Now the Jewish religious leaders refused to believe that he had really been blind and had gained his sight until at last they summoned the parents of the man who had become able to see.

They asked the parents, “Is this your son, whom you say was born blind? Then how does he now see?”

We know that God doesn’t listen to sinners, but if anyone is devout and does his will, God listens to him.

Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, so he found the man and said to him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”

“I tell you the solemn truth, the one who does not enter the sheepfold by the door, but climbs in some other way, is a thief and a robber.

When he has brought all his own sheep out, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they recognize his voice.

just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.

My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can snatch them from my Father’s hand.

The Jewish leaders replied, “We are not going to stone you for a good deed but for blasphemy, because you, a man, are claiming to be God.”

If those people to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ (and the scripture cannot be broken),

do you say about the one whom the Father set apart and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’?

(Now it was Mary who anointed the Lord with perfumed oil and wiped his feet dry with her hair, whose brother Lazarus was sick.)

After he said this, he added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep. But I am going there to awaken him.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live even if he dies,

But some of them said, “This is the man who caused the blind man to see! Couldn’t he have done something to keep Lazarus from dying?”

Jesus, intensely moved again, came to the tomb. (Now it was a cave, and a stone was placed across it.)

So they took away the stone. Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you that you have listened to me.

Then many of the people, who had come with Mary and had seen the things Jesus did, believed in him.

You do not realize that it is more to your advantage to have one man die for the people than for the whole nation to perish.”

Now the Jewish feast of Passover was near, and many people went up to Jerusalem from the rural areas before the Passover to cleanse themselves ritually.