John 11 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

There was a man who was sick — Lazarus, from Bethany, the village where Mary and her sister Martha lived.

This was the same Mary who later poured perfumed oil on the Master and wiped his feet with her hair. Her brother Lazarus was the one who was sick.

So the sisters sent a message to Jesus: "Master, the one you love is sick."

When Jesus heard this, he said, "This sickness won't end in death. No — it's an opportunity for God's magnificent reality to be displayed, so that God's Son is revealed through it."

Now Jesus deeply cared for Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he actually stayed where he was for two more days.

Then after that, he said to his students, "Let's go back to Judea."

His students said, "Rabbi, just recently the Jewish leaders there were trying to stone you, and you want to go back?"

Jesus answered, "Aren't there twelve hours of daylight? If you walk during the day, you don't stumble, because you can see by the light of this world."

But if you walk at night, you stumble, because you don't have the light in you."

After saying this, he told them, "Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I'm going to wake him up."

The students said, "Master, if he's sleeping, he'll recover."

Jesus had been talking about his death, but they thought he meant natural sleep.

So then Jesus told them plainly, "Lazarus has died."

"And for your sake I'm glad I wasn't there, so that you'll trust me. But let's go to him."

Then Thomas — the one called "the Twin" — said to the other students, "Let's go too, so we can die with him."

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem,

and many of the Jewish people had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at the house.

Martha said to Jesus, "Master, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died."

"But even now I know that whatever you ask God, God will give you."

Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again."

Martha said, "I know he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day."

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Anyone who trusts in me will live, even if they die."

"And everyone who lives and trusts in me will never truly die. Do you trust this?"

"Yes, Master," she said. "I have come to trust that you are The One, the Son of God — the one who was coming into the world."

After she said this, she went back and quietly told her sister Mary, "The Teacher is here and is asking for you."

When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.

Jesus hadn't entered the village yet — he was still at the place where Martha had met him.

The Jewish people who had been in the house comforting Mary saw her get up quickly and leave, so they followed her. They assumed she was going to the tomb to grieve there.

When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, "Master, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died."

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jewish people who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply shaken in his spirit and visibly troubled.

"Where have you laid him?" he asked. "Come and see, Master," they said.

Jesus wept.

The Jewish people said, "Look how much he loved him!"

But some of them said, "He opened the eyes of the blind man — couldn't he have kept this man from dying?"

Jesus, again deeply shaken inside, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance.

"Move the stone aside," Jesus said. Martha, the dead man's sister, said, "Master, by now there will be a stench — it's been four days."

Jesus said to her, "Didn't I tell you that if you trusted, you would see God's magnificent reality?"

So they moved the stone aside. Jesus looked upward and said, "Father, thank you for hearing me."

"I know you always hear me, but I said this for the sake of the people standing here, so they'll trust that you sent me."

After saying this, he shouted with a loud voice, "Lazarus, come out!"

The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped in burial strips and his face covered with a cloth. Jesus said to them, "Unwrap him and let him go."

Many of the Jewish people who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did put their trust in him.

But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the council. "What are we going to do?" they asked. "This man is performing many powerful signs."

"If we let him keep going like this, everyone will put their trust in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place of worship and our nation."

Then one of them, Caiaphas, who was the high priest that year, spoke up: "You people don't understand anything at all."

"Don't you realize it's better for you that one man dies for the people than for the whole nation to be destroyed?"