John 11:14-16

“ Then Jesus therefore said to them openly, Lazarus is dead; 15 and I rejoice for your sakes that I was not there, to the end that you may believe; but let us go to him. 16. Whereupon Thomas, who is called Didymus, said to his fellow-disciples, Let us also go, that we may die with him. ”

After having set aside (John 11:9-10), the motive alleged by the disciples against this journey, and indicated the reason (John 11:11-12) which obliges Him to undertake it, Jesus concludes by explaining Himself and gives the order for departing. Παρρησίᾳ, as in John 16:25: in strict terms, without figure. There would have been, as we have already seen, a manifest falseness in our Lord's expressing Himself, as He does in John 11:15, if this death had been the intentional effect of His own mode of action. The words: to the end that you may believe are the commentary on the limiting words: for your sakes. Undoubtedly the disciples were already believers; but, as Hengstenberg says, by growing, faith comes into being. At each new stage which it reaches, the preceding stage seems to it in itself nothing more than unbelief. Jesus knows how the increase of faith which is about to be produced in them around this tomb will be necessary for them, in a little time, when they shall find themselves before that of their Master. There is something abrupt in the last words: But let us go to him. It is a matter of constraining them and of overcoming in them the last remnant of resistance. They yield, but not without making manifest the unbelief hidden in the depths of the hearts of some of them.

The words of Thomas to the other disciples betrays indeed more of love for the person of Jesus than of faith in the wisdom of His course of action. Their meaning is this: “If He actually desires to have Himself killed, let us go and perish with Him.” The Thomas who speaks thus is indeed the same whom we shall meet again in John 14:5; John 20:25; much of frankness and resolution, but little of disposition to subordinate the visible to the invisible. This quite undesigned consistency in the role of the secondary personages, is, as has been admirably brought out by Luthardt, one of the striking features of John's narrative and one of the best proofs of the historical truth of this work. The name Thomas (in the Aramaic האמא, Hebrew האם) signifies twin. The name Didymus, which has in Greek the same meaning, was undoubtedly that by which this apostle was most commonly designated in the churches of Asia Minor, in the midst of which John wrote. Thus is the repetition of this translation in John 20:24 and John 21:2 explained. Hengstenberg, Luthardt, and Keil see in this name of twin an allusion to the fact that Thomas carried in himself two men, a believer and an unbeliever, a Jacob and an Esau! He was a δίψυχος man (Keil)!

What wisdom and what love in the manner in which Jesus prepares His disciples for this journey which was so repugnant to their feeling! What elevation in the thoughts which He suggests to their hearts on this occasion!

What grace and appropriateness in the images by which He endeavors to make these thoughts intelligible to them!