NOTES for Joh 11:3-4
The Savior's reaction to the news of Lazarus's illness and death shows well what the Way is. But not only the Way with a capital letter, the Way of the Messiah; every spiritual path of an ordinary person is subject to the same laws. And the first condition of the way is the quality of life. Of existence. Of being. The Savior's words about Lazarus's illness, which is "not unto death, but for the glory of God," at first glance seem strange at the very least: after all, Lazarus did die.
Of course, one could say: Jesus knew in advance that He would raise His dead friend. But that would be only part of the answer. The point is not that He knows the past and future in all fullness. The point is how He knows them. How He sees. And this, in turn, is determined precisely by that same quality of existence.
Where do we live: in the fallen world, where space, time, and chains of cause and effect are absolute reality? Or in the Kingdom, where all this is relative, where even causal links are reversible, and where the past can therefore become as if it had never existed at all? This determines the quality of our life. And the possibility of the way as well. Jesus stands on the Way from His very birth: after all, the fullness of His communion with His Heavenly Father was absolute from the very beginning of His Way. We ordinary people still need to set out on the way, if, of course, we want to reach that Kingdom which the Savior promises us and enter it.
But the very possibility of the way is connected with our spiritual state. It is this state that determines the quality of our life. And what we are able to see. The glory of God can be seen only from the Kingdom. If we have no relation to the Kingdom, all we will see is death. Christianity is the life of the Kingdom. But in our earthly life, life in a world where the Kingdom has not yet opened to the end and in fullness, abiding in the Kingdom becomes the way of the Kingdom. That very way on which, if one walks it to the end, one can see the glory of God. And meet Christ returning in glory.