's daughter. But never a man four days buried. Never a body already decomposing. He was about to stretch their faith into territory it had never occupied.

The Glory That Makes the Pain Make Sense

The key to the entire passage is a word Jesus uses twice: glory. Verse four: "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it." Verse forty, when He finally arrives and meets Martha at the tomb: "Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?"

This is what Christ is ultimately after. Not our comfort. Not even our relief. Our exposure to His glory. And sometimes — not always, but sometimes — that glory can only be revealed through turmoil, through loss, through the kind of delay that makes you question whether He heard you at all.

There is a connection here to Genesis 45:4-5 that illuminates how Christ operates. When Joseph revealed himself to his brothers after years of separation, he said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt." He identified himself — but he also surfaced their offense. Whom you sold. There's a sting in that, even though Joseph immediately followed it with grace. Now compare that to the risen Christ in John 20:17: "Go to my brothers and say to them..." No qualifier. No "my brothers who betrayed me." No "my brothers who abandoned me." Just: my brothers. Christ is more gracious, more forgiving, more approachable than even the greatest Old Testament shadow of Himself.

This matters because it tells us something about the God who delays. He is not punishing you with His silence. He is not teaching you a lesson through cruelty. He is working — sovereignly, lovingly, purposefully — to peel back a layer of His glory that you could not have seen any other way. And when He does, your faith will be stretched, your worship will deepen, and you will know Him in a dimension you didn't know existed.

That is love. Not giving us everything we ask the moment we ask it. Not shielding us from every sorrow. But relentlessly, sometimes painfully, exposing us to more of who He is — because He knows that His glory is the only thing that will truly satisfy, truly heal, truly transform.

See how He loves us.

What to Remember

• Christ's delays are not denials of love — verse five says He loved them, and verse six says therefore He stayed. His timing serves purposes your grief cannot yet see.
• The ground of your prayer is not your faithfulness but His love. Mary and Martha didn't appeal to Lazarus's devotion; they appealed to Christ's. Come to Him on that basis alone.
• Deep worship doesn't appear out of nowhere. Mary's extravagant act in John 12 was the fruit of sitting at Jesus' feet in Luke 10. There is no shortcut.
• When you don't know how to pray, the Spirit intercedes for you with groanings too deep for words. You don't need eloquence. You need honesty.
• Christ's ultimate investment in your life is not your comfort but your exposure to His glory — and that glory sometimes arrives through the door of suffering.
• Jesus does not love in bulk. He loves you as personally and attentively as if you were the only person on the planet.

Questions to Sit With

1. When God last delayed answering a prayer, did you interpret His silence as indifference — or did you consider that He might be building something greater than what you asked for?
2. Do you approach God in prayer on the basis of your recent spiritual performance, or on the basis of His unchanging love? Be honest about which one actually drives your confidence.
3. Mary saved her most precious possession for Jesus rather than using it on her dying brother. Is there anything in your life you're giving to someone or something else that Christ deserves first?
4. If you truly believed that beholding God's glory matters more than having every prayer answered on your timeline, how would that change the way you respond to suffering — yours or someone else's?
5. Lazarus never spoke a recorded word, yet his transformed life drew people to Jesus. What does your life communicate without words?

Scripture Referenced

• John 11:1-6 — primary text
• Mark 7:37
• Ephesians 3:14-19
• John 12:3-5
• Luke 10:38-39
• Matthew 26:13
• 1 Corinthians 11:15
• Romans 8:26
• John 20:17
• Genesis 45:4-5
• John 11:14-15
• John 11:40
• John 12:9-11

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This summary was generated by AI from the sermon "See How He Loves Us | John 11:1-6 | Pastor Daniel Batarseh (7/19/26)" preached by Pastor Daniel Batarseh at Maranatha Bible Church Chicago. Watch the full sermon →