In the story of the resurrection of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, John's interpretation of the signs reaches its climax. Lazarus was dead for four days, and at the call of Jesus he came back to life. For John, an event of this kind is a most appropriate symbol of what happens to spiritually dead people when they are receptive to the power of God made manifest in the person of Jesus. That this story is found only in the Gospel of John raises some questions concerning the historicity of the event, for it does not seem at all probable that the authors of the Synoptic Gospels would have failed to relate an event as important as this one if they had known about it. Whether John was recording a popular tradition or writing a sequel to the story of the rich man and Lazarus, recorded in the Gospel of Luke, we do not know. At any rate, the story in Luke closes with the statement that those who do not believe Moses and the prophets will not be convinced, even if a person raised from the dead should speak to them. In John's story, someone does come from the dead, and even then the Jews are not persuaded by what he says and does. As John interprets the story, its deeper meaning is disclosed in a statement that Jesus makes: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die." Lazarus is typical of all human beings. Without the indwelling presence of the Spirit of God, all human life is meaningless. When the Spirit of God enters into our lives, we are no longer dead in a spiritual sense but are partakers of the life that is everlasting.
The remaining portions of the Gospel of John record incidents closely related to the closing days of Jesus' earthly ministry. Unlike the Gospel of Mark, the story of the anointing of Jesus by Mary is placed before rather than after Jesus' triumphal entry into Jerusalem, and the Passover meal with the disciples is said to have taken place one day earlier than in the account given in the Synoptic Gospels. These changes are quite in harmony with John's conception of Jesus as "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Because the paschal lamb used as a sacrifice by the ancient Jews was always slain on the day before the Passover, it seemed most appropriate to John that the sacrifice of Jesus should be in conformity with the ancient tradition.
