NOTES for Joh 11:1-57
Death puts many things in their place. It cannot be deceived, it cannot be laughed off, before it all are equal, and no one can escape it. Therefore it is not surprising that a person compares the most serious and important things in strength with death - a worthy comparison: "love is strong as death" (Song 8:6). Religious faith, as the most serious content of many people's lives, has more than once been set alongside death; thousands of martyrs chose to die rather than renounce their faith.
So death is a kind of boundary at which the final testing of faith takes place. This is not necessarily one's own death - Lazarus's sisters faced this test just as he himself did. They kept faith, but not to the end. There will be a resurrection of the dead, but not now, Martha thinks.
That is why these words sound strange to her: "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live." And victory over death takes place, even before the final triumph of Pascha, and before we ourselves can be convinced by experience that love is stronger than death.