When therefore he heard, He is sick, he remained two days then in the place where he was.
A message reached Jesus about a sick friend, and He did not move. He stayed where He was for two more days while that friend sank toward death. The verse forces the hardest question faith ever asks — what does it mean when the One who loves you does not come?
Why He waited
The verse opens with "So." The delay comes straight after the words about His love for Martha, her sister and Lazarus. One writer takes that link head-on:
Strange it must have seemed to them, when He had received their message, "He stayed two days longer in the place where He was." He did not move. He waited until the sickness had done its work and Lazarus lay dead. What a test that must have been to their confidence in Him. We may be sure that the devil was not far away from them. As those days dragged slowly by, he would suggest that their trust had been misplaced. He would suggest that Jesus could not deal with that special kind of sickness, or, worse still, that He had stopped caring. It was then that the Holy Spirit gives us this telling comment: "Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." No lack or loss of love kept Him from them. Indifference did not make Him delay. It was the perfection of His love, the wisdom of it. He had something in store for them which was infinitely better than the best they had expected of Him.
An unusual silence
He answered other people at once. Against that, the silence here stands out:
It was not His custom to receive the requests for help addressed to Him this way. Usually the answers came swift, and sure, and abounding. A woman touched Him in the crowd. A Roman officer sent Him a message. A Syro-Phoenician woman cried out to Him. Each one got an immediate and fitting reply. But the desire of these, His very dear friends, received no direct response.
His wisdom, not ours
We assume that real love must move the moment we call. One writer calls that a false claim on Christ:
It is hard to think it good when the Lord does not stop the evil we dread. It is hard when He does not come the first time love asks Him. The evil may even have come from our own unbelief or sin. Yet we hold this wrong confidence in Jesus' love: that He must be at our beck and call to remove it. Surely He has indeed made Himself our Servant from first to last, but in His wisdom (for that is love), not ours… When the right time has come, He is as ready to go at all cost… He offers to come at cost at the wise moment, and that proves it was no lack of love that held Him back or delayed Him.
Waiting on the Father
He stayed, and later He walked into a place where people wanted Him dead. Both moves came from one source:
His staying in the same place for two days was not the impulse of human feeling. In the same way, His going to the place of deadly hatred followed the light He walked in and was… He lives in dependence. He waits for His Father's will. When His Father gives it, it settles His movements at once.
What the two days produced
Later in the chapter Jesus tells the disciples what the delay was for:
Then we learn that He stayed the two days for the blessing of His disciples. The Lord says, "For your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe." This crushing sorrow had overtaken the two sisters. It would become the occasion of glory to the Father and blessing for the two sisters in their loss. It would also lead to the blessing of others.
While the answer has not come
The pause left room for suspicion — and there is a settled answer to it:
Yet He paused. The enemy might throw in all sorts of suggestions, and their own hearts might invent all sorts of reasonings… But there is a divine remedy for all the heart's reasonings, and a triumphant answer to all the enemy's dark and horrible suggestions. What is it? Unshaken confidence in the eternal stability of the love of Christ.
Applied to prayer, the principle is blunt:
His delays in answering prayer are always because of a love that is wiser than we understand.
Summary
- Love delays. The two days stand right after the statement that Jesus loved this family. The waiting came out of that love, not despite it.
- Love waits. He moved by the Father's will, not by human impulse — silent until the word came, then going at all cost.
- Love withholds. Others got swift answers; these close friends got none, so He could give them something better than a healing.
- Love is tested. In the gap the enemy whispers that He has forgotten or changed. The remedy is unshaken confidence in the stability of His love.
- Love enlarges. The delay served the sisters, the disciples' faith, and the blessing of others. One sorrow turned into glory for the Father.