The pain of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, people whom Jesus dearly loved, was real and intense. They had to wait in the dark, wondering why Jesus hadn’t shown up. He cared about their pain, weeping with them as he saw their grief, all the while certain that their grief would turn to joy. Our grief will also turn to joy — on earth, as we see and are satisfied in God, and ultimately in heaven, when we see him face to face. The most loving thing that God can do is to increase our faith in him, to show us his glory, to help us find our satisfaction in him.

Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11:21, 32)
To me, this passage from John 11 is one of the most poignant in all the Gospels. It reflects the heartbreak of sisters who had been sure Jesus would save their brother — women who loved Jesus and sacrificed for him, a family that needed his help and called to him in their distress. Yet Jesus did not respond to his friends’ urgent request. He sent no answer, but simply showed up after their brother was dead.
On the surface, this story is shocking. It doesn’t fit with our definition of love. To us, love rescues and runs. Love doesn’t wait. Love does everything possible to keep the beloved from pain. Yet in understanding how Jesus loved this family, I have seen the depth of his love for me in my own suffering.
Lazarus’s Last Breath
Days before the words above were spoken, Mary and Martha had sent a message to Jesus that their brother, Lazarus, was ill (John 11:3). They likely expected that Jesus would leave immediately to see his dear friend, or perhaps even heal him right there with a word. They knew he was the coming Christ, the Son of God, and that God would give him whatever he asked (John 11:22, 27). They had witnessed Jesus heal countless strangers, responding without delay to their requests for help. Surely he would show up for his friends.
Yet Jesus didn’t respond to their urgent need, choosing to stay where he was for two whole days (John 11:6). He told the disciples that Lazarus’s illness was for the glory of God, that he himself would be glorified through it, and that others would believe because of it (John 11:4, 14–15). At the same time, Jesus knew his intentional delay would bewilder his friends.
I imagine the sisters waiting by the window where Lazarus lay dying, straining to see if Jesus was coming. I picture them reassuring each other that Jesus would surely arrive in time to heal Lazarus. I wonder what each was thinking as Lazarus took his last breath. Were they disappointed and disillusioned with Jesus, even questioning their relationship with him? Did they wonder if Jesus even cared? Did they doubt whether Jesus was the Savior they hoped him to be?
Whatever inner turmoil they were feeling, the sisters had to go on. They needed to bury Lazarus and prepare their home, which would be flooded with people who would come to console them. Some may have asked why Jesus didn’t save Lazarus, perhaps mirroring the question asked later by bystanders: “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?” (John 11:37).
Jesus with the Sisters
In the middle of their grieving, Jesus arrived. The sisters independently met him and uttered the same plaintive words: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21, 32). Though they had lost hope of ever seeing their brother again, neither ran from Jesus in their despair, or stayed aloof to protect themselves, or pretended his inaction hadn’t hurt them. Instead, they went to Jesus, directly telling him how they felt.
Jesus responded differently to each sister, knowing what each needed. Martha needed truth; she needed to understand and reaffirm her belief in Jesus as God’s Son. Jesus told her that he was the resurrection and the life, and that whoever believed in him would never die (John 11:25–26).
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The epistolary exchange between Helmuth and Freya is one of the most moving in history. Studded with Scriptures and with honest reflections on God’s work in their lives, they are also an invaluable testimony of how Christians can come to grips with the prospect of imminent death. Most of the time, Helmuth found it impossible to focus entirely on either death or life. As long as there was a possibility for him to present his side of the story, he kept developing his line of defense. At the same time, both he and Freya learned to say, “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). 

