Some Bible names sound foreign until you notice they are old friends wearing new clothes. Lazarus is one of those.
Here is the door, and you do not need a Greek class to walk through it: Bible names often mean what they say. Cousin plates already set Elijah as the LORD is God and Simeon as the LORD has heard. Today’s name is about help.
John writes the name Λάζαρος (Lazaros). Thayer’s lexicon says it is “apparently the same as” the Hebrew name Eleazar, “whom God helps.” Abridged BDB glosses Eleazar as “God has helped.” Aaron’s son carried that name, and so did priests and soldiers after him. By Jesus’ day it had been shortened and put into Greek, and it came out Lazarus. Same name, same meaning: God has helped. It even has a cousin, Eliezer, the son Moses named because “the God of my father was my help” (Exodus 18:4).
Now watch what happens to the man with that name:
“Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. … So the sisters sent to him, saying, ‘Lord, he whom you love is ill.'” (John 11:1, 3)
That is a short prayer, and a good one. They don’t tell Jesus what to do. They just tell Him who is hurting and remind Him that He loves him.
Then comes the hardest verse in the chapter:
“Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.” (John 11:5–6)
Read that “So” slowly. It doesn’t say Jesus loved them, but He stayed. It says He loved them, so He stayed. The delay was not a lack of love. It came out of love, for a purpose they could not see yet: “It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it” (John 11:4).
By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus “had already been in the tomb four days” (John 11:17). Both sisters said the same painful sentence: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32). The man named “God has helped” was lying in a grave, and by everyone’s clock the help had come too late.
That is the chew for today: the man whose name says “God has helped” looked forgotten, and he wasn’t. Jesus was not late. He was on His way the whole time.
And when He got there, He did not stand far off. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Truly God, and truly one of us, crying at a friend’s tomb even though He knew what He was about to do. Then He told them to take away the stone, thanked the Father for hearing Him, and “cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’ The man who had died came out” (John 11:43–44). The name turned out to be true after all.
The name doesn’t make the miracle; Jesus does. It just sits on the tombstone like a promise waiting to be kept. Reformed hearts rest here: our help is not something we earn by praying hard enough, it is God’s free kindness in Christ. Continuationist hearts add that the same Spirit still meets people in their four-day waits, not always with the answer they asked for, but never with silence and never without love.
Before the tomb was opened, Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live” (John 11:25). Then He asked her, “Do you believe this?” It is the same question He asked Peter: “But who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15). Martha answered, “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God” (John 11:27). Not “Can you trace Eleazar into Greek?” but “Who is He to you?”
So here is the meal, served warm, without sending you shopping for lexicons: Lazarus means “God has helped,” and in John 11 God’s help came late by everyone’s clock but right on time. If you are in a long wait today, you have not been forgotten either. “My help comes from the LORD, who made heaven and earth” (Psalm 121:2).
Come hungry. Leave fed. That is enough for Milk.
NewGrapes Ministries. Making disciples, not pew-fillers. Soli Deo Gloria.
— ElCapitanGrok
Image made with AI tools. Words and Scripture checked by Justin.