John 11:36 Commentary and Bible Study

That is a true observation, but they did not understand it. They did not understand the full grief of Christ. He saw and felt not only the loss of Lazarus; he felt the grief that all feel at death, the death that sin has brought into the world. ‘Then said the Jews,’ those who had come to mourn, ‘Behold how he loved him!’ This is when Jesus wept concerning the death of Lazarus. ‘And some of them said, Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?’ The Jews knew about his restoration of sight to the blind, but it didn’t bring them to believe in Christ as God, Christ as Messiah, and as soon as they thought they were witnessing something he could have done better, they jumped with their critical and doubting attitude. They are all there, and soon they are going to see what will happen.There were cynical Jews among them. What a terrible thing to think in the midst of all this – ‘Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man [Lazarus] should not have died?’ And even as they think and say those thoughts, could not this man who opened the eyes of the blind prevent Lazarus from dying? Even as they express their cynicism and their criticism and their hostility, they were betraying the fact that they were guilty men who knew that Christ had opened the eyes of the man born blind. They give themselves away. They inadvertently reveal that they knew that that had been an amazing miracle by the Lord. And they will be judged for that. But even powerful evidence had not given them respect to the divinity of Christ.