“One thing Christianity and we National Socialists have in common, and only one: we demand the whole man.” These words, pronounced by Roland Freisler, State Secretary of the Reich, at the time of the trial of Helmuth von Moltke, were jarring.
“I wonder if he realized what he was saying?” Moltke wrote later. “This was grim earnest. ‘From whom do you take your orders? From the Beyond or from Adolf Hitler?’ ‘Who commands your loyalty and your faith?’ All rhetorical questions, of course. Anyhow, Freisler is the first National Socialist who has grasped who I am.”[1]
Every political accusation the party had leveled against Moltke – accusations he was well-prepared to disprove – were suddenly brushed aside to reveal the crux of the matter: Moltke’s loyalty to Christ.
Now, with the cards laid clearly on the table, Moltke felt thankful and energized. “Just think how wonderfully God prepared this, his unworthy vessel,” he wrote to his wife Freya.
He then went on to list many instances of God’s providence in his life.
Chosen and Molded
Born in March 1907 in Kreisau (now Krzyżowa, Poland) to a reputable Prussian family, at age 14 he left the Christian Science his parents had firmly embraced and became confirmed in the Evangelical Church of Prussia.
He later studied law and political sciences in Breslau, Vienna, Heidelberg, and Berlin. In 1931, he married Freya Deichman, who became his greatest earthly source of strength in this life. Four years later, he declined the chance to become a judge because the position would require him to join a party which had already reared its ugly head: the National Socialist German Party. Instead, he opened a law practice in Berlin, where he helped victims of Hitler’s régime t.
In spite of this, he was drafted in 1939 by the German military intelligence – an experience that confirmed in his mind the horrors of war. He learned of villages destroyed and thousands of people executed in senseless revenge. “Certainly more than a thousand people are murdered in this way every day, and another thousand German men are habituated to murder,” he wrote in 1941. “May I know this and yet sit at my table in my heated flat and have tea? Don’t I thereby become guilty too? What shall I say when I am asked: And what did you do during that time?”[2]
He joined a group of friends equally opposed to Nazism. Their three meetings in Kreisau led them to be known as the “Kreisau Circle.” Believing that Germany would be defeated in the war, they focused on post-war reconstruction.
Moltke opposed the assassination of Hitler. Regardless, he was arrested on the evening of January 19, 1944. Looking back, he recognized God’s hand in taking him out of the picture just as he was in danger of “being drawn into active participation for a putsch” – a violent attempt, which was actually brought to action in July of the same year. “I was pulled away,” he said, “and thus I am, and remain, free of any connection to the use of violence.”[3]
He gratefully recognized God’s hand in bringing him to Himself, after years of nominal Christianity. “He humbled me as I have never been humbled before, so that I had to lose all pride, so that at last I understand my sinfulness after 38 years, so that I learn to beg for his forgiveness and to trust to his mercy.”[4]
He recounted all of God’s mercies since he had been in prison: God had allowed him to communicate with Freya and prepare for his death; he had let him “experience to their utmost depth the pain of parting and the terror of death and the fear of hell, so that all that should be over too;” and had endowed him “with faith, hope, and love, with a wealth of these that is truly overwhelming.”[5]
The last realization was the cherry on the cake, as he stood before Freisler “as a Christian and nothing else.” To him, this was the greatest honor. “For what a mighty task your husband was chosen,” he wrote to Freya, “all the trouble the Lord took with him, the infinite detours, the intricate zigzag curves, all suddenly find their explanation in one hour on the 10th of January 1945. Everything acquires its meaning in retrospect, which was hidden.”
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Written by Thomas R. Schreiner |
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Luke encourages us to pray always. We should not become practical atheists who cease to hope in God. If we stop praying, it is because we are beginning to think that God is not faithful, that he does not care, that he will not really help us out. But the real issue is not whether God is faithful but whether we are faithful.

And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, “In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor respected man. And there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Give me justice against my adversary.’ For a while he refused, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God nor respect man, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will give her justice, so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming.’” And the Lord said, “Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”—Luke 18:1–8
Is God Like an Unjust Judge?
In Luke 18 Jesus tells of a judge who does not fear God or respect human beings. Judges have authority and power and social status. The Torah calls upon them to rule justly: “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbor” (Lev. 19:15). In addition, the fundamental requirement for all in Israel was to fear the Lord (Deut. 6:13, 24; 10:12, 20; 1 Sam. 12:24; Eccles. 12:13; Job 28:28; Prov. 1:7), for those who fear him worship him alone. Because he feared God, Nehemiah did not oppress the people financially (Neh. 5:15); in contrast, those who speak against the deaf or mistreat the blind do so because they do not fear the Lord (Lev. 19:14).
Since the judge does not fear God, he does not respect people, especially those who, like the widow, are poor and disadvantaged. As we read in Exodus 22:22, “You shall not mistreat any widow.” Indeed, the Lord “executes justice for…the widow” (Deut. 10:18). Deuteronomy 27:19 calls a curse upon those who pervert the justice that widows deserve (cf. Isa. 1:17, 23; 10:2; Jer. 7:6; 22:3; Zech. 7:10). The judge, however, since he does not fear God or respect people, does not care about what the Torah requires. The widow, however, is indefatigable, and she repeatedly petitions him for justice.
The judge, however, continues to refuse her request. He acknowledges what we saw in Luke 18:2: he neither fears God nor respects people. He does not care, therefore, about the widow’s rights or the justice of her case. Still, he eventually decides the case rightly on her behalf because the widow will not leave him alone; she keeps bothering him about the case until he gives her justice. Why does the judge finally do so (cf. Luke 11:8)? Because the widow will “beat [him] down” if she keeps coming to him. The verb translated “beat down” (Gk. hypōpiazō) is translated various ways: “wear me out” (CSB, NASB, NET, NRSV, RSV, ASV); “weary me” (KJV); “attack me” (NIV). Some understand the verb literally (the ESV and NIV could be taken this way); the judge fears that the widow will give him a black eye, that she will end up punching him in the face or resorting to some other physical violence. It seems unlikely, however, that the judge would fear physical violence from a widow. The verb, then, should be taken metaphorically—but metaphorically of what? Others say that the judge fears getting a “black eye” in the eyes of the community, of being shamed for his behavior. The problem with this reading is that we have already been told that the judge does not respect people; he does not care what they think of him. The best option, then, is represented by most translations: the judge is growing weary of his encounters with the widow. Her persistence day after day is wearing him out, and it is easier on him to grant her request than to keep dealing with her.1 He is tired of being bothered day after day.
Jesus proceeds to apply the parable to his hearers. He argues from lesser to greater: if the unrighteous judge who despised God and mistreated people granted justice when petitioned, then God will certainly grant justice to his elect who voice their concerns to him day and night (cf. Rev. 6:10). The reference to “day and night” fits with Luke 18:1 and the behavior of the widow. It fits with verse 1 because those who do not lose heart continue to pray “day and night”; it fits with the widow because she was not deterred despite the reluctance of the judge to grant her request.
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