John 11

v1-16: The description Christ gives of a believer and a believer's death is glorious.  He calls a believer, His friend.  "There is an affection and communion between them, which our Lord Jesus will acknowledge and not be ashamed of."  Not even death will break this bond of friendship, as the death of a believer, He calls sleep, because we are sure to rise again. "Just as sleep is like death, so a person’s waking up from sleep when called, especially when called by their own name, is a sign of the resurrection."

v17-32: It is comforting to know that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life.  He will give spiritual life to "those who by faith have been born again."  For their bodies He promised a "blessed resurrection" and for their souls "a blessed immortality".  This spiritual life they have been given "will never be extinguished, but perfected in eternal life."

v33-44: The loud call Jesus used to wake Lazarus up from his sleep in the grave, is a picture "of the gospel call, by which dead souls were to be brought out of the grave of sin," and of the call by which the dead will be raised on the last day.  By calling Lazarus by name, it shows that Jesus knows who are His, and that He will lose none of those whom He wants to raise to life.

v45-57: "God can and often does make evildoers instruments that serve his own purposes, even contrary to their own intentions, because he has them not only on a chain, to restrain them from doing the trouble they want, but also on a bridle, to lead them to do the service they do not want to do."  Caiaphas spoke from himself, or rather from the Devil, to stir up the council against Christ, but to declare the "purpose and intention of God to save God's spiritual Israel from sin and wrath by the death of Christ, he did not speak it from himself, since he knew nothing about the matter."