<p>11:15- see on Lk. 8:27.</p><p><i>And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe</i>- The Lord's joy was that the disciples would believe. So His joy was that He had not been there, because He knew that His resurrection of Lazarus would develop their faith. And He did this even though He wept for the loss of His friend Lazarus which was temporarily required for this.</p><p>So the Lord Jesus seems to have purposefully not gone to Lazarus immediately, knowing that the longer he remained dead, the greater would be the impression made upon the disciples when they saw the miracle He planned to do (Jn. 11:15). He was even glad that Lazarus died- even though He wept over the loss of His friend. Thus His joy, which He invites us to share, is not mere personal joy- it was the joy for the sake of others&rsquo; spiritual growth.&nbsp;</p><p>The Lord knew that His love of Lazarus was such that had He been present, He would have stopped Lazarus from dying. We have here another insight into His humanity. He knew that His emotions would have led Him to do the cure. From a distance He still could have cured Lazarus, for distance was no barrier to His healings, His physical presence wasn't required (Lk. 7:7-10). So the Lord is recognizing that His human senses and emotions would have been such that He would have cured Lazarus, but because they were not exercised so strongly, by reason of His not being physically present, He therefore restrained Himself and allowed Lazarus to die. And He was &quot;glad&quot; about that, because the resurrection of Lazarus would result in their 'believing'. Again we see how there are levels of faith. The disciples already believed; but He saw that their faith would increment to another level on witnessing the resurrection of Lazarus. Martha knew that if Jesus had been physically present, her brother would have been healed: &quot;Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died&quot; (:21). We can understand this as meaning that she knew Him well enough to know that His pity would have been so deeply aroused by the sight of the terminally ill Lazarus that He would have cured Him. In this we see another insight into His humanity. His followers certainly didn't think He was God Himself. But see another possibility on :21.</p><p><i>Nevertheless let us go to him</i>- The meaning of the &quot;nevertheless&quot; is hard to find, unless we follow the reasoning presented above about physical presence; see 11:15 <i>I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, so that you may believe</i>. Although the Lord's physical presence wasn't required for the miracle, nevertheless, He wanted to go there and raise Lazarus in front of them all- &quot;so that you may believe&quot;. In this case, as often in the Gospels, the Lord was speaking a word more to Himself than to His listeners; the &quot;nevertheless&quot; was relevant to His own deep awareness that He could merely say the word, and Lazarus would rise from the dead. The language of &quot;let us go to him&quot; implies that His dead friend was alive; which is how He looks at all who have fallen asleep in Him. For all live unto God (Rom. 4:17,18).</p>