Vuyo Fakudze

What Jesus modelled in John 11 was not a theological shortcut — “this will work out for God’s glory, so bear up.” He listened to their grief without defending himself. He wept with them.

What does it mean to look at suffering through the lens of purpose? John 11 — the story of Lazarus, his sisters, and Jesus — forces this question into the open. Lazarus falls ill. His sisters send word to Jesus, trusting that he will come and heal his friend. Jesus delays, telling his followers that “this sickness is not toward death, but for the glory of God” (v. 4). Lazarus dies. Jesus tells his disciples he is glad he was not there “so that you may believe” (v. 15). Martha and Mary, each in turn, confront him: “Master, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (vv. 21, 32). Eventually, Jesus calls Lazarus from the tomb, and the dead man walks out alive. The result: many of the Judeans who had come with Mary and witnessed what Jesus did placed their faith in him (v. 45).

The story is one of sickness and hope, grief and joy, pain and glory. But it opens with what looks like a contradiction. Jesus says the sickness will not end in death — and then Lazarus dies. How do we make sense of that?

The Grammar of Purpose

The puzzle begins with translation. The common English rendering — “this sickness will not lead to death” — is already a theological interpretation. Reading the Greek more closely, Jesus says, “this sickness is not toward death.” The keyword is the preposition πρὸς (pros), followed by the accusative noun θάνατον (thanaton, meaning “death”). In Greek, πρὸς + accusative most commonly means “toward,” “with,” or “at.”1 The standard English reading takes this as a statement of result: the sickness will not result in death. But as any reader of the text immediately notices, that cannot be what Jesus meant, because Lazarus does die.

The trick to any good translation is context. Knowing a word’s lexical range is useful; knowing how it functions in a particular sentence is what matters. Here, the question is whether πρὸς carries the force of result or purpose. Jesus seems less concerned with the immediate outcome for Lazarus than with the larger purpose the situation will serve. Edward Klink captures this well:

The larger sense seems to be less that the sickness ‘would not lead to death’ and more ‘is not for the purpose of death.’ The fact that Lazarus does die might further suggest that the meaning of this phrase was less result and more purpose. In other words, Jesus speaks less about the conclusion of the sickness and more about the intention of the sickness.2

On this reading, Jesus is not making a prediction that turns out to be wrong and then quietly revising it. He is viewing the entire situation — Lazarus’s illness, imminent death, and eventual resurrection — through the lens of purpose from the outset. The sickness is not for death. It is for the glory of God.

Purpose in the New Testament

This purposive use of πρὸς + accusative is not unique to John 11. Two other New Testament passages use the same construction to communicate intention rather than outcome.

In Ephesians 4:11–12, Paul lists the gifts that the risen and ascended Christ has given to his people, then explains their purpose using πρὸς τὸν καταρτισμὸν (pros ton katartismon) — “for the equipping of the saints.” The gifts are not ends in themselves; they are roles oriented toward a specific goal. Those who occupy these roles must exercise them in such a way that the whole body is built up until it reaches its teleios — its maturity, its wholeness.

Romans 15:2 applies the same construction to the divided house churches in Rome. The community is split along lines of conscience regarding Torah and food: Paul’s “strong,” who eat freely, and the “weak,” whose conscience constrains them. Paul exhorts the strong to please their neighbour πρὸς οἰκοδομήν (pros oikodomen) — “for their building up.” The reason each person must please their neighbour is for the purpose of that person’s formation and growth. Strength is not a possession to be enjoyed but a resource to be directed toward others’ flourishing.

Both examples confirm that πρὸς + accusative can bear the weight of purpose rather than mere result. This is the sense at work in John 11:4. Jesus is not speaking about what will happen to Lazarus in the next few hours. He is speaking about what the whole situation is for.

Glory as Belief

If the sickness’s purpose is the glory of God, the narrative tells us what that glory looks like in practice: many of the Judeans who witnessed what Jesus did pledged their faith to him (v. 45). The equation the text draws is deliberate — God’s glory is people coming to trust in Jesus. This is not a side effect of the miracle; it is the point toward which the entire episode has been moving. The religious leaders grasped something of this and grew alarmed, fearing that Jesus’ growing following would bring trouble with Rome. The stakes of the story — personal, communal, political — are all in motion because of what began as one family’s private grief.

Entering the Pain, Holding the Purpose

None of this means that Jesus trivialises the suffering of Martha and Mary. The text will not allow that reading. He listened to their grief without defending himself. He wept with them. He felt their pain before he resolved it. The one who spoke of purpose also groaned in the spirit and was deeply troubled (v. 33, 35). Purpose does not anesthetize pain; it lives alongside it.

What Jesus modelled in John 11 was not a theological shortcut — “this will work out for God’s glory, so bear up.” It was a way of holding two things simultaneously: full entry into the present reality of grief, and an orientation toward what that grief might yet serve. He gave Martha and Mary something greater than they could have imagined — their brother’s tragedy becoming a vehicle for the glory of God.

This is a posture worth learning. It does not call us to resolve pain prematurely or to explain suffering away. It calls us to enter into the hurt and brokenness of people fully, and — in the midst of that entering — to remain open to how the present situation, as difficult as it may be, can become the occasion for something far larger than it first appeared. That is what it means to see through the lens of purpose rather than the lens of immediate result.